St John Nepomucene

This primitive and expressive sculpture portrays the Czech saint John Nepomucene (ca 1340–1393), whose cult was encouraged in many countries by the Jesuits in their struggle against Protestantism, in their efforts to promote the Sacrament of Confession. Not only is the saint popular in the Czech Republic, but also in Slovakia, Poland, Germany (in particular Bavaria), Austria and Slovenia. He is one of the favourite saints of Lithuanian folk sculptors. Country people often called him tenderly by the diminutive Šventas Jonelis, or just Jonelis (St Johnny, or Johnny).

Not many sculptures have survived with the undamaged attributes of his story, a martyr’s palm in one hand and a Crucifix in the other. The nimbus with five stars around his head comes from the story that five stars appeared in the river where he drowned, and so helped to find his body. St John Nepomucene can be identified even without his attributes, but just from his canonical dress, a black cassock, a white surplice, a stole, a cloak and a biretta.

St John Nepomucene was thrown into a river from a bridge, and is therefore considered the patron saint of bridges, and a protector from drowning and floods. He was revered in the Lithuanian countryside as a guardian of bridges, and as a saviour from accidents in or near water, and that is why sculptures of him were placed by bridges, rivers, streams, bodies of water, ditches, and other waterlogged places.

Text author Skaidrė Urbonienė

This primitive and expressive sculpture portrays the Czech saint John