Renaissance Poland-Lithuania - The Realm of Venus, goddess of love, destroyed by Mars, god of war. Discover its "Forgotten portraits", its sovereigns and its unique culture ...
Forgotten portraits - Introduction - part A Forgotten portraits of the Jagiellons - part I (1470-1505) Forgotten portraits of the Jagiellons - part II (1506-1529) Forgotten portraits of the Jagiellons - part III (1530-1540) Forgotten portraits of the Dukes of Pomerania, Dukes of Silesia and European monarchs - part I Forgotten portraits of the Jagiellons - part IV (1541-1551) Forgotten portraits of the Jagiellons - part V (1552-1572) Forgotten portraits of the Jagiellons - part VI (1573-1596) Forgotten portraits of the Dukes of Pomerania, Dukes of Silesia and European monarchs - part II Forgotten portraits - Introduction - part B Forgotten portraits of the Polish Vasas - part I (1587-1623) Forgotten portraits of the Polish Vasas - part II (1624-1636) Forgotten portraits of the Polish Vasas - part III (1637-1648) Forgotten portraits of the Polish Vasas - part IV (1649-1668) Forgotten portraits of the Dukes of Pomerania, Dukes of Silesia and European monarchs - part III Forgotten portraits of the "compatriot kings" (1669-1696) 
"Before the Deluge", it is a former title of a painting now identified to depict the Feast of the prodigal son. It was painted by Cornelis van Haarlem, a painter from the Protestant Netherlands, best known for his highly stylized works with Italianate nudes, in 1615, when the elected monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a descendant of the Jagiellons - Sigismund III Vasa. Despite huge losses in the collections of paintings, the oeuvre of Cornelis van Haarlem is represented significantly in one of the largest museums in Poland - the National Museum in Warsaw, the majority of which comes from old Polish collections (three from the collection of Wojciech Kolasiński: "Adam and Eve", "Mars and Venus as lovers", "Vanitas" and "The Feast of the prodigal son" from the collection of Tomasz Zieliński in Kielce, inv. M.Ob.260; M.Ob.81; M.Ob.269; M.Ob.1472).
Sadly, its earlier history is unknown, so it cannot be unmistakably associated with the Golden Age of Poland-Lithuania, which, almost as in the Bible, ended with the Deluge (1655-1660), a punishment for sins as some might believe or like the opening of Pandora's box unleashing evil upon the world. "The Swedes and the notorious Germans, for whom murder is a play, the violation of faith is a joke, robbery a pleasure, arson, rape of women and all crimes a joy, our city, destroyed by numerous contributions, they destroyed with fire, leaving only the Koźmin suburb unburned", describes the atrocities in the city of Krotoszyn, burned down on July 5, 1656, an eyewitness - an altarist, brother Bartłomiej Gorczyński (after "Lebenserinnerungen" by Bar Loebel Monasch, Rafał Witkowski, p. 16). A contemporary account tells of the devastation of Wieluń by the Swedes. The town was occupied for a relatively short time by the troops of the starost of Babimost, Krzysztof Jan Żegocki (1618–1673). "As soon as the starost of Babimost withdrew from Wieluń, the Swedes immediately entered and slaughtered everything they could get their hands on, and slaughtered so many people that only the dogs were left alive [...], and they also burned all the houses around the Wieluń Castle". The destruction of Łęczyca, which the Swedes re-entered after the partisans had left, is described as follows: "The Swedes entered the town, killing innocent people. Eighty inhabitants died in the town. The town was completely plundered". "They took everyone's weapons, expelled some from their homes, took all their equipment from others and levied unbearable taxes on every house every month [...] Finally, they burned half the city [...] They completely demolished many buildings that had been spared by the fire, razed all the stables and fences. But what can we say of the murders of many citizens, of many honest women raped, of virgins consecrated to God, who were treated in a vile and inhuman way not by people, but by untamed beasts and cruel tyrants. It is better to remain silent than to spread it, so as not to offend honest ears", describes the destruction of the city of Łowicz Andrzej Kazimierz Cebrowski (ca. 1580-1658), pharmacist and physician in his Annales civitates Loviciae ("The Annals of the City of Łowicz"), written in Latin in the years 1648-1658 (after "Życie codzienne małego miasteczka w XVII i XVIII wieku" by Bohdan Baranowski, p. 240). The wealthy city of Łowicz, seat of the Primate of Poland, was also plundered by the Transylvanian forces, the Polish army and peasants, and the destruction was accompanied by an epidemic of plague and famine. "Churches everywhere plundered, priests stripped of everything, some tortured, wounded, killed with cruel deaths on the gallows, nuns raped, houses of nobles plundered, a great number of nobles killed, all the people extremely oppressed. Neither pacts, nor dedycyje [deditio in ancient Rome, i.e. capitulation] nor protections are of any help, although the diplomatibus of the King of Sweden confirmed" describes the atrocities another contemporary source (after "Pisma polityczne z czasów panowania Jana Kazimierza Wazy ..." by Stefania Ochmann-Staniszewska, Volume 1, p. 145). Descriptions of the destroyed Vilnius after the withdrawal of the Russian and Cossack armies, and other cities of the Most Serene Republic, are equally terrifying. Polish troops responded with similar ruthlessness, sometimes also towards their own citizens, who collaborated with the invaders or were accused of collaboration. The invasion was accompanied by epidemics related to the marches of various armies, destruction of the economy, exacerbation of conflicts and social and ethnic divisions. An unimaginable Apocalypse, sent not by God but by human greed. War should be a forgotten relic of the past, but unfortunately it is still not. "The war of 1655-1657 was the most ruthless and disastrous in terms of cultural losses. Perhaps even more than the enormous spoils of war that were carried away, it left behind the greatest destruction of cultural goods, the collapse of villages and towns, castles and palaces, churches and monasteries", comments Zygmunt Łakociński (1905-1987) in his Polonica Svecana artistica, published in 1962. "Moreover, the looting of cultural goods was planned and organized in advance. Before the war, the Swedes prepared a trained team of 'experts' who accompanied the army and systematically robbed treasuries, archives and libraries", adds Michał Rożek (1946-2015) in his article on the cultural and artistic losses of Kraków during the Deluge. According to Aleksander Birkenmajer (1890-1967) the robbery and destruction of libraries was one of the factors that brought about the decline of culture after the era of John II Casimir (after "Straty kulturalne i artystyczne Krakowa w okresie pierwszego najazdu szwedzkiego (1655-1657)", p. 142, 153). Another painting in the National Museum in Warsaw recalls these events. This small painting (oil on copper, 29.6 x 37.4 cm, inventory number 34174) was very probably made by Christian Melich, court painter of the Polish-Lithuanian Vasas, active in Vilnius between 1604 and 1655 (similar in style to the Surrender of Mikhail Shein in the National Museum in Krakow, MNK I-12) or other Flemish painter. It was initially thought to represent King John II Casimir Vasa after the Battle of Berestechko in 1651, but the distinctive features of a man on horseback, as well as the yellow and blue costume, allowed to identify him with great certainty as Charles X Gustav the "Brigand of Europe", as he was called in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, "who was capable of beginning horrors of war in any part of the old continent" (after "Acta Universitatis Lodziensis: Folia historica", 2007, p. 56), and the subject as his triumph over the country. Female personifications of the Commonwealth, most likely Poland, Lithuania and Ruthenia (or Prussia) like three goddesses from the Judgement of Paris, pay homage to the "Brigand of Europe" supported by Mars and Minerva and trampling Polish enemies in national costumes. One of the women (Venus-Poland) offers the crown and a putto or Cupid offers the symbol of Poland, the White Eagle. Mars, with his sword drawn, looks at the humble woman. Dramatic events change not only individuals but also entire nations. 
Mars and Venus as lovers (Mars being disarmed by Venus) by Cornelis van Haarlem, 1609, National Museum in Warsaw.
Feast of the prodigal son (Before the Deluge) by Cornelis van Haarlem, 1615, National Museum in Warsaw.
Triumph of Charles X Gustav the "Brigand of Europe" over the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by Flemish painter, most probably Christian Melich, ca. 1655, National Museum in Warsaw.
Bibliography and legal notice. The majority of historical facts in the "Forgotten portraits" and information on works of art are easily verifiable on reliable sources available on the Internet, otherwise I invite you to visit the National Libraries of Poland - personally or virtually (Polona). The majority of translations, if not specifically attributed to someone else in the text or cited sources, are my authorship. Original paintings reproduced in "Forgotten portraits" are considered to be in the public domain (faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art, copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer) in accordance with international copyright law (photos from publicly available photo libraries, websites of relevant institutions, my own photos and scans from various publications with credit to the owner), however, all have been retouched and enhanced without significant interference with the quality of the original artwork, where possible. All interpretations, identifications and attributions, not specifically attributed to other authors in the text or cited sources, must be considered as my authorship - Marcin Latka (Artinpl).
Foreign communities, merchants and travels
Majority of confirmed effigies of the Last Polish-Lithuanian Jagiellons are official, popular portraits pertaining to northern school of painting. As in some countries today, in the 16th century, people wanted a portrait of their monarch at home. Such effigies were frequently idealized, simplified and inscribed in Latin, which was the official language, apart from Ruthenian and Polish, of the multicultural country. They provided the official titulature (Rex, Regina), coat of arms and even age (ætatis suæ). Private and paintings dedicated to upper class were less so direct. Painters were operating with a complex set of symbols, which were clear then, however, are no longer so obvious today.
Since the very beginning of the Jagiellonian monarchy in Poland-Lithuania, art was characterized by syncretism and great diversity, which is best illustrated by the churches and chapels founded by the Jagiellons. They were built in a Gothic style with typical pointed arches and ribbed vaults and decorated with Russo-Byzantine frescoes, thus joining Western and Eastern traditions. Perhaps the oldest portraits of the first Jagiellonian monarch - Jogaila of Lithuania (Ladislaus II Jagiello) are his effigies in the Gothic Holy Trinity Chapel at the Lublin Castle. They were commissioned by Jogaila and created by Ruthenian Master Andrey in 1418. On one, the king was represented as a knight on horseback and on the other as a donor kneeling before the Blessed Virgin Mary. The vault was adorned with the image of Christ Pantocrator above the coat of arms of the Jagiellons (Jagiellonian Cross). Similar church murals were created for Jogaila by the Orthodox priest Hayl around 1420 in the Gothic choir of Sandomierz Cathedral and for his son Casimir IV Jagiellon in the Holy Cross Chapel of the Wawel Cathedral by Pskov painters in 1470. Jogaila's portrait as one of the Magi in the mentioned Holy Cross Chapel (Adoration of the Magi, section of the Our Lady of Sorrows Triptych) is attributed to Stanisław Durink, whose father came from Silesia, and his marble tomb monument in the Wawel Cathedral to artists from Northern Italy. The presence of Italian merchants in Kraków is confirmed in 1424. While in the 14th century Genoese immigration predominated in the capital of the Kingdom of Poland, at the beginning of the following century Milanese and Venetian, and above all Florentine, predominated. In a letter from Florence dated January 5, 1424, the Florentine Council thanks Jogaila for releasing Leonardo Giovanni Mathei (Leonardum Johannis ser Mathei, mercatorem et dilectissimum civem nostrum) from prison and recommends Leonardo and his brothers, who are trading in Poland, while in a letter from Kraków dated April 16, 1429, the Kraków City Council certifies the verdict of the arbitration court between Antonio of Florence and Johannes Bank of Wrocław in the case of the dispute over Polish cochineal and furs sent to Venice. According to the letter of May 12, 1427, Hincza and Henryk of Rogów ordered expensive jewelry and clothing, including two hats set with pearls and decorated with heron feathers, from Margherita, widow of Guglielmo of Ferrara (Margaretha relicta olim Wilhelmi de Fararea Comitis, after "Rocznik Krakowski", 1911, Volume 13, p. 98-100, 103). Two splendid pieces of jewellery from the early 15th century found near Lublin bear witness to the high quality of local and imported jewellery. The Italian merchants enjoyed the king's protection. According to a document dated November 15, 1430, the Florentine patrician in the service of Antonio Ricci, Reginaldo Altoviti, when questioned before a court in Venice to know if in dieto regno Polane redditur bonum ius Italicis, replied that justice is always rendered to Italians as to others arriving in this country and that the king would guarantee the money in the event of a debt to an Italian merchant (et eciam per serenissimum regem Pollane constringi posset ad huiusmodi et maiorem quantitatem solvendant cuilibet). Between 1485 and 1489, the Genoese Andreolo Guascho da Soldaja managed the estates of Uriel Górka (d. 1498), Bishop of Poznań, and then he went to Genoa to find a good gardener for the bishop. He concluded a contract with a certain Nicolaus de Noali, son of Paul, from the village of Coste Ripparoli for four years to "plant vines and all kinds of agriculture" (plantandi vineas et omne genus agriculture). Before 1486, the same Bishop Górka, when he wanted to order various types of silver goblets, did not turn to local craftsmen, but ordered them in Nuremberg from Albrecht Dürer, the father of the famous painter. The relations of the Italian merchants were sometimes quite complex. Giacomo Tebaldi, who was a resident of the Duchy of Ferrara in Venice from 1516 to 1549, often dealt with Gaspare Gucci, a renowned merchant in Kraków in the 1540s, and an intermediary in the trade between Italy, Germany and Poland-Lithuania. Tebaldi also corresponded with Giovanni Andrea Valentino (Valentini, de Valentinis), influential physician to Queen Bona (e.g. letter from Kraków of April 18, 1521 addressed a Venetia a ms. Iacopo Thebaldos, after "La trama Nascosta - Storie di mercanti e altro" by Rita Mazzei). The list of professors of the Vilnius Academy, such as Emmanuel de Vega (d. 1640) from Portugal, Laurids Nilsen (1538-1622) from