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Obraz – spotkanie

Author(s): Michael Brötje / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2008

Michael Brötje starts his essay with a discussion referring to two assumptions one can make while confronting the pictures. The first one is: ‘a picture presents something’. According to this one, the viewer should pay attention to ‘what’ is presented in the picture and ‘how’ – i.e. the visual qualities of an object (form, colour, light etc). To understand a picture it is necessary to reconsider a story and an idea of the represented world. The second assumption, however, is: ‘a picture shows itself’. This formula requires the assumption that there is a certain quality, which is an essence of every picture. It is not the story or the form, but a flat, stretched, almost always rectangular surface of the picture. This surface, irremovable in the process of viewing, is the picture. It funds its identity and allows to reveal its truth. The surface differentiates itself into the elements of the presented world - each of them emerges from this surface, step by step, in the process consistent for the eye.In the extensive analysis of the picture, which refers to every motive of the represented world, every relation between its elements, and re-defining all of them as the part of the surface, Brötje indicates, in a convincing way several phases of this process of emerging the elements from the picture surface. The first, referring to the shape of the picture plan, is connected with the relation between the roof and the platform, which leads our view directly to the pillar on the left. The relation between the light and the shadow on the pillar show the phase of discrepancy, contradiction between them, which can be overcome only by throwing a glance at the goods van. The second and the following phases contain the goods van, a factory with its three windows of the same appearance, a grey building without any windows and – as the last one – a handcart on the right, which directs the view back to the platform. In spite of the ordinary scenery, the analysis allows us to recognise it as a vision of the world as a whole, from its creation to this phase of its history – history of Mankind – in which the God was superseded by the reason; as Edward Hopper said: ‘Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world’.Opublikowane01.09.2008Licencja

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V Polsko-Niemieckie Seminarium Wrocław-Halle: „Pomorze Przedodrzańskie w okresie nowożytnym. Pięciowiekowa tradycja i jej recepcja z perspektywy dziejów Kościoła oraz historii sztuki”

Author(s): Dominika Piotrowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2008

From 13th to 19th May 2008 in Zingst, Germany the 5th German-Polish interdisciplinary Seminar Western Pomerania (Vorpommern) in the Early Modern Times. Five-Century Tradition and Its Reception from the Perspective of the Church History and History of Art was held by the Theological Department of Martin Luter University in Halle and Wüttenberg and The Art History of Renassaince and the Reformation Section at The University of Wrocław. The project was supported by The Polish-German Co-Operation Fund. Prof. Udo Sträter, the director of The Interdisciplinary Centre for Research on Pietism at the Theological Department of UML and prof. Jan Harasimowicz, the head of The Art History of Renassaince and the Reformation Section at UWr., led the scientific guidance. The meetings have been held for five years in Poland and in Germany alternately. The topic of this year seminar was devoted to the area of Western Pomerania, the tradition and art of this region from the perspective of theology and art history. Visiting the local monuments of church art accompanied traditional lectures in the seminar programme.

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Recenzja książki Magdaleny Poradzisz „Kościół szpitalny Trójcy Świętej przy ulicy Świdnickiej we Wrocławiu”

Author(s): Aleksandra Jaśniewicz-Downes / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2008

In March 1870 the Corpus Christi Hospital and Trinity Church in Świdnicka Street in Wrocław were pulled down. Located in a district that, over the span of the first decades of the 19th century, became a highly representative part of the city, simple and meager buildings of late-medieval origin did not serve its standards. And as such, they have not drawn the attention of art historians so far. Magdalena Poradzisz in her book ‘Kościół szpitalny Trójcy Świętej przy ul. Świdnickiej we Wrocławiu’ (‘St. Trinity Hospital Church in Świdnicka Street in Wrocław’) systematises the complicated history of the building, tries to reconstruct its architectural form and changes of its facilities over the centuries.Based on the archival sources, the author organises data concerning the history of the hospital buildings. She analyses the iconography of the church and examines the hospital-church structure in its closest environment as well as from the perspective of the entire city with its late-medieval hospital infrastructure. Much attention is devoted to the patronage of the city council and patron’s intentions behind the commission. Extensively discussed adjustments to the interior, executed in the age of the Reformation according to the new confessional circumstances, are seen in the wide context of analogous Silesian examples.This scholarly study brings back the memory of the no longer existing architectural structure and makes essential conclusions on its history. The monograph of a foundation, including a brief analysis of its ideological continuation - the 19th century hospital and church located in the suburbs of the city - is an important contribution to the history of hospital architecture in Wrocław.

