Misericordia Domini Painting
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Saint John Cantius had a deep fascination with a painting, “Misericordia Domini” (The Mercy of the Lord) that, according to tradition, hung by the entrance to the university building near his private room. He was said to pray often next to this painting and when he died it was hung near his tomb.
On Friday, March 27 at 6:30pm Br. Mateusz Szymanski will be exploring the hidden depths of this image, uncovering the layers of meaning that drew our patron saint to this unusual icon. The presentation will take place in the parish hall, with Pergolesi's Stations of the Cross following.
“Misericordia Domini” was painted in Kraków by an anonymous painter in the fifteenth century. The title denotes not the unique title of this specific painting but rather an iconographic motif that was popular in the art of that age, which found its inspiration in the passage from Chapter 53 of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, which prophesied the Man of Suffering. It depicts Christ standing in the tomb and blood from the wound in His side flowing out into a chalice placed on the edge of the tomb. Behind and to His right stands the Blessed Mother in prayer as the Co-Redemptrix in His work of redemption. It is for this reason that it was also considered a Marian image and sometimes called “Imago Matris Miseridordiae” (Image of the Mother of Mercy).
In 2020 a replica of this image was created for our parish. Just as the original, this painting was executed on a board of linden wood enclosed within a frame made from alder wood. The image was painted, as the original, with egg tempera pigments and gilded. The finished image was then sealed with varnish and wax.
The artist who created this copy, Ewa Kociuba, is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, Poland where she presently lives and works in her studio “Pracownia Temper.”