Department I - Polish painting and sculpture before 1764
Department I - Polish painting and sculpture before 1764
This collection brings together a range of paintings and sculptures created between the 14th and 18th centuries as well as stone originals and gypsum casts of historical objects dating to the 12th-19th centuries, which have not survived in their original form.
Of the greatest value are the works dating back to the 14th, 15th and early 16th centuries, compiled at the Museum since its inception. They are objects of sacral art, originally elements of the interior design of churches and cloisters, mostly in the area of today’s Małopolska. They help trace all the stylistic phases in the art of southern Poland, starting from a modest group of sculptures dating to the 14th century, which presaged the flourish of what was called the ‘beautiful style’ in the first three decades of the 15th century (Virgin With Child from Krużlowa, ca. 1420), to Krakow’s art of the second half of the 15th century (the Dominican polyptych, ca. 1465 and the Augustinian polyptych, ca. 1468), and late-Gothic realism culminating in the works of Veit Stoss (Gethsemane, ca. 1485).
This collection also includes an interesting group of portraits, from an early – and quite rare for Polish painting – rendering of devotionally posed Jan Herburt, secretary to king Sigismund August (ca. 1570), and 17th-century Sarmatian portraits of simple composition (such as of Stanisław Żółkiewski or Jarosz Zyzemski), to full-length 18th-century images of magnates (Mikołaj Sieniawski, Michał Serwacy Wiśniowiecki and others).
A group of 17th and 18th-century coffin portraits is the pivotal element of this collection. It is very diversified in terms of form, ranging from classic, hexagonal, male and female effigies cropped below the bust (e.g. a likeness of Adam Wężyk, who died in 1668, or a portrait of a young woman who died in 1686), to a uniquely composed female portrait with the Krzywda and Bończa family crests, where the woman is showed nearly in full figure and posed in an elegant, courtly manner (ca. mid-18th century).
The collection is divided into sections with the use of stone originals and gypsum casts of architectural and sepulchral sculptures, most of them going back to the Middle Ages. Examples include Romanesque tympanums from Strzelno and Wysocice or sculptures from St. Mary’s Church in Krakow.
The set of wooden ceiling boards decorated in polychrome from SS. Simon and Jude Church in Kozy near the town of Bielsko-Biała is unparalleled by any other Polish museum.
Of the greatest value are the works dating back to the 14th, 15th and early 16th centuries, compiled at the Museum since its inception. They are objects of sacral art, originally elements of the interior design of churches and cloisters, mostly in the area of today’s Małopolska. They help trace all the stylistic phases in the art of southern Poland, starting from a modest group of sculptures dating to the 14th century, which presaged the flourish of what was called the ‘beautiful style’ in the first three decades of the 15th century (Virgin With Child from Krużlowa, ca. 1420), to Krakow’s art of the second half of the 15th century (the Dominican polyptych, ca. 1465 and the Augustinian polyptych, ca. 1468), and late-Gothic realism culminating in the works of Veit Stoss (Gethsemane, ca. 1485).
This collection also includes an interesting group of portraits, from an early – and quite rare for Polish painting – rendering of devotionally posed Jan Herburt, secretary to king Sigismund August (ca. 1570), and 17th-century Sarmatian portraits of simple composition (such as of Stanisław Żółkiewski or Jarosz Zyzemski), to full-length 18th-century images of magnates (Mikołaj Sieniawski, Michał Serwacy Wiśniowiecki and others).
A group of 17th and 18th-century coffin portraits is the pivotal element of this collection. It is very diversified in terms of form, ranging from classic, hexagonal, male and female effigies cropped below the bust (e.g. a likeness of Adam Wężyk, who died in 1668, or a portrait of a young woman who died in 1686), to a uniquely composed female portrait with the Krzywda and Bończa family crests, where the woman is showed nearly in full figure and posed in an elegant, courtly manner (ca. mid-18th century).
The collection is divided into sections with the use of stone originals and gypsum casts of architectural and sepulchral sculptures, most of them going back to the Middle Ages. Examples include Romanesque tympanums from Strzelno and Wysocice or sculptures from St. Mary’s Church in Krakow.
The set of wooden ceiling boards decorated in polychrome from SS. Simon and Jude Church in Kozy near the town of Bielsko-Biała is unparalleled by any other Polish museum.