HOUSTON, TEXAS.- The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, presents "Leonardo da Vinci and the Splendor of Poland," on view through February 17, 2003 at the Caroline Wiess Law Building. The proud history of collecting in Poland is reflected in Leonardo da Vinci and the Splendor of Poland opening December 8 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The crown jewel of the exhibition is Leonardo´s powerful Lady with an Ermine (Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani) (c. 1490). The portrait, which is the first painting by Leonardo to ever be shown in the southwest, is complemented in the exhibition with 74 outstanding works by European masters such as Bernardo Bellotto, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and Johann Friedrich Overbeck, and works by great Polish artists including Jan Matejko, Piotr Michalowski, Olga Boznañska, and Jacek Malczewski.

 

"Throughout its history, Poland has maintained a remarkable commitment to art," said Peter C. Marzio, MFAH director. "This exhibition underscores how collectors and patrons in Poland remained steadfast through centuries of change, political and social upheaval, and the devastation of war. Now, through the generosity of the country’s most important public and private museums, the American public has the opportunity to view this wide-ranging collection of masterworks and to learn more about this little-known aspect of European cultural history."

The exhibition spans the last 500 years with paintings from Italian, Dutch, French, German, and Polish artists. It is intended to bring attention to Poland’s place in history as a meeting ground for artists and intellectuals of many nationalities, and as a center for royal patronage.

 

Royal patrons were responsible for acquiring masterworks of art throughout the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. When Poland lost its independence in 1795 and was then partitioned geographically, the country’s art collections felt the impact. Cultural and political oppression culminated in the radical dismantling of collections and museums during Nazi and later Soviet rule. The country has worked in the years since World War II to recover and restore paintings stolen or displaced during the war. A number of those paintings are being shown for the first time since recovery and conservation.

 

Leonardo’s Lady with an Ermine (Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani) is the undisputed centerpiece of the exhibition. From the collection of The Princes Czartoryski Museum in Cracow, the rare painting depicts a teen-age girl modestly but elegantly dressed in velvet, and cradling an ermine in the crook of her arm. The subject is Cecilia Gallerani, mistress of Ludovico Sforza, then ruler of Milan. Predating da Vinci’s Mona Lisa by more than a decade, this painting has been described as "the first painting in European art to introduce the idea that a portrait may express the sitter’s thoughts through posture and gestures." Leonardo demonstrates his masterful technique in his choice of rich colors and by his subtle manipulation of light.

 

"Leonardo’s amazing powers of observation are evident in this magnificent painting," said Edgar Peters Bowron, the Audrey Jones Beck Curator of European Art, who is organizing the exhibition at the MFAH. "Every detail contributes to its complex symbolism. The museum is extremely pleased to bring a Leonardo da Vinci painting to Texas for the first time. That it is in the company of so many other wonderful works makes it even more significant."

Among the other fine paintings on view are four of Bernardo Bellotto’s famous views of Warsaw, created while the Italian artist was court painter for the last king of Poland, Stanislaus II Augustus Poniatowski. In these paintings, Bellotto not only provides an important record of the city’s architecture but also captures the life of the city in depicting its inhabitants in astonishing detail. The Krakowskie Przedmieœcie, Warsaw (1778), for example, is dominated by a church of the Holy Cross but throngs of people going about their business in the street demand the viewer’s attention.

 

The exhibition also includes the expressive John the Baptist in the Wilderness (c. 1640) by Jusepe de Ribera, one of the most important artists of the Spanish Baroque. French artist Elisabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun, regarded as one of the greatest painters of the 18th century, is represented in the exhibition with two paintings, Portrait of Prince Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski (1793) and Portrait of Princess Pelagia Sapieha (1794). In the former, the Prince is wrapped in brilliant red cloak, standing against a flat background; in the latter, the Princess dances against a dramatic sky and the smoking crater of Vesuvius in the distant background.

 

A select group of paintings by 22 great Polish artists highlight the country’s native artistry. Among the works, which span five centuries, are Virgin and Child with St. Felicity and St. Perpetua (c. 1525), attributed to Great Poland Painter, and identified as one of the finest examples of Late Gothic painting in Great Poland, as the country was then known. Three works by Jan Matejko are on view including Stanczyk, The King’s Jester (1862), an historical painting in which the artist tried to express his views on the fate of his country through a brooding portrait of the royal jester.