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Bartolomeo Berrecci Da Pontassieve
Bartolomeo Berrecci (1480 Pontassieve, Italy - 1537 Kraków, Poland) was an Italian Renaissance architect who spent most of his career in Poland. Studies and career in Poland He learned architecture in Florence, first through apprenticeship with his father, who was also an architect. He was then probably taught by Andrea Ferrucci, his father's fellow Florentine architect. He moved to Poland in 1516 at the invitation of the bishop Jan Łaski to take over the work of rebuilding the Wawel Royal Castle in Kraków after the death of Francesco Fiorentino, working with Benedykt from Sandomierz. The castle had burnt down in 1499, and the rebuilding was commissioned by Sigismund I of Poland. He also took over Florentino's workshop, with the artists Bernardino di Gianotis, Giovanni Cini from Siena, Mikołaj Castiglione, and five members of the Soli family. He worked in Kraków, Niepołomice, Poznań, Tarnów and most likely in Vilnius where the Royal Palace of Lithuania was reconstru ...
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Tarnów
Tarnów () is a city in southeastern Poland with 105,922 inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of 269,000 inhabitants. The city is situated in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship since 1999. From 1975 to 1998, it was the capital of the Tarnów Voivodeship. It is a major rail junction, located on the strategic east–west connection from Lviv to Kraków, and two additional lines, one of which links the city with the Slovak border. Tarnów is known for its traditional Polish architecture, which was influenced by foreign cultures and foreigners that once lived in the area, most notably Jews, Germans and Austrians. The Old Town, featuring 16th century tenements, houses and defensive walls, has been preserved. Tarnów is also the warmest city of Poland, with the highest long-term mean annual temperature in the whole country. Companies headquartered in the city include Poland's largest chemical industry company Grupa Azoty and defence industry company ZMT. The city is curre ...
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Jan Matejko
Jan Alojzy Matejko (; also known as Jan Mateyko; 24 June 1838 – 1 November 1893) was a Polish painter, a leading 19th-century exponent of history painting, known for depicting nodal events from Polish history. His works include large scale oil paintings such as '' Rejtan'' (1866), ''the Union of Lublin'' (1869), '' the Astronomer Copernicus, or Conversations with God'' (1873), or ''the Battle of Grunwald'' (1878). He was the author of numerous portraits, a gallery of Polish monarchs in book form, and murals in St. Mary's Basilica, Kraków. He is considered by many as the most celebrated Polish painter, and sometimes as the "national painter" of Poland. Matejko was among the notable people to receive an unsolicited letter from the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, as the latter tipped, in January 1889, into his psychotic breakdown while in Turin. Matejko spent most of his life in Kraków. His teachers at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts included Wojciech Korneli ...
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Wawel Cathedral
The Wawel Cathedral ( pl, Katedra Wawelska), formally titled the Royal Archcathedral Basilica of Saints Stanislaus and Wenceslaus, is a Roman Catholic cathedral situated on Wawel Hill in Kraków, Poland. Nearly 1000 years old, it is part of the Wawel Castle Complex and is a national sanctuary which served as the coronation site of Polish monarchs. The current Gothic cathedral is the third edifice on this site; the first was constructed and destroyed in the 11th century and the second one, constructed in the 12th century, was destroyed by a fire in 1305. The construction of the existing church began in the 14th century on the orders of Bishop Nanker. Over time, the building was expanded by successive rulers resulting in its versatile and eclectic architectural composition. There are examples of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical and Neogothic elements in the cathedral's façade and interior. The exterior is adorned by side chapels and representative ma ...
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Władysław II Jagiełło
Jogaila (; 1 June 1434), later Władysław II Jagiełło ()He is known under a number of names: lt, Jogaila Algirdaitis; pl, Władysław II Jagiełło; be, Jahajła (Ягайла). See also: Names and titles of Władysław II Jagiełło. was Grand Duke of Lithuania (1377–1434) and then King of Poland (1386–1434), first alongside his wife Jadwiga until 1399, and then sole ruler of Poland. Born a pagan, he converted to Catholicism in 1386 and was baptized as Władysław in Kraków, married the young Queen Jadwiga, and was crowned King of Poland as Władysław II Jagiełło. In 1387, he converted Lithuania to Catholicism. His own reign in Poland started in 1399, upon the death of Queen Jadwiga, lasted a further thirty-five years, and laid the foundation for the centuries-long Polish–Lithuanian union. He was a member of the Jagiellonian dynasty in Poland that bears his name and was previously also known as the Gediminid dynasty in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The dynas ...
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Niepołomice Castle
Niepołomice Royal Castle is a Gothic castle from the mid-14th century, rebuilt in the late Renaissance style and called the ''second Wawel''. It is situated in Niepołomice, Poland and was extensively reconstructed in the 1990s. Niepołomice Castle was built by order of King Casimir III the Great on the slope of the Vistula valley, to serve as a retreat during hunting expeditions to the nearby Niepołomice Forest. The castle consisted of three towers, buildings in the southern and eastern wing, and curtain walls surrounding a courtyard. Sigismund I the Old rebuilt the structure, giving it the form of a quadrangle with an internal courtyard. Queen Bona Sforza's gardens were located on the southern flank. In 1550 a great fire destroyed the east and north wings. Reconstruction works were conducted in 1551-1568 under the supervision of Tomasz Grzymała and a sculptor Santi Gucci. At the end of the 16th century the castle passed into the hands of the Curylo, Branicki and Lubomirski ...
