Eighteenth - century furnishing of the Ruthenian Uniate parish church in Zarvanytsia

St Trinity Ruthenian Uniate parish church in Zarvanytsia, erected in 1754, founded by the village proprietor Piotr Michał Mączyński, the Czernichów voievode, so far has not been an object of interest of art historians. The main attention of researchers focused on the miraculous image of St Mary worshipped in the temple, and its only representation in literature was a woodcut of BMV's altar. In recent years there also emerged Ukrainian publications concerning the history and spirituality of the Zarvanytsia sanctuary. The 18th-century furnishing of the church, as one can conclude from the preserved descriptions and rudimentary iconographic sources, included as many as six altars and a pulpit of Latinised forms. The main altar (iconostas) was "without Jesus, Apostles and the Royal Doors; according to the current fashion," part of the equipment was illusionistically painted on the walls, and the sculptural decoration of the Our Lady altar showed somewhat mediocre standard, close to, for example, the works of Antoni Sztyl. The entire interior was complemented with the illusionistic polychromies made in 1784 by a painter from Krekhovichi, Andrzej Solecki, in the spirit of Stanisław Sroiński's works (which inspired Piotr Krasny to say, somewhat exaggerating, about a bel composto degli arti in the Zarvanitsia decoration). From among the whole furnishing only the pulpit founded by Mikołaj Bazyli Potocki survived, non-existent at all in art history literature. The work is differently dated; from time to time returns a legend popular in the 19th century, that it was allegedly imported from Italy. Actually, the pulpit is a relatively faithful replica of the pulpit from the church of the Missionaries in Hodorenka, c. 100 kilometres away. The analogies primarily refer to the composition, gestures and faces of the figures of the four Evangelists placed on the basket. Depending on the adopted dating, it may be one of the earliest replicas of the Horodenka work, when an anonymous sculptor had not fully acquired the style of Pinsel. Thus, it is worth analysing information about the original furnishing of the Zarvanitsia church, for it constituted yet another link in the chain of works of "Lviv rococo sculpture". What is helpful in the reconstruction of the original 18th furnishing is both 18th and 19th-century inventories, as well as the manuscript "The Description of the Zarvanitsia Orthodox church and miraculous icons which are there." Moreover, the Photo Library of the Institute of History of Art at the Jagiellonian University has an unpublished photograph of the Our Lady altar, on the basis of which the woodcut ilustration was made and published by Alojzy Fridrich. It is worth remembering that the first image enjoying common worship, approved of by Lviv Ruthenian Uniate bishop Metropolitan Archbishop of Kiev Atanazy Szeptycki in 1742 was the icon of the Crucified, disseminated in devotional prints in several versions (Polish and Ruthenian). In this light we should interpret the erection in 1759 and furnishing of the new brick church in Zarvanytsia as a thoughtful action propagating the worship of the miraculous icon of the Crucified, which was a perfect part of the extensive tendency of modernising temples residing miraculous images. The phenomenon, relatively well perceived in Latin churches, in the case of Greek Catholic art, still waits for studies.