From guild master to independent craftsman. Life and artistic work of a Toruń painter Heinrich Christian Serner

Abstract

The article is devoted to the presentation of life and output of a Torun painter Heinrich Christian Serner (died 1729). He became a master in the local guild in 1673. After converting to Catholicism in 1714 he quit being a member of the organization and moved to suburban areas belonging to Benedictine nuns. During that time he completed a number of works in the Torun church of St. Jacob, which too remained under the nuns’ supervision. He was bestowed with the gilding of a few altarpieces, sources also confirm his authorship of three reredos paintings. Two of them, depicting St. Michael Archangel and Guardian Angel have been preserved until today. On the basis of stylistic-comparative analysis other paintings can be attributed to Serner as well. Some of them, namely: God’s Transfiguration and St. Onofre Communion have so far been mistakenly linked to Johann Georg Petri, who worked in Toruń in the second half of 18^th century.