Leon, I have something for you. Do you remember Mehoffer? And these things?
Well, now compare to this
Turns out that these artists just make the drawing sketches, and then a glass expert produces it. You know, chain production. And I found the original sketches alongside plenty of other stuff you – English plural you – have to see. And no, I was not at Włocławek – for those of you who don’t know about Włocławek, well, that was a noclegi that deserves the anecdote* –, but I just also discovered that Mehoffer designed the stain-glass windows at Włocławek’s Cathedral. Seriously, this guy and his super colleague Wyśpiański are the world master of stain-glass windows. I always neglected such windows until I saw Mehoffer’s at Friburg, and so far I keep looking for more of their jobs, looking for someone else’s windows as well, and no way, nobody like these two guys.
This year somewhat resembles my last year in Madrid, in the sense of self-determination to do too many things at the same time, at to what this post concerns, further discovering Kraków. Where in Madrid I used to remember the year and architect of virtually every minimally relevant building within the city centre, now I’m going for that degree of knowledge about Krakow. I started, this time, with museums. Call it Leon pushing me to every second one during our trips. And just that, that one chance when we stumbled upon those stain-glass windows at Friburg’s cathedral. That single moment when that coincidence made me utterly interested in Mehoffer, and thus, to the topics surrounding him.
So why not starting with Matejko historicism? We all know we love history. And where Matejko’s colour managing is quite interesting, most of all his paintings are an encyclopaedia of arts. Perfect starting point, history was always my thing. That quickly escalated.
Back in the centuries, around Revolution times, Paris pushed around Europe a classicism which values historical depictions over every-day life scenery, to which Napoleon was paragon – those David’s encyclopaedias… –. On the meanwhile, a non-existent Poland slightly pushed by Poniatowski’s attempts to update a backward school of arts, valued those historical depictions for the special reason of a reminiscence of Poland’s former greatness. There is one painting that wonderfully explains everything.
![Jan Matejko [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://i0.wp.com/farfromready.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/prussian-homage.jpg?resize=697%2C339&ssl=1)
But more explanations to come, I’m rushing now to take a train to visit some of my favourite people on earth, but I’ll also take the opportunity to finish some research on that School at my friends“ city.
Yeah, I know the world is getting a bit messed up. But hey, if there is one outcome of Trumplandia I’m kind of pleased with, is the amount of interesting stuff that is being written about that disaster, and all the others – don’t let one story make you forget the rest. I have nothing to add on that topic, just refer yourself to the wisest articles you find around the net.
[…] get to the point. Some time ago, while Leon was writing to me that he wanted to get into arts, and I was writing about arts for him, I was having jobs I was not enjoying. At one of them, I had to do too many repetitive […]
[…] Nelson, I have something for you! […]
Correction: I’m not pushing you into every second museum, I’m just suggesting there is one and then you pull me along 😛
But no, different thing: I’m looking at glass windows, too, nowadays. Turns out the most prominent ones of Münster are t e r r i b l e. The entire cathedral: This dark, grey-and-brown-and-black post-1945 stuff that just totally neglects the raison d’être of church windows (something to illuminate the interior? To make it brighter than as if there was just a wall?).
St. Lamberti has a Sainte-Chapelle-like apsis, though (not with pictures like that, but with a similar colour impression).