Changes in the Medieval Colour Scheme of the Southern Façade of Wrocław Town Hall—A Case Study

Abstract

The aim of this article is to discuss the colour transformations of one of the most representative Gothic façades in Central Europe—the southern façade of Wrocław Town Hall. Based on iconographic, architectural, and stratigraphic research, it was possible to find the remains of two stages of medieval colour changes. Based on these discoveries, an attempt was made to reconstruct both phases of the medieval colour scheme. The research findings enable the object to be described with regard to the architecture and colours of late gothic façades in Poland, Czechia and Germany.

1. Introduction

Restoration work carried out in the years 2004–2005 on the southern façade of the late Gothic Town Hall in Wrocław enabled the hall’s architectural and colour changes to be clearly identified (Legendziewicz and Polak 2005). Based on interdisciplinary architectural, stratigraphic, and chemical studies, as well as on analyses of the building’s iconographic representations, it was possible to recreate and trace the transformations of the colour patterns of its most representative façade (Figure 1).

The Town Hall is located in the south-eastern corner of Wrocław market square. The building is made up of a two-story three-bay building on a rectangular plan, and has a basement. From its north-western side, a 66-m-high tower adjoins it (square at the bottom, and octagonal from the level of the clock faces).

The most representative façade of the Town Hall, which faces south, is three-storey and has ten axes with double openings in the eighth axis (counting from the west). It has a quite regular composition, with slight shifts of the openings in its eastern part (Figure 1). Its horizontal layout, dominated by a monumental length of up to 50 m, is broken by three avant-corps: the highest central one, and two lower ones located at the edges. The walls between the avant-corps, as well as the south-west corner of the building, are reinforced by buttresses. The eastern avant-corps, which is wider than the others, consists of two parts: a section facing south that has a triangular gable with ancillary columns, and another with its front from the east.

Stairs with a stone balustrade are added symmetrically on both sides of the central avant-corps to its side walls. Bay windows, situated on each of the avant-corps, accentuate the third story of the façade, which houses representative rooms. The avant-corps are topped with pyramidal helmets, except for the aforementioned fragment of the eastern avant-corps, which is closed from the south with a gable. The façade is currently covered with stone detail and smoothed plasters that were painted using colour wash in a heterogeneous rusty red colour.

The oldest mention of Wrocław Town Hall comes from 1299 from the city’s accounting book. At that time, the income related to the oldest part of the building, the consistorium (Codex Diplomaticus Silesiae 1860, p. 2), was recorded. In the next two centuries, the building was expanded. The last stage of the transformations of the seat of the municipal authorities of Wrocław was the erection of the southern nave with three avant-corps, which took place in the years 1470–1486 (Zlat 1976, p. 81).

The issue of the development of the architecture of Wrocław Town Hall has been the subject of publications by, among others, Carl Lüdecke (Lüdecke 1898), Rudolf Stein (Stein 1935), Marcin Bukowski and Mieczysław Zlat (Bukowski and Zlat 1958; Zlat 1976), and also Olgierd Czerner (Czerner 1976). In 2002, Rafał Czerner published a summary of the research concerning the architectural changes of the building of Wrocław Town Hall that occurred from the end of the 13th century to the beginning of the 16th century. These changes were presented with regards to medieval middle-market blocks in Silesia (Czerner 2002, pp. 47–48, 88–94). The author also referred to the subject of the evolution of the layout of the southern nave and its avant-corps (Czerner 2002, p. 93). He based his findings regarding the southern façade on research conducted in 1997 (Czerner and Lasota 1999, pp. 14–18; Czerner and Lasota 2000).

The subject of the colours of the medieval southern façade of Wrocław Town Hall, despite the great interest of previous researchers in its architectural and sculptural décor, has not been fully discussed. No publications to date have focused on the colours of the walls and the stone detail of a rich heraldic and ideological content. The following considerations were based on the results of architectural and stratigraphic research, which was extended in order to consider archival iconography studies, such as an inventory of the unpreserved elements of the painting décor. This inventory was conducted by Carl Lüdecke during the renovation of the Town Hall in 1884–1891 (Lüdecke 1898) (Figure 2a,b).

