National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa, Doylestown, PA. Photo: PN

Stanisław Wyspiański’s pastel ‘Macierzyństwo z Helenami’ (Motherhood with Helena), Tum pod Łęczycą’s tympanum, Siemiginowski’s portrait of Maria Kazimiera – there is no shortage of beautiful and moving depictions of motherhood in Polish art. On the eve of Mother’s Day, which is celebrated in Poland on 26 May, Professor Jerzy MIZIOŁEK analyses them.

Drama – this is motherhood: a psychological puzzle of generations, thoughts, feelings and instincts, centred on the beginning of life, at its very source. Are they pretty? Oh, no! But beautiful, immensely beautiful, with the strength and exposed inner truth that bursts out of them (Tadeusz Żuk-Skarszewski).

Triumfująca Polska (Triumphant Poland) – this is the title, draped in a Latin garment, of the central part of the design for a triptych by Vlastimil Hofman for a competition announced by the Polish Sejm in 1929. The artist presented a modest, far from heroic vision of the triumphal procession, giving it a sublime religious content. Here a lancer, preceded by two boys, walks beside his horse, carrying his saddle, and is followed by a dewy, beautiful and large-framed Nike/Victoria. At the centre of this elongated multi-person composition is the image of the Virgin and Child, worshipped by three women and several men. The figure of the seated, young and beautiful Mary immediately attracts our attention, not least because of the extraordinary tenderness with which she gazes at the small, naked Jesus she holds in her arms. The naturalness of this depiction of motherhood leaves no doubt that the artist, who had worked on the theme of Mary on many occasions, must have had in mind a young mother of great beauty with a child in her arms.

Such a representation of Our Lady’s maternity can be found in the tympanum of Tum pod Łęczycą, dated around 1160. The creator of this painting, who must have come from Italy, did not try to show the Mother’s affectionate relationship with her Son, because the message of this scene is primarily linked to the theme of the Incarnation leading to Golgotha. For centuries to come, the only maternal images in Polish lands were those of the Virgin Mary with the Child, sometimes not without a certain tenderness, as in one of the representations by Stanisław Samostrzelnik, a monk from Mogiła, near Krakow, who worked in the first half of the 16th century.

A true representation of motherhood in a secular form was painted by Jerzy Eleuter Siemiginowski, a Rome-trained painter and favourite of King John III Sobieski. He portrayed Queen Mary Kazimiera (1641-1716) as the founding mother of the royal Sobieski dynasty. The Queen is depicted among her and John III Sobieski’s children (present in the form of a sculptural bust, visible in the depths, with her head in a laurel wreath): Jakub Ludwika, Aleksander Benedykt, Konstanty Władysław, Teresa Kunegunda and Jan. The royal couple’s two sons, Alexander Benedict and Constantine Ladislaus, in ancient robes, ride a lion, a symbol of belonging to the royal family. Daughter Teresa Kunegunda sits on a dolphin, holding a pearl shell in her lap, and her hair is also decorated with pearls. This is said to signify her destiny to the throne and the gentleness of her nature. Her youngest son, Jas, who unfortunately only lived for three years, sleeps on his mother’s lap. The mother’s face, famous for its beauty, and the child’s deep sleep somehow foreshadow the masterful representations of motherhood from the time of Young Poland, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

“Motherhood” Stanisław Wyspiański / 1905/​Wikipedia

Before discussing the real masterpiece, Stanisław Wyspiański’s famous 1905 pastel, let us recall his colleague Józef Mehoffer’s painting of the Holy Family. While the young, almost girlish Mary is breastfeeding Jesus, the carpenter Joseph is working on a piece of wood on his knee. In an almost sublime manner, Mary is cuddled by figures of blue angels who bend over her to see the Child better. The light, together with the flat silhouettes of the figures, makes the whole scene almost unreal, taking it into the realm of a mystical experience of the miracle of the Incarnation. Only the old Joseph, as if not yet fully aware of his close contact with the God-man, is sawing wood with concentration. As scholars of his work have noted, Mehoffer created in his painting a symbol of rural Arcadia, where peace and harmony reign undisturbed. The rural courtyard has become a sacred space, the interior of a temple with an invisible dome in the sky, where sunshine and angelic blue give this scene of Motherhood a truly divine dimension.

Can Stanisław Wyspiański’s wonderful 1905 pastel ‘Macierzyństwo z Helenami’ (Motherhood with Helen) be described as a secular adaptation of the Virgin and Child motif? The painting shows the artist’s wife, Teodora Teofila Pytko, breastfeeding their son Stasio and looking at their daughter Helena, who is portrayed twice – en face and in profile. In a letter to Stanisław Lack, Wyspiański wrote: ‘A strange life has such a picture. There’s something sketched in it. I’m thinking of drawing ‘Helena’ like this soon, which strangely enough expresses a preference of mine.’ This feeling may have been the memory of his mother, whom the artist lost at a young age. The image of motherhood is thus intertwined here with the sphere of the sacred. The image of the not-very-beautiful, simple, common Theodora, shown with her breast uncovered, nursing her infant son, can be compared to Wyspiański’s ‘Caritas’, which also has the face of an ordinary, common woman. Looking at his masterpiece from this perspective, the woman portrayed can be seen not only as the artist’s wife but also as a universal symbol of motherhood, a continuation of humanity’s march through history. As most commentators have pointed out, Helen, who is depicted twice, is ten years old at the time and gazes intently at the infant and her mother’s breasts. On the threshold of adolescence, is this thoughtful girl contemplating her place in the mystery of life: between birth and motherhood?

Let us return to the composition of the painting. We find in it an almost radical reduction of the imaginary space and a concentration of the main elements of the composition around the infant’s head, transforming an ordinary, everyday event in the life of the family into an image of love, trust and peace, but perhaps also containing a hint of longing for the mother lost too soon.

Prof. Jerzy Miziołek