Wyniki wyszukiwania - Biblioteka Nauki

1

Krakowski ołtarz Wita Stwosza i jego losy

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Walczy Ł.

Ochrona Zabytków

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1983

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nr 3-4

193-210

EN

In nearly five hundred years of its history the main altar in St Mary’s Church in Cracow, completed in 1489, the work of Wit Stwosz, an outstanding sculptor, painter and constructor, underwent a number of conservations and renovations. Scarce source materials from the 1st half of the 16th century inform that already at that time a fine ornamental sculpture was seriously damaged; however, we do not know if they were repaired. The first major restoration of the altar took place in summer of 1643. The gilding was then made up and a new layer of oil or distemper paint (parts of the colour) was put on flesh tints, robes and on some other relief parts. Because of that, a general tone of the altar got darker. In the 18th century the Rev Jacek Łopacki (1723—61), archipresbyter in St Mary’s Church, planned to replace Stwosz’s polyptych with a baroque altar but did not manage to collect money for this investment. The deteriorating condition of the altar was subject to an emergency restoration in 1795, which consisted in putting a new layer of oil paint on parts painted in the 17th century and parts most heavily eaten by deathwatch (pinnacles over the coping’s canopies and branches of the Jess Tree). The most extensive restoration of the altar was carried out in 1866—71 under a supervision of professors from Cracow School of Fine Arts: Władysław Luszczakiewicz and Jan Matejko. During the' restoration all constructional parts of the altar were exchanged (except for side framework and sliding wings) and therefore it was necessary to paint anew two views of the interiors in the Annunciation and the Descent of the Holy Ghost. Following the principle to bring the altar to the condition worthy of the church interior all missing details were complemented; in some places even those which had not been there originally were put (pinnacle in the key of a semicircular arch in the cabinet). Reconstruction of pinnacles over canopies of the crown was never done because of objections on part of the conservator (Paweł Popiel). All gildings were renewed (on outside bas reliefs as matt); parts painted during earlier renovations were repainted (Łuszczkiewicz, well aware of inability to have it done properly, excluded the attempts to uncover the original polychromy from Stwosz’s days). The next renovation of the altar began in summer 1946 after its return fron Nurnberg, where it had been taken by the Germans, and lasted till summer of 1949 (for some reasons tie altar could return to St Mary’s Curch only in 19f7). The work was done under a supervision of Marian Slonecki, later professor at Conservation Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. As far as poljchromy is concerned, the renovation was just a contnuation of the earlier one, which allowed to uncover in full, an original coloured robe from Stwosz’s days. Tie gilding and missing elements of the sculpture were supplemented. The wood was protected against noxious insects by its impregnation with a solution of arsenic in alcohol and minium coating of unpolychromed xnd ungilded parts. Apart from that, figures of predella were impregnated in carbon dioxide. However, the problem of stabilizing the cabinet damaged during its dsmantling by a Nurnberg group in 1940 has not beer as yet successfully solved.

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Kadra urzędnicza w salinach Wieliczki i Bochni w latach 1810-1918

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Walczy Ł.

Studia i Materiały do Dziejów Żup Solnych w Polsce

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2012

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tom 28

31-90

XX

In the period that is the object of this study, 17 managers succeeded one another in Wieliczka. Until 1867, they managed the Bochnia saltworks and other plants which were temporarily subject to the Saltworks Board, also known under other names, which were frequently changed: the sulphur plant in Swoszowice, the hard coal mines in the Jaworzno district and the state forest inspectorate in the Jaworzno district. After 1867, only the Wieliczka mine was subject to the Board until 1914 (changes of managers, which happened very often between 1915 and 1918, are not possible to register in detail); there were 16 deputy managers, 16 mine surveyors, 10 finance directors, 10 “materials managers”; 3 engineers responsible for buildings and machines and 8 doctors. At that time in Bochnia, 20 managers succeeded one another; until 1867, they were subordinate to the Board operating in Wieliczka. Later, the saltworks in Bochnia was managed, on equal footing with Wieliczka, by the Galician State Management of the Treasury in Lviv and, through its agency, by the Ministry of Finance in Vienna; there were 13 deputy managers, 3 mine surveyors (for the majority of the discussed period, there was a separate mine surveyor, i.e. a surveyor accepting responsibility for the reliability of measurements by his signature, as well as correctness of maps and proper placement of markings in the mine pits); 12 finance directors; 11 “materials managers”; 2 doctors; a separate “machine” engineer worked here for a short time in the years directly preceding WWI. It is impossible to trace by names or even specify the total number of directors of individual “mounts” i.e. mining fields, operating in every field with deputies and assistants in three or two-person teams; the composition of such teams would change very often. Polonization of the personnel of the above-mentioned managing positions began in the middle of the 19th century. It was a result of co-existing processes; on the one hand, in some families who came to the Cracow Saltworks right after the partition, the second and, at the latest, the third generation began to identify with Polishness, adopting Polish as the native language, and the Polish custom as the home custom and, more importantly, the Polish manner of thinking and acting; on the other hand, the gap left behind families who in the past came from various Austrian states and whose descendants decided to return to the family places of their fathers or grandfathers were filled by representatives of Polish landowning families (the first example is the Wieliczka “saltworks physician”, Feliks Gozdawa- Boczkowski), who were permitted to do so on account of the necessity of maintaining employment in the saltworks. The moment when the saltworks clerks started to think and act “in Polish”, feeling that they were the officials of the Austrian state more and more solely in a formal way, falls at the end of the 1880’s and the beginning of the 1890’s. At that time, proposals of new names for underground pits started to contain, almost exclusively, names of older colleagues with whom people submitting the proposals used to work – and if they referred to higher rank clerks, these were predominantly Poles who worked on the level of province authorities (representation, state division, treasury directorate) – therefore, objectively, in the Polish interest. At that time, a place of clearly Polish character started to be built in the Wieliczka salt mine – the Chapel of St. Kinga (from the very beginning, its decoration was devoid of “Austrian” elements, whereas the pulpit, executed in 1903, presents the symbol of the holiest Polish national symbol: the Wawel Castle). In 1906, the 1st Convention of Polish Miners was held in Cracow, partially co-organized by the Wieliczka Saltworks Board; it was combined with a visit at the Wieliczka mine and a meeting for industry specialists from the Polish lands under all three partitions. After 1910 and before 1914, the Wieliczka saltworks clerks started to issue publications in the magazines in Warsaw and Zagłębie Dąbrowskie. True engineers/ humanists were in this group. Among them, the person of Feliks Piestrak, author of historical studies devoted to the maps of the Wieliczka mine prepared by M. German, W. Hondius and J.G. Borlach and philological translation of the Latin poem of A. Schröter of 1548 (describing the author’s impressions and remarks made during a visit to the Wieliczka Salt Mine) is particularly important. The group of clerks who, by way of promotion, worked in Wieliczka, Bochnia and in the saltworks of Eastern Małopolska, i.e. the historical Russian Saltworks, includes two professors from the first group teaching at the Cracovian Mining Academy, which started to operate in the Independent Poland in 1919. The merit of these people, and quite a significant one, was leading the saltworks away from the reign of Austria to independent Poland. In Western Małopolska, it was possible to perform it peacefully; in Eastern Małopolska, it also happened without greater losses and maintaining continuity of people and institutions, in the conditions of civil war provoked by Austria almost in the last days and hours of the partition.

