Information about the object:
The Church of the Holy Spirit in Vilnius is a temple with an extremely rich history. The first church was built in 1323. Destroyed in a fire, it was rebuilt in 1409, by Grand Duke Vytautas. The stone Gothic church was rebuilt by order of Alexander Jagiellon in 1501. It was then handed over to the Dominicans. Destroyed by many fires and rebuilt many times, it took its present shape, designed by Jan Krzysztof Glaubitz, in 1770. According to local tradition, several thousand corpses are buried in the vaults of the church, the so-called Kingdom of the Dead. A non-invasive geophysical survey combined with laser scanning was commissioned in 2022.

Completed work:

2023
In the crypts of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Vilnius, 23 mummified bodies with preserved clothing (17th-19th centuries) were found. Between 2011 and 2017, the bodies were examined by anthropologists and at that time the preserved items of clothing were removed.

The aim of the project was to carry out inventory and documentation activities with the detached textiles. The work was exploratory in nature, with the aim of reviewing, segregating and making an inventory of the preserved materials, along with producing photographic documentation. The activities were accompanied by preliminary conservation research to determine the number of surviving garments and types of textiles and haberdashery elements, as well as preliminary identification of garment types and their completeness.

Another important objective will be to assess the state of preservation of the textiles, collecting material for further research and conservation projects of the entire ensemble.

2024
The project is a continuation of the work undertaken as part of the 2023 Volunteer Programme. The aim of the task was to complete conservation prevention activities on the inventoried ensemble of grave textiles detached from the bodies preserved in the crypts of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Vilnius. In the first stage, the textiles were documented, their number and types determined. Initial conservation work was undertaken by making wrappings for the individual items. The number of textiles turned out to be so large that in the first stage it was not possible to carry out the procedures to ensure safe storage to an adequate extent. In the case of archaeological textiles, carrying out treatments to ensure their safe storage conditions is a very important process. Many times, conservation efforts end at the prevention stage, so it was crucial to complete the work undertaken in 2023 and to ensure that the inventoried objects had the right conditions for further storage. Acid-free paper packaging was made for each object. An inventory of all the textiles was drawn up, which amounts to 167 items: including some 25 secular and grave clothes, 20 headgear, fragments of liturgical vestments and haberdashery, scapulars and coffin cushions and upholstery. The textiles will be stored at the Museum of Sacred Heritage in Vilnius.

The work was carried out by four volunteers - textile conservation students from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw: Róża Borek, Maria, Bystrowska, Dorota Osman and Olga Zasada, and they were guided by Dr Monika Stachurska.

Funding: Polonika Institute programme "Polish cultural heritage abroad - volunteering".

More about the project: https://polonika.pl

• Fundacja Akademii Sztuk Pięknych w Warszawie, realizacja w latach 2023 i 2024