Leonard Jan Józef Lepszy

“ In 1895 Julian Falat, the painter of Northern landscape, of vast plains of snow glittering in the sun, and of impenetrable forest thickets, was appointed headmaster of the Cracow Academy of Arts. He had come from the older Cracow School, but later on he followed the latter-day tendencies in art, and became the leader of modern Polish impressionism. His appointment to the headmastership made it possible for him to engage new teachers, and thus by degrees to change the old School of Arts into a real Academy. ”

“ There appear sometimes, in the history of art, powerful individualities, who, without any particular predecessors or followers, attain a great height, and leave us in amazement at their solitary grandeur. Such a God-gifted artist was Peter Michalowski (born at Cracow in 1800, d. 1855) , who, with an eagle-like keenness of mind, clearly perceived his proper tasks and went to their execution with impulsive, spontaneous inspiration. He learned painting in the school of Charlet at Paris, where also his best works are to be found; he generally painted in water-colours ”

“ Claptrap and soulless splendour are the chief characteristics of this period; they are prominent in such monuments of the time as the sepulchres of King John Sobieski, King Michael Korybut, or Bishop Soltyk, on the Wawel. They give most eloquent proof of the decay of art. During the last span of Poland's independence in the eighteenth century Cracow is entirely devoid of artistic genius, Warsaw having become a centre of attraction through the last king's liberality and taste. The short stay of the great Dane Thorwaldsen, in 1820, was of some importance for Cracow. ”

“ It is somewhat strange that in the great Renascence movement, inaugurated and guided in architecture and sculpture by Italian artists, painting should have fallen entirely within the sphere of German influence only. Miniature painting only shows Italian forms, the codices being partly of Italian origin, partly illuminated in Poland after Italian models. The reign of King Stephen Bathory is marked by a great rise of portrait and of battle painting. ”

“ It is not merely his masterful correctness of design, his familiarity with the most recent tendencies in art, and his great susceptibility that deserve high praise; but above all this, his pictures, by the extraordinary creative power of his mind, become a series of grand poems reflecting the very soul of the nation in fantastic allegorical symbols of its sufferings and meditations. ”

“ Besides, we learn from records in the archives that the royal sculptors Filippo da Fiesole, Nicolo Castiglione, and Guglielmo Fiorentino took part in the adornment of this magnificent structure. Antonio da Fiesole was a pupil of Andrea Sansovino. The grand work of all these artists is a perfect gem among the masterpieces of Renascence art on our side of the Alps. Outwardly, the Sigismund Chapel exhibits a square substructure without windows; the moulding of the walls by means of pilasters is exquisitely elegant and neat. ”

“ Excellent in its proportions and in the pictorial aspect of the whole, the church impresses us as a perfect work of art.
The splendour of the edifice is best exemplified by the façade, rich in architectural moulding, and adorned with statues and marble wainscoting. Its conception in its organic entirety is still dominated by the spirit of the Renascence. The enclosure in front of the entrance is formed by statues of the twelve Apostles, all in pathetic attitudes, done by Hieronymus Canavesi. To the same period belongs the sepulchral chapel of St. Stanislas in the cathedral (illustration 60) . ”

“ The ladies of the time were fond of art at home and produced works of exquisite taste, faithfully reflecting the change of fashions and styles. The embroideries of Queen Anne, at least, certainly deserve notice from this point of view. A bookbinding of 1582, or the altar-cloth of the Sigismund Chapel, may be mentioned as fine specimens of this kind of domestic industry.
Besides embroideries and carpets, the manufacture of silk belts, which were an essential feature of the nobleman's costume, forms a highly important branch of applied art. ”

“ Santi Gucci, born at Florence, being a son of Giovanni della Camilla, who restored the cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore, had a good training at home. Of his works, we find on the Wawel the large monument of King Stephen Báthory (illustration 68) . The decorative moulding which is of baroque intricacy, the scrolls and volutes, distinctly show that we are bordering on a new epoch. Sculpture is rapidly approaching a period of decline.
In the whole artistic movement, which thus centres in Wawel Cathedral, the citizens of Cracow take a warmly sympathizing part. ”

