Polvijärvi has rejoiced for 140 years since the discovery of the altar painting in the belfry and attic. Now there is a new problem ahead. Where does the church find the money to renovate the painting, which costs tens of thousands of euros?
“Now was it found? ”
This was heard from the phone when I was a photography entrepreneur from Knee Lake Jari Matikainen played by a professor of art history Heikki to Halle last spring.
A couple of weeks earlier, Matikainen had been amazed in the back room of his photography shop.
It was March, and the Titians already tuned their spring songs in the church village of Polvijärvi, North Karelia. The Polvijärvi parish celebrated the 140th anniversary of the home church.
Matikainen prepared a photo exhibition about the history of the church. Retired pastor Erkki Jaskari had promised to help collect the props.
To that end, Jaskari had gathered a 120-year-old priest in the loft. All sorts of unnecessary stuff had been exported there for decades, as is often taken to the winches.
Jascar knew that the altarpiece of the previous church lay in the attic. He had seen it once before while working as pastor of Lake Polvijärvi.
The chancellor of the parish had knocked out a winch in the 1990s and brought down a rolled-up painting. For a while, the painting was spread on the floor in the priest’s hall, but in the midst of everyday hustle and bustle, no more attention was paid to it. So the painting was rolled up again and taken back to the attic.
The old painting had once been taken to the loft of Polvijärvi’s parsonage, which was completed 120 years ago.
In March 2021 Erkki Jaskari brought a roll about 1.5 meters wide to Matikainen’s photography shop.
The linen roll smelled old and attic and felt brittle. The men opened it carefully.
The roll opened a large, more than two-meter-long oil painting depicting the crucified Jesus.
“It’s as if we have opened Tutankhamun’s tomb,” Matikainen says.
“It was mute. It was so old and so great. I immediately realized I can’t frame this and put it on display. This is a cultural-historical discovery. ”
The men knew that the painting had been an altarpiece in the first church in Lake Polvijärvi, built in 1850. It was not known otherwise.
Jari Matikainen played amanuensis at the Joensuu Art Museum To Maria Inker. This did not know the book any more. He said nothing should be done about the painting until museum experts come to the scene.
Matikainen moved the painting to better security in his basement studio. With a little undercover work – with the help of lights and an image processing program – he managed to read the author information from the dark bottom of the painting: C. F. Blom and 1844.
The painting was already 177 years old.
Photography entrepreneur Jari Matikainen began to find out the backgrounds of the painting brought from the attic and contacted the Joensuu Art Museum. In the photo, he is emptying his photography business in September, which he closed in the fall.
From the Internet, Matikainen found out that he was a professor of art history Heikki Hanka The University of Jyväskylä has once done his dissertation on painting.
“Now is it found?” the professor stated with delight when Matikainen called him.
Painting the backgrounds began to fade.
In April, the amanuensis of the Joensuu Art Museum, Karoliina Katila (right) and Maria Inkeri, visited the basement of the Matikainen photography movement in Polvijärvi to evaluate the found painting. Maria Inkeri is pleased that Matikainen quickly contacted a regional art museum expert. That is exactly what should be done if works are found, he recalls.
Carl Fredrik Blom had been a prolific artisan painter who had toured in the 1820s and 1850s to make altar paintings, especially in Satakunta, Pirkanmaa, Central Finland and Savo.
According to Hanka, the painting of Lake Polvijärvi may have been originally made in Pielavesi, Savo, but it was transported to North Karelia. It was eventually donated to Lake Polvijärvi in 1850, when the first, modest church was completed there.
The painting was the altarpiece of the church until 1881, when a new, current church was completed for the parish. The old altarpiece was no longer desired there.
Heikki Hangan according to the increase in art education, the appreciation of artisan painters decreased already during Blom’s lifetime. Comments were also attached to the Polvijärvi painting: “högst illa målad” or “very ugly painted”.
According to Hanka, the work contains the clumsiness of an artisan painter.
“But a viewer who has gone through the trends of modernism thinks that clumsiness like that can seem unobtrusively genuine and charming,” Hanka says.