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Średniowieczny szpital pw. św. Macieja we Wrocławiu

Author(s): Rafał Eysymontt / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2008

The building of Saint Mathias hospital, described in the article, together with the hospital of Corpus Christi in Mikołaja Street are the only two preserved medieval buildings of this function in Wrocław. The foundation of Saint Mathias hospital ought to be connected with the regency of the Silesian princess Anna, the widow of prince Henry II the Pious (who had fallen in the Battle of Legnica in 1241), in the years 1241- 42. The hospital was already mentioned in 1253.Although the present building has a Classicistic form from the beginning of the 19th century, the hospital hides inside the remains of the 13th-century architecture, which can be compared to other preserved examples of medieval and early modern building of this kind in Western Europe (Lubeck, Beaune, Brugge, Augsburg). Some spectacular remnants of the medieval architecture are visible now in the northern part of the building (a gothic blend). Other parts of the covered with plaster walls have a typical 13th-century structure (brickwork).The longitudinal form of the building, divided into several parts, can also be compared to the original early modern description of the hospital. At that time the hospital was divided into rooms for the sick and for rich residents – namely those who had paid their legats for the hospital fund earlier. The description deriving from the beginning of the 16th century mentions also a room ‘sub longa porticu’, where the sick lay in separate beds. The Saint Mathias hospital welcomed both men and women, which fact can be traced in the known from iconography two parallel wings of the building.The revitalisation of the old building led by the Ossoliński Foundation in the years 2005 and 2006 enabled reconstructing the northern part of the building. The project of a hammer-beam in the assembly hall on the second floor followed the example known from Saint John hospital in Brugge. This way the building in its form from 1807 received one more element connected with its medieval history.

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Trwałość? Użyteczność? Piękno? Architektura dwudziestego wieku w Polsce. Ogólnopolska konferencja naukowa we Wrocławiu

Author(s): Agnieszka Zabłocka-Kos / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2009

On 24-25th April 2009 an all-Polish conference ‘Persistency? Utility? Beauty? Twentieth-century Architecture in Poland’, organised by History of Art Institute at the University of Wrocław together with the History of Art Student’s Scientific Circle and Museum of Architecture, took place in Wrocław. MA and PhD students along with their supervisors, historians of art and architects gave almost thirty lectures dedicated to architecture of the interwar and People’s Republic of Poland periods. The conference brought a spirited discussion and it was decided that from then on such meetings would take place annually in different Polish cities.

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NOBILITATISQVE GERMANAE EXEMPLUM. Wolfgang von Rothkirch und Panthen i jego epitafium z kościoła św. Katarzyny w Makowicach koło Świdnicy

Author(s): Monika Żernik / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2009

Wolfgang von Rothkirch und Panthen had functions of a duke counselor and a starost on the court of Georg Rudolph, duke of Liegnitz and Brieg. Through the eyes of his contemporaries – what was mentioned in Simon Grunaeus’s, rector of St. Mary Church in Liegnitz, funeral sermon – he was seen both as a person of great knowledge and a magnanimous, honest and hard-working man. The epitaph devoted to Rothkirch, placed in a little village church in Makowice near Świdnica, with its form and ideological programme echoing hierogliphics fascination of those times, perfectly matched humanistic currents present at the duke court. The monument was created in ca. 1620 most probably by Georg Weber, one of the most innovative sculptors in the Liegnitz milieu. The dominant role of words as the main bearer of the dead’s praise, as well as the used emblems showing vanitative contents, which – with high probability – may be assumed as Simon Grunaeus’s work, accentuate the monument’s individual character, and also allow us to see Wolfgang von Rothkirch’s epitaph as an elite work, aimed at educated circles of recipients.

