Upadek Faetona – między niebem a ziemią. Dekoracja stiukowa plafonu w dawnym salonie pałacu Pod Krzysztofory w Krakowie

THE FALL OF PHAETON – BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH. THE STUCCO DECORATION OF THE PLAFOND CEILING IN THE FORMER DRAWING ROOM AT KRZYSZTOFORY PALACE IN KRAKÓW In the baroque urban mansion, presently still referred to as Krzysztofory Palace, the family seat of three generations of the Wodzickis who owned it from 1681 to 1773 and one of the most magnificent aristocratic residences in Kraków, only a few features of the once-opulent decor survive today. Among these are the two brilliant works of art dating from the turn of the 17th and the 18th centuries which costitute the stucco decorations of the interiors of the stately apartments of the mansion’s piano nobile, namely the former drawing room and the study (or, possibly, the palace chapel), the works of a prominent Italian master Baldassare Fontana. The artist who in Polish scholarly publications is referred to as Baltazar Fontana (1661–1733) was active mainly in Central Europe (Poland and Moravia) where he designed and executed stucco decorations of outstanding artistic quality for a number of residential interiors and sacred buildings. He contributed to the popularization of the Roman baroque style in Europe and had a great impact on 18th-century art. Fontana’s life and works have been the subject of academic interest for many baroque art historians; his major monographer is Mariusz Karpowicz. The stucco decorations in the palace’s apartments were created either in the period 1697–1702, or in 1703–1704. The works had been commissioned by the then owner of Krzysztofory Palace, Anna Maria Wodzicka, née Gratt. Fontana’s authorship is not confirmed by any of the known sources. His participation in the creation of the decorations in the study (or chapel?), confirmed by comparative analyses, is generally accepted without reservations. What has been the subject of controversy is Fontana’s authorship of the decoration on the plafond ceiling in the drawing room which has been attributed to his workshop. The recent, new, in-depth analysis of the decorations in the drawing room, including the mythological scene of The Fall of Phaeton, has resulted in the verification of the artistic quality thereof, and yielded a new interpretation of the piece’s ideological message. The composition of the plafond’s central scene depicts the tragic end of the divine Helios’ human son Phaeton who dared to commit a forbidden deed: he mounted his father’s luminous chariot that circled around the horizon. To punish him, Zeus struck him with thunder, and the adventurer fell down from the sky. The figure of Phaeton is an allusion to the canonical figure of biblical Adam as it is portrayed in the scene The Creation of Adam in Michelangelo’s fresco adorning the vault of the Sistine Chapel. It is not only a question of formal analogy between the two works; the message conveyed in both of them is that of the fate of disobedient sons who broke the commandments of their great fathers.The mythological motif of the fall of Phaeton is an allegory on the biblical original sin committed by Adam, as a result of which the first parents were expelled from paradise, lost their happiness and were plunged into death. Expulsion from the Garden of Eden as punishment for disobedience is an illustration of a fundamental question in Christian theology, where the word “the fall” means the original sin, the contamination of human nature with evil. The moral that arrogance is a harbinger of the fall assumes a universal meaning and shows the cultural continuity of Europe from the myths of ancient Greece, to the Commandments of the Decalogue and the doctrinal interpretation of Christian theology contained in the Creed. Helios - the mythological solar god of light - finds ideologicalcontinuation in Christian culture through his identification with Christ who is the divine light and redemption.