Cracow, the royal capital of ancient Poland: its history and antiquities/Preface
PREFACE
CRACOW, the time-honoured residence of Poland's kings, is amply entitled, by its numerous monuments of ancient civilization and art, to take the rank among famous historical towns which it is the purpose of this work to establish for it in the opinion of the international public. The bulk of the book is based, and most of the illustrations are taken from a collective monograph on the town's glorious past, published in 1904, by the Cracow Society of Antiquaries (Towarzystwo miłośników historyi i zabytków Krakowa), a result of the cooperative labours of Prof. S. Krzyżanowski (on the general history of the town), Dr. S. Tomkowicz (on Cracow's intellectual life), Dr. A. Chmiel (on the municipal organization and the craft-guilds), Prof. F. Kopera and Prof. K. Górski (on architecture), Dr. J. Muczkowski (on sculpture), and L. Lepszy (on painting, applied art, and commerce).
For details of architectural history, the standard work of A. Essenwein has been consulted.
In order to make the book acceptable to the foreign reader the matter of the collective work first mentioned has been condensed into what claims to be, to some extent, an independent treatment of the subject.
The present English translation was made from Mr. Lepszy's German work as published in the series Berühmte Kunststätten, Leipsic (E. A. Seemann), 1906, the translator himself being responsible for some explanatory additions which seemed necessary for the sake of the English reader—e.g., the accounts of Matejko's historical pictures, and of Wyspianski's paintings and poetry—as well as for the description of such recent works of art as the Grunwald memorial (unveiled in 1910). The Cracow Society of Antiquaries are indebted to the Austrian Ministry of Public Works for the grant of a subsidy towards the publication of the book in its English form. The translator is under obligation to his friend, Mr. L. C. Wharton, B.A., of the British Museum, for a revision of his work.