SKT. NIKOLAJ KIRKE - Danmarks Kirker - Nationalmuseet

810 KOLDING SKT. NIKOLAJ KIRKE
The eighteenth century is also represented by
paintings of the parish priest Carsten Volquartz
and his wife Margrethe from c. 1775, the nineteenth
by the Twelve Bell, donated in 1840 by
Jens Peter Wissing, and a chandelier from 1880,
which bears the names of the same Jens Peter
Wissing (posthumously) and of S. Svensson as the
churchwarden. The pews are from 1908.
Colour scheme and refurbishings. The church interior
acquired its present appearance in the most
recent restoration of 1975-77, when most of the
historical furnishings were repaired and a succession
of treatments of the other items was launched.
The interior is dominated by rich Renaissance
colouring, most authentic on the altarpiece. Particularly
worth singling out are the fine paintings
from the reign of Christian IV, which are further
supplemented by a number of painted sepulchral
tablets. The names of painters cannot be ascribed
with certainty to any of the works, but it seems
reasonable in the case of the altarpiece to mention
the Hans Kjær (Paludanus), ‘painter to His
Royal Majesty’, who died in 1590 and has his
small sepulchral tablet (no. 6) from 1616 in the
chancel. For the painting on the sepulchral tablet
no. 4 from 1599, Jutland’s great Renaissance
painter Lauritz Andersen Riber has been proposed.
The more recent furnishings are in subdued
tones with a fondness for polished wood.
As early as 1560 the church acquired an †organ,
and over the subsequent decades †pews were
installed, arranged in the usual urban fashion by
rank with the pews of the King and the Lord
Lieutenant at the front, followed by ‘mayors,
alderman and other citizens by rank and class’.
Probably in 1638, when the church was given
a high (†)chancel rail, the pulpit was given an
unusual place above its centre; a position that was
paralleled for example in the church in Kristianstad
in Scania. From the period around 1700 the
strict ranking of the pews began to break up, as
several of the city’s better-off families now established
cabin-like ‘closed pews’ with windows
through which they could observe the service in
splendid isolation. However, the number of the
closed †pews never grew large: in 1746 it was
stated as eight.
The rebuilding of the church after this also led
to an extensive restoration in 1753-58 of the furnishings.
In the rebuilt nave four new rows of
†pews were set up as well as two in each of the
chapels. To these were added a new †organ loft in
the west with a new †organ (no. 2); for its casing
Bishop H. A. Brorson wrote a commemorative
poem on the restoration.
In 1780 an agreement was reached whereby
several valuable vestments and cloths were borrowed
from the Castle Chapel at Koldinghus, for
example the altarcloth from 1719 and two chasubles
from c. 1600 and 1719 (nos. 2-3). The loan
meant that these items were saved from the fire
in the Castle Chapel in 1808, and that they could
be kept in Skt. Nikolaj.
In 1815 the North Chapel was separated from
the church by a wall and furnished as a school;
the baptismal font was given its place in front of
the wall. After the possibility of moving the pulpit
was tried out in 1781 and 1819 (using a test
pulpit!) the pulpit was finally taken down from
the chancel rail in 1823 and set up on the easternmost
pillar on the north side.
In 1858 the North Chapel was once more
incorpo rated in the church. On the same occasion
the pulpit and font were given their present
positions (cf. fig. 106), and a new organ was procured
(†no. 3), built by Demant & Søn, Odense.
In 1876 a wish was expressed to paint the
church pews in the same brown colour as the
choir stalls and the organ, since their white paintwork
from 1852 was ‘difficult to keep clean because
of the smoke from the new heating apparatus’.
After the doors of the pews had been
removed they were therefore given an oak colour
which was to spread to almost all the furnishings
with the rebuilding of 1885-86.
In 1893 Professor Magnus-Petersen carried
out the earliest antiquarian restoration, giving the
altarpiece and pulpit their present appearance.
SEPULCHRAL MONUMENTS. The church
is one of the richest in sepulchral monuments in
Jutland. Of the 15 preserved sepulchral tablets and
memorial tablets a large proportion are from the
Renaissance period. Three are of carved wood