Kościół pw. Przemienienia Pańskiego, Kraków

Kraków’s Church of the Transfiguration, also known as the Piarist Church, is a Baroque Piarist convent church on Pijarska Street. Built to Kacper Bażanka’s design, it contains dramatic illusionistic vault paintings by Moravian artists and a memorial holding Father Stanisław Konarski’s heart.

The Church of the Transfiguration, commonly called the Piarist Church, is the Piarists’ convent church on Pijarska Street, with its monastery joined beside it. Kacper Bażanka designed the building, which rose between seventeen eighteen and seventeen twenty-eight. Its Baroque character belongs to a style made for drama, movement, and rich visual effect.

The façade now facing the street came later: Francesco Placidi designed it, and it was completed between seventeen fifty-nine and seventeen sixty-one. Inside, the church is arranged as one main nave with side chapels opening directly from it. The visual surprise is overhead: in seventeen thirty-three, Moravian painters Franz Gregor Ignaz Eckstein and Joseph Piltz created illusionistic painted decoration that makes the vault seem to exceed its real architecture.

The nave frescoes celebrate the glorification of Saint Peter’s keys, using painted perspective to extend the space. Eckstein also created the illusionistic high altar. There is a particularly personal memorial here as well. The heart of Father Stanisław Konarski is set into the wall beside the high altar, while his bust stands before the church entrance.