Marian Piety and the wall paintings at the Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary and St. Bernardin of Siena in Olomouc
Abstract
The Late Middle Ages was a time of heightened spirituality and an emphasis on traditional objects of popular piety-the Virgin Mary and the life of Christ. Wall paintings in the choir and at the end of the northern and southern nave of the Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary in Olomouc are surely connected with Marian piety and its expression in the rosary.
These trends, which were strongly promoted in Catholic circles, were supported by the mendicant orders and spread through the influence of the Franciscan-Observants. Among the Franciscans of the 15th century was the most popular version the one that was promoted by St Bernardino of Siena and his disciple St Giovanni of Capistrano.
Capistrano was but a pale shadow of his master. but his mission in central Europe in the middle of the 15th century had a deep impact on religious life in the region for many decades. His work proved instrumental to the great expansion of power of the Order of Observant Franciscans, and he also played a part in the reawakening of the visual arts in Bohemia after the long years of the Hussite wars.
The wall painting of Our Lady of the Rosary from 1500 is a variation on a panel painting of Corona Beatissimae Mariae, now at the National Museum in Warsaw. It was probably the artistic model for the painting in Olomouc.
The iconographic programme of the panel, that was created around the year 1500 for the Church of St Bernardino of Siena in Wrocław, was just as a painting in Olomouc a demonstration of the order's reverence for Mary and devotion to the rosary. The fact that paintings were widespread recalls the general trends of piety at the end of the Late Middle Ages, although one can find specific point in common between Franciscans in Olomouc and in Wrocław, Jan Filipec.
He was an advisor of the king Matthias Corvinus, an administrator of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Olomouc and from 1492 Franciscan monk He took his vows in Wrocław and joined the Franciscan Order in Olomouc, who he lived about the year 1500.