“Painters of the late 19th century, [Akseli] Gallen-Kallela and partners, strive for a rug-like, primitive representation. Here it is, by nature. ”
Old altar paintings were discarded when churches were renovated or new churches were built. The old altarpieces were moved to warehouses, belfries and winches.
“They were not systematically destroyed, but I have dug up one of this painter’s works from under the board warehouse,” Hanka says.
In Polvijärvi Blom’s painting was first taken to the belfry. At some point, it was moved to the loft of a later completed parsonage. Mention of the painting disappears from the parish furniture catalogs after the 1930s.
The altar painting thus disappeared from the books and covers. As generations changed, it was also forgotten in people’s minds.
Retired Pastor Erkki Jaskari and current Pastor Satu Ruhanen in the attic of the Polvijärvi rectory, where the old altarpiece had once been moved from the belfry. Jaskari picked up a painting roller under the roof of the lapland roughly from behind Ruhanen.
While writing his dissertation in the 1990s, Hanka also studied the fate of painting in Polvijärvi. At that time, no one could tell the whereabouts of the painting.
Hanka had to state in her dissertation that the altarpiece had disappeared.
“I’ve been waiting for it to pop out. That’s how it then burst, ”he says.
Hangan according to it, it is not uncommon for such treasures to be found to be lost in the churches. An inventory of artefacts is carried out in the Evangelical Lutheran Church. The church board has obliged parishes to make their inventory of objects by 2024.
“There is something quite miraculous and strange about almost every church. Information about these objects has been lost because there has been no register in which these have been compiled. And there has been no expertise to even identify them, ”says Hanka, who has been involved in promoting the inventory.
“There are still a lot of valuables in the churches that I hope would come to light and be found somewhere someday.”
In September amanuensis Maria Inkeri and Karoliina Katila open the door to the storage facilities of the Joensuu Art Museum. Here, Blom’s 177-year-old altarpiece is now awaiting further plans.
According to the amanuensis, the work is in good condition for its age, even though it has been kept for more than a hundred years in a cold belfry and attic. It has not been destroyed by the cancers, and the paint surface has not deteriorated very badly.
Carl Fredrik Blom painted the altar painting in oil on canvas in 1844.
However, there is something in the middle of the work that it didn’t originally have.
“Something has been done about it afterwards. It has sometimes been tried to fix it, ”says Katila.
“But it’s always shocking when something like that is found.”
Polvijärvi the current pastor Satu Ruhanen rejoices at the discovery of the old painting. Alongside the joy, however, Ruhanen’s mind is concerned with practical matters.
“It is really valuable and great that such a thing has been found. But something also needs to be done for the painting. Where in the world do we find the money for that? ” Ruhanen says.
The congregation has now insured the painting worth 50,000 euros. The fate of the rest of the painting has not yet been decided.
“We are a small, relatively low-income church, and conservation is expensive. There is talk of several tens of thousands of euros. We do not have such money to be deducted from the budget, ”says Ruhanen.
Already, the parish is realizing its properties to find savings. The old parish house was sold in the autumn for 16,000 euros.
Congregation and the museum are now working together to find out the conservation plan for the painting and its funding. In Polvijärvi, fundraising and funding opportunities in the art sector are being considered.
“In any case, the goal is to get the painting in order in the next few years. You just have to find funding for something, ”says Ruhanen.
According to the amanuensis of the art museum, the work is in good condition for its age, even though it has been preserved in the attic.
According to Hanka, Blom’s work has been preserved in congregations. In Korpilahti and Hankasalmi, the old altarpieces are now in the church galleries. In Loimaa Forest Church, the painting was returned to the altar.
Even Satu Ruhanen should like painting in Polvijärvi, although there are also sales supporters in the parish.
“Despite the fact that we don’t have the money, I wouldn’t be very suddenly willing to give up work. The Polvijärvi parish was once born through hard work and effort. The painting is a tribute to its history and the work done in front of the church. ”
Ruhanen has also thought of a suitable place for painting. He would place it on the side wall at the front of the church. To a church where it was not cared for 140 years ago.
Erkki Jaskari and Satu Ruhanen in the current 140-year-old church in Polvijärvi. Ruhanen shows in the front of the church a place where he thought the restored altarpiece could be placed.
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