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 ART FROM THE RENASCENCE spectator's heart and brain. His artistic talent is distinguished by a perfectly faultless moulding of forms. All his conceptions, however fascinating in their own allegorical intricacy, receive a separate and additional charm from being set in a most elaborate and thoroughly realistic background of landscape, which reminds one of the masterpieces of Japanese art. His immense variety of forms, always original, always fresh and brilliant, cannot fail to impress us with sincere admiration for the inventive genius of the artist (illustration 91).

Thus having finished our sketch of modern Polish painting as developed within the walls of Cracow, we turn to the history of in the modern era. Here again, the Renascence proved a life-giving impulse, stirring up men's imaginations to the production of new forms. The applied art of the Renascence did not come to us, as painting did, through the medium of Germany, but direct from Italy, its original source. Before the actual advent, however, of Italian Renascence masters, some productions of the new style in applied art had already found their way from Italy to the royal court of Poland, through the channels of trade. There is, for instance, in the Czartoryski Museum a fine piece of enamelled Venetian plate, which dates from the reign of King Alexander Jagello (1501-1506). Polish craftsmen, especially goldsmiths, did not become used to the new forms at once,, they only adopted them fragmentarily, and, in the mode of fashioning the whole, still adhered to the Gothic model. Examples of this are a fine reliquary in St. Mary's Church, the chalice of Bishop Padniewski, and other objects. Meantime, however, the royal court was paving the way for the new style; thus the King's donation of a magnificent golden reliquary (with relics of St. Sigismund) to the Treasury of the cathedral, was an important step in the promotion of Renascence fashions in art. Among the craftsmen artists who were attracted to the court by the favour it showed to the new style, the most eminent was Jacopo Caraglio (d. 1565). Like Cellini, he was excellent both as designer, engraver, goldsmith, enameller,