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Did you know that Ruben’s innovations Peter Paul Rubens developed a new type of equestrian portrait. The system that had been used up until then, in the Titian tradition (Horse portrait of Charles V), depicted a rider on a horse in profile. Rubens changed this, depicting the figure and mount slightly turned en trois quarts in a short perspective, so that they seemed to be heading directly towards the viewer. |
 The Albino magpie This bird has a very characteristic black and white plumage, black beak and legs. Its dark feathers have a metallic sheen, green-navy one on wings, as well as scarlet on the head and back, distinguishing it from the corvids. The presented specimen is unique, because of a very rare gene mutation that caused a lack of pigmentation in this individual and, as a result, its white plumage in places where magpies normally have black or light-brown feathers. |
 The European roller The European roller (Coracias garrulus Linné, 1758 r.) is one of the rarest and most beautifully coloured birds in Poland. It is an insectivorous bird, specialized in hunting large insects — e.g. beetles. In our country, it lives in dry and warm habitats in a varied landscape, with fallow lands, meadows and a small area of arable land, among which single, old trees grow. |
 The European bee-eater The former name of this bird (Merops apiaster Linnaeus, 1758)—the bee-eater—says a lot about its biology. The bee-eater (Merops apiaster is its full name according to the binominal nomenclature of species) is a bird from the bee-eater family (most species from this family occur in Africa and Asia). It feeds on insects, including bees and wasps caught in flight. bee-eaters establish nests in loess escarpments by drilling special tunnels in them (usually in high escarpments and banks). |
 “The album of plants and animals” The preserved collection of paintings, called, The album of plants and animals, is identified as the representations of plants and animals which are known from a source text and were purchased for the School of Drawing and Painting by the painter Józef Peszka. A document has been preserved in the archives of the Jagiellonian University, in which Peszka enumerates the items purchased for the school in 1920. In the list, under number 7, he wrote: “A collection of oil-painted animals and birds and flowers on a thick folio paper 30 pieces PLN 540”. |
 An impression of the body of a tuna-like fish with skeletons of smaller fish in its abdominal section This is a fragment of a thick layer of dolomitic ferruginous mudstone with an impression of a tuna-like fish on one side. In its abdominal section, there are preserved skeletons of smaller fish that have been eaten. |
 Crinoids Appellative of crinoids (Crinoidea) comes from the Greek words krinon, which means lily, and eidos ‒ form. This marine animals characterized by calyx-shape body, have also the stem and arms. Crinoids lived in prehistoric sea c. 200 million years ago. They belonged to the echinoderms. |
 Painting “Frenzy” by Władysław Podkowiński Along with Józef Pankiewicz, Władysław Podkowiński is considered to be the precursor of impressionism in Polish art painting. His works also gave rise to Symbolism and Expressionism trends in Polish Modernism.
About 1892 Podkowiński’s oeuvre began to feature visionary and phantasmagoric depictions of the issues of love, suffering and death inspired by his personal experiences, with references to achievements by Western European symbolists. |
 Over Door Tapestry with the Arms of Poland on landscape background with Animals ‒ Beaver and Porcupine One of sixteen over-door and over-window tapestries with the coats of arms of both parts of the Commonwealth. They were counterparts of large heraldic tapestries and their purpose was to fill the castle with heraldic motifs of national importance. Their format was adapted to the architecture of Wawel. They were produced as part of the programme for complete decoration of representative chambers with Brussels tapestries. |
 Painting “Team of Four” by Józef Chełmoński Józef Chełmoński’s Team of Four is the best known and most frequently referred to example of peak achievements of naturalism in Polish paintings. This large-format canvas depicts a team of four horses tearing towards the viewers while driven with passion by a Ukrainian peasant. The animals, painted in their natural size, seem to be bursting the surface of the painting, causing the illusion of unstoppable, constant movement. |
 Short-toed Eagle Short-toed Eagle — Circaetus gallicus (Gmelin, 1788) is a bird of prey in the family of Accipitridae. It feeds on different species of reptiles, especially snakes. Occasionally hunts for amphibians and small mammals. In Poland, bird is very rare — can be found... |
