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 ART FROM THE RENASCENCE Knight, reposing on it in full armour and with the crown on his head, is of bronze.

In 1910, when the whole nation sent representatives to Cracow to commemorate the 500th anniversary of King Jagello's victory over the German "Knights of the Cross," Paderewski, the pianist of world-wide fame, presented to the town a monumental equestrian statue of the King, on a solid granite base, surrounded by four groups of figures representing moments of the fight. The whole, a powerful piece of work by a young sculptor named Wiwulski, is a proud memorial indeed of a great event in Poland's history; it adorns the square in front of the College of Art (illustration 77).

For, the Renascence also meant the dawning of a new day. This is manifested by the disappearance of the typical gold background with Gothic tracery, which is replaced by some rudiments of landscape. A very strong current of new ideas distinctly permeates the painters' guild of Cracow in 1490. It is decreed to reform the ordinances of the guilds by new statutes. Immigration of painters from Nuremberg, Silesia, Saxony, Moravia, and Bohemia becomes more frequent; all these foreigners infuse new life into Cracow painting. It is not improbable that even the greatest master of German Renascence painting, Albrecht Dürer, passed through Cracow on his wanderings. Among others, there came Joachim Libnan of Dresden; he was in close relations with the Augustine Order, which the Lanckoronski family used to endow with their foundations. Thus it is highly probable that the interesting folding-altar of St. John the Almoner, of 1504, came from his workshop (illustration 78). The characteristic figures of this triptych, the mise-en-scène of the whole episode, the bright colouring, the Renascence-like ornaments on the gold background, all show this to be the first real Renascence painting at Cracow. Making allowance for medieval realism of manner and traditional means of expression, as shown, e.g., in the folds of drapery or in the difference of proportion between the Saint's figure and those of the common men, we still clearly see new principles of art asserting themselves, chiefly those that were