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Nasza Przeszłość

Vol. 96 (2001): Our Past

Articles

Paintings by Bernard Franciszek Remela from the Cistercian church in Koronowo

  • Emanuel Okoń
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52204/np.2001.96.321-364  [Google Scholar]
Published: 2001-12-30

Abstract

This article deals with a series of ten historical and allegorical paintings in the old convent church at Koronowo. Their subject is the history of the Bene­dictine and Cistercian orders. The document containing the original commis­sion, signed on 23 March 1757, has recently been found in the Diocesan Ar­chives at Pelplin. With this discovery it has been possible to clarify the key questions concerning the date and authorship of the paintings. Now we can be certain that they were executed in 1757-1758 by a hitherto unknown artist Bernard Franciszek Remela, commissioned from Antoni Jan Chrząstowski, Abbot of Koronowo. The iconographic programme of the whole cycle was devised by Chrząstowski himself. Moreover, the artist Bernard F. Remela was not, as some scholars were inclined to believe, a member of the Cister­cian order.Originally, the cycle consisted of twelve pictures put above the arcades of the nave. Two of them went missing some time after 1900. In 1945-1948 the interior of the church was subject to major alterations affecting in particular the stalls and the chancel. Also the paintings on the south side of the nave were reshuffled, a change which disrupted some aspects of the original com­position, though not its basic division. Since the time they were put in place in the 18th century the pictures illustrating the history of the Benedictine or­der have always hung on the north wall, while episodes from the life of St Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercian monks have decorated the south wall. The scenes in each series were intended to build up a narrative sequence which led to the main alter; moreover, pictures facing each other across the nave were linked by a number of thematic parallels. The author of this article offers a new iconographic interpretation of some of the paintings and in the case of one of them identifies the work on which it was modelled. He also claims, on the basis of an analysis of the newly-found contract, that Bernard F. Remela must be the author of one of the portraits which is still hanging in the church. The inscription at the back of the picture suggests that it is a portrait of Abbot Mikołaj Stefan Chrząstowski, and not A. J. Chrząstowski. The portrait was painted by Bernard F. Remela around the year 1757; while working on it, he got the commission to paint all the pictures for the nave of the church.

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