Lately I have had a pleasure to work on the old prints of the collection of Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, which are being digitalised and appear in the on-line service PAUart (www.pauart.pl). The collection contains, among others, numerous prints and copies after the prints by Albrecht Dürer. Today…
On Christmas 800 AD the Pope Leon III crowned Charlemagne, who then became the first Roman Emperor in Western Europe since the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD. After the difficult Migration Period, Western Europe achieved what we call the Carolingian Renaissance, as Charlemagne often referred to the…
The Christmas has just passed, but instead of talking about Gospel let’s get back to the Old Testament. After all, Christmas Eve is the day dedicated to Adam and Eve. The first people are usually depicted in the act of the first sin: when they taste a forbidden fruit from…
September is the month of the grape harvest: it is the time of hard work but also the time of fun in every wine-producing region. It is still not the time for the new wine, as that shows up in November, but it is already possible to produce a fermented freshly pressed grape…
The famous Last Judgement Triptych will be soon shown at an exhibition in Rome, dedicated to Hans Memling. The altar is going from Gdańsk to Rome; Polish media are writing about that journey, so let’s have a look at this masterpiece today. Hans Memling was born probably circa 1440 in…