Dekoracja sztukatorska Baltazara Fontany w tzw. kaplicy pałacu Pod Krzysztofory i jej przesłanie ideowe

Abstract

BALDASSARE FONTANA’S STUCCO DECORATION IN THE SO-CALLED CHAPEL AT KRZYSZTOFORY IN THE CHAPEL AT KRZYSZTOFORY PALACE AND ITS IDEOLOGICAL MESSAGE

The subject of this paper is an attempt to unravel the mystery  of the iconography of Baldassare Fontana’s stuccos decorating  the room located on the first floor of Krzysztofory  Palace in order to determine whether the interior’s original  character was secular, or sacred. The author also strives to  arrive at the exact date when that decoration was created.  Krzysztofory Palace is one of the five mansions standing  along Kraków’s Main Market Square. It is located on the  corner of the Market Square and Szczepańska Street. The  room containing the aforementioned stuccos by Baldassare  Fontana was built in the years 1682–1684 above the  baulk passage between two adjacent properties – the Pod  Krzysztofory house, and the Chmielowska house. These  two buildings were eventually merged to become a bigger  structure – the palace. The joining process was initiated in  1682 by Wawrzyniec Jan Wodzicki, supervisor of the royal  salt mines in Wieliczka and Bochnia, who had earlier  bought the two adjacent houses (chronologically, he bought  the Chmielowska house in 1650, and the Pod Krzysztofory  mansion in 1664). The joining design had been created by  an Italian architect Giacomo Solari who personally supervised  the construction works.  The room in question was located on the first floor of the  newly rebuilt palace, overlooking Szczepańska Street. There  has been no agreement among researchers concerning the  room’s purpose, as some of them believed it could have  been used as a chapel, while the majority concurred with  the opinion that the room had a purely secular character.  Those who assumed the secular hypothesis pointed to the  fact that there was a fireplace in the room, and the themes  represented in the stuccos themselves seemed to support  that. The bas-reliefs on the medallions had been identified  as representations of Diogenes, Cleopatra, Venus with  Amor, and Diana.  However, a new analysis of the figures depicted in the  medallions and their attributes suggests that what we are  dealing with here might not be mythological and historical  characters, but, rather, allegorized ideas of religious nature.  The attributes accompanying the allegorical figures can also  incline us towards such interpretation.  A more in-depth analysis of the medallions enforces a new  interpretation of their meaning. The figure heretofore identified  as Diogenes may symbolize God’s Love, the Psyche  may be a depiction of the Sacrifice of the Eucharist commemorating  Christ’s Passion, and what used to be identified  as Diana may be Holy Virgin Mary the Saviour. The  figure previously identified as Cleopatra may be an allegory  of the universal idea of holiness, and the young man may  be the harbinger of a good Christian’s eternal bliss. The  ideological message encoded in the medallions corresponds  with the themes of the mural paintings on the room’s vault  and walls, which are associated with Man’s rebirth to eternal  life. The paintings on the vault and the upper sections  of the walls above the cornice could be the works of either  Karl Dankwart, or Innocente Monti, or Gregorio Pagani. It  is difficult to determine the authorship of this polychrome  today due to its bad condition.