Piotr Krasny

‘Ancient’ Paintings versus ‘Italian’ Paintings: Some Contributions to Research on the Role of Archaising Tendencies in Catholic Religious Painting in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the End of the Sixteenth and in the Seventeenth Century

At the end of the sixteenth and in the beginning of the seventeenth century Chancellor Jan Zamoyski started to furnish the collegiate church in Zamość with purchased paintings by Domenico Tintoretto, then one of the leading Venetian painters, to be mounted on the high altar. Yet, this import failed to spark any fascination with ‘modern’ Italian artistic devices. Even the parish priest of the collegiate church, Mikołaj Kiślicki, commissioned for his burial chapel a painting depicting St. Nicholas that was a copy of a medieval image located above the tomb of the saint in Bari. This decision was likely motivated by a conviction, widespread in Poland at the time, that ancient images better stimulated the faithful to piety. This opinion had been disseminated by church writers of various religious denominations (e.g. Krzysztof Kraiński, Jan Augustyn Biesiekierski, and Petro Mohyla) and approved by the Synod of Krakow in 1621. Oldfashioned artistic devices appeared especially often in the images of the Virgin and Child and of saints living in the Middle Ages. A similar modus operandi may be encountered in numerous Catholic countries. However, in Poland, the seventeenth-century images in archaising forms enjoyed special reverence and were venerated as miraculous. The largest group among all crowned images of the Virgin Mary consists of paintings dating from the beginning of the early modern period, which were purposefully executed in archaising forms. Such an attitude towards cult images effectively hampered the spread of the then most up-to-date iconographic formulas and artistic devices in Poland, including those that carried a message that was congruous with the conceptions of the Tridentine reform of the Church.

Author's email:

piotr.krasny@uj.edu.pl

DOI: https://doi.org/10.54759/ART-2025-0302



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