Residential town of the Potocki family

Buczacz is a town situated extremely picturesquely between hills and cut by the waters of the Strypa River. In the 18th century it was in the possession of the Potocki family, and its most famous owner was Mikolaj Bazyli Potocki (1707/08-1782), starosta of Kaniów, an adventurer and eccentric known throughout the Republic.

Potocki chose Buczacz for his residence. Although a ruined castle still stood on the highest hill, the magnate settled in a wooden manor house. From the mid-18th century, he systematically transformed the town with his foundations. One of the first was the erection of two tall columns, on which were placed the statues of St. John of Nepomuk, flanked by two putti holding palms of martyrdom (1750) and the Immaculata or Virgin Mary Immaculate (1751). The pedestals bore inscriptions referring to Potocki and the Pilawa coat of arms with which he sealed his name. Art historians are convinced that the architect Bernard Meretyn (d. before 1759) was responsible for the design of both columns, while Johann Georg Pinsel (d. 1761/1762) was responsible for the sculptures.

In the 1750s and 1760s, Mikolaj Potocki founded a new parish church, a small Uniate church of Pokrovna (Protection of the Mother of God) and an Orthodox church for the Basilian order, for which the Lviv sculptor Michal Filevich (d. 1804), then settled in Chelm, made the main altar in the 1770s.

New parish church

The Roman Catholic parish in Buczacz is one of the oldest in the territory of the Lviv archdiocese. It was founded in 1379 and since then there have been several successive churches in the town, about which we have little information.

The old parish church, immediately preceding the present church, was probably built in the last quarter of the 14th or 15th century. By the middle of the 18th century it was already in a poor state of repair, so Mikołaj Bazyli Potocki decided to fund a new one in March 1761.

Construction must have continued quickly, because already two and a half years later, on 14 August 1763, Lviv Archbishop Waclaw Hieronim Sierakowski (1700-1780) consecrated the temple with five altars inside. Its architect is unknown. In the interwar period, the art historian Zbigniew Hornung (1903-1981) spread the opinion that it was the Lviv architect and builder Marcin Urbanik (d. 1764 or 1765).

In its form, the church in Buchach is similar to the church in Hodovitsa near Lviv (1751-1758), designed by Bernard Meretyn. It is a cross-shaped, single-nave building with shallow transept arms and a short presbytery. A rectangular, very high porch, decorated with stone vases, is attached to the façade.

Equipment from the circle of "Lviv rococo sculpture"

Inside the church there are five 18th-century altars. If they are the same as those consecrated by Archbishop Wenceslas Sierakowski, they must have been made before mid-1762. However, very different and extensive dating can be found in the literature, reaching as far back as 1773. This does not mean that attempts have not been made, while there are several unconfirmed proposals in the literature.

The focal point of the interior is the dynamic structure of the main altar, which fills the entire width of the chancel. It is built on the plan of a concave ellipse and divided by columns and pilasters. The numerous panels are richly decorated with Rococo ornaments. Between the columns are set white lacquered statues of saints: St John the Evangelist, St Joachim, St Anne and St Zacharias, and kneeling on the abutments in the upper part are large figures of angels with their wings spread wide. In the finial, the triangular Eye of Providence is visible against a radiant gloria with clouds and winged angel heads. The figural decoration in the altarpiece has geometrically shaped folds of robes and expressive, exaggerated physiognomy. These are characteristic of the trend of the so-called Lviv rococo sculpture. However, they are not outstanding works; their anonymous creator mechanically operated with learned patterns.

Of the four side altars, designed in pairs, two are located at the closures of the transept arms, and another two are located at the icosahedral wall separating the nave from the presbytery. The altar of Our Lady of the Scapular (left) features 18th-century sculptures of allegories, possibly of Prudence and Love, adoring angels and a contemporary painting. The opposite altar of St Anthony had a similar decoration, but unfortunately did not survive the Second World War and the closure of the church by the Soviet Ukrainian authorities.

The side altars of St. Thaddeus and St. Nikolai differ from the previous ones in structure and have been partly deprived of their sculptural decoration. In the altar of St Thaddeus (left side), only the statue of Archangel Michael with a balance in his hand, surrounded by putti and winged angel heads, remains in the coping. The figures of Archangel Raphael and the Guardian Angel have not survived, nor have the carved antependia (the front part of the altar). On the other hand, in the altar of St Nicholas, in the finial, there is a figure of St John of Nepomuk also surrounded by putti and winged heads. At the bottom of the altar, there used to be statues of St. Valentine and St. Francis Borgia, convincingly linked by researchers to the chisel of Johann Georg Pinsel, but they have been taken to the Ternopil Regional Museum.