Niderlandy – Lubeka – Gdańsk. O artystycznym pochodzeniu późnogotyckich rzeźb Marii z Dzieciątkiem z Garczyna i Sianowa

Abstrakt

Two parish churches in small Kashubian villages: Sianów near Kartuzy and Garczyn near Kościerzyna, feature two preserved late Gothic wooden sculptures of the Virgin and Child. Quality‑wise, they are by no means provincial works; on the contrary, both figures can be ranked among the best sculpture pieces from the vicinity of Gdańsk created in the latter half of the 15th century. The sculptures display similar formal and stylistic features, and are closely akin to each other in view of the iconography; they seem to have had the same artistic source and come from the same place. There is rather scarce literature available on either. The present study contributes to it with some new observations. Far‑reaching formal and stylistic analogies suggest that the two figures were created around the same time, among the same artistic circle, highly likely in one workshop; additionally, they may have been executed by the same artist. It is, however, very unlikely for works of such high quality to come from rural parish churches. The close vicinity of Gdańsk, as well as the genesis of the figures’ style could suggest that they might have come from one of Gdańsk’s churches. Both sculptures have a very close equivalent in the double presentation of the Virgin with Child in the Church of St Christopher in Werne (Kreis Unna) in North Rhine‑Westphalia. It seems that the figures in Garczyn and Sianów, as well as the Werne work, are variants of the formal model outstandingly implemented in the stone statues of the Virgin and Child in the Lübeck Cathedral and the Hamburg Church of St Peter, executed mostly likely by an artist active in Lübeck. Following historical records, the figures can be dated at 1460‒70. The Garczyn and Sianów statues additionally reveal kinship with other Lübeck works as for their form, execution technique, and material. The similarities allow for the hypothesis that the two works in question originate from Lübeck from around 1470‒80, though they were not necessarily executed there. Interestingly, the works also display clear Netherlandish features, stemming from the oeuvre of Master of Flémalle/Robert Campin. It is not at all surprising that art pieces from Lübeck are to be found in Gdańsk, since the first was the latter’s major trading partner. The bulk of Gdańsk’s patriciate originated from the western regions of the Baltic coast, including Schleswig‑Holstein, and Lübeck itself. There exist a number of testimonies to the manifold mutual artistic bonds between Gdańsk and Lübeck. Artists educated in the latter were active in Gdańsk. In Gdańsk and around it there may have been other sculptures from Lübeck copying the scheme whose variants are to be found in the pieces from Garczyn and Sianów, this confirmed by a small figure of Virgin and Child in St Catherine’s Church in Stężyca near Kartuzy, paraphrasing the stone Virgin from Hamburg to a higher degree than the figures from Garczyn and Sianów. There are strong premises to claim that the presence of the sculptures in question in Prussia was connected with Gdańsk. Gdańsk may have mediated their import from Lübeck, or they may have been executed in Gdańsk by an artist (or workshop) educated in Lübeck. On the other hand, it is also likely that Gdańsk was to be their final destination, since the cosmopolitan environment here had customers interested in art of Western provenance. At the same time, however, it cannot be ruled out that the discussed sculptures were from the beginning meant to find their destination outside Gdańsk. In this case, however, only in convents. The example of the Premonstratensians from Żukowo reveals that monastic circles also had founders and customers seeking high‑quality art works, available from further afield than merely the closest vicinity.