The presentation of the evolution of the design of the most representative facade of the Town Hall is an important aspect in the context of discussing the architectural and stylistic changes in the gothic seat of the municipal authorities of the second largest city in the Czech Kingdom, and the most important city in Silesia. When compared to other medieval Silesian Town Halls, which mainly have ceramic architectural decorations, e.g., in Brzeg (Czerner 2002, pp. 57–58), Namysłów (Lasota and Legendziewicz 2007), Środa Śląska (Czerner and Kościuk 1999), Kożuchów (Legendziewicz and Marcinów 2020), Zielona Góra (Kowalski et al. 2011), or those that only have a small degree of stone frames, e.g., in Świdnica (Czerner 2002, pp. 85, 87), Wrocław Town Hall is distinguished not only by its scale, but above all by the extraordinarily rich architectural and sculptural design of its main facade. Research concerning the colour scheme of the façade of Wrocław Town Hall is important for the analysis of historical colour schemes and colour decorations of medieval Town Hall elevations in Central Europe and Silesia.

2. Results of the Research

2.1. The First Phase of Constructing the Façade (around 1330)

The oldest walls within the southern part of the building, which later underwent a Gothic reconstruction in 1471–1486, were erected during two construction actions (Figure 3). They are located on the edges of the present southern façade. The building in the eastern part of the complex was erected first. It was built as a single-nave building arranged along the east–west axis and adjacent to the east part of the Town Hall’s extension, which was built in around 1330 (Czerner and Lasota 1999, pp. 14–18; Czerner 2002, pp. 89–91). This building consisted of a two-span nave and a diagonally placed avant-corps in the south-eastern corner of the present Town Hall. The remains of the avant-corps include fragments of a dismantled wall with dimensions of approximately 1.70 m/2.80 m, which were found at the height of the present most outer eastern window of the basement.

2.2. The Second Phase of Constructing the Façade (after 1330)

The second building (in chronological order) was built on the western edge of the southern façade. Its implementation took place shortly after the completion of the eastern part. The wing was located along the southern and western part of the oldest building of the Town Hall, which was erected at the end of the 13th century.

The decor of the southern and eastern façades of the western part is partially preserved due to its later reconstructions. On the ground floor of the present western avant-corps, two window openings were recorded, which were probably of ogival shape. On the southern façade there was a window of about 3.60 m wide and about 2.50 m high. The base for the frame was a ceramic windowsill from which only a trace of bricks (set vertically), the so-called “roller”, remained. There was a much smaller opening in the eastern façade. It was located at the same height as the one discussed earlier and was of a similar height. The building’s south-west corner was reinforced with a corner buttress, which is currently visible on the ground floor of the west façade of the west avant-corps.

2.3. The Third Phase of Constructing the Façade and the First Colour Phase (1471–1486)

The construction of the Town Hall’s present southern nave and the central and western avant-corps was probably completed in the years 1471–1486 (Zlat 1976, pp. 83, 89). The façade was composed of seven axes: three axes in the western part, and four in the eastern part. Its division was accentuated by a central bay window.

The present southern façade was rebuilt after the previously existing southern part between the two avant-corps located on the western and eastern edge of the Town Hall was dismantled to the basement level. The wall was erected at the same time as the central avant-corps in one construction action. The construction of the brick walls began with the building of pillars between the windows. Stone profiled frames for the rectangular windows were embedded in the openings. The openings of the ground floor and first floor windows were divided by a stone pillar and a muntin in the form of a Latin cross. A reinforcement in the form of construction arches with a thickness of one brick was made above the basement openings and on the ground floor.

The western avant-corps was also rebuilt. Its walls were dismantled to a height of about 5.70 m. The framing of the ogival opening on the southern wall was removed, and the opening itself was blocked with a brick wall and stone blocks. Parts of the ground floor were also rebuilt by extending the avant-corps to the west by 1.2 m. The form of the eastern avant-corps was also changed. Its south-west diagonal wall was dismantled to the level of the Market Square. The same was done with the vault, which was bricked up. The perimeter walls were built up to the present height. The southern façade on the first floor has two axes and two ogival window openings, which were probably decorated with stone tracery. The façade was finished with a triangular gable with ancillary columns, and lesene that was decorated with pinnacles. Moreover, a richly decorated bay window, supported on corbels, was placed in the east. A similar form was given to the bay window that crowns the central avant-corps, as well as to the one to the west that is more modest in its form (Figure 4).

