The exhibition is housed at the Museum of Sacred Baroque Sculpture. It presents a collection of sculptures carved by world-class masters Johann Georg Pinzel and Jan Pfister, which are now held by the Lviv National Art Gallery and other Ukrainian museums, including the Berezhany State Historical-Architectural Reserve in Ternopil region.
The exhibition is accompanied by a number of visual aids put on stands, including texts about and photos of Pfister’s works preserved in churches of Ukraine and Poland, such as the Jesuit Church and chapels of the Boim and Campian families in Lviv, the castle chapel in Berezhany, and the Cathedral Basilica in Tarnow (Poland).
According to the museum, the collection of Baroque sculptures was brought to the Lviv Art Gallery as a result of the museum workers’ fieldwork in the 1960s and 1970s. They managed to save about 2,000 artworks then.
Let us recall that Pinzel, one of the most talented European sculptors of the 18th century, was at his best in the second half of the century. Influenced by Eastern Byzantine art, he left an original creative legacy that had no equal in Europe, and founded the Lviv school of Baroque sculpture, teaching about 40 masters. He managed to achieve excellence in depicting the mystical and the dramatic, as clearly shown by the world-renowned works that are exhibited in the museum, such as Angel, Crucifixion, Abraham’s Sacrifice, or Samson Ripping the Lion’s Jaws Apart.
Jan (Johannes) Pfister was the greatest sculptor in our part of the world in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, working in Wroclaw, Tarnow, Lviv, and Berezhany. He employed mostly marble and alabaster in his works, sometimes turning to wood as well. Pfister created tombstones of Jan Swoszowski in the Dominican Church in Lviv, Adam Sieniawski in Berezhany, the Ostrozky family in Tarnow, and decorated the chapel of the Boim family.
The exhibition “Origins and Apogees of the Ukrainian Baroque” will be hosted by the Pinzel Museum through the summer.
