Scandalous and sacred: The tale of a church artist who painted from Austria to Minster

The churches of West Central Ohio are a vision, grand, opulent tributes to faith with cross-topped spires towering above the neighboring fields. But the opulence inside - and the role played by one family of artists - is a story known by few.

And what a story it is, three generations of artists lead by a patriarch nearly as famous for his scandals as his art.

The story begins in the mid-19th century in St. Cassian, Austria, a small village in north Tyrol eventually ceded to Italy after World War I. Josef (or Joseph, the spelling changes with the source) Vittur was born into a poor Catholic family who earned their meager living by farming and weaving. In his youth, Josef found work in a variety of jobs, from goatherd to tinsmith and Alpine guide before eventually finding work painting wooden religious statues carved at the nearby Moroder Studios. It was there that a local painter saw Josef's work and encouraged him to study art.

From the records, it appears Josef took the painter at his word and moved to Vienna to study art at the prestigious Vienna Academy of the Arts. We don't know exactly when he made the move, but we know it was there that he met a young dressmaker and probable art student named Fanziska, Franny for short. Family legend has it that the two met through one of the matrimonial agencies popular at the time. Whatever the genesis, the two were married May 1, 1887. A year later, their first child, Robert, was born.

By the late 19th century, there were limited ways an artist could make a living. In most cases, it meant teaching or finding patronage through wealthy families or institutions. It was Franny who apparently encouraged Josef to seek work with the most dependable of patrons for the time, the Catholic church.

The couple moved to Munich and later Kalrsruhe, Germany, a city in southern Germany, near the French/German border. It was there that Josef began what would make up the bulk of his life's work, creating the grand, iconic images adorning churches throughout Europe and the U.S.

It was in America that Josef's career took off. How exactly he got here is another story shrouded in family legend. The more interesting version was apparently passed on by Josef himself. It has it that Josef, being fluent in French as well as German and Romanian, was asked by an inventor friend to travel to France and help him sell the French government on a type of bullet he had invented. While there, the French reportedly began to suspect Josef was actually there to spy for the Germans. The threat was serious enough to prompt the painter to flee Europe for the general safety of the United States.

The other version of the migration story, passed on by his son Robert, was that Josef actually left Europe to avoid conscription into the Austrian army. Whatever the impetus, Josef hurriedly shipped out of Le Harve, France, aboard the S.S. La Touraine for the U.S., leaving his family behind in Germany.

Josef eventually found his way to Chicago. With no money and speaking no English, he showed up at the door of Father Paulinos Trost, an American priest he had befriended while in Paris. It was Trost who paved the way for Josef to launch his career as the painter and decorator of churches throughout the Midwest.

Josef's style was fairly typical of the day, dramatic allegorical renderings in muted oils featuring scenes from the Bible. In many cases, it was Stations of the Cross around the church interior or elaborate Biblical scenes painted on the church ceiling or cupola. Word spread of his abilities, and he found work with some of the city's largest churches, including Chicago's Notre Dame cathedral, where he rendered a 2,000-square-foot cupola mural with more than 180 individual images illustrating the history of the Bible.

By 1893, Josef had made enough money to send for his children. On Oct. 5, 1893, Franny and her two sons set sail for America, paying $118.12 for passage for the three, according to the ship's docket.

Josef continued to work over the next 10 years, painting a long list of churches through the Midwest, including the churches in Minster and St. Henry and Celina's Immaculate Conception Church, where he created an allegorical work made up of 150 figures representing the Immaculate Conception.

But while Josef's work offered heavenly inspiration, his private life was taking a decidedly unsaintly turn. Some time around 1904, Josef began working with a young model named Clara Gillar. The two eventually began an affair passionate enough to prompt Josef to leave his family and move with the young model to Cleveland. The two remained together for four years, but Josef appears to have gradually descended into madness. Reports from the time say he grew increasingly angry and even slashed the canvases of his own works.

Eventually, Josef's moods grew too much for Gillar. In a letter that made national newspapers, the model asked Franny to "forgive the sin" and told her that since Josef's illness she felt "the powers of the Supreme Being" prompting her to make amends.

An article outlining the letter ran in the April 25, 1908, edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune under the headline "Man is Brought from Cleveland O, with his Mind a Wreck."

"The artist who lost his mind four years after he had deserted his wife for an ‘affinity' was forgiven yesterday. He was brought from Cleveland and placed in the detention hospital.

"A letter written by Mrs. Clara Gillar, the woman for whom the artist left his wife and family, begging the wife's forgiveness, touched Mrs. Vittur. It was while acting as Mr. Vittur's artist, principally in Madonna pictures, that Mrs. Gillar stole the heart of the painter."

The article goes on to explain that Gillar wrote - with an obvious flair for drama - to ask the wife's forgiveness.

"My only wish now is that he may recover and be restored healthy and happy to you and his children. ... I am unable to understand why it was that we met, and why for all these years we have been permitted to live in this wicked love that we thought was so pure. We thought we were happy," she wrote.

Franny, who shortly after moving to America had changed her name to Charlotte, gave in and retrieved Josef from Cleveland, moving him in to the local asylum. A story in the March 30, 1908, Chicago Daily Tribune noted; "Joseph Vittur, at one time an artist of considerable repute, who recently has been condemned to the insane asylum of Cleveland, O., will be placed in the Elgin State Hospital this week. The action is taken with consent of his wife, Mrs. Charlotte Vittur, whom he deserted eight years ago."

Josef never left the state hospital, dying there on June 7, 1910, at the age of 52. His trade lived on through future generations of artists, including his son, Robert, who himself became a well-known church artist.

The majority of Josef's church works were lost over the years, either to fires of changes in fashion. Most damaging was the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council calling for the removal of "excess and lavish displays" from the church. His paintings certainly fell into that category.

Some of his works did survive, including seven paintings in the distinctive half-barrel ceiling in Minster's St. Augustine church. In recent years, his most famous work, the elaborate ceiling of Chicago's Notre Dame, has been restored back to its original grandeur, securing for generations to come Josef's rightful place among his time's finest church artists.

Next week: Nationally known church decorative artist Robert Vittur.