Brick pillars between the windows and buttresses at the level of the first floor were reinforced by introducing recesses that were closed with a segmental arch. The recesses are decorated with stone consoles and canopies. They were probably prepared for the placement of stone sculptures, which are currently not preserved. In the middle of the length of both sections of the façade (between the avant-corps), there are two narrow buttresses crowned with stone covers in the form of an ogee-shaped arch. In the upper part of the western buttress, there is a stone gargoyle of simple form, which is the mouth of a roof gutter.

The façade at the basement level has nine window openings with stone framings. In the first and ninth axes (from the west), there are large window openings with more decorative bands. The entrance to Piwnica Świdnicka is situated in the central avant-corps. It has a sectional shape and is framed with stone profiled framing. On the ground floor, there are twelve window openings arranged in ten axes. In the eighth and tenth axes, the windows are double. Apart from the avant-corps, the windows with stone bands are placed on a drip cornice. Their openings are divided into four areas by a muntin of a Latin cross shape. In the central avant-corps, above the entrance to the basement, there is a large window opening with a semi-circular arch. The window is flanked by two sculptures that show a genre scene: a drunk journeyman and an angry wife. The sculptures are placed on consoles that have representations of animals, which symbolize the mood of each character: two bears drinking honey (under the man), and two biting dogs (under the woman). Above the figures, there are canopies with pinnacles topped with flowers. The composition of the first floor includes thirteen rectangular window openings that are framed in stone profiled bands, and which have their openings divided into four fields with a muntin of a Latin cross shape. The windows of the central bay window, as well as those in the eighth axis (counting from the west), are doubled.

The openings, which are arranged within the main wall, are set on a drip cornice and topped with tympana in the shape of an ogee arch. They are flanked by a pair of pinnacles topped with flowers. The tympana have a sculptural decoration with a heraldic theme and with elements of the five-field coat of arms of Wrocław. Starting from the west, there is a shield with the letter “W” held by “wild men” in the second axis (Figure 5); in the next axis there is a shield with an eagle with a crescent moon on its chest, which is held by two eagles with raised wings; and in the fourth axis there is the head of St. John the Baptist in a bowl with the date 1483 on its frame, which is held by two kneeling angels. The decorations of the eastern part of the tympana are: an eagle with a crescent on its chest, which is supported by griffins; an eagle on a shield between a pair of eagles with raised wings; a lion with a split tail on a shield between two other lions; and in the last shield there is the head of St. John the Evangelist between a pair of standing angels. The two openings within the eastern avant-corps are shaped as ogival bay windows, which are placed on windowsills supported by a pair of monkeys and dragons.

The cornice under the windows of the first floor is decorated with an openwork floral ornament with figures that depict urban genre scenes: a fight in an inn (Figure 6a), a duel with wooden swords (Figure 6b), musicians playing the pipe and violin (Figure 6c), and two men playing dice. There are also animals: dogs fighting each other, deer running away from a pack of dogs, a lion biting its prey (Figure 6d), lonely animals such as a deer with its antlers tangled in branches (Figure 6f), and also animals related to fairy tales, such as a stork giving a fox food in a high jug (Figure 6e). The crowning cornice, which is much higher, also received a similar thematic decoration. It shows genre scenes that are interwoven with fleshy plant twigs: a woman being carried on a wheelbarrow (Figure 7a), a woman being carried in a basket, travellers with a dog, riders fighting on lances (Figure 7b), a knight killing a dragon, knights fencing, knights having a duel with two-handed swords (Figure 7c), a deer hunting scene (Figure 7d), as well as images of animals: two fighting eagles, a deer and a bear.

