After spending much of the day witnessing the remnants of man's inhumanity to man, I needed something to remind me of his glory. I met Christine at the Czartoryski Museum to check out one of only four surviving portraits of women by Leonardo da Vinci.
The Italian master was just shy of 40 when he painted "Lady with an Ermine" on walnut. She's all by herself in a darkened room, a beacon of Renaissance loveliness.
You'd never guess from the unprepossessing exterior of the museum what awaits you inside.
A major renovation was completed five years ago, not long after the Princes Czartoryski Foundation received more than a million dollars for the building and the collection from the Polish government. That's quite a bargain given the DaVinci painting alone probably could have commanded that price on the open market.
The tortured history of the collection, begun by Princess Izabela Czartoryska in 1796, reflects Poland's own for the past two centuries. It was partially destroyed during the Polish–Russian War 1830–31, although many works were sent to Paris for safekeeping. Prince Władysław Czartoryski, who significantly expanded the collection moved it to Kraków five decades later. When World War I intervened, another family member took the most important works to Dresden. It took some negotiation with the newly hatched Soviets, but these items returned to Krakow in 1920.
With yet another war on the horizon, the collection was unsuccessfully hidden from the Nazis who sent their plunder to Germany where Der Fuhrer took ownership. But when Hitler appointed his pal Hans Frank as General Governor of Poland, Frank "borrowed" many of the works and hung them in Wawel Castle, where he set up his headquarters in Kraków. When the Nazis evacuated Poland in 1945, the art ended up at Frank's private villa in Bavaria. Once the Allies captured Frank and returned the works to the surviving members of the Czartoryski family, an inventory of the collection revealed more than 800 works were missing, including Raphael's "Portrait of a Young Man."
Long story short: it's almost a miracle that the "Lady with an Ermine" and the other works pictured below remain on view today.
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| "Venus Victrix" by Michele di Jacopo Tosini (1565-75) |
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| St. Peter Mosaic by an Unknown Artist (18th century) |
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| Portrait of a Man by an Unknown French Painter |
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| Frédéric Chopin Death Mask |
Christine stands before "The Last Judgment" by an unknown painter.
I loved the ferocity of this small Chinese dragon.
There's a painting of Dante Alighieri from the 16th century.
Reliquaries that take human form are known as "herms."
The Czartoryskis also amassed quite a collection of antiquities, beautifully displayed.
More Poland
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