The Wall Paintings by Stanisław Stroiński in the Church of the Observant Franciscan Nuns (Poor Clares) in Lvov as an Example of the Reception of Prints in Polish Eighteenth-Cenrury Monumental Painting

• Authors: Dzik Janina

Title variants

PL

Polichromia Stanisława Stroińskiego w kościele Bernardynek (Klarysek) we Lwowie jako przykład recepcji grafiki w osiemnastowiecznym polskim malarstwie monumentalnym

• Languages of publication: PL EN

Abstracts

EN

Aprint depicting the Assumption of the Virgin, discovered in the Print Room of the Scientific Library of PAU [Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences] and PAN [Polish Academy of Sciences] in Cracow, was produced in the workshop of Joseph Wagner (1706-1780), German painter and engraver, around 1736. The graphic composition repeats in simplified forms a painting by a Venetian painter Giambattista Piazetta (1682-1754) executed for the Deutschordens-Kirche (S. Maria in Sachsenhausen) in Frankfurt am Main, now in the collection of the Louvre. The print has iconographic affinities with the type of the assumptio created by Titian in the sixteenth century: Mary was shown soaring up in ecstasy into heavens, hovering between clouds and sun, above a group of apostles gathered around her empty tomb visible in the lower part of the composition. The reactions of the apostles correspond with the miraculous vision: some of them look in bewilderment into heavens, while others gaze at the open sarcophagus with a shroud inside. The print had been used as a model for a painting on the ceiling of the Observant Franciscan nuns (Poor Clares) church in Lvov. The mural paintings, which cover almost all surfaces of the church's interior, are dated to the 1760s and count among the most important works of a Lvov painter Stanisław Stroiński (1719-1802). Yet, sińce the church had for a long time served as a storage space, they are in a poor state of repair. The Assumption, painted on the chancel ceiling in iconographic relation to other scenes carefully arranged along the main axis of the church, had been set in an entirely new context. The main picture of the ensemble, located within the space of an illusionistic dome achieved by means of ąuadratura painting, represents the Apocalyptic Lamb reposing on a book with Seven Seals surrounded by clouds and angels' heads, symbolizing the act of shedding the Saviour's blood that delivers the Earth from the bonds of sin. The painting is flanked by two scenes: the Adoration of the Lamb by the Elders of the Apocalypse who take down their crowns, and a group of virgin martyrs featuring the representatives of female religious orders from the medieval and modern times, arranged in the shape of the letter "S" at the beginning of the inscription reading, Sequimtur Agnum, set within a cartouche. The central scenę with the Lamb and the holy virgin martyrs was inspired by prints from the workshop of two Augsburg engravers, Joseph Sebastian (c. 1700-1768) and Johann Baptist (1712-1787) Klauber, depicting the wife of the Lamb and the mission of St. John of Matha, the founder of the Trinitarians. Of importance for the overall idea of the church's interior decoration is an image of the Venerable Mary of Agreda (Maria de Jesus de Agreda; 1602-1665) rendered as a quasi-easel painting on the chancel wali. The Spanish mystic and Franciscan nun was shown while evangelising Indians in California, exercising her ability for bilocation. The image of Mary of Agreda, very rare in Polish art, was based on a print by a Roman artist Piętro Bombelli (1737-1809), of 1761, which in turn repeated a painting by Joan Barnaba Palomino. The nun authored a book entitled "Mystical City of God, or the Life of the Mother of God" (Mistica Ciudad de Dios, historia divinay vida de la Virgen Mądre de Dios), and it may have influenced the programme of the murałs which highlight the glory of saints in Heavenly Jerusalem and the communion of saints {communio sanctorum) with the mystical brides of the Lamb. Emphasised already by St. Clare, the bridal theme played an important part in the spirituality of the order. Such a formulation of a precise iconographic programme, encompassing the mission of evangelisation fulfilled by the Franciscan Order as well as the nuptial aspect of glorification, constituted a confirmation of the order's individual character and its prestigious position, in response to the growing reformatory activities of female orders (e.g. the Carmelites or Benedictines) and the emergence of new religious communities (e.g. the Vłsitation Sisters). It was also a proof of the order's high position within the Catholic Church in a multicultural and multidenominational city. The print, used as a model for mural paintings, helped to create an impressive work of art which, nonetheless, from a stylistic point of view was unsophisticated, a result of a compilation. The above-mentioned prints propagated the rococo style in its Augsburg version characterized by refmed, decorative forms. They were favourably received in the local artistic milieu and influenced the local style of mural painting. The murals, though original as far as their programme is concerned, formally are an example of eclectic, contemporary European illusionistic painting on a cosmopolitan level.

• Publisher: Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Institute of History of Art
• Journal: Modus. Prace z historii sztuki
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 10-11
• Pages: 81-96

Contributors

author

Dzik Janina