This autumn, nearly 400 unique works of art from thirteen countries around the world will be on view at Wawel Royal Castle in Image of the Golden Age, an exhibition recalling the Renaissance flowering of art and culture in Poland and Lithuania under the last kings of the Jagiellonian dynasty.
The Krakow exhibition will showcase notable objects from public, ecclesiastical, and private collections. It will include not only widely known and exhibited works of art, but also a number of newly discovered objects, as well as may that have never been exhibited in Poland.

For three months, the former royal residence on Wawel Hill will be filled with several hundred works gathered from all over the world, including the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the British Library in London, The Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Louvre in Paris, the National Museum in Prague and the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest. For the purposes of this exhibition, several dozen works of art have undergone conservation, from graphic illustration and illuminated manuscripts through works of the goldsmith’s art to massive altars.

On the occasion of the exhibition, the Royal Wawel Castle has also received a generous gift from  Jerzy Wojciechowski; thirty works by Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio. This Italian in the employ of Sigismund II August was an excellent illustrator and expert carver of hardstone, an art form involving the creation of miniature royal portraits in semi-precious stones. Among the masterworks of this artist, visitors will be able to admire a cameo with a portrait of Queen Bona Sforza (The Metropolitan Museum of Art). The majestic image of Bona, bejewelled and richly dressed is a given a heroic touch by the addition of a brooch in the form of the head of Medusa, an attribute of the goddess Minerva and a symbol of “victory over evil”. The framing of the portrait, different from the widow’s portraits made of the queen after 1548, indicate her intentions to return to power.
The conception of the exhibition “Image of the Golden Age” is intended to show the revolutionary transformations taking place in the culture of Poland and Lithuania during the reigns of the last Jagiellons.
The exhibition is open from September 15 to december 14, 2023.

More information: https://wawel.krakow.pl/en/exhibition-temporary/image-of-the-golden-age