Department of History, Institute of Archaeology

In the typographical resources of the first edition of Marcin Bielski’s (1495-1575)
Kronika wszytkiego swiata (“Chronicle of the whole world”), which appeared in
1551 in Krakow in the printing house of Helena Unglerowa, we find rulers’ images
in woodcuts in the all’antica style. This group is dominated by the profiled representations
extracted – in the spirit of the Italian Renaissance woodcut – from a black
background and incorporated into medallions surrounded by decorative wreaths.
The placing in Bielski’s “Chronicle” of images of rulers, related to Roman monetary
prototypes, made on the basis of Strasbourg woodcuts from the Craton Mylius
publishing house, may be regarded as one of the first accurate uses of the ancient
style for the portraits of Roman emperors in the history of the fine arts in Poland.
The medium through which ideas inspired by the ancient portraits of the emperors
came to Bielski’s work, is De Caesaribus atque Imperatoribus Romanis opus insigne
published by Johannes Cuspinianus in 1540 in Strasbourg by the publishing house
of Craton Mylius. The graphic content of De Caesaribus, enriched by several new
images, was taken from the Chronicum abbatis Urspergensis by Konrad of Lichtenau,
published in the same publishing house three years earlier. The iconographic
elements of this edition were indirectly derived from the Illustrium imagines by Andrea
Fulvio, published in 1517 in Rome. This work contained images in medallions
from which the printer Wolfgang Köpfel in Strasbourg later drew heavily, using
the arrangement and workmanship of images of the Roman emperors and their
family members. Subsequent illustrated editions of the emperors’ biographies by
Johannes Huttich (1525-1534) gained an enormous popularity. In Krakow’s intellectual
environment not only was the chronicle of Konrad of Lichtenau, published
by Mylius, known, but also graphic patterns popularised by Fulvio and Huttich,
a perfect example of which is the frieze with busts of Roman emperors, empresses
and princesses in medallions, which decorates the galleries of the Wawel Castle and
which bestow the decorations with a specific ideological meaning. Ancient coins,
imported from Italy, had the same effect, as did those that in ancient times were in
abundance at Barbaricum sites, including the Polish lands, and were discovered for
example in Lesser Poland, but especially in the vicinity of Krakow, creating a part
of various private collections. One can assume that placing a recognized monetary
iconography of antiquity in Bielski’s work would have generated great interest in
Krakow.

Piotr Jaworski, Figurae absurdae et inelegantes? Iconography of all’antica medallions in the second edition of Kronika wszytkiego świata of Marcin Bielski (1554)

As early as three years after the first release of Marcin Bielski’s Kronika wszytkiego świata by Helena Unglerowa printing house, a new edition was prepared at Hieronim Szarfenberg’s press in Cracow. It was completed by the author and was given a new graphic design. Similarly to the editio princeps, there were all’antica medallions presenting rulrs, which were used also to illustrate the lives of biblical figures. Later, thanks to Hieronim’s widow, Elżbieta Fetrówna, all of these were added to the press run by Mateusz Siebeneicher (whom she married in 1557), and were used again in a third edition, released by this press in 1564.

The medallions made for Hieronim Szarfenberg, in which the drawing of a person was placed in a double circle (or sometimes in three or more), were set in relief against a white background by black contour lines and an inner drawing. They consisted of 33 profiles, cut by a Cracovian wood engraver who was inspired by illustrations in Huttich’s Imperatorum et caesarum vitae, released by Balthazar Amoullet’s publishing house in Lyon in 1550. The iconography of Amoullet’s woodcuts – being in fact another version of all’antica medallions in the style of Fulvio – was either authentically based, or just stylized on real coins. Similarly to the all’antica medallions in Unglerowa’s woodcuts, the second edition of Kronika wszytkiego świata did not have figure identifications in the medallions, thus making them reusable.

The busts placed in Bielski’s work were based on medallions from Lyon, which were not considered to be of a high artistic value, and were made carelessly by a Cracovian copyist. Moreover, some of them were changed so drastically that without comparing them with Amoullet’s original woodcuts, it is very hard to find a connection with ancient coin iconography. We might conclude that the decision made by Szarfenberg to use woodcuts from Amoullet’s press as a graphic model in illustrating the second edition of Marcin Bielski’s Kronika wszytkiego świata was dictated rather by the accessibility of the Lyon books in Cracow, than by a real
knowledge of modern typographical techniques used in illustrating chronicles and biographies of the Caesars.

Distinctive feature of money circulation in the area of Cyrenaica during the first decades of the Roman Empire is a considerable demand for small coins. This feature is common for the definite majority of monetized urban areas in the declining years of the Republic and the early days of the Empire, and this was also one of the main reasons for the flourishing practice of cutting coins. Major increase in bronze coin finds cut into halves and quarters was brought by the excavations of the Polish archaeological mission in Ptolemais. At present, the group of cut bronze coins found in Ptolemais consists of 62 specimens, 57 of which come from Polish excavations conducted in the years 2002-2009, whereas five, being surface finds from the site area, are in the collection of the local archaeological museum. This article was enriched by the set of 21 coins from Cyrenaica, held in a private collections.

The article presents the results of the latest studies on the graphic content of Kronika wszytkiego świata (“Chronicle of the Whole World”) by Marcin Bielski. The first edition of this famous Polish chronicle was prepared at Helena Unglerowa’s printing house (1551), the second was released at Hieronim Szarfenberg’s press (1554). Three sets of woodcut medallions, consisting of rulers’ images related to Roman monetary prototypes, were discussed. Attention was focused on the iconographic analysis of previously not elaborated medallions presenting Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Augustus, whose effigies Unglerowa decided to copy basing on one of the editions of the chronicle, released by the Christian Egenolff (1533–1535) publishing house in Frankfurt am Main.