The façade has distinctive decorated bay windows in three avant-corps (Figure 5). Two of them (west and middle) are covered with carpet ornaments with floral and geometric motifs. In the corners of the bay windows there are cantilevers for figural sculptures. The cantilevers have engraved angels, and below them there are figures of townspeople, e.g., a trumpeter, a piper, and an innkeeper. The most decorative central bay window is enhanced in its upper part with a strip of ogee-shaped arches, which is decorated with flowers. The eastern bay window is topped with a roof framed by triangular gables with ogival tracery and coats of arms: with the Jagiellonian Eagle (west side), with the head of St. John the Evangelist (east side), and the Czech Lion (in the crowning). The east part of this window is decorated with intertwining ogee-shaped arches topped with pinnacles, and its southern part has a window tympanum with intertwining ogee-shaped arches. The second southern gable of the bay window is decorated with pinnacles. Between these decorations, there are four figures of saints: Andrew, Elizabeth, Mary Magdalena, and Lawrence. Below, between the bay windows of the first floor, there is a sculpture of St. Christopher, and at the height of the inter-story cornice there is a sculpture of St. John the Baptist. The rich sculptural decoration of the bay window and the façade was made by the master Briccius Gauske (Zlat 1976, p. 90).

The remains of the colours registered on the brick surface and the stone detail give an idea of the colour design of the façade. Traces of red colour, which were found in many places (directly on bricks and joints, on stone elements, and on bossage) indicate that the façade was painted in iron red (Figure 8a). At the crockets on the pinnacles flanking the tympana (Figure 8c), and in the bends of the profiled framing, traces of iron red were found directly on the stone. In addition, at least three colours were found on the surface of the stone within the tympana and the heraldic representations that were composed in them (Figure 8b,d). Iron red was also spotted in the backgrounds of the tympana, the folds of the sashes, and on the shield with the representation of the Lion with a split tail (the coat of arms of the Czech Kingdom). Black was found on the bends between the feathers of the Eagle with a crescent on its chest (the coat of arms of Silesia). In turn, white was found between the feathers of the Eagle on the shield and between its two supporting eagles (the Jagiellonian coat of arms), in the folds of the robes of the angels who support the shield with the head of St. John the Evangelist, and also in the folds at the outer edges of the sashes. The preserved remains of the painting indicate that the façade, completed in 1486, was entirely painted with red monochrome, with the architectural detail being emphasized with iron red. The elements of the coat of arms of Wrocław, which are placed in the tympana of the windows of the first floor, had a colour scheme that was in line with the heraldry (Legendziewicz and Polak 2005, pp. 6–10, 17–19).

2.4. The Second Colour Phase (around 1510)

The late Gothic transformation of the southern façade of the Town Hall, completed in around 1510, mainly involved the introduction of painting decorations, which are known from the inventory made by Carl Lüdecke (Lüdecke 1898; Zlat 1976, p. 100). Moreover, within the southern façade of the eastern avant-corps, stone bay windows were introduced in the place of ogival openings.

The painted decoration of the southern façade is probably the last medieval stage of the reconstruction of the seat of the municipal authorities. The strip of the first floor in the eastern part has multi-coloured views that symbolize the city during times of peace, and also has representations of various urban states (including townspeople, a street musician, a guard leaning on a halberd, and a bear playing a bagpipe). In turn, the western part shows the city during war, with images of the walls being conquered (including a soldier climbing a ladder, and defenders throwing stones and firing a crossbow). The entire ground floor is covered with a rectangular plasterwork motif, and the inter-story cornice is enhanced by a painted frieze with motifs: rosettes, a fish’s swim bladder, and ogival tracery.

Unfortunately, after the removal of the layers of cement plaster, only three fragments of traces of this decoration were recorded. Two areas of about 40 cm/40 cm were found in the recesses between the windows of the first floor. In one of them, a fragment of a red frame was found surrounding the blende area, which was painted black, and which originally constituted the background for the figural decoration (Figure 9a). A small strip of plaster was also found above the roof of the eastern avant-corps (Figure 9b). A fragment of the lower edge of the motif painted in white was discovered there. The plaster was made of sand-lime in a pink-sand colour with visible small lumps of not fully slaked lime. The thickness of the plasters ranged from about 5 to 7 mm, and they had a slightly uneven (wavy) texture due to their surface being smoothed with a trowel (Legendziewicz and Polak 2005, p. 9).

