The Italian Renaissance In Krakow
Poland's long history of contacts with Italy was particularly fruitful in the artistic sphere, and an amazingly high proportion of the country's principal monuments were created by Italians who were enticed there by lucrative commissions offered by the royal court and the great rural magnates. One consequence of this is that Poland, and Krakow in particular, possesses some of the finest Renaissance architecture to be found outside Italy itself. Although the architects remained true to the movement's original classical ideals, they nonetheless modified their approach to suit the local climate and tradition. The result is a distinctive national Renaissance style which is purer than the derivatives found anywhere else north of the Alps. The Renaissance was introduced to Poland as a direct result of the Jagiellonians' short-lived dynastic union with Hungary. Franciscus Italus (d.1516, and tentatively identifed as Francesco della Lora), who had been employed at the Hungarian court since the 1480s, was summoned to Krakow to reconstruct the royal palace which had been badly damaged by fire in 1499. Work on this occupied him until his death, but it was far from complete by then, as King Sigismund subsequently decided on a complete rebuild. The present appearance of the complex is due mainly to Franciscus' fellow Florentine and successor as the royal architect, Bartolomeo Berrecci (c.1480-1537), who seems to have invented the highly original form of the courtyard. Its first two storeys are reminiscent of the celebrated Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, but the third tier is at twice the normal height, with the columns, which are moulded into bulbous shapes at the normal position of the capital, rising straight to the huge overhanging wooden roof, omitting the usual entablature in between. In his other key commission, the Sigismund chapel in the Wawel cathedral, Berrecci showed similar ingenuity. The basic shape he chose - a cube divided internally by paired pilasters, and surmounted by a dome, octagonal outside and cylindrical inside, with eight circular windows - represents the Italian ideal. Yet the overall appearance, with its profuse furnishings in a wide range of materials and elaborate surface decoration filling every available space on the walls, is totally unlike anything to be found in Italy. Berrecci built nothing else of significance, as his life was cut short by an assassin's knife. Many other Italian craftsmen worked on the interior of the Sigismund chapel, the most prominent being Giovanni Maria Mosca (c.1495-1573), generally known as "Il Padovano" on account of having been born in Padua. The recruitment of Mosca was seen as a major artistic coup, as he had already established a formidable reputation for himself in his native city and in Venice. Primarily a sculptor, it is probable that he was entrusted with carving the effigy of Sigismund himself; he also made the two memorials to bishops in the chantry chapels of the east end. In addition, he struck four royal medals, carved the tabernacle in the Mariacki, and made many other funerary monuments in Krakow and elsewhere, notably those of the Tarnowskis in Tarnow cathedral. As an architect, his main work was the addition of the attic and parapet to the medieval Sukiennice, giving it a pronounced Renaissance appearance in a transformation reminiscent of that wrought by Palladio on the Basilica in Vicenza just a few years before. The outsized savage masks on the Sukiennice were carved by the Florentine Santi Gucci (c.1530-1600), who was also responsible for some of the tombs in the Sigismund chapel. Gucci subsequently came to prominence in his own right as court artist to Stefan Batory, adapting the Wawel's Lady Chapel into a lavish chantry in his honour. He also seems to have built a number of country houses; not all of those documented have survived, but he is thought to have been responsible for the most spectacular one remaining intact, at Baranow Sandomierski. By the time of his death, Italian Renaissance architects had been dominant in Krakow for exactly a century. The style was to remain popular elsewhere in Poland for a considerable time yet, but in Krakow it was supplanted by the Baroque - introduced, once again, by Italians.
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