Dekoracja dworu w Osieku koło Kościana
Decorations in the Manor in Osiek near Kościan

Summary/Abstract: For centuries, the most typical building material was timber. Unfortunately, susceptibility to fire rendered it impermanent. This is the reason why the discovery, during the repair of a manor in Osiek near Kościan, of painted boards, re-used at the beginning of the twentieth century as division walls, proved to be a true sensation. Covered by a layer of cane and plastered, they remained concealed and cut off from light. The repair unexpectedly disclosed the boards to the construction workers. Although the appearance of the boards was rather pitiful - the re-cut, arbitrarily arranged fragments were disfigured with nails - their attraction lay in the colourfulness and the colourfulness and multiplicity of depictions. The light, which reached the very thin colour layer, was capable of destroying fragments crumbling away from the foundation. Salvage came in the form of conservation conducted by Krzysztof Powidzki. Next to secular figures, undefined by inscriptions or coats of arms, there emerged the semi-figures of apostles, described by means of inscriptions. Such galleries of likenesses (which must have totalled 12) embellished churches from the fourteenth century on. In Osiek, the depictions painted on the walls imitated paintings proper, but at the bottom and top they were enhanced by additional ornamental elements. The characteristic feature of the boards from Osiek was an imitation of a theme unambiguously defining the Ecclesia - the institution of the Church in sacral interiors.We are entitled to assume that this symbolic no longer functioned in the decoration in question. Likenesses of the disciples of Christ were merely a decoration of an adobe of a Christian, the owner of the house. The paintings come undoubtedly from the first half of the eighteenth century, and some of their details indicate the 1730s - 1740s.

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