LEONARDO DA VINCI AND THE
SPLENDOR OF POLAND
History of Collecting and Patronage
An extraordinary, one-time-only distillation of Poland’s most important and hitherto relatively unknown collections of European painting, from both public and private museums, was presented for the first time in one place and outside of Poland when the Milwaukee Art Museum on September 13, 2002 has opened its eagerly anticipated exhibition, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Splendor of Poland: A History of Collecting and Patronage, to run through November 24, 2002.
The story of Poland’s most important public and private museum collections presented for the first time outside Europe featuring an undisputed masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci Lady with an Ermine. Other exhibition highlights reflect the proud history of collecting in Poland, including a love for the great Dutch and Flemish painters evident in the large numbers of their works found in the national collections, including Hans Memling’s The Last Judgement (1467-71), from Gdañsk.
The collection also includes important European late Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque works by artists such as Veit Stoss, Jan Van Goyen, and Jusepe de Ribera, as well as several of the 18th-century cityscapes of Warsaw, by the Italian court painter Bernardo Bellotto, which later served as helpful guideposts in the post-World War II reconstruction of Warsaw’s completely destroyed Old Town. Alongside these and numerous other European masters will be a select group of works by great Polish artists from five centuries, including Jan Matejko, Piotr Michalowski, Olga Boznañska and Jacek Malczewski.
The exhibition highlights Poland’s place in history as a meeting ground for artists and intellectuals of many nationalities; a center for rich and diverse forms of royal patronage incorporating Italian, Dutch and French influences; a hub for international trade that produced a pluralism of taste, and a country that clung to its artistic culture in the face of a geopolitical order that shattered its national independence throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries.
During the exhibition Milwaukee Art Museum hosted a broad range of educational programs and activities designed to enhance the understanding of Polish culture to diverse audiences. Activities included musical performances, lectures and a symposium. The exhibition will then travel to The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (where it will be on show from December 8, 2002 till February 16, 2003) and to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco: California Palace of the Legion of Honor (from March 8 until May 18, 2003).