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"Aresztowanie" ołtarza Wita Stwosza : wystawa na Wawelu 1949-1957

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Walczy Ł.

Ochrona Zabytków

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1992

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nr 4

283-295

EN

The magnificent world-renown poliptych sculptured in the years 1477-1489 for St Mary's Church in Cracow by Wit Stwosz was dismantled and and transported to Nuremberg by Nazi invaders during World War II. In 1945 it was secured by the American army, and in 1945- 1946 prepared to repatriation transport by Prof. Karol Estreicher, who was delegated by Polish authorities to revindicate the cultural treasures seized during the war. On May 30th, 1946, the transport reached Cracow. When the sculptures of the altar were in the country it turned out that they needed thorough conservation. The State Workshop for Conservation of Paintings, headed by Prof. Marian Słonecki, was charged with this task. The team not only carried out a complete restoration of wood structure (including poisoning wood-eaters and impregnation against their new invasion), but also, in the process of paint layers conservation, removed the repaintings from the 19th, 18th and 17th centuries, discovering Stwosz's original polychromy. This painstaking work was finished in the late summer of 1949. Thanks to warm sunny Indian summer the altar's main framework was reinstalled in the presbytery of St Mary's basilica. The sculptures were to be set out in October, November and December, and the whole retable was to be consecrated at Christmas 1949. Polish communist authorities did not allow this schedule to be realised. They ordered to leave the sculptures in the Conservation Workshop in former Royal Kitchen in Wawel, arranging an exhibition from fragments of the altar. The exhibition, planned as a close of the conservation, was held between June 10th and July 10th 1949 as a part of „The Days of Cracow" and attracted lots of visitors. This last fact, „public demand", was a perfect excuse to continue the exhibition and delay the return of the sculptures to St Mary's church. On the 2nd of October 1950 the exhibition was reopened without any negotiations with Church authorities and without stating the termination time, which actually meant that the altar was „interned" or „arrested" in Wawel. The exact circumstances in which this decision was taken may remain unknown, but its genera motivation can be guessed. The delay in the return of the poliptych to the basilica was probably an indirect repression against the Archbishop of Cracow, Cardinal Adam Sapieha, in the situation when the communist authorities which since 1949 tightened up their policy towards the Church, but refrained from attacking the Cardinal directly due to his age and authority. This indirect repression achieved its aim as the Cardinal did not live to see the altar re-consecrated - he died on the 23rd of July 1951. The archpresbyter of St Mary's church. Rev Dr Ferdynand Machay returned to the problem of the altar in nearly every sermon and interceded for the case with the authorities at various levels, but until the Polish October in 1956 the government decided about Stwosz's masterpiece as if it was their property; for example in 1953 some of the sculptures were sent to Warsow for the exhibition „The Renaissance in Poland". Not earlier than on the 13th of April 1957 was the monument returned to the rightful owner - St Mary's parish. It is worth noting that it was the second act of that kind in the history of the altar - the first one took place 11 years earlier, on the 30th of April 1946. In April 1957 it was possible to resume the work where it was interrupted in 1949. The conservation was completed very quickly. On the 15th August 1957, the day of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin, the Archbishop of Lvov and Cracow, Eugeniusz Baziak, consecrated the altar restoring it to the Holy Service. That was the end of the war exile of Wit Stwosz's masterpiece continued by its eight-year-long „arrest” in Wawel.