the reaches jewish kazimierz 29

CHAPTER TWO

THE RENAISSANCE REACHES JEWISH KAZIMIERZ

In the Shadow of the Italian Renaissance

Renaissance art was brought into at the initiative of Sigismund I the Old (1467–1548) and his immediate circle.1 Sigismund was nurtured at the court of his father, King Casimir IV of Poland, by Filippo Buonaccorsi (alias Callimachus; 1437–96), an Italian writer, historian, and correspon- dent of Lorenzo de’ Medici the Magnificent (1449–92) and Marsilio Ficino (1433–99).2 Since Sigismund, the youngest of the king’s five sons, had nev- er been expected to be crowned king, Buonaccorsi educated him in ac- cordance with the Humanistic ideals of a nobleman educated in literature and arts. Sigismund deepened his Renaissance experience when he went to visit his brother, Vladislas II, the king of Hungary and Bohemia, in Buda.3 Vladislas succeeded to the Hungarian crown after Matthias Corvinus (1443–90), an admirer of Renaissance Humanism and art, who also had contacts with Buonaccorsi in Cracow and Ficino in Florence.4 Captivated

1 The following sources are representative of the vast literature on the beginnings of the Renaissance in Poland: Stefanja Zahorska, “O pierwszych śladach Odrodzenia w Polsce,” Prace Komisji Historji Sztuki 2 (1922): 101–22; Karol Estreicher, “Polish Renaissance Archi- tecture,” Burlington Magazine 86, no. 1 (1945): 4–9; Adam Bochnak, “Problematyka kra- kowskiego Renesansu” and Józef Lepiarczyk, “Znacenie Krakowa dla sztuki Renesansu w Polsce” in Krakowskie Odrodzenie, Referaty z konferencji naukowej Towarzystwa Miłośników Historii i Zabytków Krakowa z września 1953, ed. Jan Dąbrowski (Cracow, 1954), 106–24 and 125–37 respectively; Kenneth F. Lewalski, “Sigismund I of Poland: Renaissance King and Patron,” Studies in the Renaissance 14 (1967): 42−72; Tadeusz Dobrowolski, Sztuka Krakowa (Cracow, 1971), 211–73; Jan Białostocki, The Art of the Renaissance in Eastern Europe (Oxford, 1976), 9–12; Stanisław Wiliński, “O renesansie wawelskim” in Renesans. Sztuka i ideologia (Warsaw, 1976), 213–25; idem, “Renaissance Sculpture in Poland in its European Context: Some Selected Problems” and Adam Miłobędzki, “Architecture under the Last Jagiellons in Its Political and Social Context” in The Polish Renaissance in Its European Context, ed. Samuel Fiszman (Bloomington, 1988), 281–90 and 291–99 respectively. 2 T. Garbacik, Kallimach jako dyplomata i polityk (Cracow, 1948). 3 Jan Dąbrowski, “Związki początków i rozwoju Odrodzenia w Krakowie z Odrodze- niem na Węgrzech” in Krakowskie Odrodzenie, 138–57. 4 Lech Kalinowski, Speculum Artis: Treści dzieła sztuki sredniowiecza i renesansu (Warsaw, 1989), 473. 30 chapter two by Corvinus’s cultural heritage, Vladislas called his Bohemian architect, Benedict Ried (alias Rejt; ca. 1454–1534), to visit the Castle in Buda in order to replicate its Renaissance style in Prague.5 When Sigismund came to Buda in 1498, he found there the Tuscan Renaissance style, treasures of Renaissance art, and the huge library of Renaissance tractates and illumi- nated manuscripts collected by Corvinus.6 In 1501, Sigismund returned to Poland, where his enthusiasm for the Renaissance was shared by many young who had been studying in Italy,7 and Italians working in Cra- cow. The strands linking the Polish court and aristocracy with Italy were so numerous that Cracow of the last Jagiellonian kings became a provincial offshoot of Italian Renaissance culture.8 Already as prince, Sigismund gave vent to his partiality for the Renais- sance style by intervening in several projects undertaken at the royal resi- dence at Wawel in Cracow. Sigismund recruited the Tuscan masters who worked at his brother’s court in Hungary in order to give a Renaissance character to the Late Gothic works in Wawel Castle that were in progress at the time. One of the guest masters was the architect and sculptor Fran- ciscus Italus or Florentinus (alias Franciszek Florentczyk; d. 1516), who had mastered the style of the Tuscan Renaissance in his native land. In 1502– 1505, Franciscus, together with his assistants, produced a Renaissance ar- chitectonic frame for the Late Gothic tomb of Sigismund’s other brother, King John Albrecht, at Wawel Cathedral, originally sculpted in 1501 by Jörg Huber of ’s circle (Fig. 10).9 Franciscus set the effigy of John Albrecht into a deep niche and spanned it with a coffered arch supported

5 G. Fehr, Benedikt Ried: Ein deutscher Baumeister zwischen Gotik und Renaissance in Böhmen (Munich, 1961). 6 Jolán Balogh, Die Anfänge der Renaissance in Ungarn: Matthias Corvinus und die Kunst (Graz, 1975). 7 Poles studied mainly in the universities of Bologna and Padua. See Giovanni Maver, I Polacchi all’università di Padova (Rome, 1933); Richard Casimir Lewański, Storia delle relazioni fra la Polonia e Bologna (Bologna, 1951). 8 See Anne Markham Schulz, Giammaria Mosca Called Padovano: A Renaissance Sculptor in Italy and Poland, vol. 1 (Pennsylvania, 1998), 89–93. 9 On these works, see Stefan Komornicki, “Franciszek Florentczyk i palac wawelski,” Przegląd Historii Sztuki 1 (1929): 57–69; Helena Kozakiewicz, Rzeźba XVI wieku w Polsce (Warsaw, 1984), 11–19. On the Albrecht tomb, see Feliks Kopera, “Grobowiec króla Jana Olbrachta i pierwsze ślady stylu Odrodzenia na zamku wawelskim,” Przegląd Polski 118 (1895): 1–36; Białostocki, Art of the Renaissance, 10–11; Andrzej Fischinger, “Nagrobek Jana Olbrachta i początki rzeżby renesansowej w Polsce” in Renesans. Sztuka i ideologia, 451–66.