2024-04-16
The Madonna of Toruń (...) has carved out a place of honour for the city on the stage of Europe's artistic masterpieces, at the same time presenting one of the most vital forms of aesthetic precepts of the time' - this is how, in 1933, a famous Polish art historian wrote about the Beautiful Madonna of Toruń. What happened to her?
The Beautiful Style is one of the most interesting phenomena in late medieval sculpture. It gave birth to a new type of Madonna - feminine, with real carnality, who tenderly focuses on the child Jesus. Beautiful Madonnas appeared on the map of European artistic phenomena shortly before 1400, within the so-called International Style around 1400.
The 14th-century Teutonic city of Toruń was regarded as an important artistic centre. Interestingly, it was probably in Bohemia around 1390 that an unknown sculptor made a statue of the Madonna and Child intended for the Franciscan Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Toruń. At the beginning of the 17th century, the statue was moved to the Church of St John the Evangelist and Baptist in the same town. It is known that in 1942 the Madonna was taken to the conservation depot in Grębocin (German scholars realised its great value). Rumours circulated in Toruń after the war that the last known place of storage for the statue was Szczecin.
Interestingly, the famous Polish art historian Prof. Zygmunt Świechowski asked Prof. Karl Clasen in 1962 during a meeting of the two art historians in Berlin about the fate of the sculpture. From the statements, it could be deduced that the Beautiful Madonna is safe, Clasen saw it after the war, but he is obliged to keep it secret.
Another clue seems to be the information passed from an expert on beautiful Madonnas - professor Gwido Chmarzyński to professor Józef Poklewski, who claimed that during his studies he found out that the statue is in a private collection near Bonn.
Currently, in the church in Toruń there is a copy made in 1957 by the sculptor Witold Marciniak, placed on the original console with the image of Moses.