The Infant Christ Bearing the Instruments of the Passion in the Chapel of St Theresa’s Church in Vilnius

Abstract

The image of the Infant Jesus bearing the instruments of the Passion appears in the mural paintings of St Theresa’s Church in Vilnius. It is the so-called Infant Christ of the Passion – basically a symbolic, metaphorical motif connecting the realities of childhood and death. In the article, its iconographic genesis and the historical context of its appearance in the side Chapel of the Divine Providence (later, of Our Lady of Good Counsel) of St Theresa’s Church in Vilnius is discussed. The author attempts to reconstruct the meaning of this motif in a more general iconographic context of the furnishing and mural paintings of both chapels of the narthex. It is revealed that based on the altars of these chapels standing opposite each other, another axis of the church’s iconographic programme was formed – the series of the Passion of Christ, which was as if intersecting the axis of the visual narrative of the central nave running lengthwise. The author of the article tries to prove the supposition that the polychromy of the church from the second half of the 18th century was closely related to the iconography of the titular images of its altars.