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„My house is my castle”. O semiologii dziewiętnastowiecznych pałaców czynszowych Wrocławia

Author(s): Bożena Grzegorczyk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2009

The subject of this analysis are three tenement houses in Wroclaw, aiming to be a „zins-Palast”. Each of them received the name of its principal. The first one was a house belonging to the Jewish family firm „Moritz Sachs”, built during the years 1871-73 and situated at a plot on the corner of Teatralny Square and Świdnicka Street. The second one was a commercial establishment founded by baron Josef Huppmann-Valbella during the years 1873-75 at Kołłątaja Street 30/32. The third was at first glance a more modest tenement house, but erected at the foot of the flank of Liebich´s Hill by the town council member Gustav Friderici in the years 1875-77.Our analysis is based on the method suggested by Umberto Eco in „La struttura assente”. The model of the Florentine palazzo was taken as a reference point, together with its whole context of meanings assigned to this type of achievements (the family habitat, the place for political discussions and meetings with clients, the owner´s testimony stato and gloria, the owner´s statue of power and triumph).Analysing this assumption special attention has been paid to these elements of the Renaissance origin, which decided their palatial image. Consequently our observations were directed towards the lay-out, the spacial outline, the interior decorations and furnishings. Because the Renaissance palazzo´s reveal in the context of ‘openness’, we did try to present them above all in the principal´s complexion. As a result, it seems, that only the house of the „Moritz Sachs” firm deserves the name palatial residence.

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Dzwony wieży ratusza w Nysie

Author(s): Krzysztof Pawlik / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2009

The town hall tower in Nysa [German: Neisse] was built in the years 1488-1499. It was 89 m high. Four bells were hung in its helm. Three of them were clock bells. The town hall tower clock came into being ca. 1650.The oldest one, the second hour bell, was cast in 1498 by Bartel Lindenrath, a bellfounder from Nysa. Two other – the first hour bell and the quarter bell – were made by Peter Herel, a bellfounder from Nysa, in 1629. The last one, not being a clock bell, was cast in 1749. It bore the name of convicts’ bell, later also an alarm bell or a „Schließglocke” (English: ‘closing bell’), as it used to strike at 9 pm to get city gates closed. This bell was mentioned in the sources in the 16th and 17th centuries. It may be supposed that it was recast in the 18th century.All four bells survived World War I as they were not commandeered. During World War II, in 1942, the convicts’ bell was taken out from the tower and recast for war purposes, while the three clock bells were left in the tower. In March 1945 during Red Army’s attack on Nysa the town hall tower was seriously damaged and collapsed together with the bells, nevertheless they could still be used.After the war, ca. 1947-1948, the preserved bells found their place in catholic parishes. The second hour bell of 1498 was hung in the belfry of St. Jacob church in Nysa and after the war it was recast. The quarter bell of 1629 found its place in Our Mother of Sorrows church in Nysa, and the first hour bell of 1629 was placed in the chapel in Sucha Kamienica [German: Dürrkamitz] in the poviat of Nysa.

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Podróż do wnętrza miasta. Pierwsze wrażenia Franciszka Krzywdy-Polkowskiego z pobytu w mieście „drapaczów nieba”

Author(s): Rafał Ochęduszko / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2009

In January 1925 on the pages of the Cracow journal ‘Architekt’ an article by Franciszek Krzywda-Polkowski was published. In the text entitled Impressions of the sojourn in the country of ‘sky scrapers’ the author described his memories from New York, where he started to work in 1924 for the architects office McKim, Mead & White. Special attention should be paid to the initial description of the very first moments spent in the city. The modern way of perceiving the city space, fully performed by Franciszek Krzywda-Polkowski in the quoted fragments, is characterised by abandoning the panoramic (static) perspective, typical for realistic poetics, for the benefit of the pedestrian’s perspective, which is determined by movement, changes of view points and removing the distance to the experienced space. Attractiveness of Franciszek Krzywda-Polkowski’s text, which undoubtedly comes as a new quality in Polish writing about architecture, derives from a few coinciding elements: an up-to-date topic, which New York was at that time and the discussion on acceptable heights of buildings in a city; the author’s writing skills, his courage in applying modern form of narration; also the character of his stay in New York – he was a traveler who, glancing ‘from the outside’, is able to notice the every-day life of the place where we happen to be in a more penetrating way.