“ Mary's Church, is marked by all the characteristics of the Nuremberg School.
In the royal court, the influence of Renascence ideas produced an atmosphere of individualism, of adoration for great minds,, firing the soul of the nation and lifting it up to their own height. Such a disposition was naturally favourable to portrait painting. Accordingly, we possess, from this time, a great many likenesses, to be found on the Wawel, in the cloisters of the Franciscan Church, and in the Museums. Miniature painting was a favourite pursuit both with monks and laity. ”

“ Franconian influence is traceable in such works of Cracow painters as, e.g. the Madonna in St. Nicholas's Church of 1515-1520. Touches of local character sometimes appear in the shape of a Slavonic type of face, or a picturesque background of Cracow landscape; also in the national costume, which there is opportunity for exhibiting in scenes like the martyrdom of St. Stanislas.
Nuremberg influence is by no means the only one acting on Cracow painting; almost simultaneously with it, the Flemish school conies into prominence. ”

“ THE golden age of Polish civilization was that of Renascence Architecture. A great fire in 1499 had turned the royal castle on the Wawel into a ruin. Sigismund the Old, then only Crown Prince, and living at the Hungarian Court, was already endeavouring to find an opportunity for coming into contact with Italian artists. In
55. THE ROYAL CASTLE, WAWEL (SEEN FROM THE EAST) . Hungary he bought, from Italian architects, plans for the castle to be erected, and in 1502 he called Franciscus Italus to Cracow, who built the western part of the palace, with the entrance door and the oriel. ”

“ Thomas Dollabella, mentioned above, was born in 1570 at Belluno in Venetia, and died at Cracow in 1650, after having served three Polish Kings, viz., Sigismund III, Ladislaus IV, and John Casimir (all of the Vasa dynasty) . He is among the most productive artists of his period. His most characteristic feature inherited,—in fact, from his master, Aliense—was a certain decorative grandeur, united with a rather superficial treatment of the canvas. He cared little for nature, but aspired to excellence in brilliant compositions which he threw off with magnificent ease. ”

“ The art of medallion-making makes a fine start in the Renascence period. The museums of Cracow all contain precious collections of medals of this time, the artists being for the most part Italians, such as Caraglio, Padovano, an anonymous one of 1527, and others. The Cracow Mint, under the administration of Justus Decius, was famous for the model coin that came from it. The copper and brass founders displayed a vigorous activity; but when the greatest bell in Poland was to be cast for Cracow cathedral, the task was entrusted to a German, John Behem of Nuremberg (d. 1533) . ”

“ MONUMENT OF QUEEN HEDWIG IN WAWEL CATHEDRAL.
(A. Madeyski.) the project of Thaddæus Rygier, which accordingly carried the day. His monument, in deference to literary considerations with which we are not concerned, was put in a place decidedly ill-chosen from the aesthetic point of view, and thus Central Square was disfigured rather than adorned. Rygier's monument is of very unequal artistic merit; at all events, it is the production of an intelligent artist, anxious to preserve harmony of proportions in the groups, to which he has given a graceful if somewhat lifeless expression. ”

“ The columns supporting either arches or wooden architraves with projecting roofs over them, have Ionic capitals, e.g., those in the palace galleries on the Wawel, or in the cloisters of private houses. A remarkable feature is formed by stone blocks of a peculiar basket-like structure, superimposed on the capitals, and establishing the communication between these and the ceiling. Sigismund Augustus, on ascending the throne, found Renascence art fully developed; it had already struck deep roots in native architecture. The first generation of Italians was dying out ”

“ The most eminent foreign artists entered the king's service and exercised a beneficial influence on the education of Polish adepts. The king formed the design of a series of pictures illustrating Polish history. This idea had a deep suggestive influence on artists' minds all over the country. Thus there appeared at Cracow, Michael Stachowicz, an indifferent artist, but valuable to us for his observation of contemporary events of the life that rolled its tide through the squares, streets, and churches of Cracow ”

“ This Oriental style was not limited to arms of attack; it was applied to all implements of war; we observe it, e.g., in the manufacture of Polish tents after the Turkish fashion, the tent-makers giving an artistic aspect to the cloths, which are richly embroidered on the inside. Examples of their work are found in the museums of Cracow. Embroidery generally reached, even in the early sixteenth century, a high stage of perfection at the hands of artizans called "silk hafters"; it is easy to see that they were aided in their work by real artists. ”

