Dekoracja malarska w piwnicy pałacu Pod Krzysztofory

PICTORIAL DECORATIONS IN THE BASEMENT OF KRZYSZTOFORY PALACE The knowledge of the alterations to the brick and stone dwelling houses (kamienice) in Kraków derived from historical and architectural surveys permits substantial conclusions about the buildings adjoining the Main Market Square, including about the basements thereof. It is assumed that the earliest kamienice in Kraków did not have basements; their bottom storeys became basements already in the 14th century, when the level of the Main Market Square was regulated after the construction of the Cloth Hall. Until that time the basements were used as dwellings and business premises, usually shops. It can also be assumed that they contained pictorial decorations which either have not survived or have not yet been discovered. In 2005, during research and conservation works, pictorial decorations were revealed and preserved in the basement of Krzysztofory Palace. Developed in the last quarter of the 15th or the first quarter of the 16th century, the room was presumably used to receive visitors. It was decorated with murals in the late Gothic style produced by artisan painters having their studio in Kraków. The decor was based on a garden house theme with the walls of the painted “bower” crowned by a stencilled frieze resting on buttresses or illusionary cantilevers and featuring the motif of a pole entwined with acanthus leaves. The ceiling was covered with a tangle of acanthus twigs against the sky-blue background. It is largely due to a substantial destruction of the murals that their actual meaning cannot be established. The decorations most probably date from the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th centuries, when the palace belonged to Sebastian Morsztyn, supervisor of the royal salt mines in Wieliczka. The room with the polychromes may be associated with the pharmacy that functioned in the palace for nearly a hundred years, from 1564 to 1655; Wojciech Piątek-Rzęczyca is the first known-of apothecary from Krzysztofory Palace. The hypotheses arrived at so far with regard to the origins and function of the room with pictorial decorations definitely require further interpretation. This study is no more than a contribution to the deliberations on the interior decor of the basements of the historic brick and stone houses in Kraków.