Madonna with the sparrow

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Madonna with the Sparrow (2017)

The Madonna with the Sparrow is a Gothic Madonna figure in the parish church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary ( Polish: Kościół Wniebowzięcia Najświętszej Maryi Panny ) in Glatz ( Polish: Kłodzko ) in the powiat Kłodzki in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship in Poland. Together with the Glatzer Madonna, it is one of the most important Gothic portraits of Mary in the former County of Glatz .

description

The 155 cm tall figure depicts St. Mary holding the baby Jesus on her left arm . Both smile. A bird sits on the child's knee, which it seems to be catching. In popular parlance , she was referred to as the Madonna with the Sparrow , although the depiction may have a different symbolic background (see below) . Mary holds a finely divided scepter in her right hand . The folds of her robe are clearly worked out. The work is assigned to the group of beautiful Madonnas .

The sculpture is carved from dark wood and not taken . It stands on a plinth in the barred St. James chapel in the south aisle of the church.

history

The figure is the Prague cathedral architect Peter Parler attributed . On the basis of archival studies in 1930, the Glatzer local writer Franz Albert was able to prove that the Madonna with the Sparrow, together with the image of the Glatzer Madonna, was donated to the Glatzer Augustinian Canons by the first Archbishop of Prague, Ernst von Pardubitz . As a boy he had attended the Latin school of the Glatzer Johanniterkommende and experienced an apparition of Mary in the Glatzer parish church during this time . That is probably why he was a great admirer of Mary . In 1349 he founded the Glatzer Augustinerstift together with his brothers Smil and Wilhelm. According to the Cronica Monasterii Canonicorum Regularium in Glacz, the monastery was settled with monks from the Augustinian canons in Raudnitz , which had also been founded by Ernst von Pardubitz. Both Madonnas, the statue and the picture, were called "Arnestus Madonnas" in the Glatzer Land because Ernst von Pardubitz was venerated as a blessed man in the Glatzer Land. They belonged to the equipment of the Glatzer Augustinian monastery and decorated the main altar there, which was a winged altar in the structure . Elsewhere, due to stylistic features, reference is made to the time the Madonna was created between 1400 and 1430. The Madonna with the Sparrow is one of a series of Madonna figures created during the Gothic period in the Kłodzko area. That is why the Kłodzko Land, which was raised to a county in 1459 by the Bohemian King George of Podebrady , is also called "Marienland".

After the bohemian uprising of 1618, the buildings of the Augustinian monastery, which was located below the Glatz castle and which had been handed over to the Glatz Jesuit college in 1597 , were destroyed in the battles for Glatz in 1622 and not rebuilt. The Madonna with the Sparrow is said to have rescued a Protestant from the then predominantly Protestant Glatz. She first came to Frankenstein and then back to Glatz in 1625, now in the parish church of the Assumption of Mary. According to other sources, both Arnestus Madonnas, together with other furnishings from the destroyed Augustinian monastery, were sent to Adrian von Eckersdorf , who is said to have owned Poditau and Morischau , with the consent of the Glatzer castle captain Georg von Semling . Adrian von Eckersdorf expressed his support for an investigation by an Imperial Commission in a letter dated August 19, 1625, the original of which was in the Breslau State Archives in 1930. Despite his attempted justification for the possession of the Madonnas, Adrian von Eckersdorf was sentenced to life imprisonment and the loss of his property on November 8, 1625 by the Imperial Commission.

After the Thirty Years' War the two Arnestus madonnas were revered in Glatz in the course of the Counter Reformation. During the tenure of Rector Johannes Roller , the Madonna with the Sparrow was placed next to the entrance to the sacristy and then reworked by Michael Klahr the Elder in the Baroque style . It was newly decorated and colored. St. Mary and the baby Jesus are now depicted with insignia : both wear crowns and Mary the scepter. A pedestal was also added to the composition . During a preservation in 1971, the figure was stripped of all its ingredients and colors except for the bare wood.

iconography

The goldfinch plays an essential role in Christian iconography . His blood-red coloring of the head and his fondness for thistles are considered symbolic of the passion of Jesus Christ . You can therefore find him on Passion pictures, but also on many portraits of Mary, on which he is supposed to represent the foresight of Christ 's crucifixion . Examples of this are pictures by Raffael , Barocci and Tiepolo . This suggests that the bird is supposed to represent a goldfinch on the child's knee.

literature

  • Roland Gröger, Marek Sikorski: About the Madonna with the Sparrow or Siskin? In: At the limit of legend and belief. Sights and art treasures of the County of Glatz. Marx Verlag Leimen 1994, ISBN 3-87854-102-3 , pp. 33-36.
  • Artur Heinke: The county of Glatz. Wayside shrines and local folk art. Ostdeutsche Verlagsanstalt Breslau 1941, Reprint Marx Verlag Leimen, p. 89 u. 204.
  • Aloys Bernatzky : Lexicon of the county Glatz . Marx Verlag Leimen / Heidelberg 1984, ISBN 3-931019-06-3 , pp. 159 and 164.
  • Ruthild Völkel: The Madonna with the Sparrow - Glatz . Self-published by Franz Jung, 1993.
  • Franz Albert: The Madonna with the Sparrow - An archival study on the art and church history of the County of Glatz . In: Glatzer Heimatschriften Volume XXI., Verlag des Verein für Glatzer Heimatkunde, Glatz 1930.
  • Stanislav Brandejs: Umělecký místopis Kladska . In: Václav Černy , Kladský sborník , 1946, pp. 85–96.

Web links

Commons : Madonna with the Sparrow  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dehio - Handbook of Art Monuments in Poland. Silesia. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich a. a. 2005, ISBN 3-422-03109-X , p. 456.
  2. ↑ Mary statues of Peter Parler in Bohemia (Czech)
  3. ↑ From the circle of Peter Parler, the Tumba was created for Ernst von Pardubitz from 1364 to 1370 , who was buried at his own request in the Glatzer parish church.
  4. ↑ Gröger, Sikorski, p. 33
  5. ↑ Art. In: Culture and history of the County of Glatz (Silesia). Retrieved May 14, 2018 .
  6. ↑ The Lexicon of the County of Glatz (p. 163–167) lists 14 Madonna statues as examples, 11 of them from the period before 1500; there are also numerous pictures of the Madonna.
  7. ↑ 1597 transfer of the Augustinian monastery to the Jesuits
  8. ^ Encyclopedia of the County of Glatz
  9. ^ Franz Albert, p. 11.
  10. ↑ Information here after Franz Albert ... According to the nobility of the Glatzer country , he sat on Labitsch in 1615 .
  11. ↑ According to this web link, the nobility of the Glatzer country from 1462–1623 , Adrian von Eckersdorf was convicted as a participant in the “Bohemian Rebellion”, ie in the class uprising of 1618 . Since at the same time most of the former Glatzer nobility were sentenced to this punishment, this version seems more credible.
  12. ↑ picture to this. Retrieved May 14, 2018 .
  13. ↑ Raffael: Madonna Solly
  14. ↑ Federico Barocci: La Madonna del Gatto
  15. ^ Giovanni Battista Tiepolo: Madonna with the Goldfinch
  16. ↑ Roland Gröger, Marek Sikorski, p. 36. Gröger and Sikorski, however, refer to the goldfinch with its vernacular name Zeisig .