Norway, Laurentius Boierus (1561-1619) from Sweden, the Englishmen Richard Singleton (1566-1602) and James Bosgrave (1553-1623), as well as the Spaniards Garcia Alabiano (1549-1624), Miguel Ortiz (1560-1638), Santiago Ortiz (1564-1625) and Antonio Arrias (d. 1591), preacher of King Stephen Bathory, confirms that many foreigners also lived in the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (comapre "Wilno od początków jego do roku 1750" by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, Volume 4, p. 29-36). Italian merchants from Poznań at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, such as the Genoese (Paolo de Promontorio and his brother Stefano, Peregrinus de Promontorio, Agostino Mazoni de Promontorio, Nicolaus de Noali, Eustachio de Parentibus, Antonio de Pino, Gian Antonio de Insula and Baptista Dologesa) and the Florentines (Marcioto, Raphael, Jacopo Betoni and Baptista Ubaldini) frequently operated in the area from Genoa and Venice to Vilnius, while Jewish merchants dominated trade with Grodno. In the 1530s, "Paul the seller of Venetian goods" (Paulus rerum venetiarum venditor) went to Vilnius and was recommended by the Poznań council in the trial against Lorenzo the Italian, who died in Vilnius (compare "Prace", Poznańskie Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk, 1928, Volumes 5-6, p. 275). The so-called Madonna Scroll (Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, inv. 116027), inspired by the Byzantine icon Salus Populi Romani and bearing the mark of the Chinese painter and calligrapher Tang Yin (1470-1524), indicates that Italian painting probably reached China in the early 16th century. The artist adapted the icon to Chinese standards, while the image is also believed to depict the Buddhist goddess of Mercy, Guanyin. It probably reached China via Portuguese or Venetian merchants or missionaries, illustrating the scale of Italian pictorial production during the Renaissance and its distribution. Although the Netherlandish community was much larger in the northern regions of the country and in the major ports, it was also found in Kraków, where they imported cloth from Flanders and London. As in the case of the Boner family from the Palatinate and the Nuremberg painter Hans Suess von Kulmbach, as well as the Montelupi family from Tuscany and the workshop of Domenico Tintoretto in Venice, which is confirmed by the sources, it was merchants established in Poland-Lithuania who frequently recommended or facilitated contacts with artists from their countries of origin. King Sigismund Augustus's "servant" Roderik van der Moyen (Roderigo Dermoyen or Dermoien, d. 1567), a merchant and citizen of Lübeck, was sent from Knyszyn to Gdańsk and further to Brussels by the king with the order to make tapestries (according to a letter to Jan Kostka dated May 12, 1564), most likely black and white tapestries with the king's coat of arms and monogram (compare "Czarno-białe tkaniny Zygmunta Augusta" by Maria Hennel-Bernasikowa, p. 33), and in 1601 Sefer Muratowicz, an Armenian merchant from Warsaw, was sent by Sigismund III with the order to make kilims in Persia with the king's coat of arms. In both cases, merchants had to receive designs for fabrics (at least general) approved by the king. Around 1620, the Venetian painter active in Kraków - Tommaso Dolabella, a pupil of Antonio Vassilacchi, known as L'Aliense, depicted the first king of the new dynasty kneeling before the crucified Christ, accompanied by his wife and co-monarch, Saint Jadwiga (Hedwig of Anjou, 1373-1399), Saint Florian, the Virgin Mary, Saint John Cantius, Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Stanislaus. This large painting (oil on canvas, 381 x 362 cm), was probably painted for the theological lecture hall of the Kraków Academy (Jagiellonian University) and probably founded by Prince Ladislaus Sigismund Vasa (future Ladislaus IV). The royal couple restored the academy in the 1390s. In 1643, another Italian painter, Silvestro Bianchi, court painter to Ladislaus IV, made two separate portraits of Jogaila and Jadwiga, kneeling as donors, for the library of the university (after "Katalog portretów i obrazów będących własnością Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego ..." by Jerzy Mycielski, p. 9, 31, items 42-43, 186). In both cases, the painters based their work on original effigies of the period, from the late 14th century for the effigy of Jadwiga, dressed in medieval costume, and from the early 16th century for the portrait of Jogaila, dressed in Renaissance armour. This studio practice proves that skilled painters do not need to see the real model to create a good effigy and composition. Since the Middle Ages, portraiture accompanied important international relations in Europe, particularly the marriages of the ruling houses. According to Jean d'Auton, or Jehan d'Authon (1466-1528), official chronicler of King Louis XII of France, portraits of Anne of Foix-Candale (1484-1506) and her cousin Germaine of Foix (ca. 1488-1536), later Queen of Aragon, sent to Vladislaus II Jagiellon (1456-1516), King of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, eldest son of Casimir IV, played an important role in the marriage negotiations in 1501-1502. Vladislaus sent his ambassador to France called Georges Versepel from the Kingdom of Bohemia and identified as Jiří z Běšin (d. 1509), who brought him portraits of the two ladies "taken from nature" (pourtraictures d'icelles prises sur le vif, after "Chroniques de Louis XII", Volume 2, p. 215-216). Brides generally do not need to request a reliable portrait because effigies of important monarchs of Europe, including the kings of Poland, were well distributed and since the 15th century even coins provided a faithful effigy of the sovereign. Perfectly conversant with Latin and the other languages of medieval and renaissance Europe, Poles, Lithuanians, Ruthenians, Germans and other ethnic groups of the multi-ethnic country, traveled to different countries of Western Europe, thus various fashions, even the strangest ones, like the effigies of Christ with Three Faces or effigies of crucified, bearded female Saint Wilgefortis, easily penetrated Poland-Lithuania.
Portraits in disguise
Disguised portraits, especially likenesses in guise of the Virgin Mary were popular in different parts of Europe from at least the mid-15th century (e.g. portraits of Agnès Sorel, Bianca Maria Visconti and Lucrezia Buti). Often unpopular rulers and their wives or mistresses were depicted as members of the Holy Family or saints. This naturally led to frustration and sometimes the only possible response was satire. The diptych by anonymous Flemish painter, most likely Marinus van Reymerswaele, from the 1520s (Wittert Museum in Liège, inventory number 12013), referring to diptychs by Hans Memling, Michel Sittow, Jehan Bellegambe, Jan Provoost, Jan Gossaert and other painters is obviously a satirical criticism of these representations. Instead of the rosy cheeks of a "virgin" holding a red carnation flower, a symbol of love and passion, the curious viewer will see brown cheeks and a thistle, a symbol of earthly pain and sin. In a 1487 diptych of Hieronymus Tscheckenburlin by the German painter, the rosy virgin is replaced by a rotting skeleton - memento mori (Kunstmuseum Basel, inv. 33).
One of the earliest confirmations of disguised portraits made in 15th-century Italy is found in Russian sources. In 1469, Giambattista della Volpe, a merchant from Vicenza in the Venetian Republic, known in Russia as Ivan Fryazin, was sent to the papal court in Rome to initiate official negotiations for the marriage between the exiled Byzantine princess Sophia Palaiologina (d. 1503) and the Grand Prince of Moscow Ivan III (1440-1505). According to Sofia Second Chronicle (Sofiyskaya vtoraya letopis'), della Volpe returned to Moscow with a portrait of the princess that "was written [painted] on the icon" (a tsarevnu na ikone napisanu prinese), which "caused extreme surprise at court," according to later authors. The Byzantine princess was therefore most likely depicted as the Virgin and Child or a Christian saint, like Saint Sophia of Rome, which was typical for many Western European paintings at that time. However, some authors who were probably unaware of the tradition of disguised portraiture, interpreted this fragment that the chronicler called the portrait an "icon" not finding another word, since this portrait is considered the first "secular image" in Russia, or that it was a parsuna, a portrait painted in the iconographic style. The fate of this painting is unknown. It is believed that it perished during one of the many fires in the Kremlin. However, since many valuable objects related to the Russian tsars have survived, it seems more likely that it was destroyed in 1654 or 1655, during the iconoclasm in Moscow (compare "Art Judgements: Art on Trial in Russia after Perestroika" by Sandra Frimmel, p. 212). Furthermore, although the portrait is considered to have probably been painted by one of the painters of the papal court, it is also possible that della Volpe was only given a drawing and that the painting was executed in one of the famous Venetian workshops, such as that of Giovanni Bellini. The stopover of the Russian legation in Venice in 1469 is confirmed in the Sofia Second Chronicle, moreover, they were accompanied by a certain "Pan Yurga" (Mr Jurga), most likely a Pole, who knew the route to Venice and Rome (I poslal pana Yurgu s nim v provozhatykh, potomu chto on znayet tot put': idti na Novgorod, ottuda k Nemtsam i na Venetsiyu gorod, i ottuda k Rimu, tak kak tot put' k Rimu blizhe. I on, pribyv v Venetsiyu ...). A portrait of such an important figure was probably not made in a single copy, so perhaps a copy made for the Pope or Sophia's family in Italy is waiting to be discovered hidden under a religious disguise. Interestingly, a painting attributed to Giovanni Bellini perfectly meets all the requirements for such a copy. It is now in the Khanenko Museum in Kyiv, Ukraine. It comes from the collection of Bohdan Khanenko (1849-1917) and his wife Varvara Tereshchenko (1852-1922) and was previously attributed to Bartolomeo Montagna from Vicenza, considered a student of Giovanni Bellini. The previous provenance is not known, the couple probably bought the painting during their travels, while Vienna, Berlin, Paris, Madrid, Rome and Florence are mentioned as the places they visited. About 100 valuable paintings were acquired from famous collections put up for sale in Rome and Florence, the Borghese collection is also mentioned. Before settling with his wife in Kyiv, Khanenko lived in Warsaw between 1876 and 1882 and before that in St. Petersburg, where he also bought paintings, and in Moscow. "The Infanta Margarita" from the collection of the Infante Sebastian (1811-1875) in Pau was purchased at auction in Hamburg in 1912 (Galerie Weber, February 20-22, 1912, lot 176). The painting is undated and in the catalogue of the Fototeca Zeri (Numero scheda 28317), the period between 1480 and 1530 approximately is proposed with an attribution to the painter's studio. Giuseppe Fiocco (1884-1971), who attributed the work to Giovanni Bellini, also noted the Castel Sant'Angelo, the tallest building in medieval Rome, in the background (cf. "Treasures of Ukraine" by Dmytro Stepovyk, p. 53). The layout of the city, the castle and the bridge correspond perfectly to the views of medieval and renaissance Rome, such as the 1493 illustration in the Nuremberg Chronicle, the view by Sebastian Munster from around 1560 or the map by Braun & Hogenberg from 1572. The view in the Kyiv painting of is taken from the north-east, where Moscow (and Venice) are located, and for obvious reasons, the "Madonna" covers with her right arm another important building in Rome - St. Peter's Basilica and the Vatican, the seat of the Pope. The facial features of the Virgin - elongated face, prominent lips and the shape of the nose, are reminiscent of the forensic facial reconstruction of Sophia Palaiologina from 1994. Among the earliest portraits "in guise" in European painting are the portrait of a lady (Aloisia Sabauda, perhaps from the House of Savoy) as the Sibyl Agrippina (Egyptian Sybil), painted by Jacques Daret in the 1430s (Dumbarton Oaks, inv. HC.P.1923.01.(O), inscription: SIBYLLA AGRIPPA), the portrait of Isabella of Portugal (1397-1471), Duchess of Burgundy as the Persian Sibyl by the workshop of Rogier van der Weyden from around 1450, (Getty Center in Los Angeles, inv. 78.PB.3, inscription: PERSICA SIBYLLA 1A), the portrait of a lady as Saint Catherine of Alexandria by Sandro Botticelli from about 1475 (Lindenau-Museum, inv. 100), the portrait of a man as Saint Sebastian by Jacometto Veneziano from the late 15th century (Brooklyn Museum in New York, inv. 34.836) or portrait of a lady as Saint Justina of Padua by Bartolomeo Montagna from the 1490s (Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 14.40.606). The effigy of Pope Joan (Joannes septimus, John VII), the legendary female pontiff, holding her child in Hartmann Schedel's Registrum huius operis libri cronicarum ..., published in Nuremberg in 1493 (Bavarian State Library in Munich, Rar. 287, p. 169v), is clearly inspired by the effigies of the Virgin and Child from the late Middle Ages. Ladislaus the Posthumous (1440-1457), King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia and his fiancée Magdalena of Valois (1443-1495) were represented as Ahasuerus and Esther in the so-called Mazarin tapestry from around 1500 (National Gallery of Art in Washington, inv. 1942.9.446). Around 1502, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (1477-1549), better known as Il Sodoma ("the sodomite"), considered a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci, painted his splendid self-portrait at the center of a religious scene depicting Saint Benedict repairing a broken colander through prayer, at the Benedictine monastery of Monte Oliveto Maggiore, on the road from Siena to Rome. Although it had long been common for artists to leave their image in their works, it is highly unusual for them to do so in such an ostentatious manner. The artist, dressed in a rich costume, holding a sword, and accompanied by his pets, badgers and ravens, dominates the scene, while Saint Benedict and his nurse, Cyrilla, appear here as secondary characters. The effigy of Judas looking out at the viewer in a fresco of the Last Supper in the church of San Bartolomeo a Monteoliveto in Florence, painted by Sodoma around 1515-1516, is also considered to be his self-portrait (after "Giorgio Vasari: The Man and the Book" by Thomas Sherrer Ross Boase, p. 226-227). Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo lend their features to Plato and Heraclitus in Raphael's The School of Athens, painted between 1509 and 1511 (Apostolic Palace, Vatican), while Emperor Charles V was depicted as King Sapor of Persia humiliating Emperor Valerian, in a small painting by School of Antwerp from about 1515-1525 (Worcester Art Museum, inv. 1934.64). In Peter Vischer the Younger's Allegory of the Victory of the Reformation, created in 1524, the naked Martin Luther (LVTHERVS) in the form of Hercules leads the Conscience from the ruins of the Roman Church towards Christ (Klassik Stiftung Weimar). The highly idealized portrait of a lady as Judith in the art collections of the University of Liège (inv. 38) is traditionally known to be a disguised portrait of the unspecified Margaret of Rochefort (Margarete von Rochefort als Judith). Dated "1526" and inscribed IVDIT, this painting, although considered a work by Cranach or his circle, is closer to works attributed to Hans Kemmer. The portrait of Francis I (1494-1547), King of France as a transgender composite deity combining the attributes of Minerva, Mars, Diana, Cupid and Mercury from around 1545 (National Library of France, Na 255 Rés.) is certainly one of the most intriguing paintings of this type. The same can be said of the portrait of the "sodomite" Gaucher de Dinteville, lord of Vanlay, and his brothers depicted in the painting "Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh" (identified by the inscriptions on the hems of their robes), probably painted by Bartholomeus Pons in 1537 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 50.70). In this scene, Gaucher's brother, Jean de Dinteville (1504-1555), lord of Polisy, known for Hans Holbein the Younger's famous Ambassadors, is depicted as a seductive, half-naked Moses. In turn, the marble bust of the young Beatrice d'Este (1475-1497), Duchess of Bari and Milan, preserved in the Louvre Museum, bears an inscription in Latin "To the divine Beatrice, daughter of Duke Ercole" (DIVAE / BEATRICI / D[ucis] HERC[ulis] F[ilae]) indicating that the boundary between divine and human beings was not as clearly defined in the Renaissance as it is today. Before 1570, Luca Longhi (1507-1580), a painter active in Ravenna in the Papal States, created a large painting for the church of Saint Barbara depicting the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints (Ravenna Art Museum) in which he lends the features of his daughter Barbara Longhi (1552-1638) to her saintly patron. Luca also depicted his daughter as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, holding attributes of that saint, a wheel and a palm of martyrdom, which was later copied by Barbara, also a talented painter (both paintings are in the Ravenna Art Museum). Barbara painted several copies of this effigy as well as other portraits in guise of Saint Catherine (e.g. paintings in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna and the Museo Canonicale di Verona). "This type of self-imagery assisted the devotee, in this instance Barbara Longhi, the painter, to visually impersonate a favorite female saint and emulate the martyrdom experience of said saint", furthermore, in 16th century Italy, "the artist's virtuosity became regarded as artista divino (the divine artist), demonstrating that the artist's genius was inspired by God, as exemplified by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo" (after "Barbara Longhi of Ravenna: A Devotional Self-Portrait" by Liana De Girolami Cheney, p. 23, 26, 29, 31). In the scene of the Adoration of the Magi by Paolo Caliari (1528-1588), known as Paolo Veronese, the servants of three men ostentatiously demonstrate their coats of arms on their liveries (Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon, deposit of the Louvre Museum, inv. A 79). They not only commissioned this painting, but were also depicted as the Magi, as their faces and costumes indicate. Thanks to the coats of arms, Florence Ingersoll-Smouse recognized three members of the Contarini, Cornaro (or Corner), and Molini (Molin or Molino) families (from left to right), probably Venetian Camerlenghi. The African page, wearing the Contarini coat of arms on his costume, hands his lord a silver bowl bearing the same coat of arms. The painting was probably painted for the palace of the Magistrato di Camerlenghi in Venice, at the request of the three members of these families (after "L'inventaire Le Brun de 1683 ..." by Arnauld Brejon de Lavergnée, p. 419). Another religious scene once attributed to Paolo Veronese: The Wedding at Cana takes place in Venice (or more generally in the Venetian entourage) and the ladies seated at table table with Christ proudly display their splendid costumes (Ansorena in Madrid, April 8, 2021, lot 88). This painting is now attributed to Jacopo Negretti (1549-1628), better known as Palma the Younger (il Giovane), who painted works in Venice commissioned by King Sigismund III Vasa. Among the oldest indirect (implicit) confirmations of the existence of disguised portraits in Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia is the letter of Giovanni Andrea Valentino, court physician of Sigismund I and Bona Sforza, to Alfonso d'Este (1476-1534), Duke of Ferrara (June 1529 from Vilnius), in which he informs the Duke that the court barber had to kneel before the portrait of Federico II Gonzaga (1500-1540), Marquis of Mantua, with his hands folded in prayer. This portrait was sent from Mantua to Queen Bona and was most likely painted by Titian. Another interesting document is the letter of Queen Anna Jagiellon to the priest Stanisław Zając dated June 19, 1586 from Warsaw. According to this letter, the queen sent her portrait to the Sigismund Chapel in Kraków, the Jagiellonian burial chapel. The elected queen warned: "And lest it be worshipped, let it always be well covered, and never uncovered, unless someone is very eager to see it" (A iżby się mu nie kłaniano, niechaj zawzdy dobrze zakryty będzie, a nigdy go nie odkrywać, chyba iżby kto bardzo się go napierał widzieć, compare "Rex et Regnum Poloniae..." by Juliusz A. Chrościcki, p. 152). A direct confirmation of this practice can be found in the 1661 inventory of the paintings from the Lubomirski collection that survived the Deluge, which mentions the portraits of Helena Tekla Ossolińska (1622-1687) "in the form" of Saint Helena and another "in the form" of Diana, Roman goddess of the hunt, as well as the portrait of Renée du Bec-Crespin (1613/14-1659), comtesse de Guébriant "in the form of the Blessed Virgin Mary" (Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw, 1/357/0/-/7/12). As in other countries in Europe, during the Renaissance and early Baroque, Greek and Roman mythology was extremely popular and, despite enormous destruction, traces of a kind of inclination towards the Roman goddess Venus, not to say a cult, can still be found, notably in poetry. Venus and Cupid and other Roman deities were frequently part of theatrical performances, masked processions, and other festivities, while chandeliers in ballrooms or dining rooms in castles and palaces were often shaped like a biblical or mythological figure, composed on the theme of Judith with the head of Holofernes or Cupid with a bow, as for example in the Krasicki castle in Dubiecko or in the Korniakt manor in Zolotkovychi (compare "Życie polskie w dawnych wiekach" by Władysław Łoziński, p. 13, 181). Aleksander Stankiewicz describing a Renaissance tile from the 1570s found in the Old Castle of Żywiec and decorated with the coat of arms of the owner and his wife (Żywiec Municipal Museum, inv. 1663), concludes that the naked Venus in this tile could represent the Virgin Mary, which the Komorowski family revered, as evidenced by the family's numerous foundations (compare "Trzy zespoły kafl i z zamku w Żywcu", p. 42). In the poem "Psyche", Jan Andrzej Morsztyn (1621-1693) describes Venus finding Cupid in the queen's gardens at the Villa Regia palace in Warsaw (Tam ją zastała wtenczas Erycyna, Z swemi nimfami siedzącą, i syna). Sometimes also historical scenes were represented in a mythological or biblical disguise or in a fantastic entourage. This is the case of a painting depicting the Siege of Malbork Castle in 1454 seen from the west - one of four paintings by Martin Schoninck, commissioned around 1536 by the Malbork Brotherhood to hang above the Brotherhood bench in the Artus Court in Gdańsk. To emphasize the victory of Gdańsk and the Jagiellonian monarchy over the Teutonic Order, the painting is accompanied by the Story of Judith, a mere woman, who overcomes a superior enemy, and effigies of Christ Salvator Mundi and Madonna and Child (lost during World War II). During the Renaissance, the two traditions – Christian and Greco-Roman, the Bible and ancient mythology also mixed. The best example is Judith and the Infant Hercules, attributed to the Master of the Mansi Magdalen (National Gallery in London, NG4891). In this painting, naked Judith, resembling Cranach's Venuses and holding the head of Holofernes, is accompanied by the infant Hercules, who strangles two snakes sent by the jealous goddess Juno to kill him. This symbolism (overcoming male dominance and female jealousy) indicates that the woman depicted as Judith most likely commissioned this painting to address these issues in her life. The widespread popularity of the "Metamorphoses" and other works of the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC – 17/18 AD) also contributed to the popularity of disguised portraits in Poland-Lithuania. The poet lived among the Sarmatians, legendary ancestors of the Polish-Lithuanian nobility, and was therefore considered the first national poet (compare "Ovidius inter Sarmatas" by Barbara Hryszko, p. 453, 455). In the "Metamorphoses" he deals with transformation into different beings, disguise, illusion and deception, as well as the deification of Julius Caesar and Augustus since both leaders trace their lineage through Aeneas to Venus, who "struck her breast with both hands, and tried to hide Caesar in a cloud" in an attempt to rescue him from the conspirators' swords. The portrait of Philip II (1527-1598), King of Spain, preserved in the famous Renaissance Hardwick Hall (inv. NT 1129159), is very interesting from the point of view of metamorphoses in portraits painted in the 16th century, as well as effigies based on works by other painters. The author of this work, an unidentified English painter, was undoubtedly familiar with the portraits of the husband of Queen Mary Tudor (1516-1558) by Hans Eworth and other Flemish and Dutch painters. However, intentionally or not, the facial features of the Spanish monarch closely resemble the earlier effigies of Mary's father, King Henry VIII (1491-1547), such as his portrait by Joos van Cleve (Royal Collection, inv. RCIN 403368). Only the Habsburg jaw and costume reveal that this is in fact the portrait of Philip II. Dark hair and blond beard of the sitter are other typical features of portraits from this period. Adam Jasienski, describing the portrait of a woman, perhaps of the person who commissioned the painting, as Saint Barbara, painted in Spain in the first half of the 17th century (Lázaro Galdiano Museum in Madrid, inv. 08107), provides some characteristics of such representations in religious scenes: "The woman who kneels in the foreground is represented according to the conventions of period portraiture: her facial features are particularized, and, whereas Christ's face is painterly, with eyes downcast, hers is highly finished and confronts the viewer with a direct gaze. Tellingly, the angel also looks out from the picture: he, too, is a portrait, likely of the sitter's young son" (after "Praying to Portraits", p. 1-2). The Jagiellonian era was also a time of lavish balls, feasts, and festivities. The splendor of the festivities organized by Sigismund Augustus at the grand-ducal court in Vilnius is evidenced by the expenditure on dyeing horses and making shields for tournaments, as well as the use of artillery and fireworks. In 1546, on the occasion of the stay of the king's cousin, Duke Albert of Prussia, a tournament was held, in which Gabriel Tarło fought ad hastiludium ("lance game") against Kaspar von Lehendorff, a servant of the duke. Another time, races were held, the participants of which were disguised as Ethiopians and wild forest peoples (personis ad instar Ethiopum et hominis silvatici ad hastiludium). On March 25, 1546, the expense of 67.28 florins was entered as court expenses for the costumes paid for this event, paid to Michaeli, stipatori, who also received 10.10 florins "for a certain image of a naked woman" (Pro quadam imagine feminae nudae per eundem dati). Equally grand was the spectacle that took place on February 22, 1547, during the Lithuanian Diet. It included three items on the program: a tournament, hussar competitions (torneamentum hussaronicum), and the capture of a defensive castle. The king himself took an active part, fighting with his cupbearer, Mr. Ligęza, and the courtier Frikacz. A certain Zofia Długa (Sophia Long), a woman of easy virtue (meretricam), also participated in the tournament, for an appropriate fee. Dressed in specially commissioned armor, she fought in a jousting tournament against the courtiers Herburt and Łaszcz, thus adding spice to the competition (after "Turniej rycerski w Królestwie Polskim ..." by Bogdan Wojciech Brzustowicz, p. 287-288). She was paid 2.15 florins according to the court's expenses (Die 22 Dlugiey Zophiey, meretrici, quod se passa est indui armis ad hastiludium cum domino Herburth et Lascz, sexagenam Lithuanicam, facit, after "Rachunki dworu królewskiego 1544-1567" by Adam Chmiel, p. 217, 233). One of the most memorable events was also the wedding of King Stephen Bathory's niece, Griselda (1569-1590), to Jan Zamoyski in June 1583. Kraków's market square was filled with the Olympus of the Gods, recalling the triumphs of the Roman emperors. The most illustrious lords of the kingdom, dressed in various masks, participated in this celebration. The procession was inaugurated by Mikołaj Wolski (1553-1630), the Crown Sword Bearer, in the guise of an African. The famous military commander Stanisław Żółkiewski (1547-1620) led the fourth procession, dressed as Diana, goddess of the hunt, "surrounded by nymphs, he shone like the dawn", according to Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz. Joachim Ocieski (ca. 1562-1613), starost of Olsztyn, was dressed as Cupid. The procession was closed by Venus, who dragged Paris tied with a chain, undoubtedly symbolizing the triumph over male domination and most likely referring to Queen Anna Jagiellon. The goddess of love approached the newlyweds and, smiling, offered them the golden apple.
Tolerance, morality and iconoclasm
Poland-Lithuania was the most tolerant country of Renaissance Europe, where in the early years of the Reformation many churches simultaneously served as Protestant and Catholic temples. There are no known sources regarding organized iconoclasm, known from western Europe, in most cases works of art were sold, when churches were completely taken over by the Reformed denominations. Disputes over the nature of the images remained mainly on paper - the Calvinist preacher Stanisław Lutomirski called the Jasna Góra icon of the Black Madonna "an idolatry table", "a board from Częstochowa" that made up the doors of hell, and he described worshiping it as adultery and Jakub Wujek refuted the charges of iconoclasts, saying that "having thrown away the images of the Lord Christ, they replace them with images of Luther, Calvin and their harlots" (after "Ikonoklazm staropolski" by Konrad Morawski). Unlike other countries where effigies of "The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies", nude or half-naked images of saints or disguised portraits in churches and public places were destroyed in mob actions by Protestant crowds, in Poland-Lithuania such incidents were rare.
