Art: A MASTERPIECE COME HOME

AS last week’s riots in Warsaw testified (see FOREIGN NEWS), troubled, spirited Poland continues to writhe under the heel of Communist rule. But the heel has been lifted enough, since Wladyslaw Gomulka came to power a year ago, to permit the restoration to its proper place of Poland’s greatest treasure of religion and art. After 18 years’ absence, the famed Cracow altar, a huge, polychrome Gothic masterpiece carved out of linden wood in the 15th century, is back in its place in the red brick Church of Our Lady.

To welcome back their revered altar, 6,000 devout Poles thronged the 13th century Roman Catholic church and the small square outside one day in August while a solemn Mass of thanksgiving was offered. And for good reason. Cracow’s altar is not only the largest Gothic altar in Christendom, but the greatest masterpiece carved by Veit Stoss, the German sculptor who. along with his younger contemporaries Mathias Grunewald, Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach. brought the art of the Middle Ages to its great and final climax.

Lyrical Composition. Sculptor Stoss was summoned to Cracow in 1475 when he was in his mid-30’s worked for 14 years carving the altar, which measures 45 ft. in height and 36 ft. in breadth and contains some 200 individual carved figures. The greatest labor and most consummate skill were obviously lavished on the shrine, or central panel (see color page). There at the center of the drama is the dying Virgin Mary, falling with limp hands into the anguished arms of the attending St. James. The two figures, carved from one massive block of wood, have been called “one of the most lyrical compositions of the late Middle Ages.”

The other foreground figures, all about 10 ft. tall, almost equal the central pair. Particularized, rather than idealized, they represent a triumphant manipulation of space, in gilded robes and meticulously formed figures, transcending the stiff, hierarchic form of the early Gothic style. The aging St. Peter reads a prayer, while another apostle offers holy water, and a third blows out a candle, symbol of life. St. John, on the dying Virgin’s right, stricken with sorrow, raises his cloak. The outer figures, by their startled gaze and uplifted heads, point to the next act—the Assumption of the Virgin to her throne of glory beside Christ, surrounded by angels.

With Needle & Knife. In 1940 the German army shipped the dismantled altar to Berlin to be stored like the treasure it is in the vaults of the Reichsbank. When the conquering U.S. Army moved into Germany, it found the crated altar in an air-conditioned vault in Veit Stoss’s native Nürnberg. General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower ordered it shipped back to Cracow.

There the Poles set out to restore the masterpiece to its original state. They injected chemicals into the figures to kill the termites that infested the wood, filled thousands of holes left by the insects, and then, with skillfully wielded knives, attacked five centuries of paint. Art Expert Marian Slonecki and 20 assistants labored for three years, scraped down through four layers to find intact the centuries-old blue and gold, “the original bright Stoss colors that we wanted.”

When the restoration work was completed in 1952, the antireligious campaign of the Communists prevented Polish Roman Catholics from installing the altar in the church. They waited patiently for five years until a safer climate prevailed. Last August they reassembled the 2,700 pieces of the altar and installed it in the church. Said St. Mary’s Pastor, Father Ferdinand Machay: “This return of our beloved altar is something every Catholic in Poland has yearned for. It will do something to calm our spirits to have it back.”