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Anna Jagiellon
Anna Jagiellon ( pl, Anna Jagiellonka, lt, Ona Jogailaitė; 18 October 1523 – 9 September 1596) was Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania from 1575 to 1587. Daughter of Polish King Sigismund I the Old and Italian duchess Bona Sforza, Anna received multiple proposals, but remained unmarried until the age of 52. After the death of King Sigismund II Augustus, her brother and the last male member of the Jagiellonian dynasty, her hand was sought by pretenders to the Polish throne to maintain the dynastic tradition. Along with her then-fiancé Stephen Báthory, Anna was elected as co-ruler in the 1576 royal election of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Their marriage was a formal arrangement and distant. While Báthory was preoccupied with the Livonian War, Anna spent her time on local administrative matters and several construction projects, including the city wall Stara Prochownia to protect Sigismund Augustus Bridge. After her husband's death in December ...
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Sigismund II Augustus
Sigismund II Augustus ( pl, Zygmunt II August, lt, Žygimantas Augustas; 1 August 1520 – 7 July 1572) was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, the son of Sigismund I the Old, whom Sigismund II succeeded in 1548. He was the first ruler of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the last male monarch from the Jagiellonian dynasty. Sigismund was the only son of Italian-born Bona Sforza and Sigismund the Old. From the beginning he was groomed and extensively educated as a successor. In 1529 he was crowned '' vivente rege'' while his father was still alive. Sigismund Augustus continued a tolerance policy towards minorities and maintained peaceful relations with neighbouring countries, with the exception of the Northern Seven Years' War which aimed to secure Baltic trade. Under his patronage, culture flourished in Poland; he was a collector of tapestries from the Low Countries and collected military memorabilia as well as swords, armours and jewellery. Sigismund Augustus' r ...
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Santi Gucci
Santi Gucci (c. 1530–1600) was an Italian architect and sculptor. Biography He moved to Poland after 1550, most probably from Florence, and became the court artist of king Sigismund II Augustus of Poland, his sister Anna Jagiellonka and his successor Stefan Batory of Poland. Santi Gucci's workshop in Pińczów became a notable school which attracted many future artists and became one of the centres of Mannerist art and culture in Poland. For his merits for the Polish crown he was ennobled, accepted into the ranks of the szlachta and given a Zetynian Coat of Arms. One of the most successful and fruitful artists of his epoch, Gucci built or reconstructed a number of palaces of notable people in all parts of the Polish Republic. Among them was the Firlej family castle in Janowiec on the Vistula (1565–1585), for whom he also sculpted a Mannerist tomb in a local parish church (c. 1586). For the Piotr Myszkowski family he erected a new palace in Książ Wielki (1585–1595), ...
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Sigismund Chapel
Sigismund's Chapel ( pl, kaplica Zygmuntowska) is a royal chapel of the Wawel Cathedral in Kraków, Poland. Built as a funerary chapel for the last members of the Jagiellonian Dynasty, it has been hailed by many art historians as "the most beautiful example of the Tuscan Renaissance north of the Alps". Financed by King Sigismund I the Old, it was built in 1519-33 by Italian architect Bartolomeo Berrecci. A square-based chapel with a golden dome houses the tombs of its founder King Sigismund, as well as King Sigismund II Augustus and Anna Jagiellon. The inner sculptures, stuccos and paintings were designed by some of the most renowned artists of the age, including the architect Berrecci himself, Georg Pencz, Santi Gucci and Hermann Vischer. Gallery File:Poland-01779 - Anna's tomb (31970703362).jpg, An elaborate and gilded tombstone of Queen Anna Jagiellon File:011Kraków.JPG, Window decoration and a spire sit atop the dome File:Kraków - Wawel - Orzeł Zygmunta Starego.jpg, P ...
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Jagiellonians
The Jagiellonian dynasty (, pl, dynastia jagiellońska), otherwise the Jagiellon dynasty ( pl, dynastia Jagiellonów), the House of Jagiellon ( pl, Dom Jagiellonów), or simply the Jagiellons ( pl, Jagiellonowie), was the name assumed by a cadet branch of the Lithuanian ducal dynasty of Gediminids upon reception by Jogaila, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, of baptism as Władysław in 1386, which paved the way to his ensuing marriage to the Queen Regnant Jadwiga of Poland, resulting in his ascension to the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland as Władysław II Jagiełło (initially ruling ''jure uxoris'' jointly with Hedwig until her death), and the effective promotion of his branch to a royal dynasty. The Jagiellons reigned in several Central European countries between the 14th and 16th centuries. Members of the dynasty were Kings of Poland (1386–1572), Grand Dukes of Lithuania (1377–1392 and 1440–1572), Kings of Hungary (1440–1444 and 1490–1526), and Kings of Bohemia and im ...
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Kazimierz
Kazimierz (; la, Casimiria; yi, קוזמיר, Kuzimyr) is a historical district of Kraków and Kraków Old Town, Poland. From its inception in the 14th century to the early 19th century, Kazimierz was an independent city, a royal city of the Crown of the Polish Kingdom, located south of the Old Town of Kraków, separated from it by a branch of the Vistula river. For many centuries, Kazimierz was a place where ethnic Polish and Jewish cultures coexisted and intermingled. The northeastern part of the district was historically Jewish. In 1941, the Jews of Kraków were forcibly relocated by the German occupying forces into the Krakow ghetto just across the river in Podgórze, and most did not survive the war. Today, Kazimierz is one of the major tourist attractions of Krakow and an important center of cultural life of the city. The boundaries of Kazimierz are defined by an old island in the Vistula river. The northern branch of the river (''Stara Wisła'' – Old Vistula) was fil ...
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