Janina Dzik

The discovery of a photograph from Michał Greim’s collection in the collection of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences presenting the main altar in the Post Trinitarian church in Kamieniec Podolski gave an impulse to initiate the research into a little known oeuvre of a Vienna born Trinitarian painter, Johann Prechtl (in the convent Joseph of St. Theresa; 1737–1799). Most of his works from the monasteries located on the territory of today Ukraine were destroyed during the wars or in the times of a communist regime. Probably the earliest among those known works of the painter is the polychrome in the presbytery of the church of the Order of Friars Minor “Observants” (Bernardines) in Dubin, a small town located near Beresteczko. Prechtl did not finish the decoration of the church probably because he went to Cracow to complete the decoration made by a Moravian artist, Joseph Plitz, after the fire of the monastery. It is a polychrome in the vestry of the Church of the Order of the Holy Trinity in Cracow, created in 1765 and depicting the adoration of the Eye of Providence, a symbolic sign of the Holy Trinity, by John of Malta and Felix of Valois.
The paintings for the Trinitarian Church of the Holy Trinity in Beresteczko, where Prechtl settled down initially, were created in the second half of the 18th century. These were the polychromes on the walls and the vault of the church (the scene of the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles), 16 altar paintings and a historical painting outside presenting the Battle at Beresteczko.
The interior of the three – nave Church of the Holy Trinity in Brahiłów (Braiłów), financed by Franciszek Salezy Potocki and completed in 1778, included the illusionistic paintings by Johann Prechtl, which constitute one of the finest works of art in eastern parts of Poland. In the years 1776–1778 he created a large series of the polychromes covering the vault of the temple and its chapels (the well – known scenes The Adoration of the Shepherds, The Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, Ransoming of the Slaves from the Pagans by John of Malta and Felix of Valois, and The Healing of a Sick by Saint Cajetan). The polychrome in the church in Iwanków (Andruszówka region, Żytomierz) has also been attributed to the convent artist by J. Kowalczyk. The entire church was painted al fresco including five illusionistic altars. On the only surviving photograph one can see fragmentary paintings of the dome depicting Jesus cleansing the temple, which are enclosed in a quadrature. However, nothing is known about the murals in the Dominican Church of the Annunciation in Szarawka (Płoskirów county), Podolia, which was turned into an orthodox church in the first half of the 19th century, and those in the Czacki family’s palace in Boremel ( Równe region).
A unique photo of the interior of the Trinitarian church in Kamieniec Podolski as it was before the change of the big altar during a complete renovation of the church in 1907 shows the only work of Prechtl in this city that is known to us, although according to Edward Rastawiecki, in the second half of the 18th century Prechtl supposedly created painting decorations al fresco and paintings for the Kamieniec Podolski Cathedral as well as the decorations in the Trinitarian church.
According to the archival documents, the Trinitarian Church of St Michael Archangel and the Conversion of St Paul in Łuck was “all painted inside in different colours and images”, which were partially destroyed, especially in the chapels, during the march of Napoleon’s army in 1812. In the view of the archives, we can suppose that there were Prechtl’s paintings in the two-storey side altars. After the dissolution of the order in 1845 and the deconstruction of the church in 1869, the paintings depicting St Reces and St John Nepomucen were moved from the Trinitarian church to the Łuck Cathedral. From the altar paintings created by the Trinitarian artist one painting survived. Meant for the Church of St Peter and Paul in Antokol, Vilnius (moved to Dailes Muziejus, now in the Museum of Lithuanian Art in Vilnius), it presented the image of a reformer of the Order of the Trinitarians, John Baptist de la Conception (after 1770).
The skills of foreign painters working in eastern Poland, including Prechtl, Francis Gregory Eckestein and his son from Moravia, Jospeh Mayer and Łukasz (Charles) Hübel from Silesia, who used better techniques and new models contributed to the improvement of the level of our Polish art.