Selected graphic and narrative forms in Poland from the Middle Ages to the 19th century
Selected graphic and narrative forms in Poland from the Middle Ages to the 19th century.
Paweł Chmielewski
A distinctive feature of European art in the Middle Ages was its imagery - derived from Carolingian codes, and at the end of the 11th century focused on the artistic achievements of the Ancient East, discovered at the beginning of the Crusades - revealed primarily through the cycle of illustrations. It was no different in Poland. We know these graphic narratives from the pages of the oldest Romanesque codes, among which the "Płock Evangelist" deserves attention (called the "Pułtusk Code" from the place of storage), which is a "guide" for the preacher, illustrated just after 1075, "The Golden Code of Gniezno ”, Created around this time and a century younger, lost in the Warsaw Uprising, illustrated“ Biblia Redska ”. The material on which the narrative picture stories were recorded was not always parchment. The oldest - so far known to us in Poland - such a representation are eight scenes from the life of the Old Testament hero Gideon, engraved in the 10th century on the walls of the so-called "Wrocław witchcraft". The most famous and most elaborate realization of this sequential way of imaging is the bronze door in the Gniezno cathedral (built around 1170), showing the life and death of Saint Adalbert in two rows of nine "frames".
In what Johan Huizinga called "the autumn of the Middle Ages", publishing houses were operating successfully in Krakow (then the capital of the Polish kingdom), publishing books with picture narratives. Today we could call them comic book ancestors. I will mention a few of the most important ones. The first print that refers to the ideas already known from the Dutch and German "Bibles of the Poor" is the Ungler Gospels, compiled by Jan of Sącz (a. Johannes Maletius, 1482-1567), published around 1527. In 1561, heirs The then most famous Krakow printer, Marek Szarfenberg (ca. 1490-1545), prepared the so-called The Leopolita Bible. There are as many as 296 graphics with captions on 1,266 pages. In this enormous book (and at the same time one of the monuments of the Polish language), the Apocalypse of St. John. This mysterious and symbolic passage from the New Testament is illustrated with twenty-six woodcuts. They co-create an integrated graphic and narrative work. They are full of dynamics, they show fantastic characters with expressive characters and amazing phenomena, sudden plot twists, they build a coherent narrative showing the passage of time, and their addition is a synthetic text describing the content of the paintings. We can supplement this description with two more determinants in the field of comic book theory - they co-create a popular and widely available work. The representation of Krakow's graphic and narrative forms from the late Middle Ages and the dawn of the Renaissance revival is completed by the "Code of Baltazar Behem" from 1505, illustrated by an anonymous artist modeled on the painting of Hieronimus Bosch, drawing calendars and prediction collections prepared by the Cracow astronomer and professor Michael of Wiślica (approx. 1499-1575) and satirical, originating from the circle of "low" literature, prepared in 1521 by Jan of Koszyczki (approx. 1488-1546) "Conversations that were washed by King Solomon the wise with the fat and dirty Marcholt ”With a series of illustrations by an anonymous woodcutter.
Jan Ziarnko (1575-1626) was among the engravers and printers who emigrated from Poland at that time. In the French, beautifully illustrated book "Les peintures sacrees sur. la bibie pur le R ”(1665), whose editor and author of the introduction was Antoine Girard, among the six illustrators of the series, we find the name of this painter from Lviv. Although he did not live to be published, the notes in the studies prove that he enjoyed some recognition on the Seine.
Among the projects that pave the way for press comics, let's stop for a moment at the 17th-century fashion journal. Here, in the aesthetics typical of the German and French proto-comics of the Baroque period, Anton Möller (c. 1563-1611) from Gdańsk created "All states of clothing ..." (1601). Twenty figures with descriptions - a curiosity are the different views of the models at different angles, in profile, half-profile, from the back, as if anticipating the actions of photographers - figures representing the entire social profile of Gdańsk at that time were shown. From servants and poor townswomen, to bankers' wives and rich patricians.
