The Czartoryski Museum
Every Pole has heard of the Czartoryski family – and not only Poles. They even have a street named after them in Vienna, and some of them served as foreign ministers … of Russia. This is possible because the family descends from the Lithuanian Grand Dukes – the Gediminids – and bears a coat of arms almost identical to the Lithuanian Pogoń.
One of the most important museums in our country is the Czartoryski Princes Museum in Kraków, which has belonged to the National Museum for several years now. It is also one of the oldest museums; its origins go back to the 18th century and Princess Izabela Czartoryska.
Princess Izabela Czartoryska, née Fleming
This venerable museum would not exist without Princess Izabela Czartoryska, née Fleming. Her passion for collecting and preserving mementos of the Polish state lost at the end of the 18th century forms its foundation. Initially, the museum – or rather the princess’s private collection – was located in one of the family estates in Puławy, displayed in the local Temple of the Sibyl. The beginnings of the collection coincided with difficult times for our country: the partitions and the struggle to regain lost independence.
The turbulent 19th century
Although Princess Izabela’s son, Adam Czartoryski, served as the foreign minister of the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 19th century, he supported the November Uprising. The price for its failure was paid by everyone, not only the insurgents. Autonomy within Russia was abolished, and the estates of participants were confiscated. The Czartoryski family and their properties in the Russian partition suffered the same fate. To avoid arrest and exile, they evacuated themselves along with everything valuable and portable, joining many members of the Polish elite in emigration. They settled in Paris, and their residence, the Hôtel Lambert, became a center for stateless Poles scattered around the world. But even Paris became unsafe when the Paris Commune shook the foundations of society in 1871. Although the Czartoryskis survived unharmed, they concluded that it was time to return home.
The Czartoryski Museum in Kraków
Neither the Prussian partition with its Germanization policies nor the Russian partition with its – for obvious reasons less effective – Russification was a good place for a museum with Polish content in the 1870s. Therefore, the Czartoryskis decided to move to Kraków, then under Austro-Hungarian rule. The so-called “Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria” – a name invented by the Austrians for the areas around Kraków and Lviv – was the only region where the Polish language and culture enjoyed freedom.
For the museum, and initially also as living quarters, the family purchased three townhouses at the corner of Św. Jana and Pijarska streets, as well as the former Piarist monastery building. They also received the former Municipal Arsenal from the city, located within the city walls. The buildings were rebuilt and connected by a covered bridge over Pijarska Street. Next to the museum is the Czartoryski Library.
The collections of the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków
As is typical for 19th century collections, the range is broad and includes one of the most valuable art collections in Poland. European painting with Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo da Vinci – about which I will write a separate article – and Landscape with the Good Samaritan by Rembrandt are the jewels. But beyond these, you will find tens of thousands of objects, from ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman art to the 19th century.
The collection includes objects that from a 21st century perspective seem almost comical, such as the cap of Oliver Cromwell’s mother or a chair on which Shakespeare supposedly sat. In earlier times, great importance was attached to relics of past eras.
Sculpture, painting, arms and armor, prints and drawings, liturgical vestments, objects related to the distinctly Polish pompa funebris, numismatics, artistic crafts, Orientalia, Polonica from the First Polish Republic, and many other beautiful objects were collected over roughly a hundred years as the museum took shape.
You should plan about three hours to visit the Czartoryski Museum; the exhibition halls span six former large buildings connected into one complex.
Although the most valuable objects survived the turmoil of war, the museum shared the fate of the country and lost hundreds of items. The most valuable among the missing is Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man.
Would you like to visit the Czartoryski Museum with me? Let me know.