Before the Great Iconoclasm, many temples were filled with nudity and so-called falsum dogma appearing at the time of the the Council of Trent (twenty-fifth session of the Tridentium, on December 3 and 4, 1563), which "means not so much a heretical view, but a lack of orthodoxy from the Catholic point of view. Iconography was to be cleansed of such errors as lewdness (lascivia), superstition (superstitio), shameless charm (procax venustas), and finally disorder and thoughtlessness" (after "O świętych obrazach" by Michał Rożek). The "divine nakedness" of ancient Rome and Greece, rediscovered by the Renaissance, was banished from churches, however many beautiful works of art preserved - like naked Crucifixes by Filippo Brunelleschi (1410-1415, Santa Maria Novella in Florence), by Michelangelo (1492, Church of Santo Spirito in Florence and another from about 1495, Bargello Museum in Florence) and by Benvenuto Cellini (1559-1562, Basilica of Escorial near Madrid). Nudity in Michelangelo's Last Judgment (1536-1541, Sistine Chapel) was censored the year after the artist's death, in 1565 (after "Michelangelo's Last Judgment - uncensored" by Giovanni Garcia-Fenech). In this fresco nearly everyone is naked or seminaked. Daniele da Volterra painted over the more controversial nudity of mainly muscular naked male bodies (Michelangelo's women look more like men with breasts, as the artist had spent too much time with men to understand the female form), earning Daniele the nickname Il Braghettone, "the breeches-maker". He spared some female effigies and obviously homosexual scenes among the Righteous Men (two young men kissing and a young man kissing an old man's beard and two naked young men in a passionate kiss). Another interesting example of censorship after the Council of Trent is the tomb of Pope Paul III Farnese (1468-1549), the pope who convened the Council in 1545 and commissioned Michelangelo to direct the construction of the basilica in 1547. This splendid bronze and marble monument in St. Peter's Basilica was sculpted by Guglielmo della Porta (d. 1577) between 1549 and 1575. With a payment order to the bank of Tiberio Ceuli dated April 2, 1593, Cardinal Odoardo Farnese (1573-1626) advanced 50 scudi to Guglielmo's son Teodoro Della Porta, who had inherited his workshop, for the "metal robe to be made on the naked marble statue of Justice, placed on the tomb of our Pope Paul, Holy memory" (veste di metallo che deve fare sopra la statua nuda di marmo che rappresenta la Giustizia, posta mella sepoltura di papa Paulo nostro, Santa memoria, after "La leggenda del papa Paolo III: arte e censura nella Roma pontificia" by Roberto Zapperi, p. 14). The statue was dressed at the request of Pope Clement VIII Aldobrandini (1536-1605), shortly after his election as pontiff (January 30, 1592). Interestingly, this nude statue, which is still covered with this "metal robe", is considered to be an effigy of Paul III's sister, Giulia Farnese (1474-1524), mistress of Pope Alexander VI Borgia (1431-1503), and the half-naked statue of Prudentia on the same monument is supposed to represent the features of their mother Giovannella Caetani (after "Tesori d'arte cristiana" by Stefano Bottari, Volume 5, p. 51). Rediscovered in 2014 portrait of Isabella de' Medici (1542-1576), who died tragically, now housed at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh (inv. 78.10.2), illustrates not only 19th-century falsification and idealization (the sitter's face has been reshaped), but also the censorship of controversial elements of the painting. Paolo Giordano I Orsini's wife, dressed in a splendid costume, was depicted holding an attribute of Saint Mary Magdalene: an alabaster vase containing an ointment in her right hand, and with a halo around her head, both repainted later. Gabriele Paleotti (1522-1597), doctor of civil and canon law, archbishop of Bologna and great contributor to the reform of the Church during the Council of Trent, commented in his "Discourse on Sacred and Profane Images" (De imaginibus sacris et profanis, 1594) on the merits of painting for a Christian, among which is to create not only an art that imitates the natural world but also an art that imitates the glory of God. He added that likenesses of holy figures "should be of a good and intelligent person revealing the nature of devotion" and warned painters against composing a portrait of a saint using the image of a commoner or frivolous person, well known to others, as this would be considered a shameful action (compare "Barbara Longhi of Ravenna: A Devotional Self-Portrait" by Liana De Girolami Cheney, p. 28-29). The provisions of Trent reached Poland through administrative ordinances and they were accepted at the provincial synod in Piotrków in 1577. Diocesan synod of Kraków, convened by Bishop Marcin Szyszkowski in 1621, dealt with issues of sacred art. The resolutions of the synod were an unprecedented event in the artistic culture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Published in Chapter LI (51) entitled "On sacred images" (De sacris imaginibus) of Reformationes generales ad clerum et populum ..., they created guidelines for the iconographic canon of sacred art. Holy images could not have portrait features, pictures of the naked Adam and Eve, Saint Mary Magdalene half-naked or embracing a cross in an obscene and multi-colored outfit, Saint Anne with three husbands, Virgin Mary painted or carved in too profane, foreign and indecent clothing should be removed from temples, because they contain false dogma, give the simple people an opportunity to fall into dangerous errors or are contrary to Scripture. However, the bans were not overly respected, because representations of the Holy Family, numbering more than twenty people, including Christ's siblings, have been preserved in the vast diocese of Kraków (after "O świętych obrazach" by Michał Rożek). Between 1615 and 1618, the stonemason Andrzej Jastrząbek (Jarząbek), who decorated the Chapel of St. Hyacinth of Poland in the Dominican Church in Kraków with Mannerist reliefs, incorporated into the decoration the image of a naked Cleopatra, in the Venus pudica type, with two putti (western wall, internal pilaster on the right side of the entrance arcade). The current form of the chapel was given by Zofia Stadnicka, née Sienieńska (wife of Andrzej Piotr Stadnicki of Żmigród), who allocated 6,500 florins for its construction and decoration (Capellae S. Hyacinthi sumptibus Magnificae Dominae Zophiae de Sienno Stadnicka). The chapel project was presented to the monks for approval on April 4, 1615 (after "Sztuka w kręgu klasztoru Dominikanów w Krakowie", p. 50-51, picture 13). The victorious Counter-Reformation and the victorious Reformation opposed shameless lust and shameless charm and a kind of paganism (after "Barok: epoka przeciwieństw" by Janusz Pelc, p. 186), but church officials could not ban "divine nakedness" from lay homes, and nude effigies of saints were still popular after the Council of Trent. Many of such paintings were acquired by clients from the Commonwealth abroad, in the Netherlands, in Venice and Rome, like, most likely, the Busty Madonna by Carlo Saraceni from the Krosnowski collection (National Museum in Warsaw, M.Ob.1605 MNW). It was the time of high infant and maternal mortality, less developed medicine, lack of public health care, when wars and epidemics ravaged large parts of Europe. Therefore, virility and fertility were considered by many to be a sign of God's blessing (after "Male Reproductive Dysfunction", ed. Fouad R. Kandeel, p. 6). Several paintings by Hans Holbein the Younger perfectly illustrate the notion of disguised portraits and eroticism in religious paintings, as well as Renaissance morality. The painter depicted his mistress Magdalena Offenburg née Zscheckenbürlin (1490-1526), a woman well known in Basel for her beauty and loose morals, as Lais of Corinth, an ancient Greek courtesan, who charged dearly for her favours (inscription: : LAÏS : CORINTHIACA : 1526 :), and as Venus with Cupid, also attributed to the painter's workshop and also believed to represent Magdalena's daughter, Dorothea (both paintings are in the Kunstmuseum Basel, inv. 322 and 323). Magdalena's pose in these paintings echoes that of Jesus in Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper". The Meyer Madonna (Darmstadt Madonna), painted around the same time, between 1526 and 1528 (Würth Collection, inv. 14910), is also widely considered to bear the features of Magdalena Offenburg (compare "Hans Holbein: Portrait of an Unknown Man" by Derek Wilson, p. 112). A few years earlier, between 1515 and 1520, Holbein created with Hans Herbst (1470-1552) a painting of the Flagellation of Christ, most probably for the Church of Saint Peter (Peterskirche) in Basel (Kunstmuseum Basel, inv. 307). In this painting, which by today's standards can be considered obscene, three men proudly displaying their big codpieces torment the naked Christ. Comparable in this respect are some paintings by the Dutch painter Maarten van Heemskerck (1498-1574) depicting the Lamentation of Christ and Christ as the Man of Sorrows. In the Lamentation, dating from around 1527-1530, the section depicting the genitals was partially overpainted and censored, probably in the 19th century. These changes were largely reversed during the last restoration, before 2002 (Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, inv. WRM 0586). Heemskerck's Man of Sorrows of 1532, preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent (inv. S-53), is considered to depict the erection (ostentatio genitalium), a symbol of the resurrection and continuing power of Christ (after "The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion" by Leo Steinberg, p. 89, 324). This is particularly evident in another version of the composition, held before 1996 at the Bob Jones University Museum and Gallery in Greenville (inv. P.70.488), now in a private collection. The painter and his workshop created two other similar paintings - the signed and dated 1525 version from the collection of Hans Wendland in Paris (Sotheby's London, December 6, 2017, lot 33) and the painting now held at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (inv. SK-A-1306). Several facts from an earlier period, the 15th century, also illustrate how peculiar medieval Polish morality was. As early as 1468, Sandivogius of Czechel (ca. 1410-1476), a humanist, astronomer, and cartographer, and later an Augustinian monk, was involved in a conflict with the Dominicans of Kraków, represented by provincial Jakub of Bydgoszcz (after "Sędziwój z Czechła ..." by Jacek Wiesiołowski, p. 101-102). Sandivogius, educated in Paris between 1441 and 1444, from where he brought back not only a painting of the Passion of the Lord, but also new concepts of art, considered one of the old sculptures of the Dominican church to be contrary to the aesthetic and dogmatic requirements of the time, in particular with the ruling of the Council of Basel on the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The case concerned an altarpiece decorated with a sculpture of the Nativity of the Lord, which depicted the Blessed Virgin lying on a bed after the birth of Jesus. The realism with which this scene was presented seemed to offend his subtle Christian feelings, and with the help of letters, Sandivogius led a widespread campaign to have the sculpture removed from the church. The outcome of the conflict is unknown, however, the statue probably remained in its original location in the main altar until 1668, when it was burned in a fire (after "Studja nad kulturą i sztuką w kościele OO. Dominikanów w Krakowie" by Leonard Lepszy, p. 99-100). Stanisław Cieński, parish priest of Iwanowice, appointed notary public of the diocese of Poznań on October 8, 1438, included among the sample letters a letter from Stanisław Ciołek's Liber Cancellariae, written in the official language, allegedly from Queen Sophia of Halshany (ca. 1405-1461), Jogaila's fourth wife, who proposed an exchange of husbands to Barbara of Celje (1392-1451), wife of Sigismund of Luxembourg (1368-1437). In another similar letter, Cieński himself draws comparisons between the Sorores Valisovienses, the Sisters of Chwaliszewo, ladies of loose morals from Poznań, and their Mazovian counterparts (after "Najkrótsza historia Wielkopolski" by Stefan Bratkowski, p. 179). The biblical story of Potiphar's wife, who began to lust after the handsome young slave Joseph, particularly fascinated many Europeans in the 16th and 17th centuries, as it was depicted in numerous paintings and applied arts - for example a stove tile from Klaipeda Castle from the first quarter of the 16th century or paintings by Palma il Giovane and the circle of Guercino (Wawel Royal Castle) and Pietro Liberi (National Museum in Warsaw) from the first half of the 17th century. To make it even more accessible to the general public, the German painter and engraver Sebald Beham in 1526 and 1544 and Rembrandt in 1634 created highly erotic engravings representing this scene from the Old Testament. In Poland-Lithuania, where there were many wealthy and influential women and where in some circles the tradition of "assistants of marriage" (matrimonii adiutores) probably survived, such scenes undoubtedly fired the imagination or served as a warning to husbands who neglected their wives. Very interesting in this respect is also a magnificent painting from the collection of the Wawel Royal Castle in Kraków, painted by Benvenuto Tisi (1481-1559), also known as Garofalo (inv. ZKnW-PZS 10509). Tisi, attached to the Ferrarese court of the Dukes d'Este, relatives of Queen Bona Sforza, depicted the Virgin with the naked infant Christ kissing and embracing his cousin John the Baptist. This theme was supposedly conceived by Leonardo da Vinci, who was obviously homosexual, and who painted some preparatory drawings for it in the 1490s. Cases of organized iconoclasm or desecration in Poland-Lithuania are, however, confirmed during the Deluge (1655-1660). "The Swedes, while waiting for him [George II Rakoczi], sacked this miserable city [Kraków]. Until now, they had at least some respect for the altar of Saint Stanislaus; but now they stripped this one too and broke the reliquary of this saint to take it. It is said that the body was taken to hide it from them, for fear that they would take it away to sell it. They plundered all the graves of the kings and even broke the coffin of the late King Ladislaus [Ladislaus IV Vasa], to take silver nails with which it was nailed down", reported in a letter of March 12, 1657 from Częstochowa Pierre des Noyers, secretary of Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga (after "Lettres de Pierre Des Noyers secrétaire de la reine de Pologne ...", published in 1859, p. 305). The Wawel Cathedral was so rich that it was pillaged eight times, and during the fifth pillage on March 2, 1657: "general [Paul Würtz (1612-1676)] himself took the silver statue of Saint Stanislaus from the altar and he hit it on the ground until the stone broke, which is next to the grave. He also hit Piotrowin's head with a hammer in the same place, then they broke the [silver] coffin itself and tore off the lid, not quickly because it was firmly nailed, they took out a small coffin made of pure gold with relics, [...] the large one, they broke into pieces and brought it to the general, and the golden one was then opened and the general himself gave pieces of relics, taking them with bare hands, and others took them themselves. [...] Followers of Luther, when they took pieces, they said these words: he cannot save himself now, but he has to save Poles, people are deceived by these priests. [...] Then they went to the treasury, where all the drawers were opened, the cabinets were opened, the altars and walls were broken, the floors were overturned, the chests were taken, everything that anyone could find and put in pockets, accessories, stones were taken, chairs, upholstery, drawers, boxes were looted and everything that was found and who liked it", reports the anonymous author. The coffins of the bishops were also desecrated and "the rings and chains with their emblems, in gold or silver, were removed from the corpses". All this was melted down and taken away on 80 carts on March 3, 1657 (after "Straty kulturalne i artystyczne Krakowa w okresie pierwszego najazdu szwedzkiego (1655-1657)", p. 143-144, 146-148, 150, 152). In order to protect the homeland against invaders, many valuable items, especially silver, were donated for war purposes. The Chapter of Wawel offered on several occasions the silverware spared from the looting - on February 20, 1656, objects weighing 2,922 ducats were given "not out of obligation or debt, but out of love for the country" (non ex aliqua obligatione aut debito, sed ex amore erga Patriam). Some people do not realize that not only Polish-Lithuanian heritage was destroyed, but also European heritage, especially Italian, as many Italians lived and worked in Poland-Lithuania and many valuable items were acquired or ordered in Italy. Among the many churches destroyed in Kraków during the invasion, sources mention that of Saint Agnes "recently restored by Father Dzianoti [Gianotti] in the Italian taste". In March 1656, Swedish soldiers destroyed the palaces of Montelupi and Morykoni [Moriconi], as well as the royal palace in Łobzów, where marble columns were broken into pieces. In June, "the Swedes overturned and pillaged coffins in the churches of St. Casimir, St. Nicholas and on Piasek", in addition, they stole two bells from St. Nicholas, indicated to them by the Jews. Paintings, goldwork, silverware and private libraries were confiscated from wealthy bourgeois houses. Many works of art were created in Flanders and the Netherlands and in Kraków, a large number of valuable objects were commissioned from Nuremberg and Augsburg or created by artists from these German cities. "When the king [Charles X Gustav] returned to Kazimierz, he gave the keys to the church treasury to his elders so that they could take everything that was there. There they took all the city deposits and chests, they broke the church silver [...] The Swedish preacher also took the books of doctors from the library, which were of the greatest value [...]. They took paintings of Italian workmanship, that they liked", wrote the monastic chronicler Stefan Ranotowicz about looting of the monastery of canons regular in Kazimierz. The situation was similar in cities occupied by Russian forces. In Vilnius, all the funerary monuments were smashed. Very few paintings made before 1655 preserved there. It is worth noting here that in 1654 Patriarch Nikon (1605-1681) ordered that icons painted "on the Polish model" be collected, their eyes gouged out, and the faces of saints scratched out (possibly disguised portraits). During the Orthodox holiday of 1655, after the liturgy in the Dormition Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin in the presence of the patriarchs of the East, the tsar and boyars, Nikon smashed icons, explaining his actions by Western influences in icon painting and the need to return to the sources (after "Starowiercy w Polsce i ich księgi" by Zoja Jaroszewicz-Pieresławcew, p. 7). However, the beautiful portrait of Patriarch Nikon with the brethren of the Resurrection Monastery at the New Jerusalem Museum in Istra (inv. Жд 98), dating from the early 1660s, is obviously in the Dutch style and was probably painted by Daniel Wuchters or his relative Abraham Wuchters in Copenhagen.