Daniel Mikołaj Chodowiecki (1726-1801) also came from Gdańsk. The son of a Pole and a Swiss Huguenot, thanks to his proficiency and artistic intelligence, he became one of the most sought-after book illustrators on the German market. His engravings for Jan Jakub Rousseau's "New Heloise", works by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and popular romances strengthened his fame, and during the Napoleonic Wars, Chodowiecki's works found their way along with English soldiers to the British Isles, where they became very popular among collectors. This artist's place in history was secured by one work - "Journey from Berlin to Gdańsk in 1773". These are 108 engravings describing his journey from the capital of Prussia to his hometown. Chodowiecki took advantage of the travel description, which was very popular in the enlightenment of the literary genre, but presented it graphically. Readers fully appreciated his artistry a hundred years later, when a beautiful, critical edition of "Travel ..." was published in Berlin. This edition has been supplemented with descriptions from the artist's diary that precede each drawing that forms a narrative sequence. The story begins with a farewell to his family, then we see the artist in a cheerful conversation with his travel companion, then on a ferry crossing the Oder, then on the streets of towns, in roadside taverns. The "journey from Berlin to Gdańsk" lasted two months and is an extraordinary source of knowledge about the architecture, ethnography, customs and fashion of its time. The entire Chodowiecki family was extremely gifted. The cousins and children of Daniel Mikołaj were responsible for painting and graphics. Of these, attention should be paid to the daughter of Susanne Henry (1764-1819). Thanks to painting cycles, she was called "Hogarth in a skirt", and already as a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin (the first woman in this position) she created an unusual series of small etchings on customs at the beginning of the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as narrative series, among others "The Consequences of a Happy and Unhappy Marriage" (1802). Very rare, today they are a rarity for collectors. Another important figure in the pantheon of Polish comic book authors was Michał Płoński (1778-1812). This outstanding and unfulfilled artist died at the age of 34 in an insane asylum. He worked in the Imperial Cabinet of Prints in Paris and in Amsterdam. We are primarily interested in the unusual proto-comic board (in the style of Rembrandt's best drawings) "Carrying baskets". It is a metaphorical story about the human condition, the impermanence of life and matter, with the central figure of a basket merchant, reminiscent of the executioner's helpers standing around the guillotine during the Great Terror. Thanks to the symbolism of individual drawings, we can even compare the "Bearer of the baskets" to the medieval macabre dances.
Two authors of picture stories decided the shape of picture stories in Poland in the 1840s and 1850s: Jan Lewicki (1795-1871) and Artur Bartels (1818-1885).Lewicki became famous for a moment in 1830, when he came up with an idea and prepared a series of postcards with humorous poems, showing famous figures from the life of Warsaw in troublesome situations. This series - "Satirical Brooms" - was very popular among the poorest inhabitants of the capital, workers and servants. Later, in the years 1850 and 1853 (twice, in Paris and in Poland) his album (huge 22 pages) was published, adapting the Baroque diaries of Jan Chryzostom Pasek. It is a description of the wars, customs and journeys of the Polish nobleman, drawn in the mannerist style of Italian graphic artist Antonio Tempesty. It took the artist almost ten years to work on this detailed work. She did not bring fame, but secured the position of court cartographer at the court of the Portuguese king. Also in Paris, in 1858, Jan Kazimierz Wilczyński published (in the Lemercier publishing house) three albums by Artur Bartels (out of the six kept in the manuscripts in Vilnius). These are satirical pictures showing first of all moral (cultural and economic) changes in the Polish provinces, caused by new ideas of scientism and the industrial revolution. The clash of the "old" and the "new" is the source of the comic (almost Molierian). "Mr. Athanasius the Crust, a progressive man" and "Mr. Eugene" are drawn in the style of British stories. The first in chronology - "Łapigrosz" - was redrawn and corrected by the eminent Polish poet and painter, Cyprian Kamil Norwid (1821-1883). It has the formal features of the best works of Rodolphe Töpffer. Both artists - Lewicki and Bartels, did not cause an artistic revolution in Poland and did not gain fame during their lifetime. It was only with the creation of Tygodnik Illustrowany in 1859 (and other magazines soon after) and the activity of Franciszek Kostrzewski (1826-1911), the author of, inter alia, of the full-blooded press comic "Historya Jedynaczka" (1859), we can say that Polish picture stories are becoming popular and find their way into the wide circulation of culture.
