The greatest number of wooden and timbered churches in Europe is to be found in Poland. Copious descriptions concern the wooden churches in Silesia and Little Poland, while historical monuments from this group in Great Poland remain almost unknown, although their extant number totals about 270. The author discusses the most characteristic features of Protestant and Catholic wooden and timbered churches in Great Poland upon the example of the church n Zakrzewo near Rawicz. The wooden church of St. Clemens is oriented, and has a frame construction, while the chapel from 1647 and the sacristy are made of plastered brick. The interior of the church is covered by a wooden cradle ceiling, supported by a profiled crowning cornice. The semicircular rood arch with a beam distinguish the interior of the presbytery from the nave. The western part of the nave contains a choir with a profiled balustrade. The entrance to the chapel is decorated by a splendid Baroque grate from the first half of the eighteenth century. The most magnificent element of the church is its Baroque polychromy from about 1730, encompassing the entire interior: the ceiling, walls, pillars, beams underneath the choir and the sill of the choir, the rood arch and the doors to the porch. The plant tendril and acanthus leaf ornament, which covers the walls in the manner of a carpet, is executed in warm hues, endowing the interior with a joyful ambience. In between, arcade spaces contain figural depictions. The ceiling displays scenes from the life of St. Clemens as well as the figures of Our Lady, Christ and the apostles. The southern wall is decorated with scenes from the life of the Holy Virgin Mary: The Madonna and the Infant, The Immaculate Madonna, and The Enthroned Madonna, adored by kneeling founders, both secular and clergymen. The western wall shows St. Stanisław with Piotrowin, facing the king. The arcade sill and the walls of the choir feature the four Evangelists. The ceiling of the chapel is also covered by an ornament, and the door from the porch to the nave contains preserved blue floral decoration. The Late Baroque altar of the chapel displays a painting of the Madonna of Consolation, possibly the work of an Italian painter; featured in a silver Rococo dress, it is concealed by another composition. The walls shoow five coats of arms painted on tin and three on brass; in the past, they were featured in coffin portraits. The remaining outfitting originates from the eighteenth century. The wooden church in Zakrzewo is guaranteed legal protection; although its interior is one of the most interesting in Great Poland, it remains almost totally unknown.
The Archdiocesan Archives in Poznań holds a very interesting and hitherto unexplored bound volume of records entitled Monasteries Register 1817–25. It contains information about inspections in the Grand Duchy of Poznań from 1817–1825 as well as some inspections from 1809–1810 in monasteries of the Diocese of Poznań. The inspections encompassed 16 monasteries: of the Benedictines in Lubiń; Bernardine Fathers in Grodzisk, Koźmin, Sieraków and Wschowa; Cistercians in Bledzew, Obra and Paradyż; Cistercian Nuns in Owińska; Dominicans in Wronki; Franciscans in Oborniki and Śrem; Franciscan Nuns (Poor Clares) in Śrem; and the Reformati in Miejska Górka (Goruszki), Rawicz and Woźniki. The records contain inventories of church and monastery furnishings, including library lists (all items or by shelf), and information about valuation (primarily in the German documents). The table included in the article contains the following: 1. leaf no. (unnumbered); 2. date and place of inspection or place from which a letter was sent to the General Consistory of the Poznań Archbishopric; 3. location of the inspected monastery and name of the religious order; 4. language of the document; 5. title given by the inspecting authority. Additional information is provided in square brackets. Wherever possible, the author gives the names and surnames as well as functions of the monks and nuns residing in each monastery during the inspection. Surnames as well as names sometimes have different forms; sometimes, too, the monks and nuns themselves used different signatures during the one inspection. Equivocal cases are marked by question marks [?].
