In search of ...
Quotes of the week
“A visit to a museum is a search for beauty, truth, and meaning in our lives. Go to museums as often as you can.”
— Maira Kalman
“When in a museum, walk slowly but keep walking.”
– Gertrude Stein
Hello,
Hope you had a wonderful week, maybe even a holiday week? Here we have been granted a little bit of sunshine and hot weather again. Mixed with rain, but it is also needed. This week I will let you follow me in the foot steps of the Czartoryski collection and its dramatic past and present.
Czartoryski museum
During the last years the museum has been closed for renovations. You enter today into a beautiful, modern museum with an amazing collection. Collected by the Czartoryski family for generations and feature historical artefacts ranging from war memorials, tapestries, paintings, porcelain, glass ware, books, carpets, Etruscan and Greek vases, Egyptian and Roman antiquities, including mummies. It also includes a Shakespeare chair, and relics. Princess Izabela Czartoryska founded the museum in Puławy (a private castle) in 1796, with the intention to preserve the Polish heritage. Her motto was, "The Past to the Future." It officially opened as a museum in 1878. But, the collection had a long, bumpy road up until today.
Princess Czartoryski Collection
After the November 1830 uprising the collection was partly destroyed. Their property was confiscated, but what could be saved was moved to Paris and the family house Hôtel Lambert. After the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, Prince Władysław packed or hid the artefacts and fled. The city of Kraków offered him a museum, and in 1878, one hundred years after Princess Izabela set up her museum in Pulawy, the new museum opened. The Prince continued to add items to the collection until his death in 1894.
His son, Prince Adam Ludwik, carried on the work of his father. At the outbreak of World War I the Prince was called to join the Austrian Army and his wife, Princess Maria Ludwig Krasinska took over the museum. She took the most important artefacts (52 paintings, 12 carpets, 35 folders of prints and drawings, and works by da Vinci, Raphael and Rembrandt) to Dresden where the collection was opened to the public two days a week. After the war, Hans Posse, the director of the Royal Collections did not want to return the artefacts, due to fear for unrest in Poland. However, it was finally transferred to the museum in Kraków in 1920.
Prince Adam Ludwik died in 1937 and his son Prince Augustyn took over. As World War II broke out in 1939, sixteen cases were packed, transported and stored in Sieniawa (SE of Poland) while the rest of the collection was stored in the cellars of the museum. There it was found by the Germans. This included the Leonardo painting. Although handled badly, it was not seriously damaged.
In September 1939, Prince Agustyn removed what remained and transfered them to his cousin’s property in Pełkinie (SE Poland). Gestapo found the cases later and returned them to Kraków. In January 1940 the 85 most important items from the Museum was sent to Dresden, where Dr. Posse, Hitler’s representative, decided that the objects should be part of Hitler’s collection at Linz.
In 1945, Dr. Hans Frank, the German governor of Poland brought the paintings from Berlin for his own use at Wawel Castle. When the Germans evacuated Kraków in January, he took the paintings with him to Silesia, and then to his own villa in Neuhaus. He was arrested by the Americans in May and the Allies Commission for the Retrieval of Works of Art claimed the stolen paintings on behalf of the Czartoryski museum. Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man and 843 other artefacts were missing from the collection, and their whereabouts are unknown until this day.
The Leonardo
The Lady with an Ermine is a portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, a mistress of Ludovico Sforza, “Il Moro”, Duke of Milan. Leonardo was painter at the Sforza court at the end of the 15th century. It was Izabela’s son Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, who in 1798 travelled to Italy and bought the painting. There are no records of any previous owners. He also bought Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man, now lost.
If you want to see a painting by Leonardo da Vinci you should come here. Hardly any people and you are more or less alone with it, and can watch it close up. It is a beautiful painting, although some of the perspectives are a little bit strange. Like the lady’s hands for example.
It seems, that after all her travels during the last centuries, she has finally come to rest.
The collection today
In 2016 the collection was sold to the Polish government for €100 million, 5% of the estimated market value of the entire collection. The Princess Czartoryski Foundation was represented by Adam Karol Czartoryski, the last direct descendant of Izabela Czartoryska Flemming and Adam George Czartoryski, who once brought the painting from Italy to Poland so many years ago. One can only hope that the collection will now be at peace and has found its home. For sure the surroundings are worthy of it.
An amazing collection with so many items from the historical past. There is something there for everyone. The Greek, Roman and Egyptian antiquities were outstanding, also from collections we have seen elsewhere. You have the feeling that the people who collected them really loved them and put them together with care.
My blog this week
The Paris in July, 2023, challenge is in full swing.
The Elusive Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy - an old classic tale
Axel von Fersen and Queen Marie Antoinette by Margareta Beckman - the greatest love story of the 18th century. Now letters between the couple are deciphered and reveals the love between them.
Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar by Maurice Leblanc - another classic tale about the gentleman thief.
I had never heard of the Czartoryski museum . What a great report, Lisbeth. If I ever come to Kraków, I will definitely bear that in mind.
And I love the quote by Gertrude Stein, so true.