Religious statuary

These wooden statues of male and female saints are located in the chapel – dedicated to St Margaret – at Prem Castle. The chapel stands in the south-eastern corner of the castle and has the same floor area and system of vaulting as the rib-vaulted room immediately beneath it. A wall boss on the west wall above the entrance is adorned with the coat of arms of the lords of Duino, while a boss on the north wall bears the coat of arms of the Wallsee family. The capitals of the central engaged columns are decorated with animal’s heads or masks. The chapel is illuminated by two small rectangular windows in the south wall. This wall also shows a few remains of Gothic frescoes that have yet to be fully uncovered. A large window aperture below the shield on the north wall opens onto the adjoining room on the first floor of the east wing.
The aperture is surrounded by a stone frame with an undulating top edge and protected by a convex wrought-iron baroque grille that was brought here from a Venetian palazzo by the castle’s last pre-war owners. An inscription above the grille states that the chapel was renovated in the eighth year of the Fascist Era, i.e. 1930, by the Zuccolini family. All that survives of the chapel’s original fittings are a simple marble altarpiece with a neoclassical triangular pediment and the two statues of saints, one male (h = 1 m) and the other female (h = 1.3 m).