Dekoracja malarska w piwnicy pałacu Pod Krzysztofory

Abstrakt

PICTORIAL DECORATIONS IN THE BASEMENT OF KRZYSZTOFORY PALACE

The knowledge of the alterations to the brick and stone  dwelling houses (kamienice) in Kraków derived from historical  and architectural surveys permits substantial conclusions  about the buildings adjoining the Main Market  Square, including about the basements thereof. It is assumed  that the earliest kamienice in Kraków did not have  basements; their bottom storeys became basements already  in the 14th century, when the level of the Main Market  Square was regulated after the construction of the Cloth  Hall. Until that time the basements were used as dwellings  and business premises, usually shops. It can also be assumed  that they contained pictorial decorations which either have  not survived or have not yet been discovered.  In 2005, during research and conservation works,  pictorial decorations were revealed and preserved in the basement  of Krzysztofory Palace. Developed in the last quarter  of the 15th or the first quarter of the 16th century, the room  was presumably used to receive visitors. It was decorated with  murals in the late Gothic style produced by artisan painters  having their studio in Kraków. The decor was based on a  garden house theme with the walls of the painted “bower”  crowned by a stencilled frieze resting on buttresses or illusionary  cantilevers and featuring the motif of a pole entwined  with acanthus leaves. The ceiling was covered with a tangle of  acanthus twigs against the sky-blue background. It is largely  due to a substantial destruction of the murals that their actual  meaning cannot be established. The decorations most  probably date from the end of the 15th and the beginning  of the 16th centuries, when the palace belonged to Sebastian  Morsztyn, supervisor of the royal salt mines in Wieliczka.  The room with the polychromes may be associated with the  pharmacy that functioned in the palace for nearly a hundred  years, from 1564 to 1655; Wojciech Piątek-Rzęczyca is the  first known-of apothecary from Krzysztofory Palace.  The hypotheses arrived at so far with regard to the origins  and function of the room with pictorial decorations  definitely require further interpretation. This study is no  more than a contribution to the deliberations on the interior  decor of the basements of the historic brick and stone  houses in Kraków.