The exhibition Treasures of the Baroque. Between Bratislava and Krakow is the result of a collaboration between the National Museum in Krakow and the Slovak National Gallery.
It focuses on the Central European aspects of the Baroque: we will see works by artists who lived in our region yet who remain little known in Poland. As well as artworks from the Bratislava museum collection, the exhibition at the Main Building of the National Museum in Krakow includes items from Hungary, Ukraine and Poland, numbering almost 160 pieces. Authors include the once highly popular and prolific Austrian sculptor Georg Rafael Donner (he abandoned his calling as a priest to pursue a career in the arts), the eccentric author of grotesque head sculptures Franz Xaver Messerschmidt from Southern Germany, and the Slovak painter Jan Kupecký regarded as the greatest Central European portrait artist of his day. We will see the latter in a beautiful self-portrait with his wife and son. The exhibition also features posthumous portraits typical of the Baroque period, still lifes painted with a photographic precision, theatre props and various curiosities, such as crucifixes from the time of the plague. (Dorota Dziunikowska, “Karnet” monthly)
