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The high relief came from the parish church at Lövő, in the vicinity of Sopron.
The figures of St. John of Nepomuk and St. Venance, at one time decorating the wall of a late eighteenth century church, must earlier have formed part of a larger sculptural work, perhaps including other figures and intended for an altar.
St. John of Nepomuk is represented in an unusual manner: lost in thought, kneeling with a cross on a bridge over the river Moldavia, thus evoking his martyr's death. The water flowing between the piers is also represented in an unusually naturalistic way.
In Hungarian baroque sculpture the legend of the saint praying on a bridge has been known from the side-altar dedicated to St. John of Nepomuk in Ercsi and it was also depicted in a niche of the high altar in Perlak (Veit Königer, 1767). The archetype, to which both are related in style, is the monument by Philipp Jakob Straub in Graz. The closest analogue to the statue in Lövő, the standing figure of St. John of Nepomuk originally made for the chapel of Nove Celje Castle (now in the Ljubljana National Gallery), may be seen in the same environment. The delicately stooping figure, with regular features, thin hands and graceful carriage, is clad in minutely represented clerical robes with lightly gathered folds; the lower part, stylized with rocaille ornamentation, confirm the supposition that the statue represents the trend of Transdanubian sculpture which was determined by Styrian rococo. By removing a layer of paint added in the nineteenth century, restorers revealed a lustrous surface of gold foil combined with flesh colour.
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