High altar of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception

Abstract

The high altar in the Paczółtowice church is a wooden, single-axis, single-storey structure with architectural forms. It was created at the beginning of the 17th century, probably from the foundation of then land owners of Paczółtowice – Elżbieta née Czerska and her husband Stanisław Tarnowski of the Rola coat of arms, with the intention of placing in it a gothic painting of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception from the years 1470-1480. This image, together with the wings currently exposed on the sides of the high altar, depicting Gabriel the Archangel and Mary forming the Annunciation group (on the reverses) and Saint Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Barbara (on the obverses) was part of the gothic triptych. Little is known about the original high altar in the Paczółtowice temple - it was probably a gothic triptych with a (not preserved) carved scene of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary. With this altar, researchers connect a pair of painted wings kept in the collections of the Archdiocesan Museum in Cracow depicting scenes of the Annunciation and the Nativity of Jesus Christ (left wing), and the Adoration of the Magi and the Coronation of Mary (right wing). With the erection of a new altar structure and placing in it the painting of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, the altar title changed, which currently does not correspond to the invocation of the temple itself, which from the very beginning of the building's existence was devoted to the Visitation of the Virgin Mary. Around the mid-17th century, the present baroque high altar received an antependium made of black Dębnik marble made by stonemasons Wojciech or Jacek Zielaski. At the same time, the owner of nearby Pisary — Achacy Pisarski, gave the no longer existing painting to the Church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, which was placed on a sliding panel of the altar. The baroque sculpture of the Risen Christ, now placed in the finial of the altar, was first mentioned in 19th-century sources. The altar was renovated several times: in 1850, in 1943 and at the beginning of the 1990s.