The Collegiate Church of St Lawrence in Żółkiew - history
The Church of Our Lady of Heaven and St Lawrence the Deacon and St Stanislaus the Martyr, Bishop, in Żółkiew was originally built as a parish church and later became a collegiate church. It was founded by Hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski and built between 1606 and 1618. It was incorporated into the urban layout of a fortified ‘ideal city’, designed in accordance with Renaissance urban planning principles. The Hetman’s great-grandson, King Jan III of the Sobieski family, took particular care of the church; during his reign, it became the family mausoleum and the venue for many important state ceremonies. The church in Żółkiew housed numerous artefacts from the chivalric past and was dubbed the ‘Pantheon of Polish Arms’. Before 1939, it was regarded as one of the three most important churches in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The design of the church, drawn up before 1606, is attributed to Paweł Szczęśliwy. Following his death in 1610, the work was probably carried out by the Lviv architects Ambroży Przychylny (d. 1641) and Paweł Rzymianin (d. 1618), and was essentially completed before 1618. The church was built on a Latin cross plan, crowned with a magnificent dome. A statue of St Michael the Archangel was placed at the top of the façade (the sculpture of St Lawrence at the top of the transept has not survived). The frieze running around the church, designed by the hetman himself, is adorned with panoplies, bas-reliefs of Saints George and Martin, mounted hussars and archers, wounded soldiers and armed warriors.

In the collegiate church, the monuments to Hetman Żółkiewski and his son Jan—made of red marble and occupying almost the entire chancel—have survived to the present day, albeit not without damage, bearing the famous inscription taken from the Aeneid ‘Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor’ (‘May an avenger spring from our bones’) and, on the opposite side, the monument to Regina of Herburt and Zofia Daniłowiczowa, the hetman’s wife and daughter.

Inside the church – the family mausoleum of the Żółkiewski and Sobieski families – at the entrance to the chancel stand the alabaster tombstones of Jakub Sobieski – the king’s father – and Stanisław Daniłowicz, crafted by Andrzej Schlueter.

Four large battle scenes occupy a special place within the church. The first of these was commissioned by Hetman Żółkiewski, probably by the Lviv painter Szymon Boguszewicz (c. 1620), and depicts the victorious Battle of Kłuszyn. The other three works were commissioned by King John III. The painting *The Battle of Chocim* was created in collaboration with the Gdańsk painter Andrzej Stech (c. 1679), whilst *The Battle of Vienna* and *The Battle of Parkany* were painted between 1693 and 1695 by Martin Altomonte. This method of decorating a sacred interior was something entirely new, hitherto unseen in the churches of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

After the death of John III, Żółkiew remained in the family’s hands, but its days of greatest splendour were now behind it. It was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that the former collegiate church – which had been a parish church since the Austrian period – was rediscovered. Between 1862 and 1867, restoration work was carried out on the neglected church, which was still regarded as one of the most important places of worship in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. During the work, the remains of Princes Konstanty and Jakub Sobieski were discovered and solemnly reburied in 1862. During the next phase of conservation work between 1900 and 1908, the remains of Hetman Żółkiewski and his family were laid to rest in new sarcophagi. Further renovation of the church took place in 1928, and in 1933 the anniversary of the victorious Battle of Vienna was solemnly celebrated in the parish church of Żółkiew.

After the Second World War, Żółkiew became part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Some of the furnishings and archival materials survived because they were removed in 1946 by the parish priest and the prior of the Żółkiew Dominicans. Today, these items, now scattered, can be found in churches in Kraków, Bełżec, Lubaczów and Tarnów, as well as in the archives of Warsaw. Between 1946 and 1989, the church in Żółkiew remained closed for worship and served as a storeroom. The decision by the Soviet authorities resulted in the devastation of the church and the destruction or dispersal of most of its valuable furnishings.

Renovation and conservation works
On 28 October 1989, the church was returned to the congregation and consecrated by Father Rafał Władysław Kiernicki. Work began on tidying up the church, as well as on renovation and conservation.

Between 1990 and 1992, the Polish Culture Foundation became involved in the work, carrying out, amongst other things, renovation and part of the work on replacing the roof truss. The Polish Army and Kraków City Council funded the purchase of copper sheeting to cover the roof. In 1991, the parish church in Żółkiew acquired a bell cast in Jan Felczyński’s workshop in Przemyśl, funded by Adam Ważny, and two years later a small bell was added, donated by former residents of Żółkiew.

