Eighteenth-century altarpieces in the church of Saint John the Baptist in Skalb-mierz – selected problems and research perspectives
Eighteenth-century altarpieces in the church of Saint John the Baptist in Skalb-mierz – selected problems and research perspectives

Summary/Abstract: The article is devoted to the analysis of research problems pertinent to a group of eighteenth-century altar paintings located in the church of Saint John the Bap-tist in Skalbmierz. Due to the rank of the Skalbmierz collegiate church within the structure of the Kraków diocese in the eighteenth century, the artworks gathered in the temple include examples of painting at the highest level then achievable for guild painters operating in Kraków, as well as one piece made by an artist active outside the structures of guild organization. The results of archival and biblio-graphical queries facilitated broadening our knowledge about the history of the paintings, and about the way their locations moved inside the temple. The formal and comparative analyses we have conducted led us to assigning the authorship of Saint Gregory the Great [Pope Gregory I] to Tadeusz (Thaddäus) Kuntze, and the paintings of Saint Joseph, Saint Anthony of Padua, and Saint Thecla to Mikołaj Janowski. The first of the aforementioned artists, after finishing his studies in Rome, came to Kraków and worked as a court painter to Bishop Andrzej Stanisław Kostka Załuski, while the second was one of the most important painters belonging to the Kraków guild in the eighteenth century. Depictions of Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and of The Baptism of Christ represent two research problems related to the workshop practice of guild painters active in Kraków in the eighteenth century. The first of the artworks constitutes an example of repeating the composition of another painting – specifically, a canvas found in one of the churches in Kraków – made by an artist from outside the local milieu, whereas the composition of the second representation is based on a graphic pattern from which some elements have been eliminated. Both compositional methods represented by these artworks were pop-ular in Kraków eighteenth-century painting.

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