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Współczesny pomnik religijny: Kolumna Chrystusa Króla Wszechświata na Ostrowie Tumskim

Author(s): Joanna Lubos-Kozieł / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2009

The article presents the analysis of the Column of Christ, King of the Universe erected on Ostrów Tumski in 2000 to celebrate the millennium of the diocese in Wrocław. It maintains exceptionally traditional and conservative forms. It has been based on models originating in old art which have been followed in a direct, almost mechanical way. The concept of a column monument derives from the commonly known in Poland King Sigismund’s Column in Warsaw, while the figure of Christ the King is a faithful copy of a wooden sculpture from the turn of the 19th century, located in St. Maurice Church in Wrocław. Despite its not creative, lacking any artistic invention, hanging onto the chosen patterns, the authors of the Wrocław monument have made numerous mistakes and showed awkwardness. What strikes in the column is naiveness and simplification in forming details for example. The material also jars: black and red polished granite, which the cylinder, the base and the beam are made of. As an unquestionable failure comes the usage of stone blocks and slabs of small sizes to raise the column that must have been attached in many spots. Along with the poor level of performance it brought pitiful results. Not adapting the height of the copied figure of Christ to the high level of exposing it is also doubt arousing. It is difficult to regard the Wrocław Millennium Column as a successful work. It is not convincing artistically, nor meaningful; it does not even bear the traces of craftsmen’s well-made job.

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Kaplice wschodnie kościoła cystersów w Henrykowie jako wyraz nowych zadań społecznych śląskich klasztorów mniszych w czasach baroku

Author(s): Zuzanna Mikołajek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2009

Two eastern baroque chapels in Henryków were erected from the very beginning to propagate faith what resulted in architectural and spatial disposition of eastern part of the church. The northern chapel was created for the needs of the Holy Trinity brotherhood established in Henryków, whereas the southern chapel most probably gathered members of St. Joseph brotherhood who lived in the surroundings of Henryków. The two small chapels, shaped analogically and symmetrically, are central buildings. They are an apparent extension of the church aisles, what was accentuated by two architectural means: firstly each of the chapels was given a vestibule of the same width as the aisle, secondly the entrance has a form of an arcade and the same width as the vestibule and the aisle. Especially in the case of the Holy Trinity Chapel this access to the aisle and a large size of the entrance, which allowed easy communication, appeared to be indispensable. On the occasion of great brotherhood celebrations there were crowds of worshippers coming to the church, who wanted to participate in masses celebrated in the chapel. Such a small interior however, would not have held everyone, so some of them remained in the aisle, participating in prayers and seeing the altar. Ideological programmes of the discussed chapels include contents propagated by the Holy Trinity brotherhood of Henryków and St. Joseph fraternity of Krzeszów. The altar paintings were saturated with mystic spirituality of mediaeval saint Bernard of Clairvaux, moreover emblematic fresco paintings with complicated symbolics in the Holy Trinity Chapel refer to many centuries of iconographic tradition of the Catholic Church. Architectural and spatial disposition of the eastern part of the church, transformed in the age of Baroque in regard of the needs of laity, and ideological expression of the two outermost chapels reflect the change of duties and tasks of monk monasteries after The Council of Trent.

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Wołyń i obrazy

Author(s): Waldemar Okoń / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2009

In the article are discussed many views of Volyn – the land situated in the former borderland of Polish Commonwealth (so called Kresy, at present Ukraine) with its historical capital city in Lutsk. The first of these views were executed in 1781 by Jan Henryk Müntz, the following ones by such artists as Kazimierz Wojniakowski, Zygmunt Vogel or later by Napoleon Orda. A particular place in creating Volyn’s iconography takes one of the best renown Polish artists of the 19th century, a writer and a draughtsman Józef Ignacy Kraszewski. He lived there for many years and he often used to describe and draw monuments of this land, creating fictional and artistic Volyn landscapes, settled in the postulated by Kraszewski ‘cordial history’. Its main task was to evoke emotions, not only ‘picturesque’, but also patriotic and national emotions regarding political captivity in those times. Volyn seen from this perspective is the land filled with both bloody and heroic occurrences from the history of the former Polish Commonwealth, a colourful place, propitious for home version of genre art (images of ‘types’ of the local people, their customs and rites) and landscape painting – Polish version of realistic-impressionistic painting (Józef Chełmoński, Stanisław Masłowski, Leon Wyczółkowski and their many followers). History of ‘Volyn in images’, at least for Polish culture, ended with the Soviet army encroaching this area in September 1939, and the very Kresy became then an element of Polish national mythology, which derived literary and historical inspirations from the images of Volyn and the rest of Kresy alike until now.