The painting of Our Lady of the Rosary, known as Our Lady of Żółkiew – of immense importance to the residents of Żółkiew – was housed in the Dominican church (now the Greek Catholic Church of St Josaphat) until 1946. Some of the artefacts from the former Conventus Regalis survived thanks to their evacuation between 1944 and 1946. The aforementioned miraculous painting, which is currently housed in the Dominican church in Warsaw’s Służew district, was crowned once again in 1965 by Primate Stefan Wyszyński. At the request of the faithful from Żółkiew, Małgorzata Sokołowska produced a faithful copy of the miraculous painting, which was solemnly presented to the collegiate church in 1997. During his pilgrimage to Ukraine, at a Mass in Lviv, John Paul II consecrated two golden crowns intended for this image of the Mother of God, which had been funded by Adam Ważny. The solemn coronation Mass at the Żółkiew Collegiate Church took place on 17 November 2001. The painting was crowned by Bishop Stanisław Padewski of Lviv.

Under the supervision of the conservator of historical monuments, Dr Janusz Smaza, students from the Warsaw and Kraków Academies of Fine Arts began work in 1990 on a programme to preserve the tombstones of the Żółkiewski, the Daniłowicz and Sobieski families, as well as the epitaphs and stone portals located within the church. The work was carried out as part of summer student placements and through collaboration with qualified art conservators. Until 1995, the project was supported by the Warsaw Society for the Preservation of Monuments, in conjunction with the Ukrainian Society for the Preservation of Historical and Cultural Monuments.

Subsequent stages of the work were funded by the now-defunct Office of the Government Plenipotentiary for Polish Cultural Heritage Abroad (whose responsibilities were taken over by the Department for Polish Cultural Heritage Abroad, then the Department of Cultural Heritage, and currently the Department of Cultural Heritage Abroad and War Losses at the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage). Funds from the Office were also used to carry out conservation work on the Altar of the Sacred Heart (Holy Trinity). This project was carried out in collaboration with the Foundation for the Protection of Monuments, which, between 1991 and 1997, carried out restoration work in Żółkiew on the pulpit, the altar of Our Lady of Częstochowa and the choir stalls in Żółkiew (with financial support from the General Conservator of Monuments). Subsequent stages of the work since 2006 have been financed largely from the funds of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, thanks to the ‘Protection of Cultural Heritage Abroad’ Programme.

The work carried out by Polish specialists, under the supervision of Dr Janusz Smaza, has resulted, amongst other things, in the conservation of the figure of St Adalbert the Bishop from the Żółkiewski family tomb, as well as a votive plaque commemorating the anniversary of the Battle of Vienna; the completion of work on the tombstone of Jakub Sobieski and its inscription plaque—which had been shattered into several dozen pieces—and on the tombstone of Stanisław Daniłowicz. Conservation work on the collegiate church’s main portal and the 17th-century side portal, adorned with rosettes, has been completed. The wall paintings in the chapels of Our Lady and the Holy Trinity were restored. The marble statue of Hetman Żółkiewski, the wall paintings and a whole range of other furnishings were also conserved. Work on the 17th-century polychrome stone choir and the marble consecration plaque has been completed. One of the most difficult and labour-intensive stages of the work was the conservation of the vaults with their rich stucco decoration.

The comprehensive restoration work carried out at the collegiate church in Żółkiew since the early 1990s has now been expanded to include one further element – the conservation of Martin Altomonte’s works *The Battle of Vienna* and *The Battle of Parkany*, part of a set of four large-format battle paintings which held a special place in the interior décor and the ideological programme of the church. Following the closure of the collegiate church, the paintings were transferred to the Lviv Art Gallery in the 1960s and 1970s.

In December 2007, the two larger paintings – *The Battle of Vienna* and *The Battle of Parkany* (each measuring over 65 square metres) – were transported to Warsaw, and conservation work commenced, carried out between 2007 and 2011.

The five-year conservation project, carried out under the supervision of Paweł Sadlej, was funded entirely by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, at a total cost of 4.48 million PLN. The conservation and research work was carried out in Poland by a team of Polish and Ukrainian specialists, under an agreement concluded between the Royal Castle in Warsaw and the Lviv National Art Gallery.

On the Polish side, the Royal Castle in Warsaw, the Royal Castle at Wawel, and the art conservation departments of the Academies of Fine Arts in Warsaw and Kraków participated in the project.

An integral part of the project was the display of the paintings depicting the Battle of Vienna and the Battle of Parkany following the completion of the conservation work. Between 2011 and 2012, the canvases were exhibited in the Reduta Halls of the Grand Theatre – National Opera in Warsaw and at the Museum of Architecture in Wrocław. In the spring of 2012, the paintings were returned to Ukraine. Currently, the key issue remains the choice of the final exhibition venue for the restored paintings, as in June 2012 the Ukrainian side took a unilateral decision to place individual paintings in the castles at Olesko and Złoczów (branches of the Lviv National Art Gallery). The Polish side’s consistent demand is that the paintings be placed in the historic interiors of the Collegiate Church of St Lawrence in Żółkiew, for which they were commissioned by King John III and where they remained for over 250 years.