File:Gallusvita Relief Wentzinger Stiftskirche SG 04.png

The eight reliefs in the side rooms of the rotunda above the passages were created by Johann Christian Wentzinger (or Wenzinger) himself. They are of particular importance within the entire stucco decoration in the collegiate church. The figures are shaped in pronounced three-dimensionality and are heavily undercut. As a result, the reliefs remain pictorially effective from different oblique views. The figures only occupy the spatial zone in front of the relief ground. For this is not designed in perspective as an illusionary space; rather, it is empty. This creates ambiguity: on the one hand, it reveals itself as a wall surface behind picture frames and figures. On the other hand, paradoxically, it does not appear solid and impenetrable, but becomes a free space for the moving figures to act.

The eight reliefs depict scenes from the life of St Gallus. They are to be understood as exemplary beyond the purely biographical episode. Each episode can stand alone. Their position in the room makes it impossible to read them chronologically anyway.

Gallus had sensed the death of his abbot Columban and immediately celebrated a mass for his soul's salvation, his first mass since the separation. In this way, justice was done to Gallus. For Columban had punished him for his refusal to go on with him by forbidding him to say mass until he heard of his death. Gallus, dressed in a chasuble with a back cross, stands slightly bent over at the altar with a clay-painted Madonna and Child. A bald altar boy kneels on the left. A bearded gentleman kneels on the left. His half-stripped coat hangs down over the picture frame into the room. On the right, a young mother has settled down with her child. The wide puff of her dress spills down over the frame and the corner rocaille.