From Red Ruthenia to Rawa Mazowiecka: the Works of the Anonymous “Master of Pełczyska” as a Contribution to the Geography of Rococo Sculpture in Mazovia

Abstract

Current research on Rococo sculpture in Mazovia and northern Lesser Poland has not taken into consideration Lvov Rococo sculpture. A total of thirteen works by a yet unidentified woodcarving workshop, probably of Lvov provenance, was located at the intersection of these two artistic regions, in the vicinity of Końskie, Opoczno, Przysucha and Rawa Mazowiecka. Its activity, commenced after 1780 in Pełczyska near Wiślica, lasted until ca. 1800, when the reredoses and lesser works of sculpture in Studzianna-Poświętne, Skrzyńsko, Nowy Kazanów, Końskie, Gowarczów, Drzewica, Rawa and Regnów were created. In formal terms, the anonymous “Master of Pełczyska”, as an epigone of the Lvov school of Rococo sculpture, shows a far-reaching dependency on the style of sculptures similar to that in the side altar of the Virgin Mary of Dzików in Tarnogród, in the Zamoyski family fee tail. This reredos was indirectly attributed to master Franciszek Olędzki from Lvov (active since 1771, d. 1792). The oeuvre of the “Master of Pełczyska” constitutes the second-largest assembly of Lvov Rococo sculptures outside the historical Ruthenian lands of the Crown of Poland. At the current stage of research, the discussed works, located at the intersection of the former Sandomierz and Rawa voivodeships, indicate the maximal influential range of these remarkably mobile artists towards the north-west of the Crown of Poland. Their migrations were directly connected, on the one hand, with the artistic crisis that followed the First Partition of the Commonwealth in 1772 and the annexation of Lvov by Austria, and, on the other hand, with the liquidation of monasteries after 1780 and the termination of existing ecclesiastic commissions. The short-lived activity of this workshop in the vicinity of Rawa is an important contribution to the research on the mosaic of external influences on provincial late Rococo sculpture in the fourth quarter of the 18th century in Mazovia.