Historical interiors and fittings of the Holy Spirit parish church in Żabno

It happened around 1970, when as part of the action of renovating the interiors of the Holy Spirit parish church in Żabno and adapting its chancel to the requirements of the liturgy reformed after the Second Vatican Council, the Neo-Baroque uniform design and fittings of interiors were removed and irretrievably destroyed. Now it is known only from the photographic documentation made by an unknown author in the 1940s. On that basis and of the parish chronicles, the appearance of the interior of the single-nave church may be recreated, and an assessment of its historical and architectural values attempted. The interiors of the church (built in 1663-1685 by Rafał Kazimierz Makowiecki, the castellan of Kamieniec Podolski [now Kamianets-Podilskyi in Ukraine] and starost of Trembowla [now Terebovl in Ukraine]) were destroyed by fire in 1888. Repairs were undertaken by the newly appointed parish priest, Antoni Łętkowski (1852-1912), former senator of the cathedral curates of Tarnów. On his initiative a new main altar was then erected by Romuald Łapczyński, with images of Christ crucified and the Descent of the Holy Spirit by Piotr Niziński, a graduate of the Art School in Kraków. The side altars, created by a local artist Józef Sowiński, were consecrated in 1892. Also, the painting was brought to the church depicting the Virgin Mary, painted by the Tarnów artist Zygmunt Grüner (Griner), as well as the picture of St. Anthony of Padua, created by Rev. Bernard Preibisz from Tarnów. The image of the patroness of the church, St. Anne, placed in the side altar, was made by the canon and priest of the Tarnów cathedral parish, Rev. Franciszek Leśniak. A painter-woodcarver-conservationist of interiors from Lwów - Julian Kruczkowski provided the polychrome. Almost all those artists had studied in Vienna or Munich; that is probably the reason why the image of crucified Christ modelled on Van Dyck’s depiction (kept in the imperial collection in Vienna) was placed in the main altar of the church in Żabno. The patronage and interest in arts, as well as painting activity within the Tarnów diocese, is an interesting historical and cultural phenomenon. The article calls attention upon the problem of the provincial artistic community of the former West Galicia region in context of the patronage of the Church, and the issue of renovating the church along the Neo-Baroque model, in conformity with the spirit of the time and the individual features of the architectural shape of the church. For many years that art failed to receive the proper understanding of church managers, parish communities, and sometimes even the authorities of conservationist services (both those representing the church and the state)