GOTHIC STYLE IN CRACOW ART
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in the Castle. This preference of the king for Byzantine forms is easily explained by the influences of Russian civilization, which were naturally very strongly at work in the Lithuanian court he had occupied before ascending the throne of Poland. In later years he seems to have inclined more towards Western art,
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45. BRASS MONUMENT OF PETER KMITA, IN THE CATHEDRAL.
for shortly after the Russians the place of a court painter was taken by a Cracow master, Nicholas Speckfleisch. His social position would render the hypothesis admissible that it was he who first organized the painters' guild at Cracow in 1410. This guild included sign-painters and church painters, carvers, gold-
