Polonia, the name for

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

and many Romance and other languages, is most often used in modern Polish as referring to the Polish

diaspora A diaspora ( ) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of origin. Historically, the word was used first in reference to the dispersion of Greeks in the Hellenic world, and later Jews after ...

. However, as can be seen from the image, it was also used as a

national personification A national personification is an anthropomorphic personification of a state or the people(s) it inhabits. It may appear in political cartoons and propaganda. Some early personifications in the Western world tended to be national manifestation ...

. The symbolic depiction of a country as a woman called by the Latin name of that country was common in the 19th Century (see Germania,

Britannia Britannia () is the national personification of Britain as a helmeted female warrior holding a trident and shield. An image first used in classical antiquity, the Latin ''Britannia'' was the name variously applied to the British Isles, Grea ...

, Hibernia, Helvetia).

Personifications of Poland in art

Bernardo Morando Bernardo Morando, also known as ''Bernardino'' or ''Morandi'' (ca. 1540 - 1600) was an Italian architect from the Republic of Venice. He is notable as the designer of the ''new town'' of Zamość, modelled on Renaissance theories of the 'ideal c ...

''Polonia'', Old Lublin Gate in Zamość, 1588 * Ary Scheffer ''Polonia'', 1831 * Horace Vernet ''Polish Prometheus'', 1831 * Jan Matejko ''Polonia'', Illustration to Zygmunt Krasiński's "Psalmy Przeszłości" ("Psalms of the past"), 1861 *

Artur Grottger Artur Grottger (11 November 1837 – 13 December 1867) was a Polish Romantic painter and graphic artist, one of the most prominent artists of the mid 19th century under the foreign partitions of Poland, despite a life cut short by incurable ill ...

''Polonia'', 1863 * Jan Matejko ''Rok 1863. Zakuwana Polska'' ("Year 1863 - Polonia enchained"), 1864Jan Cavanaugh. ''Out Looking in: Early Modern Polish Art, 1890-1918''.

University of California Press The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by facul ...

. 2000. pp. 18, 106-107, 188. * Jan Styka ''Polonia'', 1890–91 * Stanisław Wyspiański ''Polonia'', 1892-93. Part of stained-glass design for

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. ...

of Latin Cathedral in Lviv/Lwów (in pastel, never realized in glass) * Jacek Malczewski ''In the Dust Cloud'', 1893Jeremy Howard. ''Art Nouveau: International and National Styles in Europe''. Manchester University Press. 1996. p. 135. * Jacek Malczewski ''Hamlet polski - Portret of

Aleksander Wielopolski Margrave ( pl, margrabia) Aleksander Ignacy Jan-Kanty Wielopolski (born 1803 in Sędziejowice, Kraków Department, Duchy of Warsaw, died 1877 in Dresden, Kingdom of Saxony, German Empire) was a Polish aristocrat, owner of large estates, and t ...

'' (" Polish Hamlet - Portrait of Aleksander Wielopolski"), 1903 * Jacek Malczewski ''The Fatherland'', 1903 *

Włodzimierz Tetmajer Włodzimierz Tetmajer (December 31, 1861 in Harklowa – December 26, 1923 in Kraków) was a Polish painter with works in collections of the Warsaw National Museum and Kraków. Biography Włodzimierz Tetmajer was born in Harklowa near Krako ...

''Alegoria Polski umarłej'' ("Allegory of Dead Poland"), St. Nicholas Cathedral in Kalisz, 1909 * Jacek Malczewski ''Polonia'', 1914 *

Władysław Skoczylas Władysław Skoczylas (4 April 1883, Wieliczka – 8 April 1934, Warsaw) was a Polish watercolorist, woodcutter, sculptor and art teacher. Biography His father was a foreman in the salt mines. He graduated from the gymnasium in Bochnia, then ...

''Polonia'', 1915 * Jacek Mierzejewski ''Polonia'', 1915 * Jacek Malczewski ''Polonia II'', 1918 * Leszek Sobocki ''Polonia'', 1982 * Edward Dwurnik ''Polonia'', 1984

Gallery

Image:Quincunx Polonia.jpg, Personification of Poland standing on the shoulders of a pope and a king; from a 16th-century political treatise by Stanisław Orzechowski Image:Stara_Brama_Lubelska_12-09.JPG, ''Polonia'' by

(1588). Bas-relief at the top of the ''Old Lublin Gate'' in Zamość Image:Union in lublin.JPG, Bas-relief on monument in Lublin commemorating the 1569 union between Poland and Lithuania, Paweł Maliński (1826) Image:Scheffer Allegory of the November Uprising.png, ''Polonia'' by Ary Scheffer (1831). Allegory of fall of the November Uprising Image:Jacek Malczewski, Hamlet Polski - Portret Aleksandra Wielopolskiego.jpg, '' Polish Hamlet. Portrait of Aleksander Wielopolski'' by Jacek Malczewski (1903). The female figures symbolize young revolutionary Poland and old enslaved Poland Image:Alegoria_Umarlej_Polski.jpg, ''Allegory of Dead Poland'' by

(1909) Image:POLONIA - Antoni Madeyski.jpg, ''Polonia'' depicted on a Polish 10 Złoty coin of 1932

References

{{National personifications National personifications History of Poland