Effigies of sleeping figures in Polish art by Bartolomeo Berrecci and their progeny

What is it about?

Bartolomeo Berrecci of Pontassieve (ca 1480-1537) was a court architect and sculptor to King Sigismund I Jagiellonian of Poland and Lithuania. In Kraków, he carved four reclining tomb statues in slumber, the oldest ones apart from Italy and Spain: a putto, royal knight, bishop and lady. They are believed to have been based on Roman works by Andrea Sansovino. Berrecci’s primary goal was to reproduce life rather than to show off his knowledge of a particular masterpiece. Educated in Florence, Rome and, possibly, Naples, he was able to derive his inventions from various ancient, medieval and contemporary paradigms. He applied thoughtfully the rules of art practiced in Tuscan Quattrocento workshops, including those of Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello, Verrocchio and Perugino. He stroke a balance between idealization and realism in the faces of the dead, and introduced features enhancing the realistic overtones of a given sculpture. The composition of his effigies are adjusted to their locations and the perspective in which they should be viewed.

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Why is it important?

The literature on European Renaissance monumental sculpture ignores the significant contribution of Bartolomeo Berrecci. His new type of effigy proved so successful that well over 200 statues in present-day Poland (including Silesia, Royal and Ducal Prussia) and Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus and Ukraine can be found referring to his works. Therefore, those interested in the European Renaissance would like to discover the origin of this extraordinary contribution to early-modern European art.

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