 “Fugu” — a drawing by Andrzej Wajda The fish depicted in the drawing is fugu (Latin Takifugu rubripes — a pufferfish), famous for the poison which can be found in its entrails (in particular, in its liver and ovaries), and spawn. The poison is tetrodotoxin, whose toxicity is many times stronger than the toxicity of cyanide. Because of the risk one takes while eating dishes made of fugu, this fish has a crowd of enthusiasts — those who gladly order fugu dishes prepared by qualified chefs, and artists who think about this fish as a motif in films and literature, an instrument of crime or suicide... |
 “Grotta del Cane” The present anonymous painting depicts the famous Grotta del Cane [it. Cave of Dogs]. It is located near Naples, by Lake Agname. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the cave was one of the tourist attractions of the region, visited by aristocrats and intellectuals travelling across Italy as part of so-called Grand Tour: a journey through the Old Continent, which was a traditional stage in the education of European elites. |
 “A pastoral scene against the landscape” by Peter Philipp Roos The present picture shows a pastoral scene typical of the painter. The work is kept in a warm, narrow colour range dominated by bronzes. The weather, captured perfectly by the painter, evokes the impression of hot and humid August afternoons: dark, stormy clouds are hanging over the hot, steaming earth below which birds are flying, escaping from the impending storm. |
Did you know that From Ornament of Late Antiquity to Netherlandish Grotesque On one of the seven hills of Rome – the Esquiline Hill – caves full of ancient paintings were excavated around 1480 under the foundations of medieval buildings. Their walls were decorated with fantastic, light and symmetrical structures created of figural, animal and floral motifs. La grotte, or caves, were in fact ruins of the villa of the Emperor Nero. It was called Domus Aurea because of the extraordinarily rich decoration of the walls and the inner part of the dome, which were covered with gold and paintings. They were created between AD 54 and 68 and related to the turn of the Third Style and Fourth Style of Pompeian painting. |
Did you know that Theatre of Nature The complete novelty was an animal and plant landscape, no longer treated as a background or complement to the scene, but as a separate subject matter. This type of textile was called a verdure (French: verdure) from the word verdir, or “to paint in green”, because of the predominance of this colour. It is sometimes claimed that one of inspirations for this kind of woven depictions was the hunting preferences of clients , as they are often also described as tapestries “to admire hunting” (ad venationem spectantia peristromata) or “fighting animals” (pugnae ferarum). The plant and animal landscape as a separate subject matter initially appeared in tapestries, later in paintings (for example paintings by Roelant Savery, 1576–1639). Verdures created between 1553 and 1560 that are part of the collection of tapestries of Sigismund II Augustus are probably among the first examples of this subject matter in tapestry art. |
 Bartosz Kokosiński, “Picture devouring a landscape painting” Taking up the fight with the two-dimensionality of the painter’s medium, Bartosz Kokosiński inflates the structure of the canvases with foam, deforms them, and radically bends their stretched frames. He deconstructs the painting as an artistic medium. In his most famous series – paintings devouring reality (2010–2015) – the canvases have been transformed into expanded objects, drawing in collections of various things, found by Kokosiński at flea markets, attics, and in the studios of befriended artists. |
 “Paradoxides Bohemicus” trilobite Trilobites were sea animals. Their oval and flattened body was covered with a chitinous carapace on the dorsal side. A trilobites' carapace consisted of three segments and visible body parts: a head, trunk and tail. Each of these parts could have thorns. |
Did you know that Organic formula Nature, seemingly unpredictable, surprises us with its regularity, rhythm, and sometimes even the creation of geometric forms. Perfect ripples on the water, geese flying in a V-formation, mushrooms forming a circle in the forest - they arouse admiration, but the surprise at their discovery is greater. This impression results from the association of the sense of order being a property belonging solely to the human mind, and being the result of its production, in contrast to the irregularity which characterises the living world. However, this could not be more wrong. |
 Jagiellonian tapestry “Turkeys” Verdures – tapestries presenting animals in a lanscape setting – are a large subset within the collection of Sigismund II Augustus. They can be divided into three groups. Turkeys is a part of a set of sixteen textiles in the shape of a horizontal rectangle. Central area is framed only by a narrow border of interweaving ribbons and flowers. They present animals commonly known in Europe, as well as exotic ones, such as turkeys, which were brought to Europe from America at that time. All the creatures are depicted amid the scenery of a Central European forest, in which, apart from the oaks, ivies and reeds typical of this region, there are fig trees and grapevines can. |
