Upadek Faetona – między niebem a ziemią. Dekoracja stiukowa plafonu w dawnym salonie pałacu Pod Krzysztofory w Krakowie

Abstract

THE FALL OF PHAETON – BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH. THE STUCCO DECORATION OF THE PLAFOND CEILING IN THE FORMER DRAWING ROOM AT KRZYSZTOFORY PALACE IN KRAKÓW

In the baroque urban mansion, presently still referred to  as Krzysztofory Palace, the family seat of three generations  of the Wodzickis who owned it from 1681 to 1773 and one  of the most magnificent aristocratic residences in Kraków,  only a few features of the once-opulent decor survive today.  Among these are the two brilliant works of art dating  from the turn of the 17th and the 18th centuries which costitute  the stucco decorations of the interiors of the stately  apartments of the mansion’s piano nobile, namely the former  drawing room and the study (or, possibly, the palace  chapel), the works of a prominent Italian master Baldassare  Fontana. The artist who in Polish scholarly publications  is referred to as Baltazar Fontana (1661–1733) was active  mainly in Central Europe (Poland and Moravia) where he  designed and executed stucco decorations of outstanding  artistic quality for a number of residential interiors and  sacred buildings. He contributed to the popularization of  the Roman baroque style in Europe and had a great impact  on 18th-century art. Fontana’s life and works have been the  subject of academic interest for many baroque art historians;  his major monographer is Mariusz Karpowicz.  The stucco decorations in the palace’s apartments were  created either in the period 1697–1702, or in 1703–1704.  The works had been commissioned by the then owner of  Krzysztofory Palace, Anna Maria Wodzicka, née Gratt.  Fontana’s authorship is not confirmed by any of the known  sources. His participation in the creation of the decorations  in the study (or chapel?), confirmed by comparative analyses,  is generally accepted without reservations. What has  been the subject of controversy is Fontana’s authorship of  the decoration on the plafond ceiling in the drawing room  which has been attributed to his workshop. The recent,  new, in-depth analysis of the decorations in the drawing  room, including the mythological scene of The Fall of Phaeton,  has resulted in the verification of the artistic quality  thereof, and yielded a new interpretation of the piece’s ideological  message. The composition of the plafond’s central  scene depicts the tragic end of the divine Helios’ human  son Phaeton who dared to commit a forbidden deed: he  mounted his father’s luminous chariot that circled around  the horizon. To punish him, Zeus struck him with thunder,  and the adventurer fell down from the sky. The figure of  Phaeton is an allusion to the canonical figure of biblical  Adam as it is portrayed in the scene The Creation of Adam  in Michelangelo’s fresco adorning the vault of the Sistine  Chapel. It is not only a question of formal analogy between  the two works; the message conveyed in both of them is  that of the fate of disobedient sons who broke the commandments  of their great fathers.The mythological motif of  the fall of Phaeton is an allegory on the biblical original sin  committed by Adam, as a result of which the first parents  were expelled from paradise, lost their happiness and were  plunged into death. Expulsion from the Garden of Eden as  punishment for disobedience is an illustration of a fundamental  question in Christian theology, where the word “the  fall” means the original sin, the contamination of human  nature with evil. The moral that arrogance is a harbinger of  the fall assumes a universal meaning and shows the cultural  continuity of Europe from the myths of ancient Greece, to  the Commandments of the Decalogue and the doctrinal interpretation  of Christian theology contained in the Creed.  Helios - the mythological solar god of light - finds ideologicalcontinuation  in Christian culture through his identification  with Christ who is the divine light and redemption.