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hoffer were ready and awaited Gianese in Lvov, to where
he came to see the building and to sign the agreement for
the execution of mosaic. Mehoffer spent the Easter of 1913
(which fell that year at the end of March) in Venice, overlooking
the production of the mosaics according to his
design. He was paying special attention to the choice of colours
of the tesserae from the famous Murano glassworks,
of which his mosaic was composed. By mid-July 1913 the
mosaic was already in Lvov, and was being prepared for
mounting in the dome. The installation was expected to be
completed within about three weeks, i.e. by the end of August
that year [Figs 88–93].
Mehoffer’ s mosaic in the dome depicts the Holy Trinity.
A mighty bust of God the Father with severe countenance
fills almost entirely the central part of the circular
field, leaving only some space for the Dove of the Holy
Spirit overhead in the clouds, with representations of the
Sun and the Moon flanking God to His right and left, respectively.
The tormented body of Christ reposes against
the Father’ s chest, supported on either side by a kneeling
angel. The prevalent bright tones of blue, pink, ochre and,
above all, gold make an overall pleasant impression, and
the ornaments complementing the scheme are very well
fitted in the space allotted to them on smaller architectural
fragments of the building [Figs 78–86].
The composition was based in essence on the painter’ s
earlier studies of the subject, dating from 1899 [Fig. 79] and
1903 [Fig. 80], to which he returned repeatedly and with
apparent liking over time, and which he only re-worked
for the mosaic picture. That alone would suffice to question
the totally ungrounded remarks appearing in the literature,
maintaining that the ‘Trinity’ allegedly represented an ‘Armenian
type’ of this subject. The composition consists of
the three persons of the Trinity accompanied by two angels.
Just by their presence the composition cannot be identified
with the ‘Throne of Mercy’ (Thronum gratiae). The Lvov
Trinity is much more reminiscent of Albrecht Dürer’ s print
of 1511 (B. 122; Fig. 84), whereas its closest iconographic
counterpart is the composition called Pietas Domini (God
the Father’s Pietà), Pitié de Nostre Seigneur or Notgottes,
popular in the art of western Europe since the end of the
fourteenth and especially in the fifteenth century. But in
Lvov most probably no one explored the iconographic and
theological intricacies of the composition; it was understood
as a representation of the Holy Trinity, at most only
an uncommon one. Nevertheless Mehoffer s Holy Trinity,
despite its obvious relationship with the above-mentioned
iconographic traditions, is a unique and innovative creation
of the painter. What is more, the artist apparently concentrated
rather on the formal qualities of his work than
on its content.
The Remaining Decorations
and Furnishings
According to the general principle of attaining stylistic
uniformity among the heterogeneous parts which form
the cathedral complex, a mosaic was also planned in the
dome of the extension newly added to the church, built by
Mączyński [Figs 40, 99]. This mosaic was mentioned already
in the architect’ s initial design, and hence it can be
assumed that the Archbishop from the very beginning intended
to adorn the ‘Early Christian’ construction of grey
stone with a colourful mosaic. It was apparently due to
financial constraints that a cheaper, yet quite spectacular
solution was chosen: not a mosaic but mural paintings very
plausibly imitating a mosaic. They were executed by a mediocre
painter Antoni Tuch, most probably according to his
own design. So the decoration is technically a painted imitation
of mosaic and from an iconographic point of view
it is a compilation of motifs drawn from the sixth-century
mosaics in the apses of the Ravennian basilicas of San Vitale
(Christ as ‘Cosmocrator’ seated on a globe flanked by
angels) and San Apollinare in Classe (lambs grazing on
a bright green meadow), set beneath the star-studded sky
of the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, also in Ravenna. The
dome is supported by squinches and features a circular
opening at the top, an oculus, filled with a stained-glass
panel. It was executed around 1909 according to a design
by Karol Zyndram Maszkowski (1868–1938), in Art Nouveau
style. The stained-glass window is composed of a pair
of modules (one depicting a winged cherub and the other
a ‘living’ or ‘flowering’ Armenian cross made of interlacing
ornament) repeated four times in eight panels of the
window [Figs 95–98].
The First World War prevented the plans for the restoration
and modernisation of the cathedral from reaching
completion. Due to the war and the subsequent financial
shortages, it was only in the mid-1920s that the works could
be resumed. They focused on the new furnishings for the
church and on the construction of the chapel of the Holy
Sacrament (adjacent to the sacristy and the northern wall
of the nave). Witold Rawski and Witold Minkiewicz, renowned
architects of the Lvov Polytechnic School designed
the said chapel in the years 1927–1929 [Figs 105–106]. The
latter architect is also responsible for the new disposition
of the church, as well as the main altar, semi-circular balustrade
and the Archbishopric throne [Figs 107–108]. The
furnishings, executed in simple, cubic, modernist forms
belong already to the Art Déco style. White marble used for
the furnishings came from the Russsian Orthodox cathedral
of St Alexander Nevsky which had been torn down in
Warsaw around 1925. At a later date, already in the 1930s,
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