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Geyner versus Reiner. Kwestia wątpliwego współautora fresków w kaplicy opata Hochberga we Wrocławiu

Author(s): Agata Kaczmarek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2010

The article deals with the question of authorship of the set of frescoes decorating the vaulting of the abbot Hochberg’s chapel in the former Premonstratensians church in Wrocław. In the literature which mentions the paintings Wenzel Lorenz Reiner is most often assumed to be their author, however not only once, a mysterious painter Martin Geyner (Geyer) was ascribed to create or co-create them. Analysing the reference literature we can presume that the name of Geyner came here as the result of a mistake made by Kundmann, who was the first to produce a short description of the painterly decoration of the chapel eleven years after it had been erected. What is surprising, Kundmann did not even mention the name of Reiner, ascribing the frescoes to Geyner and naming him ‘a famous painter from Prague’. The information about Geyner was repeated later by many researchers, although he was not regarded as the only author of the paintings. The publications however, caused in a significant way the birth of the myth of the frescoes authorship. The contract for the paintings execution, which has been preserved in the State Archive of Wrocław, leaves no doubts about their author. It was signed between the abbot Hochberg and Reiner on 16 July 1725, and its contents allows us to claim, with the highest probability, that Reiner was the only executor both of the design of all the paintings and the frescoes themselves. Furthermore, in regard to the paintings analysis based on the photographs this opinion seems to be right.

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Z najnowszych badań nad krasnoludkami. Rüdiger Helmboldt, „Bunte Zwerge aus Thüringen. Ein Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte der (Garten)Zwerge”, Thüringer Freilichtmuseum Hohenfelden, Hohenfelden 2009

Author(s): Joanna Lubos-Kozieł / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2010

Rüdiger Helmboldt’s book on the activity of ceramic workshops in Turingen producing clay garden gnomes comes as the first so extended scientific study of the title issue. The manufactures of Turingen, gathered in the area of Gräfenrode, Ilmenau, Waltershausen and their surroundings, were the most important centre of garden gnomes production on the German lands. The author refers to many written records and iconographical sources, e.g. press advertisement, illustrated company catalogues, commercial correspondence, archival photographs of workshops, while writing about the history of the gnomes from Turingen. The reproducing of these often fascinating archival materials, together with many contemporary photographs of the gnomes’ figurines constitute rich illustration material. Thanks to this Helmboldt’s book is both a scientific elaboration with splendid exemplification and a publication attractive for a wide audience.

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Obraz jako przedmiot i metoda badań, czyli trzecie cyfrowe spotkanie z zabytkami

Author(s): Agnieszka Seidel-Grzesińska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2010

On 24-26 September 2009 at the seat of the Institute of Art History at the University of Wrocław a conference entitled ‘Image as a reasearch topic and study method’ – the third meeting in the cycle ‘Digital encounters with art’ – took place. Dealing with complex and specialised problems related to the situation of a picture in contemporary research in art, and especially the use of digital reproduction and computer visualisation methods, becoming more and more popular, were possible thanks to the co-operation of the institutions representing the technical sciences – the Research and Academic Computer Network and the Wrocław University of Technology – Wrocław Centre for Technology Transfer – and also of the Foundation of Palaces and Gardens’ Valley (Fundacja Doliny Pałaców i Ogrodów Kotliny Jeleniogórskiej) connected with the protection of historic landscape. The conference programme covered various issues including: the techniques and technologies which may be used in monument documentation with special attention paid to photogrammetry, and 2D and 3D scaning and printing; the question of usage of digital tools in analysing – both realistic and illusory – architecture and landscape; and questions about the role of a digital picture in documentation and conservatory activities. The conference ended with the section entitled ‘In search of an addressee’ devoted to availability of the results of researching the cultural heritage to various groups of recipients.

