The Wood-Carver Stefan Müller and his Work

Abstract

In the parish church in Nowa Mysz near Baranowicze in Białoruś there are a pulpit (Fig. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) and a confessional (Fig. 8) transferred from the church of the Benedictine nuns in Nieśwież. It was closed in 1877 and designed for barracks for Russian troops. In 1895 the objects were already in their new place. “The register of profits and expenses of the cloister of the Benedictine nuns in Nieśwież” has survived that covers the years 1733-1811. Among the various expenses we find the pay for sculpture work and carpentry (cf. Appendix 1). From May to October of that year the name appears of a “Mr Miler” who received a good pay for gilding the altar, making a pulpit and ‘for work in the church’. High pays for making three confessionals (two small ones and one big), a small altar, ‘banisters for the grand altar’ and work on ‘joining the pulpit’ are connected with his person defined as ‘wood-carver’ or ‘carpenter’. All these were made by an unknown to that time wood-carver, Stefan Müller, connected with the court of the Radziwiłł Princes in Nieśwież. The pulpit was made in 1745. It was decorated with sculptures of the four Evangelists and with the paintings Offertory in the Temple and The End of the World. The ornamental back of the pulpit is decorated with curtains, puttoes, a book and the Dove of the Holy Spirit. In the cap a monumental sculpture of an angel holding a star was put (initially it was holding a trumpet) and four little angels. The confessional that is in Nowa Mysz also comes from Nieśwież. The fact that it was made by Müller is confirmed by the record in the mentioned “Register” (cf. Appendix 1). Müller also made four candlesticks that are now in the post-Bernardine church in Grodno.

They come from the Radziwiłł palace in Grodno. They were given the form of four softly modelled cartouches from which women’s heads, puttoes and zoomorphic forms appear (Fig. 9, 10, 11, 12). The sculptor probably came from Saxony, like numerous other artisans and artists working at that time for the Radziwiłł princes.