Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie (6.1965)

Tadeusz Dobrzeniecki

A ROMANESQUE STATUĘ OF THE YIRGIN AND THE CHILD IN THE NATIONAL

MUSEUM IN WARSAW*

The enthroned Mary with the Infant Christ from the Cistercian Ahbey Church at Olobok
(Greater Poland)1 was never a subject of any ampler considerations (fig. 1 — 4). After being
attributed to a Rhenish (Cologne?) workshop by M. Walicki in his report of 19322, it was only
briefly mentioned in synthetic surveys of Polish mediaeval art as the earliest known Romanesąue
wooden statuę in Poland. The present article is intended to touch upon few problcms implied
by this remarkable work.

The statuę carved in linden wood measures 39,5 cm. The Virgin in a majestic frontal attitude
is seated on a Iow throne without a back. Between Mary's open knees, straight in front of Her,
the divine Child is seated in a similar hieratic pose. The narrow shoulders of the Yirgin, extremely
steep, and the oblique disposition of Her shortened, to say blasted, legs give the impression of
a mandorla, in which the Infant thrones. The thin, elongated face of Mary with its Iow forehead,
arched eyebrows, straight pointed nose and softly rounded chin is enlivened by a scarcely per-
ceptible smile, hovering at Her wide lips, while the big, half-Josed eyes of the Mother of God
look forward as if She was lost in deep thought. The head of Jesus as well as the hands of both
these figures no longer exist. The circular openings in the sleeves and a rest of a wooden pivot
still in the hole of Christ's left arm prove that the hands were carved of separate pieces of wood.
The Virgin with a simple diadem on Her unveiled hair is clothed in a tunic and a mantle, uni-
formly folded in parallel herring-bone waves at the sides of Her body and in oblique pattern
on Her legs. The long tunic of the Child forms similar, nearly diagonal folds. The side view of the
statuę reveals a light stooping of the Virgin and a leaning forward of the Infant's torso. In front,
the lower part of the statuę is splitted at the axis and there is a notch at the base of the throne
and at the Mary's left foot. The reverse shows a rectangular finished cavity, hollowed out in the
mass of the statuę. Above, the back of the Virgin, slightly asymmetrical, is squared and the
folding of the mantle is herc discontinued. The hair of Mary f lows down to Her shoulders dividing
at Her neck into two thining down plain strips (braids ?). Their unusual flatness as well as that
of the folds of garments, giving the statuę a somewhat unfinished character, contrasts with the
subtle expression of Mary's face and compels to ascribe a polychromy a prominent role in the
original appearance of the carving.

The crack of wood at the right of the Virgin's back was filled with carefully fit wedge of linden,
preserved only in 2/3 of its length. This old reparation as well as 20 percents of the surface of the
statuę bear rest of an old (original?) polychromy on chalk ground. The carnation of Mary is
pearly-lilac, the throne is painted in red-and-black checkers. The smali areas of colour allow
for a supposition, that the hair was once yellow with dark brown drawing of braids, the circlet
was gilt, the tunic of Mary, now dark green, — red and the mantle — reddish-1 iown.

The present article is a summary of a broader study, written in Polish for the Rocznik Muzeum Narodowego w Warszawie,
IX, 1965. Only selected bibliography is here cjuotcd.

1. Founded in 1213 by the Count of Greater Poland Władysław Odonic for the Cistercian nuns of Trzebnica (Trebnitz)
in Silesia, see F. H. Likowski, „Najdawniejsze dzieje klasztoru cystersek w Oloboku", Sprawozdania z czynności i po-
siedzeń PAU, Kraków, 1921.

2. M. Walicki, „Dwa zabytki późnoromańskiej rzeźby drewnianej w Polsce1', Biuletyn Naukoicy, I, 1932, p. 18 — 20.

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