Images of writing people – authors and their works

Woodcut portrait of Mikołaj Rej from the Krakow edition of Zwierzyniec (Bestiary) of 1574, and the lithograph bust of Adam Mickiewicz from the Warsaw edition of Poetry of 1833 – these and other portraits of wordsmiths are shown at the exhibition devoted to the images of authors and their works.

It features 73 old books, 5 atlases and 14 maps from the National Museum in Krakow’s collection, published between the sixteenth and nineteenth century. The pages of these books show portraits of writers, poets and scholars from Poland and different European countries, active since antiquity until the nineteenth century. The displayed items include the works of authors that are still known and admired today, such as the great ancient Greek and Roman poets Homer and Virgil, but also works that have been forgotten, just like the names of their authors.

Do we remember the faces, or later images of the greatest authors, whose contribution to the development of literature, science, culture and religion is unquestioned? It is worth looking at people who made a living out of writing: poets, writers, Catholic Church saints and remarkable religious reformers, great scholars of different areas – astronomers, historians, geographers and cartographers, medics and travellers. One of the portraits shows Mikołaj Krzysztof “the Orphan” Radziwiłł, who described his eventful trip to the Holy Land that took place between 1582–1584.