3. Discussion

Not many traces of the medieval colours of the southern façade of Wrocław Town Hall have survived to this day. Based on stratigraphic and iconographic studies, it was possible to find and identify the remains of two medieval phases of colour patterns. This allows for a hypothetical partial reconstruction of the changes in the colour scheme of the southern façade. Moreover, it enables the façade to be seen in a slightly different way.

The first Gothic colour phase of the façade is related to the completion of the last stage of the reconstruction of the southern nave of the Town Hall in the years 1471–1486. The façade was then entirely painted in iron red (Figure 10). A multi-coloured stone architectural and sculptural detail stood out against this monochrome background. The preserved remains of red indicate that the parts of the detail that were in line with the brick wall and the stone blocks were painted analogically, merging the surface of the wall. To bring out the details above the windows of the first floor, the backgrounds of the tympana were covered with iron-red monochrome. The red colour found during the tests, which was preserved on these elements, turned out to be consistent with the pigment on the brick wall during the conducted laboratory tests.

In turn, probably to emphasize the richness of the forms of the elements protruding in front of the wall, e.g., pinnacles, flower heads, paint based on iron red was used. The remains of this paint were found on the surface of details, e.g., in the folds at the pinnacles, or on the flowers. The poor state of the preservation does not allow for a reliable reconstruction of the colour of the stonework of the window frames. The decoration of the tympana, which includes elements of the coat of arms of Wrocław, should be seen a bit differently. The colours recorded during the tests on some details confirm their compliance with the colours of the city’s coat of arms (Legendziewicz and Polak 2005, pp. 18–21). Based on these findings, as well as on heraldic studies and historical presentations of the coat of arms of Wrocław, it seems possible to reliably recreate these elements.

In the western part, in the first tympanum (counting from the west), there is a black letter “W” on the yellow shield; in the second tympanum there is a black Silesian Eagle with a white crescent moon on a yellow shield; and in the last tympanum there is the head of St. John the Baptist in a white bowl. In the eastern part, there would have again been a black Silesian Eagle with a white crescent on a yellow shield, a white Jagiellonian Eagle on a red shield, a white Czech lion on a red background, and the head of St. John the Evangelist (also against a red background). The colours of the figures supporting the shields remain unknown. White colour was only found on the tunics of the angels next to the shield with the head of St. John the Evangelist.

The second colour phase, which was much richer than the previous one, dates back to the beginning of the 16th century. The painting decoration of the southern façade was probably made by 1510 (Figure 11). The background of the façade was iron red in a shade lighter than that which was made in around 1486. The blinds between the first-floor windows were highlighted in black with red borders (Legendziewicz and Polak 2005, pp. 9, 21). The lower storey was covered with a painted imitation of stone blocks, which is similar in form to the decoration of the façade of the tenement house at 10 Dzierżonia Street in Brzeg (Figure 12a) (Burnita et al. 2006, p. 11). The stone detail was polychrome, but the preserved traces of pigments do not allow for its full colour reproduction (Legendziewicz and Polak 2005, p. 21). The sculptural decoration was complemented by a painted decoration, which filled the free spaces between the elements of the architectural design on the first floor. It shows an image of the city during war (the western part) and peace (the eastern part). It was documented by Lüdecke during works in the years 1885–1888 (Lüdecke 1898, drawings 6–7).

It can be seen in the drawings that figural scenes predominated in the paintings. On the west side of the middle bay window, soldiers climbing ladders, and defenders shooting at attackers with a crossbow, or throwing stones at them, can be seen. On the other side of the bay window, scenes from the city are shown: townspeople playing and drinking together, traveling musicians, and a city guard. In the niches on the main wall, there were supposed to be sculptures of representatives of various social classes. However, the figures were actually painted in the recesses. The fragmentarily preserved plasters with traces of polychrome enable knowledge about the colours of the polychrome to be extended, but only to a small extent. It is known that the background of the figural representations above the windows was red, and that the ornaments and joints between the bossage were white. Unfortunately, the way the colourful characters and their costumes were decorated remains unknown (Legendziewicz and Polak 2005, p. 21). It can be assumed that they were probably multi-coloured, as evidenced by the preserved figure of a knight with a sword and a Bible from the decoration of the southern façade of the Town Hall in Środa Śląska (Figure 12b).

