LOCATION, OBJECT
Hamlet of Blatten, community of Malters, Canton of Lucerne. Former chaplain’s house (Kaplanei) of the Church of St Judoc (St. Jost); built 1654-57, enlarged 1769; restored 2002-03. Private, not open to visitors.

EMBLEMS (20)
Context
First floor, coloured stained-glass emblems (each ca. 19 x 27 cm) with German verse epigrams, inserted into the upper parts of the ten windows of three adjacent rooms. Partly damaged (the colours of no. 4 are faded, no. 20 is broken and half of its pictura lost).

Authorship, Date
Anonymous, perhaps designed by a member of the Lucerne patrician family Amrhyn; executed by local craftsmen. Donated by representatives of the Lucern nobility and higher clergy, whose names and coats of arms are integrated into the design, together with the dates 1657 (nos. 4, 16 and 18) and 1656 (all others).

Significance
Emblematic representation of the ascetic life of St Judoc (7th c.) as a model of piety.

Source
Except for no. 11, all picturae were adopted from Imago primi saeculi Societatis Jesu (1640), a copy of which was acquired by the Lucerne Jesuit college in 1643. The Latin mottoes are replaced by German verse epigrams to fit the new context.

LITERATURE
Kdm LU 1: 460-64, 6: 464, and new ed. 2: 344-47 (with full list of donors); KF 1: 259; Bitterli 2005; Van Vaeck 2015: 191-93 and fig. 5.147-5.150.

Copyright note: Added 2012, updated 2019. Floor plan, photos of exterior from east and interior by H. Thürig, 2003; colour photos of emblems no. 1-20 by Therese Bütler, Lucerne, 2004; b&w photo of emblem no.20 by Max Bütler, Lucerne, ca. 1960-65, courtesy of Denkmalpflege und Archäologie des Kantons Luzern.