Dekoracja sztukatorska Baltazara Fontany w tzw. kaplicy pałacu Pod Krzysztofory i jej przesłanie ideowe

BALDASSARE FONTANA’S STUCCO DECORATION IN THE SO-CALLED CHAPEL AT KRZYSZTOFORY IN THE CHAPEL AT KRZYSZTOFORY PALACE AND ITS IDEOLOGICAL MESSAGE The subject of this paper is an attempt to unravel the mystery of the iconography of Baldassare Fontana’s stuccos decorating the room located on the first floor of Krzysztofory Palace in order to determine whether the interior’s original character was secular, or sacred. The author also strives to arrive at the exact date when that decoration was created. Krzysztofory Palace is one of the five mansions standing along Kraków’s Main Market Square. It is located on the corner of the Market Square and Szczepańska Street. The room containing the aforementioned stuccos by Baldassare Fontana was built in the years 1682–1684 above the baulk passage between two adjacent properties – the Pod Krzysztofory house, and the Chmielowska house. These two buildings were eventually merged to become a bigger structure – the palace. The joining process was initiated in 1682 by Wawrzyniec Jan Wodzicki, supervisor of the royal salt mines in Wieliczka and Bochnia, who had earlier bought the two adjacent houses (chronologically, he bought the Chmielowska house in 1650, and the Pod Krzysztofory mansion in 1664). The joining design had been created by an Italian architect Giacomo Solari who personally supervised the construction works. The room in question was located on the first floor of the newly rebuilt palace, overlooking Szczepańska Street. There has been no agreement among researchers concerning the room’s purpose, as some of them believed it could have been used as a chapel, while the majority concurred with the opinion that the room had a purely secular character. Those who assumed the secular hypothesis pointed to the fact that there was a fireplace in the room, and the themes represented in the stuccos themselves seemed to support that. The bas-reliefs on the medallions had been identified as representations of Diogenes, Cleopatra, Venus with Amor, and Diana. However, a new analysis of the figures depicted in the medallions and their attributes suggests that what we are dealing with here might not be mythological and historical characters, but, rather, allegorized ideas of religious nature. The attributes accompanying the allegorical figures can also incline us towards such interpretation. A more in-depth analysis of the medallions enforces a new interpretation of their meaning. The figure heretofore identified as Diogenes may symbolize God’s Love, the Psyche may be a depiction of the Sacrifice of the Eucharist commemorating Christ’s Passion, and what used to be identified as Diana may be Holy Virgin Mary the Saviour. The figure previously identified as Cleopatra may be an allegory of the universal idea of holiness, and the young man may be the harbinger of a good Christian’s eternal bliss. The ideological message encoded in the medallions corresponds with the themes of the mural paintings on the room’s vault and walls, which are associated with Man’s rebirth to eternal life. The paintings on the vault and the upper sections of the walls above the cornice could be the works of either Karl Dankwart, or Innocente Monti, or Gregorio Pagani. It is difficult to determine the authorship of this polychrome today due to its bad condition.