“ Immigration of painters from Nuremberg, Silesia, Saxony, Moravia, and Bohemia becomes more frequent; all these foreigners infuse new life into Cracow painting. It is not improbable that even the greatest master of German Renascence painting, Albrecht Dürer, passed through Cracow on his wanderings. ”

“ From the king's Privy Purse Accounts of 1538 we learn that Dürer also furnished a painted model of the silver altar in Sigismund Chapel; but the actual pictures (illustration 92) , which represent the story of Christ's Passion, are of higher artistic value than Dürer's authenticated works. In the treatment of his subject the painter follows, it is true, the so-called "Little Passion" of Albrecht Dürer, which of course his brother would have done ”

“ In 1501 King John Albert died, and his mother, Queen Elizabeth, a highly gifted lady, whom the humanists used to praise as both daughter of a king, wife of a king, and mother of kings, wishing to perpetuate her beloved, son's memory by a worthy monument, erected, at her own and Prince Sigismund's
66. OLD BUILDINGS IN THE SQUARE AT THE BACK OF ST. MARY'S CHURCH. expense, a sepulchre of red marble and sandstone in the Corpus Christi Chapel, which she had founded in the cathedral. In this work of plastic art two distinct styles appear combined. The marble figure reposing on the tomb is Gothic ”

“ In this, as in the general character of his art, he is most closely followed by Julius Kossak (1824-1899) , who, by his talent for illustration, his productive vigour and everyouthful enthusiasm, became the painter of Polish national life in its most characteristic aspects (illustration 86) . ”

“ In his moral life a perfect Fra Angelico, in art a follower of Carlo Maratta, he was also the first Pole who founded a public school of painting at Warsaw. His pictures, to be found in the National Museum, in the Cracow High School of Art, in St. Anne's Church, &c., prove him to have been a man of no very strong individual powers, an eclectic, devoid of original conceptions, who devoutly followed masters and models such as Raffael, Rubens, Maratta, Guido Reni, Michel Angelo; his most original production is the Vision of St. ”

“ For the task of ornamenting the King's Chapel, Giovanni Cini, of Siena, was selected, a disciple of the famous Lorenzo di Mariano, called Marina. The grotesque character of his ornamentation had a deep influence on the further development of Cracow sculpture in the sixteenth century. About 1530 Gian Maria Padovano, called Musca, came to the royal court. He was medal-maker, sculptor, and architect in one—Il celebre Musca, che lasciava in marmo ed in bronzo opere pregevolissime—had already won a name at home by his decoration of St. ”

“ Opposite to this, there stood formerly the cenotaph of King Sigismund I. The red marble figure of the king, represented in full armour, sleeping, is a work of Gian Maria Padovano. After the death of Sigismund Augustus, his sister Anne ordered the monument of Sigismund I to be raised from the ground and a second one for her brother to be placed below it, which was executed by Santi Gucci. On the south side, Queen Anne had a marble throne erected, with a recumbent image of herself on the front of it (illustration 57) . ”

“ These carvings, however, point to the Prankish school rather than to Italian models; but it is difficult to say, whether they were the work of the king's cabinetmaker, Erasmus Kuncz, or of another man. Among the Polish and German artists who then dwelt at Cracow besides the Italians, one only rises above the common level: John Michalowicz of Urzedów, architect and sculptor, called "the Polish Praxiteles" by his admiring contemporaries. ”

“ STATUE OF COUNT VLADIMIR POTOCKI IN WAWEL CATHEDRAL, BY THORWALDSEN. revival of Cracow sculpture was first started by Charles Ceptowski, a disciple of Thorwaldsen. He educated several artists of the younger generation, such as the brilliantly gifted Leon Szubert, who unfortunately died early, the excellent stone-cutters, Edward and Sigismund Stehlik, and the sculptor Rogozinski. From the Cracow workshop of Valerian Gadomski, a pupil of Filippi, there came several works of high artistic value, which now adorn public places and buildings. All these were teachers in the Cracow School of Arts ”