Architecture

St. James’s Church was built between 1613 and 1615.

To its left stands Fabianij’s City Girls’ School, today known as the Janez Levec Education Center. On the right side of the church rises the Marian Column.

Between 1667 and 1670, an octagonal chapel dedicated to St. Francis Xavier was added to the church hall. In 1882, a commemorative column with the Immaculate Virgin Mary was erected on the square in front of the church.

After the fire and earthquake, the church underwent its major renovation. The fire of 1774 led to the demolition of the adjacent Jesuit college. Following the devastating earthquake of 1895, architect Raimund Jeblinger from Linz thoroughly redesigned the exterior of the church and built a new bell tower.

Baroque sculpture in Ljubljana reached a high level of development. “Ljubljana school of sculpture,” was shaped by masters such as M. Kuša, Luka Mislej, and Francesco Robba. Initially, sculptures were ordered from Venice or created by Italian artists, but later, both local and foreign masters worked in the city. Robba, the most prominent among them, was active across present-day Slovenia, Carinthia, and Zagreb. His works have been compared to those of the renowned sculptor Donner. Ljubljana preserves key masterpieces by Robba, including the fountain in front of the Town Hall, altars in the Cathedral, in St. James’s Church, and in the Ursuline and Franciscan churches.

Interior of St. James’s Church after the fire of 1774

The fire of 1774 completely destroyed the interior decoration of St. James’s Church; only the Chapel of St. Francis Xavier was preserved, the sole example of stucco Baroque in Ljubljana. The church remained bare for decades until, under Pastor Rozman, it was artistically renewed in 1886. The renovation was led by Faleschini and Mikovics; frescoes were painted by Jurij Šubic, and stained glass windows were made in Innsbruck. The new decoration is a significant example of 19th-century church art.

We can only roughly imagine the interior of St. James’s Church before the devastating fire based on the richly stuccoed decoration of the Chapel of St. Francis Xavier—the only part that survived and the only preserved example of so-called stucco Baroque in Ljubljana. The fire that broke out on June 24, 1774, together with prolonged water damage from the exposed vaults, completely destroyed the church’s ornate interior. The stuccoes fell off, and the sooty remains of the frescoes were later whitewashed. During the renovation in 1886, traces of the old paintings were discovered beneath layers of whitewash—including depictions of the Guardian Angel and St. Michael near the choir window, along with some fragments of color on the vault. Nevertheless, the church’s interior remained bare and desolate for over a century.

It was not until the 1870s that parish priest Ivan Rozman initiated a comprehensive renovation and redecoration of the church interior. The plans were drawn up by master builder Franc Faleschini and later refined by Styrian architect Robert Mikovics. Between April 27 and October 17, 1886, the entire architectural articulation and interior decoration—still admired today—were completed. The project was overseen by Faleschini; stonemason Feliks Toman crafted the stone pedestals of the pilasters, while sculptor Franc Zajec contributed shell-shaped keystones, caryatid heads above the pilasters in the presbytery, and dynamic quatrefoil frames for the frescoes. The architectural elements—capitals, architraves, and cornices—were modeled by Anton Mlakar.

The new windows made of so-called “cathedral” glass were commissioned from the workshop of Albert Neuhauser in Innsbruck—the same workshop that had already provided four windows for the presbytery in 1879. A painted window depicting the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child in her arms was added to the church façade.

The vault paintings in St. James’s Church were executed by the renowned Slovenian painter Jurij Šubic, who designed and carried out the central iconographic program in the main nave vault and above the presbytery. Between June 15 and September 23, 1886, and for a fee of 2,178 gulden, Šubic painted four scenes from the life of the apostle St. James in the central sections of the nave vault:

• The Calling of St. James,
• The Transfiguration on Mount Tabor,
• The Beheading of St. James,
• and above the presbytery – the monumental frescoThe Glorification of St. James.