Thesauri Poloniae – The Treasures of Poland

The exhibition “Thesauri Poloniae – The Treasures of Poland”, organised by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in cooperation with the Royal Palace and the National Museum in Warsaw, will document the history of collecting art.

The area of ancient Poland proved a fertile ground for the arts and sciences. From the late Middle Ages to the flowering of Renaissance culture under the Jagiellones, to the period of elected kings and the Baroque under the Wasa dynasty, to the age of Enlightenment under the last Polish king, Stanislaw August Poniatowski, Poland retained her important cultural position which remained unaffected by passing crises and the wars of the 17th century.

Some Western-European traditions are deeply imbedded in Polish culture, which is why the main part of collected art is from the West.

The exhibition will showcase Poland´s cultural position. It brings together over 180 objects from the country´s most important museums in, for example, Warsaw, Cracow, Gdansk, and Posen, as well as from churches, monasteries, libraries, and private collections. In addition, there are numerous loans from the Rijksmusem un Amsterdam, the Kremlin in Moscow, the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana in Milan, the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Brunswick, the Lviv Picture Gallery in Lemberg, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

The exhibition will have five focal points.

I. The role of the church as an artistic treasury

Polish churches and monasteries house magnificent art treasures dating form the early Middle Ages to 18th century Classicism: book illuminations, lithurgical vessels and robes, altarpieces, stone and wood sculptures, as well as tapistries.

Of particular interest and importance is the Chalice from Trzemeszno; on show will also be late-Gothic sculptures (for example by Veit Stoss), the Tryptich from Plawno, a carved Renaissance altarpiece depicting the life and martyrdom of St. Stanislaus, the patron saint of Poland, as well as expressive late-baroque sculptures form the area around Lemberg.

II. The City as Cultural Center

Gdansk and Cracow were not only economic but also artistic and social centres of importance for the development of Poland. Their artistic magnificence will also be showcased in the exhibition. During the 16th and 17th century, German-Netherlandish (Hanseatic) elements encountered Polish elements which led to a very fruitful cultural exchange. In this context, the decoration of the church of Our Lady in Gdansk is of vital importance. Ist masterpiece, Memling`s magnificent Last Judgement, came to the church by chance in 1473 as booty from plundering raid. Once there, it provided Gdansk patricians with important artistic impulses and led to the commissioning of the altar St. Reinhold from the Netherlandish artists, Joos van Cleve. Examples of the interior decoration of the Artushof and the city hall of Gdansk resurrect the age of chivalry.

III. The Royal Court

Since the 16th century, the court resided in Warsaw. The Jagiellones loved to collect, and this tradition was continued by the rulers from the House fo Wasa, up to Jan II Sobieski and the Saxon dynasty of Wettin. Decorations in the residence of Sigismund II, the last of the Jagiellones, were particularly elaborate. In the second half of the 16th century, he commissioned the so-called Wawal-Arazzi Series of tapestries in Brussels. Of particular importance is the reconstruction of the treasure chamber of Wladyslaw IV Wasa, based on a painting dating from 1626. On show will be objects once in the royal treasury as well as sumptuous pieces of tableware used by the Polish kings. In addition, magnificent portraits of members of European ruling families, especially from the House of Habsburg, will be on show.

IV. The Splendor of Aristocracy

Beside the Church and the court, great magnates were outstanding supporters of the major and minor arts in Poland. They decorated their residences on their estates as well as in town with magnificent artworks which documented their high social status, their wealth and their claim to a share of political power. In the show, this aspect is documented mainly by the artworks from the 17th and the 18th century: portraits, tapestries, centrepieces, robes, guns, and coats-of-arms. The sitters are either portrayed wearing Western or Polish fashions. Among the typically Polish pieces of clothing is, for example, the old-Polish jacket held together by a belt.

V. Aristocratic Collections of Art at the time of Stanislaw August Poniatowski

The show will also trace the development of different art collections. The most famous was that of the last Polish king, Stanislaw August Poniatowski, a prominent supporter of the culture of the Enlightenment. He ownded paintings, drawings, illustrations, medals, and books, among them paintings by Bernardo Bellotto, Anton Raphael Mengs, and Angelica Kauffmann, as well as older masterpieces (Metsu, Stehen, Dou, Wouwerman, Backhuysen); many of them will be on show in the exhibition.

The exhibition will also focus on the large collections assembled by members of the aristocracy between 1770 and 1810; for example, the collection of Princess Izabela Lubomirska form Lancut, or that of Stanislaw Kostka Potocki from Wilanów. The historical museum of Princess Izabela Czartoryska in Pulawy represents the beginning of modern museums in Poland.