DOI Artikel:
Łepkowski, Mateusz: Nie tylko malarstwo - aktualizacja w nowożytnej kulturze religijnej: wybrane zagadnienia i problematyka badawcza
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.31348#0161
SU M MARY Polish seventeenth-century sacred painting has for a long time been outside
the main scope of the research interests of historians of early modern art. The findings of
respected scholars from half a century ago have nowadays been mechanically repeated,
both in specialist and popular publications, in spite of the fact that the same scholars, at the
end of their careers, had postulated a revision of the results of their earlier research.
Contemporisation as a tendency in Polish early modern painting was described for
the first time by Władysław Tomkiewicz in his classic study published in 1951. Yet the po-
litical situation and ideological constraints of the period had influenced the methodology
employed by the scholar, and many of his findings and observations included in this work
did not stand the test of time.
The phenomenon of contemporisation, understood as a conscious and deliberate
depiction in a religious painting of references to the present, consisting, for example, of
portraits in assfsfenza and crypto-portraits, contemporary costume, allusions to local
staffage and employing elements of local architecture and landscape as well as - more
or less explicit - references to the current political, religious and social situation, is not
a typically Polish tendency. What is more, it is neither immediately related to the post-
Tridentine era, nor is it restricted exclusively to fine arts. Similar iconographic solutions
appear almost all over Europe. Their beginnings reach back to the Middle Ages and various
contemporisation devices can be found in nearly all aspects of religious culture, starting
from literature and homiletics, through theatre and mystery plays, to music.
A researcher who undertakes an attempt at analysing and interpreting contemporised
works of sacred art is faced with a number of methodological problems resulting, above
all, from the scarcity of written documentary sources and the usually mediocre artistic
quality of the analysed works. In order not to yield to the temptation of constructing
cascading hypotheses based on meagre premises, it is necessary to exercise a scholarly
restraint and to get the possibly deepest insight into the context in which a given painting
arose and the purpose for which it was made, and then to inscribe the work in the gene-
ral cultural tendencies of the epoch. The context can be built by conscious and critical
use of the results of other disciplines dealing with the study of cultural history. It is only
through juxtaposing a work of art with literature, ritual and custom that one can arrive
at its possibly full and objective interpretation. #
Transited /oanna Wdaas^a
Nie tylko malarstwo - aktualizacja w nowożytnej kulturze religijnej...
159
the main scope of the research interests of historians of early modern art. The findings of
respected scholars from half a century ago have nowadays been mechanically repeated,
both in specialist and popular publications, in spite of the fact that the same scholars, at the
end of their careers, had postulated a revision of the results of their earlier research.
Contemporisation as a tendency in Polish early modern painting was described for
the first time by Władysław Tomkiewicz in his classic study published in 1951. Yet the po-
litical situation and ideological constraints of the period had influenced the methodology
employed by the scholar, and many of his findings and observations included in this work
did not stand the test of time.
The phenomenon of contemporisation, understood as a conscious and deliberate
depiction in a religious painting of references to the present, consisting, for example, of
portraits in assfsfenza and crypto-portraits, contemporary costume, allusions to local
staffage and employing elements of local architecture and landscape as well as - more
or less explicit - references to the current political, religious and social situation, is not
a typically Polish tendency. What is more, it is neither immediately related to the post-
Tridentine era, nor is it restricted exclusively to fine arts. Similar iconographic solutions
appear almost all over Europe. Their beginnings reach back to the Middle Ages and various
contemporisation devices can be found in nearly all aspects of religious culture, starting
from literature and homiletics, through theatre and mystery plays, to music.
A researcher who undertakes an attempt at analysing and interpreting contemporised
works of sacred art is faced with a number of methodological problems resulting, above
all, from the scarcity of written documentary sources and the usually mediocre artistic
quality of the analysed works. In order not to yield to the temptation of constructing
cascading hypotheses based on meagre premises, it is necessary to exercise a scholarly
restraint and to get the possibly deepest insight into the context in which a given painting
arose and the purpose for which it was made, and then to inscribe the work in the gene-
ral cultural tendencies of the epoch. The context can be built by conscious and critical
use of the results of other disciplines dealing with the study of cultural history. It is only
through juxtaposing a work of art with literature, ritual and custom that one can arrive
at its possibly full and objective interpretation. #
Transited /oanna Wdaas^a
Nie tylko malarstwo - aktualizacja w nowożytnej kulturze religijnej...
159