Economy and political system
In 1565 Flavio Ruggieri from Bologna, who accompanied Giovanni Francesco Commendone, a legate of Pope Pius IV in Poland, described the country in the manuscript preserved in the Vatican Library (Ex codice Vatic. inter Ottobon. 3175, Nr. 36):
"Poland is quite well inhabited, especially Masovia, in other parts there are also dense towns and villages, but all wooden, counting up to 90,000 of them in total, one half of which belongs to the king, the other half to the nobility and clergy, the inhabitants apart from the nobility are a half and a quarter million, that is, two and a half million peasants and a million townspeople. [...] Even the craftsmen speak Latin, and it is not difficult to learn this language, because in every city, in almost every village there is a public school. They take over the customs and language of foreign nations with unspeakable ease, and of all transalpine countries, they learn the customs and the Italian language the most, which is very much used and liked by them as well as the Italian costume, namely at court. The national costume is almost the same as the Hungarian, but they like to dress up differently, they change robes often, they even change up several times a day. Since Queen Bona of the House of Sforza, the mother of the present king, introduced the language, clothes and many other Italian customs, some lords began to build in the cities of Lesser Poland and Masovia. The nobility is very rich. [...] Only townspeople, Jews, Armenians, and foreigners, Germans and Italians trade. The nobility only sells their own grain, which is the country's greatest wealth. Floated into the Vistula by the rivers flowing into it, it goes along the Vistula to Gdańsk, where it is deposited in intentionally built granaries in a separate part of the city, where the guard does not allow anyone to enter at night. Polish grain feeds almost all of King Philip's Netherlands, even Portuguese and other countries' ships come to Gdańsk for Polish grain, where you will sometimes see 400 and 500 of them, not without surprise. The Lithuanian grain goes along the Neman to the Baltic Sea. The Podolian grain, which, as has been said, perishes miserably, could be floated down the Dniester to the Black Sea, and from there to Constantinople and Venice, which is now being thought of according to the plan given by the Cardinal Kommendoni [Venetian Giovanni Francesco Commendone]. Apart from grain, Poland supplies other countries with flax, hemp, beef hides, honey, wax, tar, potash, amber, wood for shipbuilding, wool, cattle, horses, sheep, beer and some dyer's herb. From other countries they imports costly blue silks, cloth, linen, rugs, carpets, from the east precious stones and jewels, from Moscow, sables, lynxes, bears, ermines and other furs that are absent in Poland, or not as much as their inhabitants need to protect them from cold or for glamor. [...] The king deliberate on all important matters with the senate, although he has a firm voice, the nobility, as it has been said, has so tightened his power that he has little left over it" (after "Relacye nuncyuszow apostolskich ..." by Erazm Rykaczewski, pp. 125, 128, 131, 132, 136). The Venetian priest Luigi Lippomano (1496/1500-1559), bishop of Verona, who was apostolic nuncio in Poland-Lithuania between 1555 and 1558, adds about the main port and Sigismund Augustus that "the first commercial city in Poland is Gdańsk on the Baltic Sea, to which grain is brought in countless quantities by the Vistula and other rivers, and from there it is distributed to Portugal, Biscay, Scotland, Sweden, Norway, etc., luxury goods come from Gdańsk. [...] His father was a Monarch famous in peace and war, his son is not a warrior, which is a great loss to this country, because the nobility, naturally inclined to arms and camps, lies in the field and gives themselves over to debauchery. The King, instead of watching over the entirety of the laws of the State, reads forbidden heretical books, so much so that he who should fight for the Sacred Catholic Faith, fights against it and against his own soul; he likes to talk with heretics, you will often find three or four religions around him, and if he finds a learned and honest man, he respects him, cum tamen sit unus Deus, una fides, et unum baptisma [since there is one God, one faith, and one baptism]" (after "Zbiór pamiętników historycznych o dawnej Polszcze ..." by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Volume 4, p. 66-67). By the late 1550s, many Italians were considering Poland-Lithuania a land of "wild heretics" (ferax haereticorum), and in June 1559, Ludovico Monti, who was living in Rome as an agent of Sigismund Augustus, wrote to Cardinal Farnese expressing his irritation at the widely accredited representation of Polish reality: "Here we are made to pass for schismatics and Lutherans. There is someone so insolent that he wants to make the king a heretic" (Qui ci spacciano tutti per scismatici et luterani. Vi è alcuno così insolente che vole fare heretico il re a viva forza). Cardinal Hozjusz, a month earlier, had added in a letter from Rome to Marcin Kromer in Kraków that: "Here there is no doubt that our King is a heretic" (Hic nihil dubitatur Regem nostrum haereticum esses). Already at the beginning of 1526, Niccolò Fabri, sent to Poland by Pope Clement VII, wrote from Piotrków about Sigismund Augustus' father that "the King deals with great zeal with the Lutheran sect, which was beginning to infect Prussia [...] if it were not for the great goodness of this king, Poland would already be entirely Lutheran" (con grandissimo fervore la Maestà del re tracta circa la setta lutherana, quale incominciava a infettare la Prussia [...] se non fusse la tanta bontà de questo re, la Pollonia saria gia tutta lutherana, after "La trama Nascosta - Storie di mercanti e altro" by Rita Mazzei). Fabri was sent to ask for the hand of Hedwig Jagiellon for the Marquis of Mantua. He was most likely depicted in a portrait by Vincenzo Catena bearing the inscription: NICOLAVS FABRIS MCCCCLX (Columbia Museum of Art, inv. CMA 1962.13). The provincial synod of Piotrków in 1542 stated that the writings of Luther, Melanchthon and related authors were taught in parish schools. The spread of new ideas was aided by the many printing houses opened in Sarmatia at that time, as well as by a large importation of books and acquisitions during travels, thanks to which many people had their own libraries. Seweryn Boner (1486-1549), director of the Wieliczka salt works, was described as a "book devourer" (librorum helluon) by a contemporary humanist, Johannes Arbiter de Zittavia and Bishop Filip Padniewski (1510-1572) made his library accessible to all scholars. Mikołaj Rej (1505-1569) sued his relative Jan Koścień for the return of Cronica mundi before a land court, and the latter sued Jan Włodzisławski (after "Cnoty i wady narodu szlacheckiego ..." by Antoni Górski, p. 100-102). The letter of Ludovico Monti, agent of Sigismund Augustus, who wrote on July 29, 1569 from his house in Modena to Duke Alfonso II d'Este, shows how well informed the Italians were about the affairs of distant Poland-Lithuania. In it, he described, as if he had been present in person, the thanksgiving ceremony that took place in Lublin, in the chapel of the castle, the day after the Union Diet that celebrated the merger between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland (signed on July 1, 1569, after "La trama Nascosta - Storie di mercanti e altro" by Rita Mazzei). Jean Choisnin de Chastelleraut, secretary to the French ambassador Jean de Monluc (1508-1579), Bishop of Valence, left a very favourable image of Poland-Lithuania at the end of the reign of the last male Jagellon in his "Speech in truth of all that happened for the entire negotiation of the election of the King of Poland", published in Paris in 1574. Choisnin, who called himself "Secretary to the King of Poland" (Secretaire du Roy de Polongne) Henry of Valois, dedicated his book to the king's mother Catherine de' Medici (1519-1589), called mother of Kings (Katherine de Medicis, par la grace de Dieu Royne de France, mere des Roys). He praises "the extent of the country, which is such that it contains at least twice as much as France" and "the great fertility and abundance of all things necessary for the life and pleasure of man". "Wines from Hungary, Moravia, the Rhine and Gascony, and the Malvasias in great quantity, which are brought to them by the Armenians from the coast of Euxine [Black Sea]: so much so that the Nobleman who does not give his friend four or five kinds of wine, and all the other delicacies that there are, either in Italy, or in the countries of Levant, he does not think he has received him well. [...] It is certain that there is no nation in the world that so quickly accommodates itself to all good morals and virtues of other nations, as the Polish nation does: They do it by nature as I have said above, more curious than any others to see foreign countries [...] After only four months in Italy, they speak perfect Italian. They dress, they live, they have the same demeanor as if they were born in Italy. They do the same in Spain and France. As for Germany, they quickly learn to speak German. But as for clothes and other ways of living, they always remember the difference in customs that exists between the two nations. [...] There is a great diversity of religion, introduced, as they say, by the connivence of the late King. But recognizing among themselves that division would bring their entire ruin, they have never wanted to attack each other. [...] Their state is governed in the form of a Republic [...] In short, those who speak of it thus acknowledge, if they please, that the late King Sigismund, father of the deceased, lived on this income that is made so small [i.e. restricted by Parliament], with as much splendor and majesty as any King that there was in his time in Christendom. Queen Bona [La Royne Bonne - literally The Queen Good], his wife, when she left Poland, took six hundred thousand écus [gold coins] in cash. This last King at the time of his death had five thousand horses in his stables. He left a Cabinet [treasury?] that is not found in all of Christendom as rich as this. I will say moreover that he left more rich clothing, arms, and artillery than all the Kings who are alive today could show" ("Discours au vray de tout ce qui s'est passé pour l'entière négociation de l'élection du roy de Pologne", p. 120-123, Lyon Public Library). The spirit of tolerance and equality of the Jagiellonian period is best expressed in the speech of hetman Jan Amor Tarnowski (1488-1561) to the Gdańsk city council in 1552. King Sigismund Augustus was then examining the possibility of making Gdańsk a naval base for planned expansion into the Baltic Sea and personally arrived in the city, while its inhabitants sought, among other things, religious privilege for the Lutherans. The patricians, who had not yet sworn allegiance to the king, were at first a little frightened, but hetman Tarnowski, in the name of the king, reassured the city superiors by saying: "This is not the time of the Teutonic Knights, the Poles, as they once recognized, still consider the Prussians their beloved brothers. Remember that within Germany you were subjects and that you live with us in sweet equality of rights and freedoms, love and citizenship", as quoted Felicja Boberska (1825-1889) in her writings published in Lviv in 1893 (after "Pisma Felicyi z Wasilewskich Boberskiej", p. 366). More than twenty years later, the Warsaw Confederation, one of the first European acts granting religious freedoms, was signed on January 28, 1573 by the National Assembly (Convocation Sejm) in Warsaw. The strong republican regime in Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia, as well as the presence of a large German-speaking community, meant that Emperor Charles V and Sigismund I's nephew Albert of Prussia, as well as their officials, sometimes forgot themselves and the king had to call them to order. "Most Serene Prince Brother and our relative. While everything is being done in Vilnius on our side to increase the friendship that exists between us and Y. I. H. [Your Imperial Highness], we cannot help but be surprised that things that are very unpleasant to us come out of the Court Chamber and Chancellery of Y. I. H. For when we do not claim any rights over the subjects of Y. I. H., they, having forgotten our agreements with Y. I. H. towards the inhabitants of Gdańsk, who do not recognize any other lord than us, dare to send rescripts and orders. We send such documents to Y. I. H., asking them not to dare to claim any right over those who have no other lord and should have no other than us. This will be in accordance with the justice of Y. I. H. and will strengthen the friendship that so constantly exists between us. Given at Brest-Litovsk on July 27, 1544", wrote the irritated King Sigismund I to Charles V. "We admonish once more H. P. M. [His Princely Majesty] the Duke of Prussia: never to let it slip from his mind that he is both subject and son of the King of Poland, and that he must not behave otherwise than as befits a subject towards his lord, a son towards his father," the king replied in a similar tone to the duke's envoy, Franciscus Tege, around 1546 (after "Zbiór pamiętników historycznych o dawnej Polszcze ..." by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Volume 4, p. 38, 41-42). VBI CHARITAS ET AMOR / IBI DEVS EST ("Where there is charity and love, there is God"), this Latin phrase placed on the Mannerist portal of the court chamber of the Kraków Town Hall, demolished in 1820, provides information on important aspect of the coexistence in a multicultural and multireligious country during the lifetime of the elected queen Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596). Although this sentence is associated