Cztery wczesne wizerunki Chrystusa Miłosiernego: rysunek S. Kreduszyńskiego, fresk Felicjana Szczęsnego Kowarskiego w Hołubli, obrazy Henryka Uziembły w Lądzie i Jana Wałacha w Czerwińsku

German Title: Vier frühe Bilder des barmherzigen Christus: eine Zeichnung von S. Kreduszyński, ein Fresko von Felicjan Szczęsny Kowarski in Hołubla, Gemälde von Henryk Uziembła in Ląd und Jan Wałach in Czerwińsk

English Title: Four early images of Merciful Christ: a drawing by S. Kreduszyński, a fresco by Felicjan Szczęsny Kowarski in Hołubla, paintings by Henryk Uziembła in Ląd and Jan Wałach in Czerwińsk

In: Artifex Novus, 1 (2017), pp. 62-79

Online-Ressource, Polish https://doi.org/10.21697/an.6322

Translation of abstract (English)

The effigy of Merciful Jesus, epitomizing Divine Mercy, is today known and promoted in two painterly versions. The first was that executed in Vilnius in 1934 by Eugeniusz Kazimirowski under the guidance of St Faustina Kowalska, who gave the painter detailed information on the appearance of the effigy while it was being created. The second, a more popular version, is the painting of Merciful Jesus by Adolf Hyła executed in 1944 for the chapel of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy at Cracow-Łagiewniki. The process of the formation of the cult of Divine Mercy, particularly at its early stage, during WW II and immediately afterwards, was accompanied by numerous effigies of Merciful Jesus, some of them often distanced from the model described by St Sister Faustina Kowalska and the work painted under her guidance by Kazimirowski. The study presents four early examples of the effigy of Merciful Jesus related to the emerging cult of Divine Mercy and documenting the process of the topic’s iconography formation. Kreduszyński’s drawing (Fig.1) and Maj’s water-colour (Fig. 2) are records of the cult of Divine Mercy during WW II, and particularly during the Warsaw Uprising. The popularity of the effigy of Merciful Jesus during the war is testified by Felicjan Szczęsny-Kowarski’s 1943 fresco in the Parish Church at Hołubla (Figs. 4,5). The 1942 work of the Cracow painter Henryk Uziembło, currently in the Ląd Parish Church (Fig. 6), is the first effigy of Merciful Jesus against landscape, clearly distant from the vision of Sister Faustina illustrated in Kazimirowski’s painting. It was Uziembło’s work that served as the model for Adolf Hyła who executed the effigy for the Cracow-Łagiewniki Sisters in 1944 (Fig. 7). Painting over the landscaped background, the artist corrected his work in 1952. In turn, Jan Wałach’s 1952 painting for the Salesian novitiate chapel in Czerwińsk shows Merciful Jesus rising above the world (Fig. 8). In this form, it echoes the vision St Sister Faustina had in 1935 during the Mass at the Vilnius Gate of Dawn when the effigy of Merciful Jesus was first presented to the public.