Portraits of Marian Sokołowski by Leon Wyczółkowski

Abstract

The Jagiellonian University Museum has two portraits of Marian Sokołowski (1839– –1911), created by Leon Wyczółkowski (1852–1936). Sokołowski was the fi rst Polish art historian, who was appointed to hold the chair of art history. His larger portrait (inv. no. 130, crayon on cardboard, 140 x 111.5 cm, signed and dated) features the model shown down to his hips, standing behind a table against a background of plaster casts of antique bas-reliefs, one of which can be identifi ed as a copy of the front plate of a Greek sarcophagus dating back to 320 BC, and featuring the Battle with Amazons (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum). The fi gures are treated sketchily, with long streaks of colour which makes the viewer focus on the face of the model painted with meticulous care, which gives perfect psychological characteristics. As shown in the dedication, the artist painted the scholar’s portrait in 1899 as a gift to him, most probably on the sixtieth anniversary of his birth. The smaller portrait (inv. no. 17,370, crayon on canvas, 86 x 59.5 cm) features the half-fi gure of the same model. The difference in the size of the portrait results from a different cropping and the fact that the background is signifi cantly reduced. A more thought-out and mature composition uses the iconographic motif of a plaster cast of the sarcophagus as a frame for the model’s face. The face itself, however, though basically identical to the fi rst, does not have the same power of expression. These features, as well as some historical evidence, suggest that the portrait was created later – a larger portrait – and is the artist’s replica of his own work. Following oral tradition, based on the accounts of Adam Bochnak, made known by Lech Kalinowski, the smaller portrait was presented by Sokołowski to his student and successor Julian Pagaczewski (1874–1940). Years later, the latter passed it down to his former student, co-worker, friend and successor, Adam Bochnak (1899–1974), who also intended to follow this set tradition and to pass it down to a scholar of the younger generation. For unknown reasons, however, he did not do it, though numerous indications suggest that he might have chosen Lech Kalinowski (1920–2004). In spite of its rather formal style, the larger portrait – the artist’s gift to the model – has become a private family memento. Its smaller replica, though more modest, has performed a public role. It was commissioned by Sokołowski, probably late in his life, ca. 1910, with the intention of bequeathing it to his successors at the university. On the one hand it was intended to commemorate the person and merits of the development of Polish art history while, on the other, it has become a symbol of leadership in the relevant discipline. It is for this memorial and symbolic function that the Jagiellonian University Museum decided to purchase the replica in 2008, although it already possessed the original, more formal version of the painting, in which the model’s psychological characteristics are expressed with greater perfection