The Group of Portraits and Altar Painting Depicting the Raising of Piotrowin from the Dead in the Oświęcim Chapel in the Franciscan Church in Krosno

Abstract

The decor of the interior of the chapel − a mausoleum of the Oświęcim family at the Franciscan church in Krosno − makes up a group of two portraits en pied of Stanisław and Anna Oświęcim, four portraits of other representatives of that family in semi-figures and an altar painting, the Raising of Piotrowin from the Dead. The latter painting represents images of that family modelled on their individual portraits. The whole of the group, except the portrait of Barbara, is dated back to the first half of the seventeenth century; the portrait of Barbara dates back to the eighteenth century.

The founder of the chapel was Stanisław Oświęcim (c. 1605-1657), a marshal of the court to the great crown hetman Stanisław Koniecpolski in the years 1643-1646 and in the period between 1646 and 1647 courtier to King Vladislav IV and Bełżec esquire carver. The idea to build a chapel and its design were conceived after the death of Stanisław's half-sister, Anna Oświęcimówna, who died on 13th January 1947. In his Diary of the years 1643-1651, Stanisław Oświęcim mentions the author of the chapel's architecture − Vincenzo Petroni − and author of the stucco decoration − Giovanni Battista Falconi. Owing to some blanks in the Diary, the author of the painting group remains unknown.

The portraits of Stanisława and Anna Oświęcim are the most original as regards their iconography, their stylistic values and especially colouring. The paintings bear the character of an elegant court portrait. The remaining portraits are the following: Florian, Regina and Jan, all of them have a lesser artistic value and belong to the so-called Sarmatian image. The portrait of Barbara bears the Rococo style. The ancestral gallery is crowned by the altar painting with the scene of the Raising of Piotrowin from the Dead, accompanied by the Oświęcim family. Presumably, the painting group was made from 1647 to 8th October 1648.

The portraits of Stanisław and Anna Oświęcim are separated from the group and ranked the most original works of the Polish portrait painting of the 1650s. There is a lot of controversy among studies on their artistic origin and authorship. The portraits are said to have been painted under northern influence. Their authorship was linked with Bartłomiej Strobel, Jan Tricjusz, Mathias Czwiczek and with the circle of Joachim von Sandrart and Peters Danckers de Rij.

The portraits of Stanisław and Anna Oświęcim draw on to the iconographic tradition of the Flemish portrait from the circle of Antoni van Dyck, a court painter to the English court, as for instance the portraits of Charles I Stuart, Thomas, Wharton, George Gordon, Hennrietta Maria and Anna Kepia, published in the studies by F. Marcel of 1962 and E. Gotz of 1975. The portrait painting of that artist was crowned with the Iconographie Anthony van Dyck, edited in 1645, and composed of a hundred etched portraits painted by him. Until the 1650s, the work had been renewed twice and became a masterpiece of the Dutch market, influencing the whole portrait painting of Middle and West Europe and becoming an iconographic pattern for many generations of painters. The analogies between the Oświęcim images and the iconography of the Flemish artist make us pout forwards a hypothesis that the artist who made the Krosno portraits assumed Antoni van Dyck's iconography of the court portrait through graphic patterns.

Assuming T. Dobrowolski's theory, the portraits of Florian, Regina and Jan Oświęcim due to their stylistic form should be numbered among the second phase of transmutation of the “Sarmatian portrait”. Now, following Jan Ostrowski and other researchers, there are not grounds which would allow us to grasp the specific character of that portrait. Therefore we should note that their style comes from their low artistic level. The Rococo portrait of Barbara, most obviously with its physiognomy, draws on to its original image of the 1650s which has not been preserved. The stylistics of the images: Florian, Regina and Jan presents the same artistic level as the altar painting, therefore we may think that the paintings have been painted by him.

The Raising of Piotrowin from the Dead is distinguished by an original character through which that iconographic trend is presented and its sumptuous artistic arrangement. The closest analogies, as regards composition, to the Krosno simultaneous scene − St. Stanisław with Piotrowin before the court of Boleslaw Śmiały are with a painting by Tomasz Dolabella of 1616, bearing the same title (the Bernardine Fathers church, Warta). The landscape scenery present in the painting, its form of nature, brings to mind northern mannerism. The extensive gradation of rust colours, however, as well as lack of three colouristic plans typical of Flemish landscape, show the Venetian origin. An analogical landscape occurs only in Dolabella's painting and, according to Tomkiewicz, was made by a disciple from the North. According to Wanda Morawska, it is of the Venetian origin and was painted by Dolabella.

Searching after the author of the paintings, lead us to the patronage of Vladislav IV's court, with whom the founder was closely related at the time the painting group was made. Taking into account his artistic option, we can come up with a new hypothesis as regards the author of the paintings. The fact that Oświęcim had employed two prominent Italian artists to build the chapel could have resulted from his fascination with Italian art, and it is here that the author of the paintings should be found.

The painting workshop of Tomasz Dolabella had won the greatest prestige in the Kraków milieu of mid-seventeenth century. That artist was educated in the climate of the Venetian colourists, and was brought to Kraków by Sigismund III about 1585. He transplanted to Poland the greatest achievements of Italian painting and became the most prominent painter of historical, religious and portrait painting, educating a large group of disciples. The portrait painting of Dolabella is little known and has not been acknowledged so far. The horse images of the Vasa family painted by Dolabella are known from their painting and graphic copies. He is thought to have painted among other things the portraits of the bishops: Jakub Zadzik and Marcin Szyszkowski. A series of portrait images Dolabella introduced in his historical and hagiographic circles. The fact that he is thought to have painted the Wawel portrait of Stanisław Tęczyński of 1634 shed a new light. According to the studies that have been made so far on the painting of Tomasz Dolabella, it is interested to note the role of graphic, whose role was underestimated in the past. The artist draws mainly on the graphic patterns of the northern artistic region and, apart from the compositional setting, would inherit the scenery and type of figures.

Putting side by side the portraits of Stanisława and Anna and Tęczyński, we notice that the artist had applied the canon of iconography en pied, the natural character of composition, portrait realism, especially the Venetian kind of almond eyes, along with an attempt to recreate the psychological aura of the figure, properly fit into the scenery of the interior. The accuracy in recreation the decorum of the costume is analogical, as well as smooth value modulation of the figure and Venetian colouring. Iconographic and stylistic analogies allow us to combine those images with the workshop of Tomasz Dolabella. The portraits have obviously been painted by Dolabella and modelled on Antoni van Dyck, contrary to what had been thought before, that is a northern artist or someone educated in the north. The remaining images should be ascribed to the disciples of Dolabella. The altar painting crowning the gallery was most probably according to the northern graphic patterns, as a work from the workshop od Dolabella and his disciples.

Founding the chapel, Oświęcim entrusted its completion to a pleiad of Italian artists. The painting decor was presumably given to Tomasz Dolabella. The fact that the second wife of the artist, Jadwiga Łopacka, was a Krosno townswoman was not without significance. An additional argument to support that standpoint can be found if we consider the paintings representing the Adoration to the Mother of God by All the Saints and the Adoration to the Holy Sacrament. According to Tomkiewicz, they were made by Tomasz Dolabella in the years 1638-1646, and other paintings ascribed to that painter.