Chapel Sogn Bistgaun, Degen

The chapel cannot be visited.

The chapel in an open field and without a cemetery is remarkable in many respects. Four of the famous artists who worked in the area have left their mark:

Hans Ardüser, the schoolmaster, chronicler and itinerant painter, painted a monumental Christophorus on the tower (2). The sight of it was intended to protect the faithful in the event of sudden death. The Memmingen workshop of Ivo Strigel supplied a Gothic winged altar in 1506. In the predella, Christ and the 12 disciples were immortalized as half-figures in three fields (3). In the shrine, next to Mary with the child on the left are John the Baptist with a Bible and the lamb and St. Sebastian as a fashionable knight. St. George with a lance and St. Roch with a staff follow on the right (4).

Johann Ritz from Selkingen (see also Vrin, parish church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary) transformed the altar into baroque forms in 1710 and added two side altars (5). Hans Jakob Greutter painted the large picture of the Visitation of the Plague on the right-hand side (6) as well as the five images of saints in the nave. Ritz also had a use for the two wings of the Strigelaltar: they crown his altar as a triptych in the gable (7): St. Catherine on the left, Magdalene and Verena in the middle and St. Barbara on the right.

The carved and colored wooden ceiling (8) was sold to the National Museum in Zurich in 1894 and replaced by a copy.

Sogn Bistgaun is again one of the saints of the plague, which indicates the constant threat to the population in the Middle Ages.

Text and photos: Walter Müller (wmueller@hispeed.ch) in collaboration with Surselva Tourism