with the Western Church, as it is the beginning of an 8th-century hymn based on the First Epistle of John and was long used as one of the antiphons for the washing of the feet on Maundy Thursday, it could be of interest to anyone visiting the capital of the Kingdom of Poland who knows Latin. The magnificent portal, now preserved in the Jagiellonian University Museum, is generally attributed to Jan Frankstijn (Hans Ulrich Frankenstein), royal sculptor and aedificiorum castrensium praefectus, and is based on Netherlandish models. The original door, made in 1593 by the carpenter Piotr Kalina, is also magnificently decorated with intarsia on which one can see in the middle an allegory of justice, and above it, the city's coat of arms. An engraving after a drawing by Józef Brodowski the Elder, published in 1845 with description ("O magistratach miast polskich ..." by Karol Mecherzyński), shows the original interior of the court chamber with well painted al fresco effigies of Polish kings, a wooden ceiling with gilded rosettes, the south window in Gothic form, three large windows on the east side and a green-painted iron cage with gilded eagles, the place where decrees and official documents were kept. Marcin Kromer (1512-1589), Prince-Bishop of Warmia, in his "Poland or About the Geography, Population, Customs, Offices, and Public Matters of the Polish Kingdom in Two Volumes" (Polonia sive de situ, populis, moribus, magistratibus et Republica regni Polonici libri duo), first published in Cologne in 1577, emphasized that "In almost our time, Italian merchants and craftsmen also reached the more important cities; moreover, the Italian language is heard from time to time from the mouths of more educated Poles, because they like to travel to Italy". He also stated that that "even in the very center of Italy it would be difficult to find such a multitude of people of all kinds with whom one could communicate in Latin" and as for the political system, he added that "the Republic of Poland is not much different […] from the contemporary Republic of Venice" (after "W podróży po Europie" by Wojciech Tygielski, Anna Kalinowska, p. 470). Mikołaj Chwałowic (d. 1400), called the Devil of Venice, a nobleman of Nałęcz coat of arms, mentioned as Nicolaus heres de Wenacia in 1390, is said to have named his estate near Żnin and Biskupin where he built a magnificent castle - Wenecja (Wenacia, Veneciae, Wanaczia, Weneczya, Venecia), after returning from his studies in the "Queen of the Adriatic". In many Western European countries, Sarmatia was considered the antemurale Christianitatis (bulwark of Christendom, the protective wall of Christianity) that protected the West from invasions from the East, as expressed by Johannes Agricola (1494-1566) in his "True Depictions of Several Most Honorable Princes and Lords ..." (Warhaffte Bildnis etlicher Hochlöblicher Fürsten vnd Herren ...) published in Wittenberg in 1562. On the page dedicated to King Sigismund Augustus accompanied by a splendid woodcut by Lucas Cranach the Younger or workshop with the portrait of the king, Agricola describes him as a just ruler who increased the wealth of his kingdom, but also adds that "He protected Germany from the great tyranny of the Turks. For this he is to be thanked greatly" (Deudschland hat er beschützet frey / Vor der Türcken gros Tyranney. Des im sehr gros zu dancken sey).
Italian influences and languages
The popular novel "The Story of the Most Serene Queen of Poland, Who Was Twice Unjustly Sent ..." (La historia della serenissima regina di Polonia, la quale due uolte iniquamente fu mandata ...) from the first half of the 16th century, as well as a story about an Italian merchant, who found himself on the Polish-Muscovite border in Baldassare Castiglione's "The Courtier" (Il Cortegiano), published in 1528, reflect the connections between Poland-Lithuania and Italy during the Renaissance. Stanisław Reszka (1544-1600), noted in his diary that Torquato Tasso had read him his work Le sette giornate del mondo creato, while the British Library has preserved a copy of Gerusalemme conquistata with a verse dedication by Tasso to Reszka (Al Sig. Stanislao Rescio Nunzio illustrissimo).
Paolo Giovio (Paulus Jovius, 1483-1552), bishop of Nocera de' Pagani, art collector and historian, who probably never visited Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia, praised in his writings published in the 1550s "this kingdom of wealth, fertility of the land and ingenuity of men" (Questo regno di ricchezza, di fertilità di paese, et d'ingegni de gli huomini), as well as the city of Kraków, where "the studies of the mathematical sciences flourish greatly" (fioriscon molto gli studi delle scienze matematiche). This owner of the museum (Museo Gioviano in Como near Milan), who owned portraits of famous people by Titian, Bronzino, Dosso Dossi and Bernardino Campi among others, also praised the virtue of King Sigismund I, the Italian charm of his daughter Isabella, diplomatic skills of Hieronim Łaski (1496-1541) and the military expertise of Hetman Jan Amor Tarnowski (comapre "L'immagine della Polonia in Italia ..." by Andrea Ceccherelli, p. 329, 331). The bishop probably relied on the accounts of Italian visitors, although the form of his statements makes his visit likely. In the 16th century, it was not only popular to travel and study in Italy, to employ Italians willing to settle in Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia, but also to conduct correspondence consultations with renowned doctors in Italy. In 1549, Giovanni Battista da Monte of Verona (Johannes Baptista Montanus, d. 1551), professor of practical medicine at the University of Padua, provided his recommendations to Queen Bona Sforza, which were published in Venice in 1556 in Consultationum medicinalium centuria prima, collected by Walenty Sierpiński of Lublin (Valentinus Lublinus, died before 1600) and dedicated to Nicolaus "the Black" Radziwill (1515-1565). The queen, aged fifty-five, suffered from headaches and failing eyesight and probably a series of ailments that appear during menopause. Sierpiński, who published several of Montanus' works, was also the intermediary in contacts with patients from his native country. Many of them consulted him for the treatment of syphilis, which was apparently common at the royal court at that time, facial burns, nasal ulcers, urinary retention, toe pain, numbness of the foot, impotence and other medical problems (De morbo Gallico [...] pro generoso Polono, De intemperie frigida splenis [...] pro nobili Polono quadragenario). In a letter to the Bishop of Kraków Piotr Tomicki (1464-1535), the Ferrarese physician Giovanni Manardo (Iohannes Manardu, 1462-1536) attributed the poor health of the Polish priest to syphilis. Francesco Frigimelica (1490-1558), professor of practical medicine in Padua, best known for his pioneering research in the field of thermal treatments, also provided such consultations to Sarmatian patients. Likewise, Girolamo Mercuriale (1530-1606), professor at the University of Padua, who also treated many Sarmatians, including Paweł Uchański (died 1590), nephew of Archbishop Jakub Uchański (1502-1581). Uchański's correspondence tells us that the letters were forwarded by Uchański's servant, and that the doctor received gifts in exchange for his advice, which the patient distributed generously. The Paduan doctor's fame was so great that Chancellor Jan Zamoyski entrusted him with the task of selecting professors for the chair of medicine at the Collegium Regium he was establishing in Kraków, which was not ultimately created. In a letter dated September 8, 1577, Mercuriale politely suggested that it would be difficult to find people willing to live in the distant country (after "Praktyka leczenia korespondencyjnego ..." by Anna Odrzywolska, p. 18-19, 21-24, 26-27). In addition to educational trips, another reason why the Sarmatians went to the peninsula was to "recover their health in the baths" (ricuperar [la] sanità alli bagni). This was the intention of John Radziwill, who planned to go to the baths of Padua in 1542, and with a view to a stopover in Ferrara he took care to have himself recommended by Bona Sforza to Duke Ercole II. At the end of October 1561, the nuncio Berardo Bongiovanni complained about the arrival in Padua of a French goldsmith named Pietro (Pierre), who is a great heretic and who has infected a third of Lithuania (compare "La trama Nascosta - Storie di mercanti e altro" by Rita Mazzei). "Decyusz [Justus Ludwik Decjusz (ca. 1485-1545)] says about the contemporary nobility that they began to crave learning and that it was rare for anyone who did not know Latin, and that most of them spoke three or four languages well, namely German, Italian, or Hungarian" (after "Z dworu Zygmunta Starego" by Kazimierz Morawski, Przegląd polski, Volume 21, p. 210). The great diversity of languages in the Commonwealth is reflected in the surviving correspondence. Upon learning of the death of Sigismund Augustus, Emperor Maximilian II wrote to the Infanta Anna Jagiellon in Spanish (letter of July 26, 1572), and her sister Catherine Jagiellon, Queen of Sweden, wrote to her in French (October 1572). Hieronim Rozdrażewski (d. 1600) asked to write to him in French and reproached his brother Stanisław (1540-1619) for having forgotten Latin (letter of December 28, 1579 from Warsaw). The young Radziwills from the Nesvizh line were particularly fond of correspondence in Spanish, as confirmed by the letters of Stanislaus "the Pious" Radziwill (1559-1599) to his brother George Radziwill (1556-1600) from 1581 to 1584. In 1581 the nuncio Giovanni Andrea Caligari sometimes asked King Stephen Bathory to indicate someone who could translate a letter from German into Italian and Stanisław Karnkowski (1520-1603) urgently sought to have in his service the Jesuit priest Basilio Cervino, an Italian who knew Polish (according to letters from Vilnius and Warsaw addressed in 1581 to Cardinal di Como). On May 6, 1583, Alberto Bolognetti reported from Kraków to Cardinal di Como that Paweł Zajączkowski had argued in Italian with Chancellor Jan Sariusz Zamoyski. In the 16th century, Italian was considered an international language in diplomatic relations. Sigismund Augustus sent his emissary, Piotr Dunin-Wolski (1531-1590), two letters to the King of Spain regarding Bona's inheritance, one written in Italian, the other in Latin, with instructions to Wolski to determine His Majesty's preferred language and deliver only this letter to him. In order to eliminate conflict with Sweden after the victories over Ivan the Terrible, Stephen Bathory sent the court chef Domenico Allamani to Sweden as an ambassador in 1582. The Swedish king was offended by the dispatch of an "Italian cook", whom he treated with contempt (after "Cnoty i wady narodu szlacheckiego ..." by Antoni Górski, p. 58, 132). Poland was a very egalitarian country at that time (the king was first among equals), so no one probably took into consideration that the private status of the official Polish ambassador might offend the Swedish monarch. The canon of Gniezno, Jan Piotrowski, who had studied in Padua and was fluent in several languages, wrote on July 29, 1581 to the Grand Marshal of the Crown Andrzej Opaliński (1540-1593) that "the answer to the letter of the Lord of Moscow, which Gizius [royal secretary Tiedemann Giese (1543-1582)] wrote in Latin, was read before the Lords. The Chancellor himself will translate it into Polish, because we, the sribes, are not up to the task, and Lithuania [Chancellery of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania] will translate it from Polish into Ruthenian" (compare "Listowne polaków rozmowy ..." by Jerzy Axer, Jerzy Mańkowski, p. 96, 98). In 1501, Erazm Ciołek (1474-1522), provost of Vilnius, who was for several years secretary to the Grand Duke of Lithuania Alexander Jagiellon and was sent by him to Pope Alexander VI Borgia in Rome, gave a speech before the Pope telling him that the Lithuanians "speak their own language. However, since the Ruthenians inhabit almost half of the duchy, their language, while it is graceful and easy, is used more often" (Linguam propriam observant. Verum quia Rutheni medium fere ducatum incolunt, illorum loquela, dum gracilis et facilior sit, utuntur communius; Oratio Erasmi Vitellii praepositi Vilnensis, Illmi principis dñi Alexandri magni ducis Lithuaniae secretarii, et oratoris ad Alexandrum VI, after "Vetera monumenta Poloniae et Lithuaniae ..." by Augustin Theiner, Volume II, p. 277-278). During the Jagiellonian era, the queen often had a separate Ruthenian secretary. This was a kind of court tradition for queens of Ruthenian or Lithuanian origin. Queen Sophia of Halshany (ca. 1405-1461), Jogaila's fourth and last wife, had such a secretary at her disposal, as did Queen Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551), at whose court Yan Nikolayevich Hayka (Jan Mikołajewicz Hajko, ca. 1510-1579), a Ruthenian scribe (notarius Ruthenicus), was responsible for matters related to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and wrote documents and letters in Ruthenian. The Ruthenian Miklasz (Nyklasz), who had probably previously served Queen Elizabeth of Austria (1436-1505), was secretary to Queen Helena of Moscow (1476-1513). At the court of Queen Bona, who was suo jure Duchess of Bari, several Italians were secretaries, such as Ludovico Masati de Alifio (Aliphia or Aliphius), a member of an old Neapolitan noble family, Marco de la Torre from a Venetian noble family, Carlo Antonio Marchesini de Monte Cinere from Bologna, Scipio Scolare (Scholaris) from Bari, Francesco Lismanini from Corfu (who considered himself Greek), Ludovico de Montibus from Modena and Vito Pascale from Bari. The Italian Giovanni Marsupino, the envoy of the queen's father, served as secretary to Elizabeth of Austria (1526-1545) and in 1544 her uncle Emperor Charles V