This year’s defense of bachelor’s theses at the IARD Department of Architecture and Сonservation, Lviv Polytechnic, was fruitful for interesting findings. Natalia Yavna, a student and now a graduate of the Art Restoration specialty, restored a destroyed plaster relief of the head of Jesus Christ of the 19th century of unknown authorship from the collection of the Brody Museum of History and Local Lore. During the defense of her final thesis, the girl proposed a hypothesis that the author of the relief could be the famous sculptor Leonard Marconi.
«For nearly a year, I have been working on the object of my bachelor’s thesis – a bas-relief of the face of Jesus Christ in a crown of thorns, which came to the workshop from the collection of the Brody Museum of History and Local Lore. The work was in an acute state of emergency: the polychrome layer was actively crumbling, fragments of the nose, strands of hair, and beard were missing. The main difficulty was to clean, preserve, strengthen and supplement the object in such a way that even an experienced restorer would not notice it. It was difficult to find at least some information about the relief. But one day, walking along the paths of the Lychakiv cemetery, I came across a direct analogue, which is placed above the door of the chapel of the family of Felix and Maria Yavorsky on field No. 71 – Jesus Christ in a crown of thorns paired with a medallion of the Mother of God. I made a guess that he could be the author of this object. A tombstone with a marble medallion of the face of the Mother of God is installed on the grave of the famous sculptor Leonard Marconi. An identical bas-relief of the Mother of God can be seen next to the relief of Jesus Christ in a crown of thorns in the Yavorsky chapel. If the bas-reliefs are in a pair, it is likely that they have the same author. Therefore, it can be assumed that Leonard Marconi is the author of these bas-reliefs», claims the student.
The given arguments convinced the members of the state examination commission of the validity of the hypothesis. They highly appreciated the student’s efforts. Natalia Yavna received an Honours Diplomas for her study and bachelor’s thesis.
It should be noted that Oleh Rybchynskyi, Doctor of Architecture, and Viktor Melnyk, Candidate of Historical Sciences, were the academic supervisors of the bachelor’s work of Natalia Yavna.
