Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie (6.1965)

Tadeusz Dobrzeniecki

A SILESIAN RELIEF OF THE ANNUNCIATION
IN TflE NATIONAL MUSEUM IN WARSA W*

The linden relief with the scenę of the Annunciation of about 1460 from St Elisabeth's Churcli
in Wrocław1, now exhibited in the Gallery of Mediaeval Art of the Museum, is an exampl3
of a peculiar iconograpliic developmcnt of the theme (fig. 1): at the axis of symmetry of the
composition, which was, most probably, intended to fili a compartment of the wing of a lost
altarpiece, a spreading tree grows with the bust of God the Father in its crown. Underneath,
the symbolic Dove — the Holy Gliost — is hovering and below it the naked Child is seen in
a strictly frontal view. At the right of the tree the Virgin Mary is sitting with the open book
in Her right hand, raising the left one in the gesture of amazement. On the opposite side
Archangel Gabriel kneels. His scroll with the only readible word of the Salutation: ...PLENA...
is wrapped round the trunk of the tree.

This representation introduces us into a circle of problems, rooced in a legend, popular in
mediaeval literaturę and art — that of Seth and the Tree of Life. The legend captured the
interest of scholars already in the 19th century, when the fundamental studies of its origin
and history in European literaturę appeared. But only in 1962 an exhaustive work of Mrs.
Esther Casier Quinn presented the evolution of all its main threads2.

Even if the legend arose as a compilation of various Biblical and apocryphal motives, it
was Consolidated by a clear-cut and theologically uniform idea: sińce the Fali of the First Pa-
rents had been caused by a tree, the Redemplion of Mankind had to be achieved also through
a tree3. This concept became, as the time passed, so influential that it was able to join two
previously independent legends: the one of the journey of Seth to Paradise and the prehistory
of wood, of which the Cross of the Saviour was made.

It was an anonymous Latin writer, who compiled the two narratives into a single story in
the third quarter of the 13th century4. This compilation expressed a common belief in ideolo-

* The iconograpliic problems presented in this article are morę circumstantially discussed in my study, written in Polish,
for the Rocznik Muzeum Narodowego w Warszawie, IX.. 1965.

1. H. Luchs, Die Denkmaler der St Elisabethkirche zu Breslau, Brcslau, 1860, p. 113; A. Schultz, UrkundLiche Geschiclile
der Breslauer Maler-Innung in den Jahren 1345 —1523, Breslau, 1866, p. 109,6; II. Lutsch, Verzeichnis der Kunst'
denkmaler der Proninz Schlesien. I. Die Stadl Breslau, Breslau, 1886, p. 232; W. Meyer, Breslauer Holzplaslik der Spili-
gotlk im ausgehenden XV. Jht., Diss. Breslau, 1920 (in typc-script); L. Burgcmeister and G. Grundmann, Die Kunst-
denkmaler der Stadt Breslau, I, 2. Die kirchlichen Denkmaler der Allstadl, Breilau, 1933, p. 98.

2. E. Casier Quinn, The Quest of Seth for the Oil of Life, Chicago, 1962.

3. The concept was often pronounced by Early Christian Greek and Latin writers, see s.v. Baum (in) Lexikon fur Antikc
und Christenlum, II, Stuttgart, 1954, col. 24 — 27. St. Augustine's statements were especially influential (e.g.: „In
arborc perivimus, in arbore redempti sumus, in ligno mors, in ligno vita pepeniit'*. Scrmo 84, cap. 3, Mai, Nova Bi-
bliotkeca Palrum, I, p. 161), and bccani3 a m^iel for St Thomis Aq., S. Th.p. III, p. 45, a. 4. For the broad
source documentatiou of the ipaestion see H. Rahner, Griechische Mylhen in christlicher Deutung, Ziirich, 1957 (in
the chapter Dis Mystcrium des Kreuzes, p. 73 — 99).

4. E. Casier Quinn, op. cii, p. 11.

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