NEWS: 15 08 2022

In the Christian calendar, the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary falls on August 15, and the same theme is also captured on the novelty, which will be presented to you after the opening of the Archdiocese Museum by our permanent exhibition To the Glory of Praise – the statue of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary from Otaslavice.

“The statue was kindly lent to the museum from the property of the Roman Catholic parish of Otaslavice, but its original provenance is unknown. The dynamic composition of the fully worked figure of the Virgin Mary made of linden wood, which can be linked to the work of the Olomouc sculptor Jiří Antonín Heinz (1698-1759) and dated approximately to the 1830s, testifies to the fact that it had to be placed in a space, e.g. in the top of the tabernacle,” reveals MUO curator Helena Zápalková.

But the statue first went to the restoration workshop of Radomír Surma, who had to deal with several very insensitive interventions that it underwent over time. Because of them, its original, exclusive surface, consisting of silvering on a red bolus background, was badly damaged. As the layer of polished silver on the draperies and clouds in particular survived only in fragments, the statue was left without significant retouching after the restoration.

“On the other hand, the missing parts of the carving were reconstructed and supplemented – part of Marys left leg, the drapery and the wings of the angels, the absence of which would have disturbed the original tone of the composition of the work,” adds Zápalková.

Machine translation