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Cyprian Godebski is the author of numerous monuments and tombstones, among others in Austria, Belgium and Russia, but he worked primarily in France. His works can be found in Paris (the best known among them are the headstones of H. Berlioz and Th. Gautier), Monte Carlo and Brittany. Probably the biggest extant work by Godebski, little known in Poland, is the stone group Madone des naufragés [Our...
In English culture Gothic architecture enjoyed ambiguous reputation: on one hand, it was obviously connected with pre-Reformation times and therefore suspect. This reputation was strengthened by the Gothic novel which associated Gothic buildings with oppression and tyranny allegedly characteristic for Catholic countries. On the other hand, as a supposedly 'native' English style, in contrast to imported...
(Polish title: Od Lenina do Jana Pawla II. Stan badan nad tworczoscia Mariana Koniecznego oraz kilka uwag o rzezbach religijnych jego autorstwa). Marian Konieczny (born in 1930) is a very controversial figure in the history of the monumental Polish sculpture of the second half of the 20th century. A student of Ksawery Dunikowski and a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Leningrad, a member of...
Among the sculptures collected in the studio of Bronislaw Chromy (born in 1925), the Krakow sculptor who could be considered one of more interesting artistic personalities in the 20th-century Poland, there is a lead model of a sculpted double door topped with a full arch. According to Chromy it is an unrealized design of the gate for St Francis Church in Ravenna. In 1973 the artist won the first award...
The study attempts to address the widespread idea about syncretism of Jacek Malczewski's art, combining the ancient cult of Dionysus and the Christian teachings on salvation. The analysis of Saint Francis, one of his numerous paintings with faun figures, tries to prove that the relationship between the titular character and the mythological figures is not a juxtaposition of similar attitudes towards...
The subject of the article are Grzegorz Bednarski's illustrations for the Book of the Revelation of Saint John the Divine, published in a new translation from Greek in 2008 by a publishig house Wydawnictwo sw. Wojciecha in Poznan. The pictures deftly connect tradition with modernity, both when it comes to their style and their theological message. Contemporary theological criticism usually tries to...
Father Piotr Cholewka was born in 1922 in a Silesian village of Marciszow near Zawiercie. In 1925, his family emigrated to Barlin in northern France. In 1943 he entered the Benedictine monastery of Wisques. In 1961, a papal indult authorized him to pursue studies and work outside the cloister. He took on stained glass in 1953. He used traditional techniques and employed reinforced concrete to hold...
In the 1950s, Christian thought was dominated by the 'debate on sacred art', in which numerous radical and dogmatic viewpoints on the 'revival' of religious art clashed. A group of Benedictine monks challenged the status quo and proposed a new approach to the issue; they laid down their ideas in an art review, which soon became a real publishing enterprise. Zodiaque publications enjoyed wide popularity...
The neo-Gothic Franciscan church in Jaslo was built between 1903 and 1904 to the design of Michal Luzecki, a Lviv architect, who also designed several neo-Gothic elements in the interior. It was the only sacred structure outside Lviv designed by the architect. Almost completely destroyed in WWII, it was a modest neo-Gothic church, consisting of a tower, a nave, and a chancel enclosed on three sides;...
(Polish title: Tradycja, stygnaca poboznosc i niejasne odczucie bostwa. Francois René de Chateaubriand a kryzys sztuki religijnej w XIX wieku). Many consider Francois René de Chateaubriand as the thinker primarily responsible for consolidating radically conservative and fideistic attitudes after the French Revolution. It was allegedly under his influence that French sacred art of the 19th century...
The article concerns The Last Supper by Maciej Swieszewski, one of the best known Polish paintings of recent years. The piece presents an eschatological feast. A sumptuous banquet table, whose rectangular shape represents earthly reality, along with the apostles, is placed in a nebulous, heavenly space of a New Jerusalem. In addition, the artist produces an interesting and meticulously studied image...
The article deals with the methodology of art history; based on the interpretation of Pieta by Tadeusz Boruta, it argues the need to analyze how pictorial representation (motifs, forms, colour, texture) is related to the plane of the painting. The multi-layered meaning of Boruta's work emerges from the fact the painting brings to light the inscription of motionless figures in the structure of temporality,...
In the study of art, it is customary to rationalize at least some aspects of this special object of reflection, which in its essential features eludes the forms of academic discourse. This is particularly true of the most outstanding works of art, which always invite multiple readings. A perfect case in point is the wide spectrum of interpretations engendered by the Ronchamp Chapel; the structure...
(Polish title: Artysta wspolczesny wobec sacrum. Watki metafizyczne w tworczosci Tadeusza Boruty, Stanislawa Bialoglowicza i Tadeusza Wiktora). In February 2009, to celebrate the opening of the Centre for the Documentation of Modern Sacred Art in Rzeszow, a small exhibition entitled Expressing the Inexpressible was organized. Its purpose was to give a succinct presentation of the ways in which metaphysical...
History teaches that the Church needs art and that art has its staunchest ally in the Church. Their mutual relationship is based on a basic tenet of faith, which holds that the eternal word of God became flesh, thus giving the highest form of religious approval to the realm of the visible. This is the belief which informs the current 'rediscovery' of painting in religion; in this context, we must...
The article concerns the influence of Stanisław Wyspiański’s art on the stained-glass design projects of Fryderyk Romańczyk which the latter executed for the churches of Upper Silesia and the Dąbrowa Basin. In the 30s and 40s of the previous century, Romańczyk ran a well-prospering stained-glass studio whereas his art work was characterized by a good technique and clear inspiration with the art work...
In 1902, a stained glass studio was established in Warsaw by Franciszek Białkowski and Władysław Skibiński. The cooperation between them soon ran its course and by1905, the two artists were already running two independent companies, producing stained-glass windows intended mainly for Roman Catholic churches throughout the Kingdom of Poland. “The Białkowski & Co. Artistic Stained Glass Studio”,...
The convent and church of the Discalced Carmelites in Poznań is the first and oldest temple in Poland which was dedicated to St Joseph (1618). The church erected in the Baroque style was designed by architects Jerzy Catenaci and Krzysztof Bonadura. The latter prepared the construction plans of the convent building taking into consideration the detailed building regulations of the Order, and they also...
For over 200 years now, that is, at least since the French Revolution, religious, or church art has been plagued with the notion of its inadequacy to the expectations of the faithful and the resulting need for the “eternal resurrections of sacred art” (les éternelles résurrections de l’art sacré). The present paper looks at such attempts undertaken on the Polish ground roughly in the first thirty...
The purpose of the article is to present the history of the mural paintings in the Basilian Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (today known as Christ Lover of Mankind) in Zhovkva and to perform an iconographic analysis of selected elements of the absidal scene of The Ascension of Our Lord, which contains elements clearly related to the temple’s name. The Dobromyl Reform (1882–1904) of the Greek Catholic...
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