Dawny „ołtarz ambonowy” w kościele pw. Matki Boskiej Różańcowej w Boguszynach w kontekście ostatnich prac konserwatorskich

Abstract

In the parish church in Boguszyny/Gottberg (commune Pełczyce, district Choszczno) in West Pomerania one can find interesting relics of Lutheran wooden “pulpit-retable,” that over the years followed the changing liturgical needs of the religious communities using the church. Despite their early dating and good artistic quality they hitherto escaped the attention of researchers. The present study aims for introducing that historic artefact into the literature as an example of “living” work of art, adjusted to diverse contexts. The opportunity to undertake that subject have been recently performed conservation works (A. Przepióra, M. Ziemkiewicz, Toruń 2010), that resulted in recreating the artistic impact obliterated over the centuries. The main body of the retable and the carcass of the pulpit, decorated in northern renaissance style, had been made in the first quarter of 17th century. The retable made one of the first in West Pomerania examples of an autonomic, Lutheran architectonic retables, liberated from the Mediaeval tradition. Its iconographic program remains unknown (there is an information on a nonexistent relief or The Last Supper in the predella). In the side recesses of the retable sculptures of Virgin with the Child and St. Barbara were placed, originating probably form some Gothic triptych. They in turn make an interesting proof of the activities of local woodcarvers’ workshops in the first quarter of 15th century, scarcely represented in this area. In an unknown circumstances (probably already after 1700) the Boguszyny retable and pulpit had been integrated in the characteristic “pulpit-retable,” popular in this area since late 17th century. In such a form it functioned till the World War II. After the church have been taken over by the Catholic church, the retable underwent a number of drastic conversions, that aimed for adjusting it to the new function. In 2010 the conservators were faced with those conversions. The completed conservation works has brought the retable to the condition closest to the original phase (with reconstruction of missing elements of the structure, polychrome and gildings and with stylised arrangement of central quarter), relics of the pulpit were returned to its former function. The performed treatment seems to be a reasonable compromise between the Protestant history of the artefact and its present Catholic usus. The present paper, analysing in detail all those transformations, is a contribution to the recently undertaken discussion on the conservation problem of transformed historic monuments and artefacts serving different denominations and on the attitude of contemporary preservation and conservation of monuments towards those transformations.