The „Fabrica” of the Warsaw Church of the Holy Spirit in the Years 1707-1730 As Evidenced by the Pauline Sources. The Process, the Designers and the Executors

Abstract

The Pauline Fathers’ Church of the Holy Spirit in Warsaw is representative of the late-17thcentury tradition of Warsaw architecture, mostly created by the milieu of North Italian masters working in Poland. The typical features of such projects are the slim facade with two side towers, and the basilical organization of the interior - called Warsaw basilica. It was defined by its compositional compactness and the extent of space integration. What makes the Church of the Holy Spirit different from other Warsaw churches of that time is that the history of its architectural origin and construction is recorded perfectly in the Archives of the Polish Province of the Pauline Order at Jasna Góra. The most important and the most abundant sources of information concerning the artistic and construction-related details can be found in two accountancy book for the church construction for the years 1707-1729 (AJG 468 i AJG 471). The construction of the Warsaw church for the Pauline Fathers was initiated by Fr. Innocenty Pokorski (1656-1734), responsible for numerous Paulines’ construction projects. At a later stage of the construction project, he was accompanied by Fr. Konstanty Moszyński - Provincial Superior of the Polish Paulines, a well-known patron of art and founder of numerous artistic projects.

The church architectural design was created by Giuseppe Piola of Valsolda (1669-1715), a well-recognized architect working in Warsaw at the turn of the 18th century. The accountancy books also make mention of two construction managers in charge of the project: Tommaso (?) Bellotti and Francesco Ceroni-Piola’s fellow countrymen from Valsolda. Other important artists and craftsmen collaborated in the construction of the Pauline church, as reported by the accountancy records: the moulder Francesco Maino, the stonemasons Roccho Solari and Antonio Bay, the painters Bazyli Marcinkiewicz, Jan Junker and Carlo de Prevo, the carpenter and ebonist, Pauline brother Grzegorz Woźniakowicz, the sculptors Bartłomiej Michał Bernatowicz, Stanisław Wolnowicz and Stanisław Cieślikiewicz, finally the pewter decorator Kacper Mościcki. The analysis of the sources allows the formulation of more general conclusions concerning the functioning of Church construction projects in Warsaw under the rule of Augustus II. It is striking that the architectural, construction and decorative work was completed by a single team of labourers. Almost all the workers came from Valsolda and they were relatives or otherwise they stayed in close personal or social relationships. They had worked together as a team on projects in Szczuczyn or Węgrów, and they had been “proved” by the older generation of Italian masters. Also striking is the specific generational community of the workers. Most of them were born in the 1760s, and they appeared in Warsaw before the end of the 17th century. These constructors and artists constituted a group of “survivors” from the Northern war and from the Warsaw plague of the years 1708-1710. One can risk saying that, apart from few Warsaw palace constructions of that time, the Pauline church was the last big construction site for this generation of constructors, having their professional debuts under the reign of John III Sobieski. At the same time, their work marked the end of the époque for a larger group of Italian artists in Poland – the Ticinesi. The future ahead was to in the hands of native Polish artists, or those of German descent. This tendency is well visible in the choice of the interior design specialists for the Pauline church in the 1720s. The role of the Pauline Fathers, as initiators and supervisors of the church construction and decoration, is noteworthy. This is especially true about Fr. Pokorski and Fr. Moszyński. They were in charge of the whole construction agenda and the decision making process. The team of Italian builders did not have a clear leader. It is intriguing to observe that once Piola had produced his design documentation, he “disappeared” from the records, and that the construction had more than one manager. This leads to a conclusion about the fundamental role of the construction prefect – in this case, Father Pokorski. This organizational solution seems be based on the case of the well-known construction project of St. Anne’s Church in Cracow, and the role that Father Canon Sebastian Piskorki played in it.