Rima Valinčiūtė-Varnė (PDF)
https://doi.org/10.53631/MIS/2024.15.2
For the first time, the article presents the painting Our Lady with the Child from the Pasvalys church, restored in the Restoration Workshop of the National M. K. Čiurlionis Art Museum in 2022. The aim of the study was to investigate the painting Our Lady with the Child from the Pasvalys church, identifying its historical, artistic and iconographic features, relationship with the Rosary Fraternity and the miraculous image of Our Lady of Bialyniczy.
The masonry church in Pasvalys was built from 1779 to 1787. The painting Our Lady with the Child for the church was made by a local artist in the 1790s. It hung on the first condignation of the left side altar of the Fraternity of Our Lady of the Rosary. From 1885 to 1887, parson prelate Vladas Dambrauskas enlarged the church and installed wooden altars, which have survived to this day. The painting was placed in the same place when the building works were done. It is the oldest work of art in the Pasvalys church, contemporaneous with the masonry church.
In 2022, conservation-restoration work to remove late overpainting revealed the authentic image of the painting and the inscription at the bottom of the painting in Polish: ‘OBRAZ CUDOWNEY NAYŚWĘTSZEY PANNY BIAŁYNICKIEY.’ The painting was repainted in 1936; its background was repainted before 1887 (also enlarged), in 1936 and the 1970s. The silver-plated copper alloy casings, the two crowns and the sceptre were made by an intermediate craftsman in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.
The iconographic tradition of Our Lady of Bialyniczy in Pasvalys probably continues from the second half of the seventeenth century. A separate altar with the painting had Fraternities of Our Lady of the Rosary and the Holy Name of Jesus, which were probably founded in the second half of the 17th century, but mentioned in sources only in 1775. The painting Our Lady with the Child, painted in the 1790s, combined both traditions in one image: Our Lady of Bialyniczy and Our Lady of the Rosary. It also incorporates elements of the images of Santa Maria Maggiore of Rome, Santa Maria del Popolo of Rome and Our Lady of Krekenava. From the end of the nineteenth century and even more markedly in the second half of the twentieth century, local piety was formed around the painting in Pasvalys.
The image of Our Lady of Bialyniczy was famous for its miracles in the Old Regula Carmelite Church in Bialyniczy (present-day Belarus). In 1660, it miraculously defended the Lyakhavichy fortress against the Moscow army, deserving the name of the
‘Lithuanian Częstochowa’. Its cult spread rapidly in the second half of the seventeenth century, maintaining its popularity in the time of troubles of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Our Lady of Bialyniczy was considered the special patron saint of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the face of its enemies (Lithuania versus Moscow). However, the national identity of Lithuania (Lithuania versus Poland) and Belarus (Belarus intra Lithuania and Poland) is also distinct in its cult.
The painting Our Lady of Bialyniczy intertwines the iconography of Hodegetria and the Queen of Heaven. Mary is depicted halfway up with an incomplete pose as if standing or sitting , with her knees forward. She wore a red dress and a dark blue maphorion. She held the Child Jesus in her left arm, and a sceptre in her characteristically lowered right hand. Jesus Christ is depicted as the Saviour of the World, blessing the world with his right hand and holding a globe in his left hand, embraced from below. His tunic is white, and his cloak is gold or red, thrown over his left shoulder and knee. The painting showed only the Child’s bare left foot, while the right foot was covered by the edge of the cloak, gently touched by Mary’s right hand. There were no aureoles around the heads of Mary and the Child. The background of the painting was neutral, dark brown.
From 1635, the image of Bialyniczy was adorned with mannerist open-type princely crowns with three arches, donated by Krzysztof Zawisza. In 1761, the painting was crowned with the princely crowns with five arches of the late Baroque, approved by a bull of Pope Benedict XIV in 1756. Additionally, a star appeared on Mary’s shoulder. In 1856, the painting was adorned with historicist close-form crowns, and casings and background were decorated with rocailles. After 1941, the image of Our Lady of Bialyniczy became lost. Its derivations from the seventeenth through twentieth centuries have survived in Lithuania, Poland and Belarus.
Keywords: St John the Baptist Church in Pasvalys, Fraternity of Rosary, Fraternity of the Holy Name of Jesus, the miraculous image of Our Lady of Bialyniczy, the icon of Santa Maria Maggiore of Rome, the icon of Santa Maria del Popolo of Rome, Our Lady of Krekenava, crowned images, iconography, casings, restoratio