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Kościół św. Marcina w Barkowie koło Żmigrodu – stan badań, analiza i wartość

Author(s): Michał Pieczka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2010

The article deals with the complex history of the place and the circumstances of raising St. Martin Church in Barkowo near Żmigród. The author, however, focuses foremost on analysing and interpreting artistic phenomena related to the object. The architecture and furnishing of St. Martin church come as the crucial question amidst the author’s considerations being a fairly interesting example of Late Baroque sacral architecture from the area of the borderline between Silesia and Greater Poland. The church was raised in the years 1783-1787 within the domain of von Hatzfeldt family most probably as the foundation of the bishop of Wrocław Anton Ferdinand von Rothkirch-Panthen. Still it is not known who was its architect as there are no archival records referring directly to the act of building the church.St. Martin Church in Barkowo is an oriented, elongated, one-aisle building which was raised on a rectangular plan with an ellipse inscribed inside it. It consists of a nave, a narrower presbytery with a semi-circular termination and a high square tower with a bell-shaped helm. A rare in Silesia two-layer scheme was applied in the church construction. It comes from the difference between the exterior view of a rectangular structure and the oval interior. The nave inside was covered with a slightly flattened dome supported by massive pillars that constitute a baldachin system. It comes as a frequent element in a repertoire of the Dientzenhofers’ architectural language.A special attention should be paid to a rich and almost completely preserved Late Baroque and Rococo furnishing of the church deriving from around 1790. It is constituted by a non-architectural main altar, twin side altars, a pulpit of an elegant form and a baptismal font, rich in its architectural and sculpturesque decoration. Besides, a Late Baroque sculpture group of St. Martin with a beggar is situated in the church. The furnishing is completed by objects deriving from the previous, not preserved, St. Martin church. These are: a Gothic figure of Pietá from ca. 1400, a Late Gothic sculpture of Crucified Christ and a Gothic bell from 1474, the latter discovered by the author in the church tower.Therefore the temple comes as a fairly valuable, both historically and artistically, example of a Late Baroque village church of Lower Silesia. As such, St. Martin Church in Barkowo richly deserves the attention of not only specialised researchers but also broader circles of art lovers. Eventually the church inscribes in a significant way into a cultural landscape of Lower Silesia as a precious monument of sacral architecture of the region.

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Składnia i semantyka obrazu. O „Karcie Setnika” z Kodeksu Egberta

Author(s): Max Imdahl / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2010

The study deals with a miniature from the Codex Egberti, one of the most renowned achievements of the Ottonian Renaissance, depicting Christ talking to a centurion, and it analyses relations between syntax and semantics of the image. The miniature shows some figures, despite the above mentioned also four apostles and four soldiers, on the ‘empty’ background, in formal regard it comes as an illumination define by the mutual relations of the figures and by the relation of the miniature itself to its painted frame. In comparison to the text of the Gospel (Matthew, 8), which records the talk between the figures in four phases, the picture presents only one scene. However, regarding the linear and plane constitution of Christ figure, his acting is marked with ambiguity, which refers him to all the characters in dialogue, both the centurion and the apostles, thanks to this the image is capable of presenting the whole of the event described in the text. A few experiments of changing Christ’s position in relation to the image field and to the accompanying him groups of characters also prove this ability, as well as comparing the results of changes with the original solution. With the aim of these experiments the author proves that each movement within the syntax of the image disturbs its semantics, which led to the conclusion that painting itself is a speech thanks to its natural abilities of realising varied layers of sense as a viewing unity that can be grasped simultaneously.

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Teoria Miasta Idealnego Francisca Eiximenisa

Author(s): Natalia Bursiewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2013

Francisco Eiximenis, a Catalan Franciscan monk, had a great impact on public and religious life of the Crown of Aragon at the turn of the 14th century and deserved full appreciation there. He had a royal protection. He performed a function of the governement of Valencia councillor, a theologist at the court of Martin I the Human and a spiritual advisor of his wife, queen Maria de Luna. Among his readers were also Peter IV Aragonese, John I the Hunter and the pope Benedict XIII.Eiximenis believed in a capability of creation of an ideal city – self-sufficient, visually attractive and safe. In his book Lo Crestia, edited in 1379, he included an analysis of the factors which effected the rise of communities and in consequence city centres. Moreover, he explained what a city is and gave instructions to be followed when rising a city. The 12th book of Lo Crestia was a harbinger of urbanistic theories of the Late Quattrocento and Cinquecento – these of Alberti, Filarete and Leonardo da Vinci’s. If we consider the date and geographical area in which Eiximenis’s texts were created, we should speak about formal and topic novelty. This proposed by him theoretical city design assumed combination of Christian and humanistic concepts with consi-deration to Greek-and-Roman tradition. His main aim was to build or rebuild a city as a centre of secular and ecclesial power. As a distinct novelty of high importance came for the Franciscan aesthetics i.e. visual aspect of a city. Its beauty was about to be revealed in harmonius space composition, its surroundings and the dwellers themselves. Paying attention to a man is yet another distinctive element. Squares as spaces of lively social interaction are designed for people. A city becomes a sine qua non condition of a man’s development. It is the only place that meets both his material and spiritual needs. Most of all, a city provides people with “real pleasure and joy”.

