Matka Boska z Dzieciątkiem z kościoła oo. bernardynów w Warcie

During the conservation and restoration of the seventeenth- century Madonna and Child, a painting in the Bernardine monastic church in Warka (voivodeship of Sieradz), the removal of a silver covering, which to considerable degree concealed the canvas, proved that the painting is a stylistic compilation of seventeenth- and nineteenth-century elements. The examination of the object (X-ray, chemical studies of samples of painting layers, stratigraphy of layers) revealed a complicated stratigraphie construction of the canvas — the existence of numerous repainting, spanning assorted ranges. In the past, the painting was subjected to many repairs, i.a. the form of the wooden under-painting was expanded and altered. The conducted survey of source material did not enable a closer ascertainment of the workshop which produced the painting, or its history. Owing to the state of the preservation of the original object and the cult functions it fulfils, conservation entailed the removal of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century repainting, a partial retention of the seventeenth-century layer, and a fragmentary disclosure of the probably sixteenth-century canvas. The article describes a situation when a conservator is compelled to make unambiguous choices, and his decisions maintain or alter the form of a given work of art. Such decisions, therefore, should entail fully conscious selections.