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Tykocin
The Baroque Holy Trinity Parish Church in Tykocin is
one of the most beautiful monuments of the old Polish
period. The construction of a brick Christian temple in
the town is closely connected with the idea to regulate
its development according to the rules of Baroque
urban planning, implemented from the 1740s by the
owner of Tykocin, Jan Klemens Branicki, the Grand
Hetman of the Crown. In addition to the construction
of a parish church, the reorganisation of the town
resulted in the transformation of the Christian square
into a representative town square with the erection
of a monument to Stefan Czarniecki in its centre
(1763), the rebuilding of the Great Synagogue in the
Jewish quarter and the building of a new Bernardine
monastery.
The Holy Trinity Church, closing the eastern frontage
of the regulated market square, was built in 1742-1749.
The body itself was erected in 1742-1745, probably
to a design by the architect Thomas Belloti II, while
further work was taken over by Branicki’s court
architect – Jan Henryk Klemm. He made corrections
to the original plan and designed the church’s façade,
bell towers, arcaded links to the façade and a gate
with busts of the Evangelists (1748-1749). Around
1775, a stepped gable designed by the Białystokbased
architect Józef Sękowski was added over the
tympanum of the façade.
The church is a three-nave orientated wall-andpillar
basilica with side aisles in the form of a row of
connected side chapels. Its three-bay body was built on
a rectangular plan, with a chancel of the height and
width of the nave. On both sides of the façade there
are square two-storey bell towers, projecting in front of
its face. They are connected to the body of the church
by single-storey, three-bay semicircular galleries, which
enhances the effect of the temple dominating the
entire market space.
The church’s furnishings are late Baroque and Rococo.
Most of it was commissioned by Hetman Branicki in the
workshops of the best artists and craftsmen in Warsaw,
while other elements were made by his employees from
the Branicki Palace in Białystok. The main altar contains
the ‘Holy Trinity’ painting by Szymon Czechowicz, the
artist commissioned by many magnate families of the time.
In the present décor of the basilica, attention is drawn to
two full-figure portraits: of Jan Klemens Branicki and his
third wife Elżbieta (Izabela) Branicka, née Poniatowska,
painted by Antoni Tallmann and transferred to the church
in Tykocin at the beginning of the 19th century.
The Baroque Basilica is separated by an iron fence with
a gate located on the axis of the façade. It is formed by two tall rectangular columns with tent-shaped canopies
bearing the busts of the four Evangelists by the
sculptor Johann Chrysostomus Redler.
The subordination of the entire city to the overriding
market and church composition in accordance with
the Baroque urban planning principles, as seen in
Tykocin, was exceptionally rare in the pre-partition
Polish Republic.
Prof. Cezary Kuklo
University of Białystok