Regimanta Stankevičienė (PDF)
https://doi.org/10.53631/MIS/2024.15.1
The article analyses the origin and history of the painting Our Lady with the Child (1710) from the St George Church in Kurkliai. This research is supplemented by the contextual studies of the Kurkliai church, its decorations and iconographic programme. The study presents several prominent people related to the history of the church: The church was funded by the spouses Krzysztof Stanisław Zawisza and Teresa Róża Tyszkiewiczówna Zawiszowa. Silvester Concess (Silvestr Koncesz) Rodkiewicz was the first prior of the Monastery of the Regular Canons Penitentiary in Kurkliai. The Plater family (the collators) and the prior Franciszek Ignacy Jankiewicz renovated the church and its decor in the mid-eighteenth century.
The research has revealed that the Zawisza family started the process of funding the Monastery of the Regular Canons Penitentiary next to the old Kurkliai chapel in 1693. Sometime later, they invited the monks to reside there, and the monastery was certainly operational in 1699. The date of 1700, which has traditionally been mentioned, is the date of the de jure foundation and the consecration of the new (or reconstructed?) wooden chapel/church. Until 1783, when it became a parish church, it was the filial church of Skiemonys and later Anykščiai parish. A new wooden monastery was built in 1735. In the 1750s and 1760s, the church was renovated and enlarged by adding a porch and its interior was decorated with new altars, a pulpit, paintings, murals, vessels and other accessories. The churchyard was fenced in, and a bell tower was built.
The inscription on the painting mentions the year 1710 and its prototype: Santa Maria ad Nives, a famous icon from Rome dating back to the late ninth to the early eleventh century, also known as S. Maria Maggiore and Salus Populi Romani. However, the painting is a replica of another famous painting from Rome, Santa Maria del Popolo (Filippo Rusuti, the late thirteenth century). Presumably, it was painted after a mid-seventeenth century engraving from the book Origine del Tempio dedicato in Roma alla Vergine Madre di Dio Maria, presso alla Porta Flamina, detto hoggi del Popolo by Landucci Ambrogio (Rome, 1646), which was based on the original painting.
In the first half of the eighteenth century, the iconographic programme of the Church of the Kurkliai Monastery of the Regular Canons Penitentiary was generally dominated by various images of Our Lady, and the devotion to Our Lady of the Snows was especially promoted in the mid-eighteenth century. The painting S. Maria ad Nives was mentioned for the first time in the 1750s. The prior Jankiewicz placed it on the new high altar and decorated it with metal tin clothing and, together with other people, rewarded it with ex-votos. Then, he acquired a large church bell dedicated to Our Lady of the Snows and a processional altar with a smaller image of Our Lady of the Snows on a copper base (the latter two have not survived). The paintings of Our Lady of the Snows mentioned above are thought to be the same paintings of Our Lady that were in the side altars of the church in the first half of the eighteenth century but were mentioned in the documents without the title ‘of the Snows’.
When the Fraternity of Our Lady of Mount Carmel was established in Kurkliai church in 1766, more attention was paid to the painting belonging to the fraternity. From the 1780s onwards, the painting of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is referred to as the high altar painting , and the painting of Our Lady of the Snows as occupying its previous place on the side altar. The monastery was closed by the tsarist authorities in 1832, but the old church stood for another four decades until the current wooden church with new altars was built in the 1870s. The Baroque paintings from the altars of the old church, Our Lady of the Snows and St Anthony of Padua (slightly reduced in size?), were moved to a processional altar acquired in 1873 and remain there until now.
At this point of our research, it seems likely that the painting was donated by the church benefactor in gratitude for saving him and his family from death when the plague struck in early 1710. This and other hypotheses of the painting’s origin and the reasons for the mismatch between its title and iconography remain to be investigated, and the painting has yet to be professionally restored.
Keywords: the painting of Our Lady, S. Maria ad Nives, S. Maria del Popolo, St George Church in Kurkliai, the Monastery of the Regular Canons Penitentiary in Kurkliai, the Zawisza family, the Plater family, Silvester Concess Rodkiewicz, Franciszek Ignacy Jankiewicz