Strącenie Faetona na plafonie w pałacu Pod Krzysztofory. O możliwych inspiracjach dla przedstawienia mitu o nierozważnym synu Heliosa

Abstract

THE FALL OF PHAETON ON THE PLAFOND CEILING AT KRZYSZTOFORY PALACE. ON THE POSSIBLE INSPIRATIONS FOR THE REPRESENTATION OF THE MYTH OF HELIOS’ IMPRUDENT SON

In the finest of all rooms in Krzysztofory Palace, the  Baldassare Fontana Room located on the so-called piano  nobile, there is a ceiling stucco depicting the dramatic scene  of the fall of Phaeton and his solar chariot. The authorship  of this piece is uncertain. In the older literature on the subject,  we find a deep conviction that the piece was done by  Baldassare Fontana (1661–1733), an Italian-born baroque  artist known e.g. as the creator of the magnificent decorations  in St Anne’s Church in Kraków. Allegedly, Fontana  produced the stucco in 1702 or 1704, when he was living  in Kraków, and the work was commissioned by Anna  Wodzicka, the then owner of Krzysztofory Palace. One of  the hypotheses says that it was a monumental satire on the  recently dethroned Polish king, Augustus II. More recently,  however, researchers tended to date the stucco to a later  period (after 1726), thus questioning Fontana’s authorship.  The present paper does not settle the question of the  piece’s authorship; instead, it presents the cultural background  behind it, as well as discusses the artist’s potential  inspirations, i.e. other representations of the fall of Phaeton  motif. The paper comprises two parts. The first part deals  with the question of how popular the myth of Phaeton  could be among Cracovians. It, therefore, discusses the literature  which was either published, or simply accessible  to the Kraków audience in the Modern Period (16th–18th  cent.), and in which the story of Helios’ son driving the  solar chariot was presented in considerable detail (mostly,  the various editions, translations and adaptations to Ovid’s  narrative poem Metamorphoses). This part of the paper also  deals with the symbolism of Phaeton as a character in the  literature written in that period. The second part of the  paper discusses the chances of the artist being influenced  by other visual representations. Particular attention is paid  to the similarities between the stucco ceiling decoration  and the motif of the fall of Phaeton and his chariot as it is  depicted in one of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s (1475–1564)  drawings which became very popular and was often copied  by numerous artists (mainly chalcographers, but also medallists  and sculptors). The artist who produced the stucco in  Kraków probably made use of that drawing, too.