Page:Cracow - Lepszy.djvu/171

 ART FROM THE RENASCENCE dignitary made the acquaintance of Bartholomeo Ridolphi, a plasterer, whom he induced to enter King Sigismund Augustus's service. In the monument to Jordan, however, it is not the hand of this Italian master that we trace; it rather shows some features characteristic of the German Renascence. Towards the end of the sixteenth century there appeared the sculptors' family of the Gucci. Santi Gucci, born at Florence, being a son of Giovanni della Camilla, who restored the cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore, had a good training at home. Of his works, we find on the Wawel the large monument of King Stephen Báthory (illustration 68). The decorative moulding which is of baroque intricacy, the scrolls and volutes, distinctly show that we are bordering on a new epoch. Sculpture is rapidly approaching a period of decline.

In the whole artistic movement, which thus centres in Wawel Cathedral, the citizens of Cracow take a warmly sympathizing part. The patricians of the town follow the example of kings and senators in building chapels of their own, founding altars, and erecting tombs. These of course are more modest in dimensions, but they equal the best in elegance of form; we even find such as are not surpassed by the others in grandeur and originality either. For proofs, it suffices to single out the Renascence monuments of Cellari and Montelupi (illustration 10), Lesniowolski, and others in St. Mary's Church, or the beautiful and interesting slabs of Cracow's Campo Santo in the cloisters of the Dominican Church.

Of the sepulchral brasses of the Renascence, the tomb of Prince-Cardinal Frederick Jagello, of 1510, deserves to be mentioned first (illustration 69); it has been described before. Here it only remains to point out the difference in style between the upper slab, with the engraved portrait of the Cardinal, which is Gothic, and the Renascence relief on the front side, representing the Cardinal as conducted by St. Stanislas to the throne of the Mother of God. Evidently, the plans were made by two different artists at Cracow, and jointly executed in Vischer's workshop at Nuremberg. One of the most beautiful