#National Museum in Krakow

[monkeyssalad-blog]

Jozef Mehoffer «In the summer apartment», 1904 by Art Therapy by Julianna Via Flickr: Oil on canvas; 150x80 cm. {59x31.4in} National Museum in Krakow, Poland

[panicinthestudio]

Władysław Podkowiński - Study of a skeleton, 1892

In 1892 Władysław Podkowiński made a series of preparatory sketches with various views of skeletons, which were distorted into the oil composition "Skeleton Dance", probably created in the same year and now lost. National Museum in Krakow

[batri-jopa]

GOLDEN FLEECE - THE ART OF GEORGIA

The National Museum in Krakow is already inviting you to the first not only in Poland, but probably also in Europe, such a comprehensive, panoramic and wide-ranging exhibition of Georgian art - from the oldest traces of human activity through stunning, ancient examples of Kolchida gold, stone steles of the early Middle Ages, the most ancient traces of human activity, enchanting ancient examples of Colchis gold, stone steles of the early Middle Ages, shimmering with a blaze of colours medieval illuminated codices, modern clothes, militaria, through landscapes illustrating the changing face of Tbilisi and paintings by Pirosmani, to avant-garde art of the 20th century, including the contribution to its development of Polish artists, who tied their lives to this beautiful and unusual country

ZŁOTE RUNO - SZTUKA GRUZJI

18.04-15.09.2024

[my-blood-is-poisoned]

Detailed monkeys 🙈 🙉 🙊

(National Museum in Krakow)

[theaskew]

Maria Chmielowska (Polish 1867-1929), Akt kobiecy (Female Nude), 1895. Oil on canvas, 170 x 75 cm. (66.93 x 29.53) (Source: The National Museum of Krakow, Krakow, Poland)

[dosartistas]

(vía Wilhelm_Kotarbiński_-_Tomb_of_a_Suicide_-_MNK_II-b-539_-_National_Museum_Kraków.jpg (Imagen JPEG, 1351 × 2048 píxeles) - Escalado (45 %))

Wilhelm Kotarbinski. Tomb of a Suicide. Painting. 212x142cm, circa 1.900.

[columba22]

Sirens from Krakow

[sheltiechicago]

Kraków, Poland

A man attends the opening of the XX + XXI Polish Art Gallery’s sculpture space at the National Museum

Photograph: Artur Widak/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

[memories-of-ancients]

Hunting cleaver with calendar, crafted by Ambrossius Gemlich of Munich, Germany in 1528

from The National Museum in Krakow

[girlactionfigure]

THURSDAY HERO: Tadeusz Pankiewicz

Tadeusz Pankiewicz was a Polish pharmacist who helped the starving, suffering Jewish residents of the Krakow ghetto by providing them with medicine, food, and other lifesaving supplies.

Born in Sambor, Poland in 1908, Tadeusz studied at the prestigious Jagiellonian University in Krakow. In 1933 he took over the family business: a small pharmacy called Under the Eagle. Germany invaded Poland in 1939, but Tadeusz’s quiet life and successful small business were mostly unaffected, until 1941, when the Nazis forced the city’s 15,000 Jews into a ghetto.

Tadeusz’s pharmacy happened to be within the ghetto’s borders. The Nazis shut down other businesses and essential services in the ghetto to make it impossible for Jews to get food and other necessities, but Tadeusz refused to close his store. He bribed the Gestapo, using his own savings, to keep Under the Eagle open. Tadeusz was inspired by his Catholic faith to stay and help people however he could.

Conditions in the ghetto were horrific. There was never enough food, and every day residents died of starvation or illness; others were shot in the street by Nazi soldiers. Medicine of any kind was almost impossible to obtain, except from Tadeusz, who provided health care and pharmaceuticals for free to residents of the ghetto. He also provided them with lifesaving products such as hair dye to disguise their identity and tranquilizers to keep children quiet during Gestapo raids.

Tadeusz’s pharmacy became the go-to place for Jews to meet, plan underground activities and acts of defiance, and get lifesaving care and equipment. Tadeusz and his pharmacy employees Irena Drozdzikowska, Helena Krywaniuk, and Aurelia Danek put their lives at significant risk to help the Jews of the Krakow ghetto. Besides medicine, supplies and a safe place to meet, the brave pharmacist and his staff shared their meager wartime food rations, and hid Jews on the property during deportations. They were able to smuggle some Jews out of the ghetto and take them to hiding places where they would be safe.

