University; to the right, the chapel where he performed his devotions.
Finally, the old synagogue of Kazimierz town (now suburb) deserves special mention; it is of medieval origin. Its interior has the shape of an oblong hall with six cross vaults, resting on two tall round pillars. Within each of the arches formed by the wall-ribs there is a high-placed window with a round arch; these admit the light. The whole place, with its iron Al-Memar in the middle, has an air of grave solemnity. The vaulting, and the fantastically shaped outward ornaments of tin, probably date from the restoration in 1570; for in this year, the Cracow architect, Matteo Gucci, made a new vault to the synagogue.
It is not only in the domain of architecture, but in that of plastic art as well, that fifteenth-century Cracow exhibits a picture of stirring life. The building of the churches above enumerated and described is intimately connected with the development of sculpture; their decorative parts required the skilled hands of stone-cutters and sculptors. These came from afar, together with the masonic lodge: they are the masters who created the figures and other heraldic and ornamental forms of medieval decoration on portals, capitals, consoles, and keystones. Their favourite line was the curve of the letter S. The mawkish faces of their statues are generally devoid of vivid expression, nor would the drapery allow the beauty of bodily forms to express itself. To this group belong the keystones of the Cathedral—representing in the naïve medieval manner the fight of St. Michael and St. Margaret with the dragon, or the Patron Saints. Other specimens of this series of Cracow sculptures are the beautiful keystones of the ground-floor room at the old Mint in the City Square (illustration 30), dating from the middle of the fourteenth century. They show seven coats-of-arms of the principalities of Poland; among these, the arms of the Dobrzyn country with the expressive head of King Casimir the Great, that of his wife Adelaide of Hesse, and other figures of men as well as of beasts and imaginary symbolical creatures. These works of plastic art