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Skąd widma w pracowni artysty? Próba interpretacji cyklu obrazów Piotra Stachiewicza

Author(s): Agnieszka Bagińska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2013

The cycle Phantoms in the Atelier is probably the only artistic expression of Piotr Stachiewicz (1858–1938) on the topic of an artist and creation. Stachiewicz was famous most of all for his religious and genre scenes, press and book illustrations and separately edited graphic cycles of which The Queen of Heaven. Legends about God’s Mother of 1893 is the best known. The discussed in this article cycle Phantoms in the Atelier was executed in two versions: the first was completed in 1883–1885 and the following one in ca. 1903. These dates seem to be important in Stachiewicz’s life – they indicate the beginning and the peak of his artistic career. The cycle comprises five paintings entitled: Muse, Irony, Melancholy, Doubt and Solace. Each of them depicts an unreal character – a phantom in the artist’s studio, and these are as follows: Fame, a jester, a genius, Fury and death.The critics of those times had no doubt as the meaning of Stachiewicz’s cycle is concerned. In a review of 1903, when the paintings were shown in Munich, it was stated that they depicted the eternal struggle of an outstanding individual with life obstacles. The phantoms were identified as outer elements which destroyed the artist’s actions: jealousy, stupidity, lack of understanding. A thorough analysis of these pictures allows us to propose a hypothesis that the reality presented by Stachiewicz refers to the author’s inner world – the crisis resulting from inability of creation. Every painting may be a metaphor of the artist’s passivity which leads to his death as a creator.Stachiewicz’s work finds its place among popular in Polish painting at the turn of the 19th c. scenes of an artist’s death in his studio. Here belong paintings that remain in realistic convention and fulfill a strong social purpose (e.g. Wacław Koniuszko, In the Atelier, 1885) and symbolic presentations, in which, similarly to the discussed cycle, unreal characters appear (e.g. Jacek Malczewski, Artist’s Death; Antoni Kamieński, An Unfinished Work, 1900).In the context of Stachiewicz’s immense artistic “fertility” and big popularity of his works, choosing the subject of creation crisis and the artist’s death seems to be an ambiguous gesture, which is not confirmed by the painter’s real situation. We can suspect that in the paintings the author, known from his numerous actions promoting his own art, made used the topic of an atelier so quick on the uptake only to make his artistic activity reliable. Just like in the case of a watercolour by Julian Fałat, Two Worlds of 1909, the cycle may be judged as the effect of following a popular convention, an expression of a peculiar game played by the artist with the audience.

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Korczak ilustrowany

Author(s): Anita Wincencjusz-Patyna / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2013

In the article the author looks closer at the illustrated edition of books written by Janusz Korczak, published in Poland between 1950s and today. There were not so many publications as one could have presumed judging from relatively big popularity of „Old Doctor”. The attention is paid to the two volumes of adventures of king Matt (King Matt the First and King Matt on a Desert Island) illustrated by Jerzy Srokowski (1957), Waldemar Andrzejewski (1978), and quite recently by Marianna Oklejak (2011); Kaytek the Wizard graphically decorated by Gabriel Rechowicz (1960), Tomasz Borowski (1978), and once again Oklejak (2012); Bankruptcy of Little Jack with illustrations by Wiesław Majchrzak (1979) and a short story Fame with black-and-white drawings by Leonia Janecka (1958). The artists applied their original, though very different from each other, styles in creation of these illustrations, and Srokowski’s version of King Matt seems to be one of the most recognisable characters of Polish children’s books. The most interesting appeared to be the possibility of comparing illustrations executed by different artists, which accompany one particular scene from one of the books. The comparison shows to what extent the interpretations may vary between one another.

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