Józef Mehoffer’s competition design for the polychrome decoration of the Franciscan Church in Kraków, 1894. An attempt to reconstruct the artist’s decorative concept
Józef Mehoffer’s competition design for the painting decoration of the Franciscan Church in Kraków in 1894 has not yet been found. This article is an attempt to reconstruct the artist’s decorative concept on the basis of the surviving sketches for the project, as well as notes drawn and written...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego
2023-06-01
|
| Series: | Sacrum et Decorum |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://sacrumetdecorum.pl/english-jozef-mehoffers-competition-design-for-the-polychrome-decoration-of-the-franciscan-church-in-krakow-1894-an-attempt-to-reconstruct-the-artists-decorative-concept/?lang=en |
| Summary: | Józef Mehoffer’s competition design for the painting
decoration of the Franciscan Church in Kraków
in 1894 has not yet been found. This article is an attempt
to reconstruct the artist’s decorative concept
on the basis of the surviving sketches for the project,
as well as notes drawn and written in a sketchbook
from 1893–1894.
The artist, who was in Paris in February 1894,
heard about the competition from Tadeusz Stryjeński.
The project he sent to the jury in May 1894 did not
meet the formal requirements; it was too sketch-like
and unpolished and was not accepted.
Mehoffer began work on it with detailed studies
of sources and iconography, documented by his drawings
and notes in his sketchbook. These bear witness
to his technical dependence on Jan Matejko and the
painters of the historicist school. The artist’s meticulous
approach in this respect was perhaps one of the
reasons why the project was not completed within
the three-month deadline set by the jury.
A stylistic analysis of Mehoffer’s sketches for the
decoration of the Franciscan Church leads to the conclusion
that they were created under the influence of
Matejko’s polychrome decoration of the presbytery of
St Mary’s Church in Kraków, as well as other sacral
decoration of the second half of the 19th century, associated
with the current of academic historicism – an
important model for the Polish artist was undoubtedly
the polychrome decoration of the chapels of Notre
Dame Cathedral in Paris – by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc
and Maurice Ouradou.
Mehoffer owed much of his inspiration for the
iconography of his design, in which the dominant
motifs were depictions of 13th-century Polish saints,
nuns, female rulers and Piast princes, to Matejko’s
work, The Defeat of Legnica – The Rebirth of Poland.
1241, 1888.
The overall vision for the decoration of the
Franciscan Church, which he did not include in
the competition design but described in his notes,
went beyond historicism. It demonstrates the artist’s
sensitivity to the new trends in art at the turn
of the 20th century, and the fact that he was already
aware of the profound changes taking place in the
style of monumental painting and in the perception
of its function.
|
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1689-5010 2720-524X |