Page:Cracow - Lepszy.djvu/92

 GOTHIC STYLE IN CRACOW ART the Skalka to the Wawel, and interred near the southern portal of the cathedral. When Stanislas was canonized in 1254, they were transferred to their present place. The different periods were reflected in the forms that the tomb of the Saint took in turn, till finally Bishop Martin Szyszkowski, in the years 1626-1629, raised the present fine memorial, at an expense of 150,000 Polish florins (illustration 61).

A contrast to the cathedral is formed by the city church of St. Mary, founded in 1226 by Bishop Ivo Odrowaz (illustration 22). In the cathedral supreme splendour and magnificence manifest the greatness and power of Poland's monarchs and its lords spiritual and temporal; in the market-place the citizens of Cracow, at the time of the town's highest development, in the fourteenth century, erected in place of an old wooden church the present magnificent building, with three naves and an oblong choir 91 feet in height. The work was done under the supervision of Nicholas Wirsing (d. 1360), treasurer to King Casimir the Great. The interior of the building—which has a triangular chevet—is extraordinarily beautiful and noble in its slim proportions, simple forms, and manifold decorative ornamentation (illustration 23). The exterior is varied by projecting buttresses, which have a very rich crown, viz., a panelling with blank tracery on three sides; on the front side the shaft wears a detached roof, surmounted by a fine pinnacle.

The walls of the choir are bordered above by a solid cornice with beautiful consoles cut in stone. Above this cornice there was formerly a gallery with pointed arches, and this was originally the upper termination of the walls. The slender threefold windows, which begin low down and reach high up, are terminated above by tracery and keystones with plastic ornaments. In 1384 the choir was entirely completed. The coloured glazing of the windows in the apse is for the most part of fourteenth and fifteenth century date. The original vaulting broke down for unknown reasons, and a new star-shaped one with four bays was made in 1442, by Master Czipser, a mason of Kazimierz. On the north wall of the interior part of the choir there was a beautiful