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Renaissance route in Malopolska

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Modlnica. Church of St Adalbert and Our Lady of Sorrows

Modlnica. Church of St Adalbert and Our Lady of Sorrows

Modlnica. Church of St Adalbert and Our Lady of Sorrows, interior

Modlnica. Church of St Adalbert and Our Lady of Sorrows, interior

Modlnica. Church of St Adalbert and Our Lady of Sorrows, interior

Modlnica. Church of St Adalbert and Our Lady of Sorrows, interior

This is the only wooden structure among those presented on the Renaissance Route in Małopolska. It was built in 1553 using beams interlocking on the corners, vertically boarded and with skirting. All the roofs are covered with wooden shingles apart from the sacristy which is covered with metal sheets. The original construction was built on the plan of a cross. In 1622, the northern arm and sacristy were transformed into a late Renaissance stone funeral chamber of the Kucharski family, with an epitaph for Stanisław Kucharski presenting the deceased in the characteristic form of a bust.

The murals in the church date back to various periods; the oldest ones date back to 1562 and present scenes from the life of Christ that can be divided into two separate series of images. The first, painted in the chancel, presents the genealogy of Christ as described in the Gospel of St Matthew. The composition presents the ancestors of the Saviour depicted in an arcaded frieze running under the ceiling and divided by columns into panels. The other presents the life and passion of Christ. The balustrade of the musical choir is decorated with a composition presenting the parable of the rich man and Lazarus from the Gospel of Saint Luke. The wooden ceiling of the chancel was covered with a mural in a coffered pattern with rosettes and acanthus leaves, characteristic of the Renaissance.

The most important element of furnishing in the church is the finely decorated marble ciborium from the 16th century in the shape of a temple with four characteristic columns supporting a canopy forming a dome. The ciborium, the work of Giovanni Maria Padovano, was originally in Wawel Cathedral from where it was transferred to the church in Modlnica. Other bas-relief elements of the cathedral altar for the Holy Sacrament have also been preserved and can be found in the Bishop Tomicki Chapel in Wawel and in the National Museum in Kraków (in the Mansion of Bishop Erazm Ciołek).

The art of the Italian Renaissance, both Florentine and later north Italian, arrived in Kraków and Małopolska thanks to Italian artists and their powerful and learned patrons who constructed buildings, tombs, and altars. Its ideology was based on the Renaissance humanism spreading there since the mid-15th century. Its charms have long attracted people living in the royal capital city of Poland, which was a true melting pot of nationalities and cultures. Italians, Poles, Germans, and Dutchmen with Italian names, sometimes styled into an antique format (for example Iustus Decius), contributed to the transformation of the artistic and cultural panorama of the kingdom and the city. With time, Renaissance art was disseminated widely, which proved possible thanks originally to its connection with a local late mediaeval artistic tradition, and later with the Northern Renaissance and mannerism (German and Dutch). This type of link is well expressed in Małopolska churches: the one in Zielonki which combines the late-Gothic type with Renaissance details, the one in Modlnica through the transformations in wooden architecture and Renaissance paintings, and the one in Giebułtów where late Renaissance and mannerism are manifested