The painting entitled „The Holy Virgin with Child in the Rose Garden" which belongs to the Diocesal Museum in Opole, comes from the end of the fifteenth century, and is executed in tempera on canvas glued onto a panel (72 X 47). The painting combines the Low Country semi-figural depiction of the Virgin with Child, intended for private devotion, with the iconographie trend of the „rose garden", favoured by German fiftenth-century art. The scheme of the depiction which originates from the compositions by Roger van der Weyden, reveals a German influence testified by the modelling of the form, caligraphic drawing, concern for details as well as the technological argument - the limewood of the base. The painting was offered in January 1987 to the Chair of Conservation of Easel Paintings and Wooden Polychromy Sculpture of the Department of Conservation of Artworks at the Academy off Fine Arts in Cracow. At the I time, it was in a critical state of preservation. Upon the basis of an examination of the object and the results of physical and chemical research it was possible to determine its history and technological construction. The undertaking involved the removal of the determinal effects of three previous conservations, and the execution of a complete technical and partial aessthetic conservation. After the removal of retouched paint and putty, and the cleaning of the reverse, the whole painting was impregnated, and the missing parts of the wooden panel were supplemented. The indented cracks in the paint layer and the ground were pressed down and glued, the gaps in the ground were replenished and the losses and smudges of the gilting and the paint layer were retouched by means of the pinpoint consolidationmitation method. The work was completed in April 1987. From 25 October of that year the painting is part of a permanent exhibition at the Diocesal Museum in Opole. (translated by A. Rodzińska - Chojnowska)
Prior to conservation completed in 1994, the bas relief material was subjected to specialist examination in order to determine its mineral composition, and torecreate upon this base the original composition. Samples taken from the original bas relief, dating from the end o f the seventeenth century, and repairs conducted in the inter-war and postwar period, were examined. Research was carried out by means o f the following methods: X-ray and thermal analysis, macroscopic and microscopic observation with a scanning electron microscope, and auxiliary chemical assay. The obtained results made it possible to ascertain that the bas relief was made of plaster mortar with an addition o f lime. In the initial composition o f the mortar, the ratio o f the dry binder to the mass of the filler totalled 1:2,4. The binder was semihydrate calcium sulfate and lime. The contents o f the former was much larger than that of the lime. The filler was high-silica sand in which the dominating size o f grains oscillated from 0,1 to 0,4 mm. An almost identical composition and structure belonged to material originating from inter-war repairs. A markedly different composition and structure were found in samples which came from postwar conservation carried out with lime mortar, with a distinctly smaller part played by the binder; consequently, the samples differed not only as regards the type but also the amount of binder in comparison to original seventeenth-century mortar.
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