The Bishop Erazm Ciołek Palace

ul.Kanonicza 17,Kraków www.muzeum.krakow.pl

About

The „Art of Old Poland Gallery: XII to XVIII Centuries" presents works of medieval and modern Polish art from a collection which has been being assembled since the nineteenth century, on display in the historic interiors of the Bishop Erazmus Ciołek Palace. The most important portion of the exhibition consists of Gothic paintings and sculptures dating from the fourteenth century to the early sixteenth century, among which are the „Palm Donkey of Szydłowiec" (after 1500), and the fascinating sculpture, „The Madonna of Krużlowa" (about 1410), as well as the oldest Polish representational epitaph plaque, in memory of the knight Wierzbięta of Branice. The exhibition includes the public display of preserved fragments of the largest altarpieces from Cracovian churches of the 1460s. One of the gallery's spaces is dedicated to the works of the famed sculptor Veit Stoss and to works that were influenced by him. Also unique are the wooden painted beams from the now no longer standing church in Kozy near Bielsko-Biała. The Renaissance period is also represented in northern (Hans Dürer, brother of Albrecht) and Italian varietes (Giovanni Maria Padovano). Of particular interest in the Baroque exhibition is the gallery dedicated to old Polish funeral customs, including the display of casket portraits, which form an extraordinary document of the period. The exposition is completed by an extensive collection of old Polish portrait painting. The „Orthodox Art of the Old Polish Commonwealth" Gallery presents a collection of icons not widely known to the public, which constitutes one of the oldest and most valuable collections of Orthodox Christian painting in Central Europe. The works found here mainly originate from the south-eastern lands of the old Polish Commonwealth. The most important portion of the collection is made up of the priceless fifteenth- and sixteenth-century icons sometimes referred to as the „Western Russian" from the Carpathian region. There are also icons to be seen in the exhibition from the modern period, the modern era of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in which the influence of western European Renaissance and Baroque art can be seen, emphasized particularly after the acceptance of a union with Rome by the Orthodox clergy in Poland in 1596. Icons are also found in the exhibition that originated in the Balkans and in the region of presentday Greece, some of which come from the holy mountain of Athos. Another interesting item in the exhibition is a section of the iconostasis from a church in Lipowiec near Kiev. Its gorgeous, sculptured structure is finished with numerous examples of Orthodox woodcarving, lending the exhibition space the character of a real Orthodox interior. The exposition is completed with objects associated with eastern liturgy.