Emblematy haftowane symbolizujące życie św. Franciszka Salezego na barokowych antependiach z kościoła SS. Wizytek w Warszawie

The article discusses four selected pieces of embroidery from the collection of Polish ecclesiastical embroidery at Wizytki Church, 34 Krakowskie Przedmieście, Warsaw. The emblems sewn into the antependia had been embroidered according to the patterns presented in the book La vie symbolique du Bienhereux François de Sales Evesque et Prince de Geneve (...) written by M.Adrien Gambart, Prestre, Paris (...), 1664. Their origin is associated with the beginnings of the Wizytki convent in Poland and with a foundation set up by Queen Louise-Marie de Gonzaque (1612-1667) in 1654, i.e., during the period when prayers in the Monastery were said in the French language. The sisters had a spiritual practice to purify the heart through prayer and meditation with the help of specially prepared texts, while at the same time they were engaged in embroidering the said emblems. There is an entry in the Monastery's Chronicle that reads that the work on the embroidery helped in focusing the sisters’ attention on God and evoked love of God. The year 1757 is assumed by the present writer to be the date of the completion of the antependia, which can also be testified by an entry in the Cyrkularz, dated 29th April, 1757 (Circulaire – circular letters written in French published in France and circulated by the Wizytki nuns). The circular letter reads that the sisters have made a parament with an emblem showing a hand holding a heart with a number of smaller hearts radiating from it, which was to symbolise the preaching of the message of love by St. François de Sales. The origin of antependia may be well associated with the preparation of the interior of the church for a celebration of the beatification of Jeanne Françoise Frémiot de Chantal, the first Mother Superior of the Monastery, which was held in Warsaw in July 1752, and was a repetition of a similar celebration at Annecy in France. However, the emblems that symbolised the life of St. François de Sales had been embroidered separately, and then sewn into the antependia, and their origin should be dated to the second half of the 17th century. An earlier version of this article was delivered during the conference of the Association of Art Historians in Poland: “Art in the seventeenth century. Bright and dark sides”, Cracow, 1993.