Matka Boska Passawska, Warsaw

Before you is Matka Boska Passawska, a votive sculpture of the Virgin Mary on Krakowskie Przedmieście in Warsaw’s Śródmieście district. Józef Bellotti, an architect as well as a sculptor, created it in sixteen eighty-three. He offered the work in thanks after plague spared him and his family during the outbreak that struck Warsaw, and he presented it to King Jan the Third Sobieski.

The monument also commemorates Sobieski’s victory in the relief of Vienna. Its name recalls a revered Marian image in Passau, Germany. That image is an exact copy, made in sixteen twenty, of Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Innsbruck altarpiece from fifteen thirty-seven.

Notice the sandstone pedestal: inscriptions in Latin or Italian are carved around it. The sculpture was moved to this site in eighteen sixty-six; decorative lamps followed in eighteen eighty, and the base and iron enclosure were remade in nineteen oh five. It survived the Warsaw Uprising. Only Sigismund’s Column, erected in sixteen forty-four, is older among Warsaw’s monuments.