Rare exhibits commemorate St. Pauline at the Archdiocesan Museum

NEWS: 19 06 2023

The permanent exhibition of the Archdiocesan Museum To Glory and Praise also commemorates 400 years since the relics of St. Pauline were brought to Olomouc. Starting tomorrow, part of the exhibition will be dedicated to the patroness of Olomouc with several rare exhibits. Come and take a look! 

The largest exhibit is a pair of wooden baroque statues - St. Pauline and St. Barbara, the work of Olomouc sculptor Johann Sturmer from around 1716. The statues were probably part of the altar of one of the Olomouc churches that fell victim to the Josephine reforms. In the first half of the 19th century they came into the possession of the blacksmith Valentin Vrana together with the sculpture of the Crucified Christ by Ondřej Zahner, who placed them on the facade of his forge in Olomouc-Repčín in 1849. After more than 150 years they were restored and lent to the Archdiocesan Museum.

St. Pauline (left) and St. Barbara

Another very valuable exhibit is a chalice made after 1709 by the Olomouc goldsmith Wolfgang Rossmayer, which was lent by the Roman Catholic parish in Jevíček. In its decoration we can find St. Pauline, who is complemented in other medallions by depictions of Our Lady of St. Nicholas and St. Nicholas. The chalice from Jevíček is the only known goldsmiths work with a depiction of St. Pauline. 

The artworks will be complemented by four small pictures on metal from the original decoration of the altar of St. Pauline in the older Marian church, which was taken over by the Jesuits after their arrival in Olomouc. From there the pictures were transferred to the new church of Our Lady of the Snows and in 1721 they were installed on the new altar of the saint. Of the original eight paintings from the 17th century, only two have survived in the original - they depict the earliest form of the reliquary for the relics of the saint. The likeness of the other two paintings is known thanks to copies from 1901, which were lent to the exhibition by the Museum of Homeland History in Olomouc. They depict a procession of supplication with the relics of St. Pauline at the time of the plague in 1623 and a funeral procession in front of the Olomouc Town Hall, above which St. Pauline is chasing away the plague with her intercession in the form of a skeleton with a scythe. 

In addition to the intervention in the permanent exhibition, the Museum of Art also commemorates St. Pauline by collaborating on the temporary return of the reliquary of St. Pauline to the Church of Our Lady of the Snows. The Baroque reliquary has returned to its original location after 237 years, and you can see it there from June 11 to September 24.