During the 1990s, a discovery was made in the palace erected at the end of the seventeenth century by Andrzej Radomicki, a magnate from Great Poland, of paintings subsequently subjected to conservation conducted under the supervision of Krzysztof Powidzki. Their theme remains differentiated and deeply symbolical. The great dining room contains religious scenes, probably by Karol Dankwart , an acclaimed painter of Swedish origin, showing the holy hermits Paul and Anthony being fed by a raven. A work by the same artist is the depiction (in a great hall on the ground floor) of four Platonic cardinal virtues: Moderation, Valour, Justice and Wisdom, presented as sitting young women. Quite possibly, Dankwart was also the author of a mythological scene in a chamber on the ground floor, featuring the competition between Apollo and Marcius– the considerable degree of the devastation of the original painting makes it impossible to establish the authorship. All the compositions could have been executed in about 1701, when Dankwart painted the newly erected Jesuit church in Poznań (today: the parish church). The polychromy in the alcove on the ground floor was probably completed in 1719; they represent the six planets which exert an impact on human life. All the paintings are accompanied by a complex of excellent stucco work, ascribed to the workshop of Alberto Bianco, employed in the decoration of the aforementioned parish church and a Franciscan church. The stucco in question resembles decorations in Rydzyna Castle. On the other hand, a depiction of a young witch, painted on the ceiling of a corner room, once adjoining the chapel, is totally unique from the viewpoint of iconography. The author showed a young girl, in the costume of a gentlewoman, witnessing the appearance of a devil — a portrayal of the victory of St. Anthony over the might of Satan. The cult of St. Anthony was extremely lively at the beginning of the eighteenth century, as testified by the erection of a Franciscan church in Poznań, with this particular patron saint; St. Anthony was also the personal patron of the son of Andrzej Radomicki, Jan Antoni, who probably after the death of his father commissioned the execution of this highly unusual scene (about 1726).
In autumn 1828 the dean of Ostrzeszów, Fr. Jak Kompałła, wrote a memorial to Archbishop Teofil Wolicki, newly appointed metropolitan of Archdioceses of Gniezno and Poznań joined by a personal union (Archdiocesan Archives in Poznań, no. KA 10 969, Records of the General Consistory of the Archbishopric of Poznań concerning the former Bernardine Church in Ostrzeszów 1823–1853). Fr. Kompałła suggested that furnishings from the dissolved and still existing monasteries be given to poor parish churches. Archbishop Wolicki intervened with the authorities in Berlin, which led to a proclamation of the Royal District (Regierungsbezirk) II in Poznań no. 348 of 19 December 1828 demanding that the “administrators of churches investigate the needs of poor Catholic parishes with regard to organs, bells, chasubles and other church furnishings”. On 14 January 1829 the General Consistory of the Archbishopric of Poznań sent a letter to all deans of the 23 deaneries with the above request. By April 1829 replies came from 262 (80.36%) out of the total number of 326 parishes in the Archdiocese of Poznań. No fewer than parishes (225, 69.01%) asked for furnishings, with only 37 parishes (11.35%) not wanting any and 64 (19.63%) parishes not replying to the question. It could, therefore, be said that 101, i.e. 30.98%, parishes did not want any furnishings. The above documents are to be found in the Archdiocesan Archives in Poznań in the bound volume no. KA 12 236. An edition of this source is under preparation. It will also feature data from a personal questionnaire sent in June 1829 on the initiative of Archbishop Wolicki to parishes and monasteries from both Archdioceses: of Poznań and Gniezno.
For centuries, the most typical building material was timber. Unfortunately, susceptibility to fire rendered it impermanent. This is the reason why the discovery, during the repair of a manor in Osiek near Kościan, of painted boards, re-used at the beginning of the twentieth century as division walls, proved to be a true sensation. Covered by a layer of cane and plastered, they remained concealed and cut off from light. The repair unexpectedly disclosed the boards to the construction workers. Although the appearance of the boards was rather pitiful — the re–cut, arbitrarily arranged fragments were disfigured with nails — their attraction lay in the colourfulness and the colourfulness and multiplicity of depictions. The light, which reached the very thin colour layer, was capable of destroying fragments crumbling away from the foundation. Salvage came in the form of conservation conducted by Krzysztof Powidzki. Next to secular figures, undefined by inscriptions or coats of arms, there emerged the semi–figures of apostles, described by means of inscriptions. Such galleries of likenesses (which must have totalled 12) embellished churches from the fourteenth century on. In Osiek, the depictions painted on the walls imitated paintings proper, but at the bottom and top they were enhanced by additional ornamental elements. The characteristic feature of the boards from Osiek was an imitation of a theme unambiguously defining the Ecclesia—the institution of the Church in sacral interiors.We are entitled to assume that this symbolic no longer functioned in the decoration in question. Likenesses of the disciples of Christ were merely a decoration of an adobe of a Christian, the owner of the house. The paintings come undoubtedly from the first half of the eighteenth century, and some of their details indicate the 1730s – 1740s. They constitute testimony of the decoration of interiors both in Baroque representative sacral buildings and in provincial manors of a more local nature. After conservation, the boards from Osiek were installed on a permanent basis in one of the chambers of the palace in Trzebiny. Particles of the painted decoration of the interiors of a gentry manor recall a space which, similarly to its inhabitants, became part of the distant past.
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