Décoration fleurie des broderies de l’Église de la Visitation de Varsovie comme le véhicule des influences de la culture et de l’art français au XVII siècle

Floral motifs on embroidered ecclesiastical vestments and decorative paraments from the Visitationist Church in Warsaw as the medium and vehicle of influence of French artistic culture in the mid-seventeenth century Poland. This article originated in connection with the 38th research conference of the Association of Art Historians in Poland, Katowice, 1989, and was published in its Conference Proceedings: "Art and Nature" in 1991 and focuses on the embroidery on the liturgical vestments from the church of the Visitationists in Warsaw. The first Visitationists nuns came to Poland from France in 1654. The Warsaw convent of the Visitationists was founded by Marie Louise Gonzaga and still sits on the same site at 34 Krakowskie Przedmieście in Warsaw. A number of heritage and historic embroideries important for Polish art are still housed in the church. The tradition has it that these stich embroideries have been woven by the Warsaw-based Visitationist nuns themselves and that Marie Louise was personally involved in their making. The above have been recorded in the Chronicles of Our Warsaw Convent and in the convent’s Inventory of 1705 that includes a list of books and implements. A selected number of the embroideries presented in this article have been preserved in a set of liturgical vestments (chasuble, dalmatic, stole, fanon, and chalice veil), as well as in the antependium with with the emblem of the Holy Trinity, and come from 1666, i.e. from the beginning of the foundation of the Order of the Visitation in Poland. The presented set of embroideries was commissioned for the canonisation of the founder and donor of the Order of the Visitation Francis de Sales, and was in fact a re-run of the similar original celebration held in Annecy in France. A characteristic feature of these embroideries is bunches of flowers in vases (similar to those painted in French and Dutch still lifes of the seventeenth century). Likewise, these features are also present in the posies of flowers and floral ornaments in the graceful curves of the stalks, uniformly arranged or laid out. The stitches are laid flat, in a series of flat stitches that are used to completely cover a section of the background fabric (satin stich). In the Polish literature on old woven fabric, the plants that are presented in a natural way are typically labelled: "French flowers", "natural flowers", "flowers in a French fashion”, or "naturalistic French flowers". The present article discusses the directions in the quest for patterns with natural depictions of flowers: drawings and graphical pieces, created with the aim of documenting French flower collections in gardens since the sixteenth century. At the time, specially commissioned artists made drawings of flowers that were subsequently collected in the so-called Florilegium – Books of Flowers. Appropriately, these depictions later provided templates or pattern books used in art. In my article I particularly pay attention to Jean Franeau’s book Jardin d'hyver ou cabinet des Fleurs..., published in Douai in 1616. The book provides graphical portraits and sketches of flowers. The exact images of these flowers are then to be found in embroidered (stitched) flowers on lithurgical vestments used by Warsaw Visitationists (e.g. alabaster tulip). The book in my article is presented as a set of patterns for flowers, among other sets of drawings and sketches of plants of French artists significant in art. More on this particular book is to be found in: M. Marrache-Gouraud, Un cabinet... “Camenae” 15, 2013. The author also mentions the influence of this book on all European art, while a number of relevant examples are provided in my article.