Painted splendour : wall decoration as an expression of the aspirations of benefactors of wooden churches in Greater Poland

Abstract

In the 18th century the interiors of Polish churches were dominated by monumental programmatic illusionist pictures inspired by Andrea Pozzo’s treatise Perspectiva pictorum et architectorum..., published in the years 1693–1700. The new idea of wall decoration, which subjected real architecture to a vision created by the painter, was also applied in wooden churches, which dominated in Polish cultural landscape. There are almost 250 wooden churches built before 1795 surviving in the historical region of Greater Poland, 25 of which have eighteenth-century wall paintings. Pozzo’s ideas were directly applied by Adam Swach in the church in Wełna near Rogoźno. His paintings from about 1730 dominated over the architecture to such an extent that the wooden church seemed to be a brick one. The foreshortened decoration of the ceiling illusion-istically heightened the low interior, opening it to a vision of heaven, pictured as a scene of timeless events. As an integral component of his programme the artist introduced illusionist paintings of furnishings, also modelled after Pozzo’s work, including architectural altars in Borromini’s style. Pozzo’s concepts, aimed at creating an “ideal model” of the Heavenly Church by painting, also echo in the interior decoration of the church in Siekierki Wielkie near Poznań, which was painted half a century later. The illusion of architectural qualities in wooden churches could also be more modest and more traditional, consisting in decorating walls with painted columns, imitations of large canvas pictures (the church in Zakrzew near Rawicz) or of whole arcade structures on marble plinths (the church in Łęki Wielkie). Sometimes illusionist paintings imitated a portal (the church in Stare Bortkowo) or a tympanum (the church in Gąsawa). Illusionist baroque painting was also intended to give the appearance of more sumptuous furnishings than could be afforded in reality: tapestries, draped curtains behind the altar, canvas paintings on the walls or sculptures on consoles, the organ façade or altars. This function re-sulted in creating complex holistic decorations (as in Gąsawa) or in simply painting altars on walls (e.g. in Grodzisk Wielkopolski). Illusionist decorations were usually funded by benefactors who were patrons of the given church as owners of the estate in which it was located. Then, the painted illusion became a social statement; it represented the benefactor’s rank, also manifesting their piety and highlighting the status of their family. In the case of churches situated in estates belonging to religious orders funding lavish decorations manifested the benefactor’s care for edifying the parishioners. Interior decorations inspired by Pozzo’s models were characteristic of eighteenth-century art. The beginning of the 19th century was marked with the return of a simpler illusionist style, sometimes implemented by second-rate local painters. Abandoning lavish decorations was partly induced by a change of the circle of potential benefactors. Distant echoes of the tradition of monumental illusionism returned only in the 1960s, when Poland celebrated its millennium.