Paweł Chmielewski
A distinctive feature of European art in the Middle Ages was its imagery - derived from Carolingian codes, and at the end of the 11th century focused on the artistic achievements of the Ancient East, discovered at the beginning of the Crusades - revealed primarily through the cycle of illustrations. It was no different in Poland. We know these graphic narratives from the pages of the oldest Romanesque codes, among which the "Płock Evangelist" deserves attention (called the "Pułtusk Code" from the place of storage), which is a "guide" for the preacher, illustrated just after 1075, "The Golden Code of Gniezno ”, Created around this time and a century younger, lost in the Warsaw Uprising, illustrated“ Biblia Redska ”. The material on which the narrative picture stories were recorded was not always parchment. The oldest - so far known to us in Poland - such a representation are eight scenes from the life of the Old Testament hero Gideon, engraved in the 10th century on the walls of the so-called "Wrocław witchcraft". The most famous and most elaborate realization of this sequential way of imaging is the bronze door in the Gniezno cathedral (built around 1170), showing the life and death of Saint Adalbert in two rows of nine "frames".
In what Johan Huizinga called "the autumn of the Middle Ages", publishing houses were operating successfully in Krakow (then the capital of the Polish kingdom), publishing books with picture narratives. Today we could call them comic book ancestors. I will mention a few of the most important ones. The first print that refers to the ideas already known from the Dutch and German "Bibles of the Poor" is the Ungler Gospels, compiled by Jan of Sącz (a. Johannes Maletius, 1482-1567), published around 1527. In 1561, heirs The then most famous Krakow printer, Marek Szarfenberg (ca. 1490-1545), prepared the so-called The Leopolita Bible. There are as many as 296 graphics with captions on 1,266 pages. In this enormous book (and at the same time one of the monuments of the Polish language), the Apocalypse of St. John. This mysterious and symbolic passage from the New Testament is illustrated with twenty-six woodcuts. They co-create an integrated graphic and narrative work. They are full of dynamics, they show fantastic characters with expressive characters and amazing phenomena, sudden plot twists, they build a coherent narrative showing the passage of time, and their addition is a synthetic text describing the content of the paintings. We can supplement this description with two more determinants in the field of comic book theory - they co-create a popular and widely available work. The representation of Krakow's graphic and narrative forms from the late Middle Ages and the dawn of the Renaissance revival is completed by the "Code of Baltazar Behem" from 1505, illustrated by an anonymous artist modeled on the painting of Hieronimus Bosch, drawing calendars and prediction collections prepared by the Cracow astronomer and professor Michael of Wiślica (approx. 1499-1575) and satirical, originating from the circle of "low" literature, prepared in 1521 by Jan of Koszyczki (approx. 1488-1546) "Conversations that were washed by King Solomon the wise with the fat and dirty Marcholt ”With a series of illustrations by an anonymous woodcutter.
Jan Ziarnko (1575-1626) was among the engravers and printers who emigrated from Poland at that time. In the French, beautifully illustrated book "Les peintures sacrees sur. la bibie pur le R ”(1665), whose editor and author of the introduction was Antoine Girard, among the six illustrators of the series, we find the name of this painter from Lviv. Although he did not live to be published, the notes in the studies prove that he enjoyed some recognition on the Seine.
Among the projects that pave the way for press comics, let's stop for a moment at the 17th-century fashion journal. Here, in the aesthetics typical of the German and French proto-comics of the Baroque period, Anton Möller (c. 1563-1611) from Gdańsk created "All states of clothing ..." (1601). Twenty figures with descriptions - a curiosity are the different views of the models at different angles, in profile, half-profile, from the back, as if anticipating the actions of photographers - figures representing the entire social profile of Gdańsk at that time were shown. From servants and poor townswomen, to bankers' wives and rich patricians.
