Along with perfecting the art of paper-making, the 16th century in Western Europe saw an unprecedented flourishing of illustrations. Engravings began to circulate between cities and regions on an unprecedented scale, speeding up artistic contacts, the exchange of information and the best iconography. Home to famous engravers’ families like Wierix, Collaert, Galle and Sadeler, Antwerp was an undoubted centre of illustration production. In the first half of the 17th century, their works gained immense international popularity and spread throughout Europe. The reach of their influence also included the Commonwealth, providing an opportunity for local audiences and artists to familiarise themselves with what was happening in Western art.
These artistic phenomena coincided with a religious fervour that covered Western Christianity in the 16th century: with a revitalised new piety, with movements attempting to return to the purity of early Christianity, and finally with disputes, splits, reforms and sectarian conflicts. In a complex confluence of events, as one of the characteristics of this turbulent time, there appeared the increased need for communication, reaching the widest possible audience and convincing them to one’s case. Illustrations lent themselves well to this cause.
This particular confluence of these two circumstances can be observed in the network of educational and reformational centres led established by the Jesuits beginning in the late 16th century: schools, colleges and universities. The systematic creation of such centres with a standardised level and methods of education was the answer of the post-Tridentine Church to the low level of religious education and the faithful moving away from evangelical communities. The need to not only educate theologically skilled polemicists was recognised, but also a kind of grassroots work: making sure that a certain level of knowledge was achieved by all believers in specific social groups. An important tool for maintaining a uniform method of education was to supply libraries in the centres being established with prints imported from abroad. This also had its reflection in art history when drawings were an important element of the prints. Additionally, printing houses were established at the colleges, with skilled engravers, who reproduced the composition and iconographic schemes they had previously developed in other places. The history of religious culture gave an additional impulse to the migration and repetition of artistic solutions, which moved further away from their original context at every stage, inscribing themselves into local art.
Although it is often difficult to reproduce all the phases of the movement of these standards, we can find in the art of the Commonwealth iconographic motifs originally associated with the Antwerp publishing work of the Jesuits. One such case is the famous book of Jesuit Gerónimo Nadal, Adnotationes et meditations in Evangelia (Antwerp 1594). This was a compendium of exegetic knowledge containing 153 Biblical illustrations, intended for Jesuit novices. Each chapter consisted of an engraving, a fragment from the Gospels, points for mindful consideration with detailed comments and prayers. The book was thus also a devotional – the engravings combined with the text were a tool for meditation according to the method described by Ignatius Loyola in his famous Spiritual Exercises.
As a foundation for the formation of novices, the book quickly spread throughout European colleges, in time also gaining popularity among the laity. The international career of the book meant that it became an important point of reference for Catholics, including in an iconographic sense. The complex texts combined with the engravings from Nadal’s book began to be reproduced in other works, Initially, in the same medium, in illustrations, but often in a simplified form – e.g. without background scenes. In time, these iconographic patterns began to be adapted in other areas of art, such as painting, sculpture and wood carving. It is not accident that reproductions of scenes from Adnotationes often appear in art associated with Catholic religious orders, such as in Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, or the Camaldolese monastery in Krakow’s Bielany.
The history of the functioning of images a Europe stricken by religious disputes teaches us, however, that iconographic patterns did not always follow the paths laid out by religious traditions. A very interesting example of the crossing of the borders between them is the influence of the engravings from Nadal’s book on Orthodox Church painting in the Commonwealth. Art historians have shown, on convincing examples, the presence of Antwerp compositional patterns in iconostases, such as in the Orthodox Church of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary in Lviv. Images of Jesus washing the feet of the Apostles, or the trial of Jesus, although expressed by painterly means belonging to the Eastern tradition, bear obvious similarities to the Antwerp originals. It is disconnected here in an obvious manner from its original context, both in terms of the type of religion it serves, as well as artistic tradition that expresses it. The presentation originally designed as an engraving is translated into the language of painting, a book illustration into an icon, a complex composition combined with text into a single scene, simple and with a clear expression.
Translation: Lingua Lab
