From Rheinland to Silesia : on two fourteenth-century stained-glass panels in the Collection of the Museum of Architecture in Wrocław

The article presents the artistic provenance of two fourteenth-century stained-glass panels depicting the Na tivity and Presentation of Jesus at the Temple from the col lection of the Museum of Architecture in Wrocław. They were transferred to the Museum as a result of the criminal investigation in the 1960s related to (then) illegal trade in artworks. Reportedly, several stained-glass panels (four medieval, one dating to a later period) were offered for sale in 1966 by military settler Captain Edmund Majew ski. Crates with stained glass had been found by soldiers in May 1945 hidden in the attic of the sawmill at Krobica (German Krobsdorf) near Mirsk (German Friedeberg/Queis): the panels doubtless came from the same unidentified collection hidden during World War II. Although inter esting with regard to the history of present art collections in Wrocław, the circumstances of discovering the stained-glass panels at Mirsk contribute no insights regarding their artistic provenance. The two panels are first mentioned in an information booklet on the collections of the Museum of Architecture in Wrocław, published in 1975 and reprinted in 1989. Lech Kalinowski and Helena Małkiewiczówna, dated the panels to ca. 1300 and stylistically connected them to the stained glass in Esslingen in Swabia from ca. 1280. But the stylistic links between the panels in the Wrocław collection and the Esslingen stained glass are too general to show that they came from the same workshop. Still, Ka linowski and Małkiewiczówna have pointed in the right direction: to Rhineland. In this article, the author argues that the stained-glass panels in the Wrocław collection had come from an Upper Rhineland workshop as suggested by their arguable connection to the local tradition of Biblical Windows and their style, in particular to the oeuvre of the Second Workshop of the collegiate church in Freiburg in Breisgau, specifically to works from the second phase of its activity. The Wrocław panels were made no earlier than ca. 1330, when the Freiburg workshop worked on the windows of Blacksmiths and Coblers, and the Tulenhaupt window.