sent a special envoy Alfonso of Aragon, probably Alfonso de Aragón y Portugal (1489-1563), Duke of Segorbe, who was also to act as secretary to the queen. In mid-1558, Erhard von Kunheim, originally from Prussia, became secretary to Catherine of Austria (1533-1572), third wife of Sigismund Augustus (compare "Sekretarze na dworach polskich królowych w epoce jagiellońskiej" by Agnieszka Januszek-Sieradzka, p. 121, 124-125, 128-130, 132, 133). The letters and biography of Andrzej Zebrzydowski (1496-1560), Bishop of Kraków from 1551, provide important information about the lifestyle, patronage and Italian connections of a wealthy Renaissance nobleman. Zebrzydowski, educated in Basel, Paris and Padua, was secretary to King Sigismund I and chaplain to Queen Bona. In a letter dated October 1546 from Sobków to the royal burgrave of Gdańsk Johann von Werden (1495-1554), he reports that he had looked for an Italian to practice his Italian again, which he had almost forgotten (ut linguae Italicae usum, quem pene amisi, recuperarem). In a letter of March 1548 addressed from his palace in Wolbórz to Piotr Myszkowski (d. 1591), canon of Kraków, he asks to send him a skilled painter "who could spend a few months here with us" (Rogo autem, ut eximium mihi quempiam ejus artis hominem quaerat, qui hic nobiscum possit aliquot menses transigere) and that he be young and unmarried man. In several letters, such as that of April 20, 1551 addressed to Francesco Lismanini (Franciszek Lismanin, 1504-1566), he mentions his gardener Julianus Italus or Giuliano the Italian (olitore nostro Juliano Italo, compare "Andreas de Venciborco Zebrzydowski episcopi ...", ed. Władysław Wisłocki, p. 43, 171, 301, 436). He also maintained a correspondence with his friends in Italy and, according to a letter dated August 2, 1553 from Kraków, he sent as a gift 40 ermine skins (pelles quadraginta zebellinas) to Cardinal Giacomo Puteo (1495-1563), Archbishop of Bari. In 1559, a Venetian printer and humanist, Paolo Manuzio (Paulus Manutius, 1512-1574), sent him a letter of praise, through Andrzej Patrycy Nidecki (1522-1587), who was returning from Padua, to which was attached a portrait of Paolo's father, Aldo Pio Manuzio (Aldus Pius Manutius, died 1515), whom the bishop had known and highly esteemed (after "Andrzej Patrycy Nidecki ..." by Kazimierz Morawski, p. 77, 95). The highly prized furs of Poland-Lithuania are often mentioned in the surviving letters. The Ferrarese agent Antonio Maria Negrisoli (Antonio Mario Nigrisoli), writing to the Duke of Ferrara from Warsaw on 27 January 1552, confirms that he had been instructed to inquire about the price of beaver furs (feltro di castoreo) for the Duke. One of the first and last known letters from Negrisoli from Poland also concerns furs. According to the letter to Ercole II of November 22, 1550, he wanted to send a beautiful fur coat from Poland to Ginevra Malatesta and on March 18, 1554 he informed Ercole II of the difficulty of finding the precious black fox furs, so sought after in Ferrara (after "Alle origini dell'immagine di Cracovia come città di esilio" by Rita Mazzei, p. 469, 504). In a letter to Cardinal Farnese in early November 1563, Ludovico Monti informs him of two nephews of the Polish ambassador in Naples Paweł Stempowski "one of whom must be handed over to Your Excellency" and "the other will go to the Cardinal of Augsburg [Otto Truchsess von Waldburg] who will hand him over to the princes of Austria so that he can learn good manners in Spain" and adds about the Polish ambassador that "it was he who sent the skins to Your Excellency last year" (l'uno ch'io lo consegni a Vostra Eccellenza [...] l'altro o va a diritto al cardinale d'Augusta che lo consignarà ai principi d'Austria perché impari creanza in Spagna [...] È quello che l'anno passato mandò le pelli a Vostra Eccellenza, after "La trama Nascosta - Storie di mercanti e altro" by Rita Mazzei). In 1557, the royal court acquired a large quantity of luxurious furs due to the need to send gifts to the Turkish Sultan (after "Dostawcy dworów królewskich w Polsce i na Litwie ..." by Maurycy Horn, Part II, p. 6). Already in the time of Sigismund I, secular plays in Latin were given at Wawel Castle under the patronage of the court. Among them was "Ulysses' Foresight in the Face of Adversity" (Ulyssis Prudentia In Adversis), performed at the castle in 1516 in the presence of the King and Queen Barbara Zapolya. In February 1522, in the presence of Queen Bona (the king left for Lithuania), Jacobus Locher's "The Judgment of Paris about the golden apple between the three goddesses, Pallas, Juno, and Venus, about the threefold way of human life: contemplative, active and lustful" (Ivdicivm Paridis de pomo aureo inter tres deas Palladem, Iuuonem, Venerem, de triplici hominu vita, cotemplatiua, actiua ac voluptaria) was performed in the Senator's Hall. As was customary at the time, all the roles were played by men, students of the Kraków Academy, a fully accepted form of public cross-dressing (by today's standards). The plays were directed by Stanisław of Łowicz, the superior of dormitories. In The Judgement of Paris, the role of Paris was played by Mikołaj Kobyleński, Pallas by Jerzy Latalski, Juno by Szymon of Łowicz, Venus by Paweł Głogowski, and the beautiful Helen of Troy by Stanisław Maik. The mythological plot was punctuated by a fencing scene and vulgar songs of "women and shepherds" (after "Intermedium polskie ..." by Jan Okoń, p. 117). The Wawel performance was intended to be an extraordinary event, and by January of that year, the full Latin text of the play had been published. The title page was adorned with a fitting woodcut depicting the judgement, inspired by the 1508 engraving by Lucas Cranach the Elder, in which all the goddesses were depicted naked. At an unknown time, probably after the Deluge, a vandal-reader of the copy of Locher's work in the National Library in Warsaw (SD XVI.Qu.6459) made a truly barbaric attempt to hide the nudity of the most shameful parts of the bodies of the three goddesses with pencil strokes. It was translated into Polish and frequently performed for the general public, however, the translation was not published until 1542 (Sąd Parysa Królewicza Trojańskiego). The oldest known depiction of the Judgement of Paris scene in Polish art is a stove tile dating from the second half of the 15th century, found in 1994 during excavations near the so-called Lech Hill in Gniezno, now in the Museum of the Origins of the Polish State in Gniezno (inv. 1994:3/21), in which all the goddesses were also depicted naked (after "Inspiracje śródziemnomorskie" by Jerzy Miziołek, p. 10-11, 17-19, 322). Since in the 1522 play all the roles were given to men, it is unlikely that they performed naked or half-naked in front of the queen and the court, but since the details of the performance are not known, who knows.
Poetry, society and the role of women
The poets and writers Andrzej Krzycki (Andreas Cricius, 1482-1537), secretary to Queen Bona Sforza, Klemens Janicki (Clemens Ianicius, 1516-1543), Stanisław Orzechowski (Stanislaus Orichovius, 1513-1566) and Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski (Mathias Casimirus Sarbievius, 1595-1640), were among the most notable Latinists of the Renaissance and early Baroque. The first Polish author to write exclusively in Polish, Mikołaj Rej (1505-1569), rightly stated: "Among other nations let it always be known / That the Poles are not geese, have a tongue of their own" (translated by Michał Jacek Mikoś), because in a multi-ethnic nation, Latin dominated in all spheres of life. It was also during the Renaissance that the first important publications in local languages appeared.
Among the notable foreign poets and writers brought to Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia at the beginning of the Renaissance, one should mention the French poet Aignan Bourgoin (Anian Burgonius) from Orléans, invited by Jan Łaski (1499-1560) in 1527. Łaski sent him to continue his studies in Italy, then to Wittenberg with Melanchthon, but this "apostle of Poland", as Melanchthon called him, died suddenly in 1534 (after "Poezja polsko-łacińska w dobie odrodzenia" by Bronisław Nadolski, p. 189). Bishop Erazm Ciołek invited in 1505 the Spanish lawyer and writer Garsias Quadros from Seville, who died in Kraków in 1518, and Bishop Piotr Gamrat invited another Spanish lawyer and writer Pedro Ruiz de Moros, who arrived from Italy around 1540. Chancellor Krzysztof Szydłowiecki patronized an English humanist, Leonard Cox (or Coxe), author of the first book in English on rhetoric, who arrived in Poland around 1518. The popularity of epigrams on portraits painted by splendid painters is another proof that Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia ranked among the most cultured countries of Renaissance Europe in terms of artistic patronage. Several of such epigrams were created by the poet Jan Kochanowski, who was educated in Italy. Pedro Ruiz de Moros, a friend of Kochanowski, also wrote such poems - the epigram on the portrait of Olbracht Łaski (1536-1604), voivode of Sieradz, one on the portrait of King Sigismund Augustus, and another on the portrait of the Spanish King Philip II (after "Royzyusz : jego żywot i pisma" by Bronisław Kruczkiewicz, Rozprawy Wydziału Filologicznego, p. 149). The poet Andrzej Trzecieski (d. 1584) is the author of epigrams - on the portrait of King Stephen Bathory, on the portrait of Justus Ludwik Decjusz, claiming that the painter imagined the face of Decjusz as if he were alive (To oblicze Decjusza wyobraził malarz jak żywe), on the portrait of Jakub Przyłuski (1512-1554), an outstanding poet, philosopher and lawyer and the portrait of Jan Krzysztoporski (1518-1585) at the age of 20 (Cztery pięciolecia pierwszej młodości liczył sobie Jan Krzysztoporski, kiedy tak wyglądał), thus most likely painted by Cranach's workshop during his studies in Wittenberg in 1537-1539, as well as on the portrait of Marcin Białobrzeski (1522-1586), Abbot of Mogiła (compare "Carmina: wiersze łacińskie" by Jerzy Krókowski, p. 145, 167, 379, 451, 546). Trzecieski most probably commissioned the portrait of Ruiz de Moros, which the Spanish poet praised in his poem In effigiem suam. Ruiz de Moros, for his part, wrote a poem about Trzecieski's portrait (In Andreae Tricesii imaginem) in which he compares him to Adonis, Venus' lover - "Forgive me, Venus, Trzecieski does not know your fires, your Adonis was not like that" (Parce Venus, vestros nescit Tricesius ignes, Non tuus ergo, Venus, talis Adonis erat). Venus is also the heroine of epigrams on portraits of Sigismund Augustus (Hanc Venus atque Thetis pictam ut videre tabellam) and Olbracht Łaski. In 1519 Jan Dantyszek wrote an epigram on his own portrait in Spain - In effigiem suam (after "Twórczość poetycka Jana Dantyszka" by Stanisław Skimina, p. 75). Despite the praise given to the talent of the painters, often compared to that of Apelles, no names are mentioned, indicating that the painters were probably not well known to the poets, and that the portraits were therefore probably commissioned from abroad. The country was formed by two major states - the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, but it was a multiethnic and multicultural country with a large Italian community in many cities. The locals most often called it in Latin simply Res Publicae (Republic, Commonwealth) or Sarmatia (as the Greeks, Romans and Byzantines of Late Antiquity called the great territories of Central Europe), more literary and by nobility. Nationality was not considered in today's terms and was rather fluid, as in the case of Stanisław Orzechowski, who calls himself either Ruthenian (Ruthenus / Rutheni), Roxolanian (Roxolanus / Roxolani) or of Ruthenian origin, Polish nation (gente Ruthenus, natione Polonus / gente Roxolani, natione vero Poloni), published in his In Warszaviensi Synodo provinciae Poloniae Pro dignitate sacerdotali oratio (Kraków, 1561) and Fidei catholicae confessio (Cologne, 1563), most likely to emphasize his origin and his attachment to the Republic. Spanish poet educated in Padua and Bologna Pedro Ruiz de Moros (d. 1571), courtier of King Sigismund Augustus, in his De apparatu nuptiarum ..., published in Kraków in 1543 on the occasion of the king's marriage, calls him "Sigismund King Augustus, another of the Sarmatian race, the Sarmatian and the new glory of the nation" (SISMVNdus tunc Augustus Rex, altera gentis Sarmatice spes, Sarmatice & noua gloria gentis). In 1541, Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560), a German Lutheran reformer, in a letter to the mathematician Burkhard Mithoff (Burchardus Mithobius, 1501-1564), criticizing the "absurd claims" of Nicolaus Copernicus, called him "the Sarmatian astronomer who moves the earth and stops the sun" and added that "wise rulers should curb the insolence of minds [or spirit]!" (Es gibt da Leute, die glauben, es sei ein hervorragender Fortschritt, eine so absurde Behauptung zu verfechten wie dieser sarmatische Astronom, der die Erde bewegt und die Sonne anheftet. Wahrlich, kluge Herrscher sollten die Frechheit der Geister zügeln!, after "Das neue Weltbild: Drei Texte ...", ed. Hans Günter Zekl, p. LXIII). In his translation of the work of Maciej Miechowita (1457-1523), dedicated to Severino Ciceri, published in Venice in 1561 under the title "History of the two Sarmatias" (Historia delle due Sarmatie), Annibal Maggi explains what the two Sarmatias were: "The ancient placed two Sarmatias, one in Europe, the other in Asia, one close to the other" (I più antichi hanno posto due Sarmatie, una in Europa, l'altra nell' Asia, una vicina all'altra, p. 5). Although some anti-Jewish sentiment can be found in religious art, as in one of the oldest depictions of a Polish Jew whipping the statue of St. Nicholas of Bari after the theft of the riches that he had entrusted to the statue's care (in a wing