Saint Ambrose

Folk woodcarving developed in the second half of the 18th and early 19th century. In the countryside and small towns, devotional pictures were mainly distributed by monks of various congregations. Woodcutters originated from guild crafts. Their workshops were in numerous pilgrimage places (Częstochowa, Gidle, Kalwaria Zebrzydowska and Pacławska, Vilnius). Pilgrims purchased miraculous Christological and Marian images or images of patron saints, believing that they brought divine protection to their families and households. Local pilgrimage sites were also popular, including: Leśna and Kodeń in Podlasie or Radecznica near Zamość. Secular, moral or illustrative themes were rarely taken up.

The most frequent theme were images of patron saints with characteristic attributes. People trusted in the powers of saints and entrusted their everyday matters to their protection. Small woodcut devotional pictures were carried with them for protection or placed in various places of the house. One such image was that of St Ambrose, the father and doctor of the Church, Bishop of Milan, who lived in the 4th century and is revered in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches as the patron saint of beekeepers and apiaries. Figural beehives in the shape of the saint, sometimes placed in apiaries, were supposed to protect bee colonies and ensure abundance of honey.

The woodcut, dating from the second half of the 18th century (ca. 1751-1800), was found near Kodeń on the Bug River. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was owned by Father Adolf Pleszczyński, a passionate regional historian and ethnographer (see E/2114/1/ML). In the 1920s, the block came into the possession of the priest Ludwik Zalewski, and in 1922 it was made available to the Warsaw printer Władysław Łazarski in order to make a series of prints (today in the collections of several museums), as evidenced by the inscription on the back: "Printed by Wł. Łazarski on 20 January 1922 in Warsaw. Board of pear wood, 2.3 cm thick [...] from Kodeń in Podlasie". The print comes from the collection of Wiktor Ziółkowski (1893-1978), a painter, graphic artist and collector of folk art.