Jolita Liškevičienė (PDF)
https://doi.org/10.53631/MIS/2024.15.3
The article focuses on the Baroque fresco cycle painted on the ceiling vaults of the central nave of the Franciscan Church in Vilnius. It depicts the life and miracle scenes of St Anthony of Padua, combining them with the emblems to create a cohesive narration. The frescoes were painted by the Marian monk Franciszek Nemierowski between 1773 and 1780, commissioned by Antoni Karęga, the Prior of the Franciscan Monastery of Vilnius. The article analyses the iconography of the frescoes, their subjects and emblems, discusses the written and graphic sources, identifies the possible prototypes and outlines their meanings and the sources of the choice of emblems and reconstructs the programmatic idea of this extended work of sacral art.
The article analyses 22 depicted narrative scenes and 15 emblems. The distinctive feature of the cycle is that the original narrative of the saint’s life is arranged conceptually rather than in chronological order. The cycle can be divided into two parts. The apse depicts the monastic life of St Anthony of Padua, from his calling to join the monastery to his readiness for preaching in public. In the next part of the cycle, located in the central nave of the church, the scenes are linked to the preaching power of the saint: a sermon to the fishes, controlling the elements, the powers of bilocation, defeating Satan, the demonstration of justice, the supernatural powers of the resurrection of the murdered, attesting the innocence of Anthony’s father and expelling the devil. The frescoes are characterised by a mature Baroque style, with architecture dominating the compositions of the scenes depicted. The arrangement of the figures and, in some cases, the surroundings repeat graphic examples in most plots. The frescoes follow the mid-18th century graphical cycle Vita S. Antonii Paduani (Munich, 1796) by Joseph Sebastian Klauber. The plots are complemented by 15 emblems, most based on the book Emblematischer Parnassus by Laurent Wolfgang Woytt (Augsburg, 1727–1730). However, some emblems were probably newly created for the cycle. Although the ceiling décor is a continuous and complete cycle, it was only one part of the overall interior concept harmoniously integrated into the whole interior of the church.
Keywords: St Anthony of Padua, Franciscans, the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Vilnius, cycle of frescoes, emblems