Temporary exhibitions

To mark the six-hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald.

15 July - 30 September 2010

The Cracow celebrations of the 600th anniversary of the triumph at Grunwald refer to a centuries-old tradition. Here, in Cracow Cathedral, at the altar of St Stanislaus, patron of the
Polish Kingdom, were hung the banners won in the war with the Order of the Knights of the Hospital of St Mary of the Teutons in Jerusalem. Here also the remains of King Ladislaus Jagiello lie in a marble sarcophagus. It was from the Wawel hill that a procession in commemoration of the great victory would set off annually on 15 July – the Feast of the Sending of the Apostles – towards the Church of St Hedvige (Jadwiga) in Stradom. And it was in Cracow that on the 500th anniversary of the battle the monumental Grunwald memorial, funded by Ignacy Jan Paderewski, was erected. An event of particular interest during the present celebrations is a display of reconstructions of all the 56 Teutonic banners and of some of the surviving trophies captured during the war against the Teutonic Knights and later given by the king to numerous churches in Poland.

ROOM I
The exhibition begins with a photograph showing a panorama of the Grunwald battlefield and with portraits of King Ladislaus Jagiello (ca. 1351-1434) and the Grand Duke Witold (ca. 1352-1430).

ROOM II
The presentation of the original Banderia Prutenorum by Jan Długosz is accompanied by a display of copies of this manuscript and its printed editions. Here also is the documentation of successive reconstructions of the Teutonic banners, undertaken between 1900 and 2009.

ROOM III
On display in the Renaissance bay window is a triptych from Pławno, recalling a special role attributed to St Stanislaus in the victory over the Teutonic Knights. Next to it can be seen the text of Bogurodzica (Mother of God) - the hymn sung by the Polish knights at Grunwald. The standards suspended under the ceiling are reconstructions of some of the Teutonic banners, including that of the Bishopric of Pomezania which was sent to Cracow with news of the victory. The presence of the figure of the Virgin Mary, patron saint of the Teutonic Knights, refers to the spiritual foundations of the Order. The centre of the room is occupied by the trophies captured during the war waged against the Order. An object of special significance is the portrait of St Bridget, who in her famous Revelations foretold the defeat of the Teutonic Knights. Fifteenthcentury manuscripts and later copies containing accounts of the battle, as well as the diploma of the First Peace of Toruń dated 1 February 1411 complement the exhibition.

ROOM IV
The objects assembled here illustrate the Grunwald tradition in the modern era until the end of the 19th century. They include a plaster cast of the sarcophagus of Ladislaus Jagiello and its Renaissance canopy, along with a reconstruction of the inscriptions which King Sigismund I (1467-1548ordered in 1524 to be placed on the grille surrounding his grandfather’s tomb in Cracow Cathedral but which have not survived. An enlarged photograph of a woodcut shows the portrait of Ladislaus Jagiello holding Teutonic banners with broken staffs. The display includes another group of reconstructed Teutonic banners. The remaining exhibits illustrate
the cultivation of the Grunwald tradition in Cracow right up until the period of the partitions of the Polish Commonwealth (1795). Here also can be seen some of the few surviving depictions of the Battle of Grunwald from the early modern era, while the screenedoff part of the room contains pictures on this subject which were painted in the period of the Partitions.

ROOM V
The diorama The Battle of Grunwald, painted by Tadeusz Popiel and Zygmunt Rozwadowski for the Cracow celebrations of the 500th anniversary of the victory over the Teutonic Knights, is an evocative pictorial vision of this great victory. The other artefacts are a reminder of the celebrations organized in Cracow in 1910. Particularly remarkable is a Paris model of the Grunwald monument by Antoni Wiwulski (1877-1919); the monument, funded by Ignacy
Jan Paderewski (1860-1941), was erected in Cracow in the same year. On display beside it is the head of Witold – a fragment of the original memorial destroyed by the Germans during World War II. The symbolic end of the exhibition is the monumental painting The Prussian Homage (1882) by Jan Matejko (1838-1893).