The Chasuble with the Scenes from the Legend of Reuniting the Corpse of St. Stanisław. The Work of the Tapestry-Weaver François Glaize

Abstract

Among the works of Polish tapestry of the 18^th century the ones whose author was the French tapestry-weaver François Glaize deserve a special attention. Glaize worked in Warsaw and Cracow from 1743 till at least 1770. Until 1758 he was employed by Bishop Andrzej Stanisław Kostka Załuski and it was for him that he made more than a dozen canonicals – chasubles, dalmatics, copes – using the technique of tapestry, which is a unique phenomenon on the European scale. The most interesting of them, with the most developed iconographic programme, is the chasuble with scenes from the legend of reuniting the corpse of St. Stanisław that in unexplained circumstances found itself abroad and at present is kept at The Fine Arts Museums in San Francisco. The sources that have been found allow to precisely date the object to 1758 as well as to define the author of the design – it was Tadeusz Kuntze who had already collaborated with Glaize. The chasuble along with five altarfrontals (that are now at the Princes Czartoryskis Museum in Cracow), two door-curtains and a carpet – we do not know if they were actually made – were supposed to be the Bishop's gift to the Polish church in Rome.