Page:Cracow - Lepszy.djvu/176

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ART FROM THE RENASCENCE
156

All these were teachers in the Cracow School of Arts; so was Marcel Guyski (d. 1893); he produced busts chiefly, which give proof of high talent, and indeed must be included among the best works of their kind, on account of both excellent characterization and technical perfection. During the first period of his activity he was under the predominant influence of Luigi Amici, but later on, after a prolonged stay at Paris, which brought him into contact with French art, he adhered to French models. His pupils, Antonia Rozniatowska, Tola Certowicz, and Thaddæus Blotnicki, inherited some of the excellences of their master's talent. Of Gadomski's pupils, Anthony Pleszowski, who unfortunately died young, was doubtless the most highly gifted one. His bronze figure, entitled Mourning (in the National Museum), although repeating a motive of Michel Angelo in a Michelangelesque manner, yet shows individual depth of feeling, beauty of conception, and extraordinary harmony of lines. Another pupil of Gadomski's, Alfred Daun, produced the decorative groups standing in the parks that encircle the city.

In the National Museum are found some fine bronzes by Pius Welonski; his Gladiator (illustration 73), and Sclavus saltans are marked as works of a higher order, by the exquisite beauty of outline and correctness of form. His also is a bronze statue of Bojan (a legendary Slavonic hero) in the city parks. Among others, the groups and statuettes contributed by Peter Wojtowicz to the National Museum, are distinguished by academic precision and exactitude of work. In the quadrangle of the University Library building, and in front of the new theatre we see two sculptures of Cyprian Godebski, who made a name in France, and accordingly followed French tendencies in art: one of these is a statue of Copernicus, the famous astronomer, in the guise of a Cracow undergraduate; the other, a bust of Alexander Fredro, the Polish Moliere. Another sculptor addicted to French modernism, Wenceslaus Szymanowski, established his studio at Cracow in 1906; his monument of the painter, Arthur Grottger, in the city parks,