Tadeusz actually befriended German soldiers to get information from them! He got them drunk and cleverly manipulated them into telling him about planned actions against Jews so he could warn them. Another service Tadeusz to the Jews trapped in the ghetto was acting as intermediary between them and the Poles with whom they left their valuables.

Among the people who met in secret in the pharmacy were prominent figures such as writer Mordechai Gebirtig and artist Abraham Neumann, who were tragically shot by the Germans in the ghetto in the infamous Bloody Thursday of June 4, 1942. Julian Aleksandrowicz survived the war to become a doctor and medical professor who specialized in the treatment of leukemia. Dr Abraham Mirowski, another Jew saved by Tadeuszm later said that the kind pharmacist was “living among us, was continuously exposed to dangers, but it did not make him scared. He was full of sympathy for our tragedy and wanted to help us with all his heart. Each death of a man or a woman was a traumatic experience for him.”

After the war, Tadeusz stayed in Krakow and, in 1947, he published his memoirs of life under German occupation. He continued working as a pharmacist. In 1957, some of the Jews he’d saved brought him for a visit to Israel as their guest. Tadeusz was honored as Righteous Among the Nations by Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem in 1983.

Tadeusz Pankiewicz died in Krakow in 1993. His pharmacy is now a museum about the history of the Jews of Krakow, with special focus on the ghetto years. Tadeusz and his brave staff are also a featured museum exhibit.

For helping Jews in the Krakow ghetto, we honor Tadeusz Pankiewicz as this week’s Thursday Hero.

[wszystkoinicmarysia]

Krakow - National Museum

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Józef Mehoffer (Polish, 1869-1946) Vita (Stained Glass), ca.1906 National Museum in Krakow

[galleryofart]

Death of Chopin

Date: Félix-Joseph Barrias (French, 1822–1907)

Date: 1885

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Collection: The National Museum in Krakow

Description

The French artist Felix-Joseph Barrias, since he painted this work 46 years after the composer's death, may have used an account of Chopin's dying moments that was conveyed to posterity by Solange, George Sand's daughter and the sculptor Clésinger's wife: "One October afternoon in 1849, on the 16th, around twenty people were apprehensively waiting in the drawing room […]. Chopin wanted to know whether Countess Potocka was also in the drawing room and if she would like to sing closer, the door was wide open, and the beautiful countess started to sing. She was singing with her heart broken, with a voice full of tears! The people in the room dropped to their knees, choking back their sobs.”

The refined lady in white, standing by the piano, is probably Countess Delfina Potocka, who, according to tradition, sang the song "Pieta Signore" (Have Mercy Upon Me), which at the time was attributed to Alessandro Stradelli and is now attributed to the 19th-century composer Niedermayer. At one side of the bed, on the left next to a nun, Solange herself is kneeling; at the other side of the bed, Chopin's sister Ludwika is holding the dying composer's hand; in the foreground to the right, Marcelina Czartoryska, Chopin's pupil, and further at the window, Father Aleksander Jełowiecki, the painter Teofil Kwiatkowski (he left a series of beautiful pencil and watercolor sketches representing Chopin both at the piano and on his death bed) and Wojciech Grzymała.

Two Swedish researchers, Cecilia and Jens Jorgensen, argue that Barrias created the painting in collaboration with his pupil, Countess Winnaretta de Polignac (1865–1943), Edmond de Polignac's widow and a philanthropist and patron of artists and scientists. She was the daughter of Isaac Singer, the inventor of the sewing machine. Reportedly, he wanted to name the first model of the sewing machine he constructed after Jenny Lind (1820–1887), an eminent Swedish soprano singer and, since Hans Christian Andersen dedicated one of his fairy-tales to her, also known as the Swedish nightingale. She met Chopin in 1848 in London during one of his last tours in the city and was intending to marry the composer.

Two weeks after the artist's death, she arranged and paid for an extremely ceremonious funeral, which started with a mass held at l'Église Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, during which she sang arias from Bellini's opera. In 1851, she met Countess Winnaretta de Polignac, and it is possible that they made a decision together to commission a painting that represents Chopin in his dying moments. We know a little about how the work was created, but we know that it was the property of Countess Winnaretta, and later Count Campofelice. According to the Jorgensens, the woman that the painting represents in white while standing at the piano is not Delfina Potocka, but Jenny Lind.

[ceruleanpages]

Georgian art and artifacts, seen in the National Museum in Krakow 05/25/2024

[espanquer]

Kazimierz Pochwalski (1855-1940) Polish painter. "Boys bathing" 1877

The National Museum in Krakow

[lascitasdelashoras]

The National Museum in Krakow - Prussian Homage, Jan Matejko