Information about the object:
The subject of the task is to carry out intervention conservation and protection works of the historical painting decoration from the 17th - 18th century with the sundial motif, located on the external wall of the western (kitchen) wing of the castle in Zhovkva, combined with the object recognition. It was planned to carry out laboratory tests on the collected samples, local underpainting layers, fixing and underpainting of technological layers and supplementing structural defects. Carrying out the above work is necessary due to the renovation being carried out at the castle, which poses a threat to the weakened historic polychrome.

Completed works:
The castle in Zhovkva was built in the first decade of the 17th century by the crown field hetman, later chancellor, Stanisław Zhovkva. It was extended in the 17th century by the Sobieski family, including King John III, the hetman's grandson, and kept in good condition until about the middle of the 18th century by the royals; in 1740 it passed into the hands of the Radziwills, who rebuilt the interiors and transformed the facades of the castle buildings. Towards the end of the century, the gradual decline of the residence and the demolition of part of the buildings began with the auction. In 1915, the castle was burnt down by the Russian army. In the inter-war period, large-scale conservation work began, repeatedly halted and not completed until the outbreak of the Second World War. Re-preservation of the castle was undertaken by the Historical and Archaeological Reserve in Zhovkva in the early 21st century. In 2018, on the south-east elevation of the former kitchen wing of the castle, a polychrome painting depicting a sundial with accompanying inscriptions, tentatively dated to the 17th-18th centuries, was discovered on the historic plasterwork. The condition of this object is critical. It is currently exposed to the weather and the adverse phenomena accompanying the renovation work currently being carried out on the castle (e.g. vibration). In many places, the adhesion of the plaster to the structural substrate is weakened. The polychrome is fragmentarily preserved and only partially exposed. The painting layer observed in the exposed part has suffered significant degradation due to secondary imbrications and natural deterioration of the materials. The inscriptions around the representation are poorly legible.

The polychrome sundial depiction is a unique composition in the former Ruthenian province of the First Republic and the other lands of the Crown. Unlike most historical Polish sundials made in sgraffito technique, the żółkiew decoration was made in painting technique. The representation of the sundial is accompanied by partially preserved and fragmentarily exposed inscriptions, forming the setting of the representation. It may have a parallel in the elaborate depiction of a sundial on the garden façade of King John III's palace in Wilanów. The painting was presumably executed by artists associated with the royal or princely court.

Funding: Programme of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage "Protection of Cultural Heritage Abroad".

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

• Towarzystwo Wspierania Inicjatyw Badawczych i Konserwatorskich.