Once again, at least virtually, I am coming back to York today, to tell you about certain Early-modern painting that stole my medievalist’s heart. Working in a project National Inventory of Continental European Paintings, I found in collection of York Art Gallery a beautiful portrait of a young woman. It…
In the Archives of the Cracow Cathedral Chapter there is a manuscript Liber Privilegiorum no 2, containing an ink votive drawing: the oldest survived work of art of that kind in Poland. The drawing depicts a donor, which is Cracow Bishop and the firs Polish cardinal, Zbigniew Oleśnicki (1389-1455), worshiping…
There’s no doubt that Mona Lisa is one of the most famous paintings in the World, and it is commonly considered as priceless masterpiece that everyone recognises. A lot has been written about this painting, including popular or even sensational articles. I always wondered why one of the Leonardo’s paintings…
The Old Masters often had their individual types of female beauties: perhaps muses or mistresses, who were the models for their Madonnas, Venuses or Dianas. Usually when we see particular type of female face repeated in many paintings of one artist, we tend to assume that it may be a…
Today I would like to focus on one of the most famous masterpieces of Polish collections: The Lady with an Ermine (ca. 1490). The painting, by Leonardo da Vinci, is usually interpreted as a portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, who was a mistress of Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan. This interpretation…