A wise woman from the Kołobrzeg parish church: From painting composition to graphic dispersion of parenetic image formula

Abstract

The article is devoted to the painting stored in the Kołobrzeg collegiate church, represent ing A wise woman , and to the reception of the iconographic type it belongs to. The com position is untypical, full of symbols and non-obvious signs, explained in the inscriptions placed on both sides of the representation. Moreover, in the 18 th century an information was placed on the panel about its founder, the year it came to the church, and its renova -tion. The painting belongs to quite popular in the late Middle Ages group of parenetic representations, which were intended to demonstrate models of proper attitude s. These models, due to the invention and dissemination of graphic techniques, could find their way to more and more numerous recipient s. Similar holds true for the composition which is found in Kołobrzeg: in the first half of the 16 th century, images of wise woman were printed in Cologne, Amsterdam, and in an unidentified workshop in the German Reich. Over the course of time the formula was e nr iched with an image of a wise man. Al though in the oldest realizations the picture was accompanied with a commentary, the later copies contain the picture alone which seems to prove considerable popularity of the composition.