Conservation works on the southern façade of the Town Hall, which were carried out in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, were conducted during three renovations managed by: Lüdecke in the years 1884–1891 (Lüdecke 1898), Stein between 1934 and 1939 (Stein 1935), and Bukowski during the post-war reconstruction carried out in the period between 1949 and 1953 (Bukowski and Zlat 1958). The works mainly included the repairing of the brick face under the crowning cornice and around the framing of window openings, as well as the supplementing or replacing of stonework elements, which mainly concerned canopy tops and the fields under the eaves in the western avant-corps. During the works carried out under the direction of Lüdecke, carved figures were placed on the consoles (representations of historical artisans). In turn, the cement plaster of the façade that has exposed stone blocks was made in 1949–1953 during works directed by Bukowski (Bukowski and Zlat 1958, pp. 73–81, 90, 101). Unfortunately, during each of these projects, no identification of the colour scheme of the stone detail and the façade was carried out. It was only Lüdecke who made an inventory of the preserved fragments of the façade decorations from around 1510 (Lüdecke 1898, drawings 6–7). This material was used by the authors as one of the sources for the conducted analyses, which were discussed above.

4. Conclusions

The colour scheme of the southern façade of the Town Hall, which was completed in around 1484, is an example of a popular colour solution in Silesia. The façades of the town halls in Namysłów (Lasota and Legendziewicz 2007, p. 51) and Brzeg (Legendziewicz 2019, pp. 6–7) were also painted in a similar manner. The colourful decor of the façade of Zielona Góra Town Hall, apart from having red monochrome, had white painted joints, with the windows and blinds being framed in grey (Kowalski et al. 2011, pp. 28–29). Apart from red, other colours were also used for façades. The façades of Paczków Town Hall from around 1474 were painted white and had red joints (Legendziewicz 2017, p. 8). At the end of the 15th century, after the fire in 1483, the façades of Namysłów Town Hall were painted black (Lasota and Legendziewicz 2007, p. 51). The architectural decoration and colour scheme of Wrocław Town Hall (the first phase of the colour of the façade) was a unique combination of a monochromatic background and multi-coloured rich architectural detail.

The stone detail of the southern façade is a unique example of the late Gothic architectural design of the seat of the municipal authorities. It can only be compared to the decoration of the façade of the Stone House in Kutna Hora in the Czech Republic, which was completed in the years 1485–1499 (at the recommendation of Prokop Kroup) by Briccius Gauske, who was also employed during the works conducted in Wrocław Town Hall (Zlat 1976, p. 91).

The painted decor that was completed in around 1510 should be seen in a similar way, as it also complements the rich stone decorations. It is difficult to define the influence of this decoration on the late Gothic architecture of town halls in Silesia, and we do not know of any other example of this type from the area. The medieval colour scheme was mainly monochromatic with red, black, or white. Small images of the richness of the forms and colours of the polychrome on the southern façade of Wrocław Town Hall can be seen in its remains, as well as in the preserved interior of Środa Śląska Town Hall, which is dated by historians to the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries (Figure 13) (Czerner and Kościuk 1999, Figure 4, pp. 141–49).

The multi-coloured decoration that was finished during the second colour phase not only filled the smooth parts of the walls, but above all enriched the composition and decoration of the southern façade of the Town Hall. This does not change the general view of the southern façade, where ambition and a sense of taste of the Wroclaw bourgeoisie are not only illustrated by the rich sculptural decoration, but also by the unique multi-coloured paintings. This unusual coincidence makes the southern façade of Wrocław Town Hall one of the most interesting and rich late Gothic projects in Central Europe.