Daniel Mikołaj Chodowiecki (1726-1801) also came from Gdańsk. The son of a Pole and a Swiss Huguenot, thanks to his proficiency and artistic intelligence, he became one of the most sought-after book illustrators on the German market. His engravings for Jan Jakub Rousseau's "New Heloise", works by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and popular romances strengthened his fame, and during the Napoleonic Wars, Chodowiecki's works found their way along with English soldiers to the British Isles, where they became very popular among collectors. This artist's place in history was secured by one work - "Journey from Berlin to Gdańsk in 1773". These are 108 engravings describing his journey from the capital of Prussia to his hometown. Chodowiecki took advantage of the travel description, which was very popular in the enlightenment of the literary genre, but presented it graphically. Readers fully appreciated his artistry a hundred years later, when a beautiful, critical edition of "Travel ..." was published in Berlin. This edition has been supplemented with descriptions from the artist's diary that precede each drawing that forms a narrative sequence. The story begins with a farewell to his family, then we see the artist in a cheerful conversation with his travel companion, then on a ferry crossing the Oder, then on the streets of towns, in roadside taverns. The "journey from Berlin to Gdańsk" lasted two months and is an extraordinary source of knowledge about the architecture, ethnography, customs and fashion of its time. The entire Chodowiecki family was extremely gifted. The cousins and children of Daniel Mikołaj were responsible for painting and graphics. Of these, attention should be paid to the daughter of Susanne Henry (1764-1819). Thanks to painting cycles, she was called "Hogarth in a skirt", and already as a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin (the first woman in this position) she created an unusual series of small etchings on customs at the beginning of the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as narrative series, among others "The Consequences of a Happy and Unhappy Marriage" (1802). Very rare, today they are a rarity for collectors. Another important figure in the pantheon of Polish comic book authors was Michał Płoński (1778-1812). This outstanding and unfulfilled artist died at the age of 34 in an insane asylum. He worked in the Imperial Cabinet of Prints in Paris and in Amsterdam. We are primarily interested in the unusual proto-comic board (in the style of Rembrandt's best drawings) "Carrying baskets". It is a metaphorical story about the human condition, the impermanence of life and matter, with the central figure of a basket merchant, reminiscent of the executioner's helpers standing around the guillotine during the Great Terror. Thanks to the symbolism of individual drawings, we can even compare the "Bearer of the baskets" to the medieval macabre dances.
Two authors of picture stories decided the shape of picture stories in Poland in the 1840s and 1850s: Jan Lewicki (1795-1871) and Artur Bartels (1818-1885).Lewicki became famous for a moment in 1830, when he came up with an idea and prepared a series of postcards with humorous poems, showing famous figures from the life of Warsaw in troublesome situations. This series - "Satirical Brooms" - was very popular among the poorest inhabitants of the capital, workers and servants. Later, in the years 1850 and 1853 (twice, in Paris and in Poland) his album (huge 22 pages) was published, adapting the Baroque diaries of Jan Chryzostom Pasek. It is a description of the wars, customs and journeys of the Polish nobleman, drawn in the mannerist style of Italian graphic artist Antonio Tempesty. It took the artist almost ten years to work on this detailed work. She did not bring fame, but secured the position of court cartographer at the court of the Portuguese king. Also in Paris, in 1858, Jan Kazimierz Wilczyński published (in the Lemercier publishing house) three albums by Artur Bartels (out of the six kept in the manuscripts in Vilnius). These are satirical pictures showing first of all moral (cultural and economic) changes in the Polish provinces, caused by new ideas of scientism and the industrial revolution. The clash of the "old" and the "new" is the source of the comic (almost Molierian). "Mr. Athanasius the Crust, a progressive man" and "Mr. Eugene" are drawn in the style of British stories. The first in chronology - "Łapigrosz" - was redrawn and corrected by the eminent Polish poet and painter, Cyprian Kamil Norwid (1821-1883). It has the formal features of the best works of Rodolphe Töpffer. Both artists - Lewicki and Bartels, did not cause an artistic revolution in Poland and did not gain fame during their lifetime. It was only with the creation of Tygodnik Illustrowany in 1859 (and other magazines soon after) and the activity of Franciszek Kostrzewski (1826-1911), the author of, inter alia, of the full-blooded press comic "Historya Jedynaczka" (1859), we can say that Polish picture stories are becoming popular and find their way into the wide circulation of culture.
Co-financé par le Fonds de Promotion de la Culture du Ministère de la Culture, du Patrimoine National et du Sport.
Komentarze
Prześlij komentarz