of the Rzepiennik Biskupi altar from the first half of the 16th century, Czartoryski Museum, inv. MNK XII-242, based on the Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine), the Renaissance is one of the most prosperous periods in the history of Polish Jews. Jewish merchants were valued suppliers to the royal-grand-ducal court and the magnates. In 1514, Ezofowicz Rabinkowicz Michael (died before 1533), a Jewish merchant and banker who had not abandoned the Judaism, was admitted to the coat of arms and knighted by King Sigismund I on the Kraków Market Square during the Prussian homage (April 10, 1525) (compare "Encyklopedia PWN"). Among the prominent members of the Jewish community close to the royal court were members of the Fiszel family. Rachela (Raśka, Raszka) Mojżeszowa, wife of the banker Mojżesz Fiszel, provided credit to King Casimir IV and his sons John I Albert and Alexander. By virtue of an act issued on November 1, 1504, King Alexander, at the request of his mother, Queen Elizabeth of Austria, allowed Reszka and her offspring, in gratitude for her services, to purchase a house in Kraków. In 1515, Rachela's son Franczek (Efraim) Fiszel was part of the retinue of the king's sister, Elizabeth Jagiellon (1482-1517), travelling to Legnica. Almost a decade later, in 1524, King Sigismund I, at the request of his wife, appointed Franczek and his wife Chwałka (Falka) as servants of two royal courts, namely his own and that of Queen Bona (after "Udział Żydów w kontaktach dyplomatycznych i handlowych ..." by Maurycy Horn, p. 6). Franczek's son, Mojżesz (Moses) Fiszel (1480-after 1543), was a medical doctor, he was trained in Padua before 1520 and in 1523, at the request of the Archbishop of Poznań, King Sigismund granted him a privilege exempting him from all taxes that Jews paid (after "Historyja Żydów ..." by Hilary Nussbaum, Volume 5, p. 122). His wife, Estera, came from the court of Queen Bona and was a renowned seamstress, also making liturgical vestments for the Catholic clergy. According to a letter from Piotr Tomicki, Bishop of Kraków to his friend doctor Stanisław Borek, the cantor of Kraków, dated March 25, 1535, he ordered two surplices, "which can be cut by Estera, the wife of doctor Mojżesz". In 1528, when the doctor decided to travel to Germany and Italy, he received from Tomicki a letter of recommendation, dated October 23, 1528 in Kraków, addressed to Bernardo Clesio (1484-1539), Bishop of Trent, in which he asked him to help doctor Mojżesz obtain a letter of safe conduct from King Ferdinand I, who was to ensure the safety of the Jewish doctor during his journey through the countries subject to him to Germany and Italy and during his return to Poland. In a letter to the Bishop of Trent, Tomicki notes that the Jew for whom he interceded gained the favor of the King of Poland and also rendered him many services (after "Medycy nadworni władców polsko-litewskich ..." by Maurycy Horn, p. 9-10). In 1547, the first Jewish printing house of Chaim Szwarc was opened in Lublin. Among the court favourites was the courtier Jan Zambocki, who was captured by the Tatars and sold into slavery to the Turks. He escaped after a long stay and in 1510 he was already found at the court of Sigismund the Old, where he remained until his death in 1529. He dressed in Turkish style and was known to have converted to Islam. As a friend of the king and Vice-Chancellor Piotr Tomicki, he sometimes worked in the chancellery and was responsible for drafting official documents (after "Z dworu Zygmunta Starego. (Dokończenie)" by Kazimierz Morawski, p. 538). He knew Latin, German and eastern languages and probably also Arabic. "The foreigner Bona gives an imprint and character to this entire era", asserts Kazimierz Morawski (1852-1925) in his article on the court of Sigismund I published in 1887 ("Z dworu Zygmunta Starego", Przegląd polski, Volume 21, p. 203). The style of her reign, as well as her education, are probably best characterized in the letter of Antonio Galateo de Ferraris (Galateus, ca. 1444-1517), an Italian scholar of Greek origin, sent to the young Bona in 1507, when she was with her mother in Bari. The court physician of the Aragonese dynasty wrote to a 13-year-old princess: "Your sweet letters, noble lady, have given me great pleasure and have awakened in me a great desire to see you. I am accustomed not only to praise your mind, but to admire it, for your soul is enriched every day with new goods. You, if you find the teachings agreeable, you will become the greatest and most intelligent woman of our time. [...] If princes by nature, and not only by law and custom, as many believe, are superior to other people, the greatest difference should be between you and other girls. You were born to rule, they were born to serve; let them use the sieve and the spindle, you the laws, science and good customs; let them occupy themselves with the worship of the body, you must educate the mind". He also advised the future Queen of Poland, Grand Duchess of Lithuania and Lady of Ruthenia: "Begin to acquire knowledge about men little by little, for you were born to rule men" and while her peers were busy with amusement or feminine work, let her study Virgil and Cicero, leaf through the old and new books of St. Jerome, Augustine and Chrysostom, the Greek and Latin poets, "for without teachings no one can live well or have any importance" (after "Królowa Bona ..." by Władysław Pociecha, p. 160). Probably around 1540, more than 20 years after his death, a medal with a bust of Galateo was made (inscription: ANTONIVS GALATEVS). The wax model for this medal is attributed to Leone Leoni (Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 1975.1.1277), while the reverse of this medal shows Venus reigning embracing Mars and accompanied by their son Cupid (British Museum, inv. G3,IP.442). It should be noted, however, that apart from her education, determination and talent, Bona encountered very favourable conditions in Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia in the 16th century, particularly tolerance and respect for women, which is best expressed by a poem by a certain Złota, from the village near Sandomierz, written at the beginning of the 15th century: "But a knight or a lord / Honours the face of a woman: it is good for you! [...] The lady is a queen, / Whoever criticizes her would perish. / They have this power from the Mother of God, / That princes rise up before them / And give them great glory. / I praise you, ladies, / For there is nothing better than you". "In accordance with the principle that a woman resembles the image of the Mother of God [which also explain the existence of disguised portraits], a medieval man, especially one who knew the etiquette, knelt before her on one knee or even on both knees, as can be concluded from a love poem written by a student from the end of the 15th century", adds Wacław Kosiński (1882-1953) in his publication on the social customs of old Poland ("Zwyczaje towarzyskie w dawnej Polsce", p. 37). Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski (1503-1572) in his famous treatise "On the Improvement of the Commonwealth" (De Republica emendanda), published in Kraków in 1551, complains about Sarmatian women: "especially those who are rich and have many friends, tend to behave more insolently than is appropriate towards their husbands" (after "O poprawie Rzeczypospolitej", ed. Kazimierz Józef Turowski, p. 78). From 1531 to 1535 Frycz studied in Wittenberg, lived with Philip Melanchthon, and travelled to Nuremberg, where the approach seems to be very different from that in Sarmatia. It is illustrated by a masterfully executed satirical print on fools and the "power" of women accompanied by verses by Hans Sachs (1494-1576), now in the British Museum (inv. 1933,0614.29). This beautiful woodcut was formerly attributed to Erhard Schön and is thought to have been made between 1530 and 1532. It depicts "The Fool Eater" and the full title in German at the top reads: "Real news about the eater of fools, his servant, and about the hungry man who devours all men who do not fear their wives" (Aigentliche newe zeitung von dem narren fresser, seinem knecht, vnd von dem hungerigen man / der alle men der fryst die sick nicht vor yren weybern furchten). While Bona has gained great notoriety and was able to influence many areas, her stepdaughter Hedwig Jagellon and her daughters Sophia and Catherine Jagellon, although they followed the same models, are sometimes forgotten in the countries they ruled. Her eldest daughter, Isabella, who ruled post-Jagiellonian Hungary and Transylvania, played a more important role and became the object of a certain notoriety. Bona's daughter Anna, who was unmarried and present in the country after the death of her brother Sigismund Augustus, was elected monarch of the Commonwealth in the second free royal election of 1575. The role of women in Polish-Lithuanian society during the Renaissance is reflected in distinct women's literature, which has its beginning in anonymous "Senatulus, or the council of women" (Senatulus to jest sjem niewieści) from 1543 and especially Marcin Bielski's "Women's Parliament" (Syem Niewiesci), written in 1566-1567. The idea derives from the satirical Senatus sive Gynajkosynedrion by Erasmus of Rotterdam, published in 1528, which caused a wave of imitations in Europe. Bielski's work, however, brings a whole bunch of articles proposed by married women, widows and unmarried women to be passed at the Sejm, which have no equivalent in Erasmus's work. There is almost no satirical content, which is the core of Erasmus's work willing to point out the faults of women. The main element in Bielski's work is criticism of men (after "Aemulatores Erasmi? ..." by Justyna A. Kowalik, p. 259). The women point to the inefficiency of men's power over the country and their lack of concern for the common good of the Republic. Their arguments about the role of women in the world are based on the ancient tradition, when women not only advised men, but also ruled and fought for their own. This work provoked a whole series of brochures devoted to female matters, in which, however, the emphasis has been shifted more to discussion of women's clothing - "Reprimand of Women's Extravagant Attire" (Przygana wymyślnym strojom białogłowskim) from 1600 or "Maiden's Parliament" (Sejm panieński) by Jan Oleski (pseudonym), published before 1617. As in Italy, women also took up painting, mainly in Kraków, where in 1495 there is a painter Małgorzata, called Łukaszowa (Lucaschowa pictrix), widow of the painter Łukasz Molner, who came from Wrocław, perhaps identical with the sister of Veit Stoss of that name, known for buying paints for the sum of 6 florins, for which her brother vouched to the seller Katarzyna Jedwatowa. The painters Katarzyna Gałuszyna in 1477, Magdalena Skorka in 1494 and Katarzyna Siostrzankowa ze Stradomia, between 1497-1504 are mentioned in the municipal registers (compare "Na tropach pierwszych kobiet malarek w dawnej Polsce" by Karolina Targosz, p. 46). Dorota Baczkowska (Dorothea Baczkowskij) is mentioned under the year 1538 and Helena malarka in 1540. In 1575, the city authorities paid a pension to the painter Agnieszka, whose husband was murdered by students in 1570. Dorota Koberowa or Dorothea Köberin (1549-1622), born in Kraków, who married the painter Martin Kober in 1586, ran a workshop during her husband's absence and after his death. In her receipt from July 31, 1599 for ten Polish złotys "for work on the coat of arms", she called herself "painter to His Majesty the King" (Malarzowa Króla Jego Mości), i.e. court painter to Sigismund III Vasa. The regulations of the Lviv painters' guild of 1597 provided for relief in obtaining the title of master for those who would marry the daughter of another painter "who knew how to paint". Barbara, a painter, worked in Lviv in 1611 and Agnieszka Piotrkowczyk, who married the Venetian painter Tommaso Dolabella, was also a painter, as were their daughters, mentioned as authors of paintings in the Dominican monastery in Kraków (Item in dormitario allongavo supra fores cellarum pulchrum prebent in frontibus adspectum imagines ex Schola Cordis efiigiatae, quos praenominati Dolabellae filiae inefformaverunt, ut sponsi et sponsae cordis in omnibus non absimiles habeatur representacio, after "Tomasz Dolabella" by Mieczysław Skrudlik, p. 56, 71). The painting depicting the Mass with the appearance of the Virgin Mary kept in the National Museum in Kraków formerly bore the inscription: Agnes Piotrkowczyk pinxit Dolabella Thomas Cracoviensis direxit. One of the peculiarities of former Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia are the Renaissance funerary monuments inspired by Roman tombs, many of which fortunately survived significant destruction during numerous wars and invasions thanks to their placement in temples. Although some of them were made by Italian sculptors and are based on Italian models, including the so-called "Sansovino pose" of a sleeping person, concering female sepulchre they are typical mainly for Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia and the women, similar to effigies of the Roman goddess of love, frequenly hold their hands on their genitals in the gesture typical for ancient statues of Venus Pudica (the modest Venus) - Venus sleeping in the church. Among the best are the monument to Barbara Tarnowska née Tęczyńska (ca. 1490-1521) by Giovanni Maria Mosca, called Padovano (ca. 1536, Tarnów Cathedral), the monument to Elżbieta Zebrzydowska née Krzycka (d. 1553) by Padovano or workshop (ca. 1553, Kielce Cathedral), the monument to Anna Dzierzgowska née Szreńska by Santi Gucci Fiorentino (1560s, church in Pawłowo Kościelne), the monument to Urszula Leżeńska by Jan Michałowicz (1563-1568, church in Brzeziny), the monument to Zofia Ostrogska née Tarnowska (1534-1570) by Wojciech Kuszczyc (1570s, Tarnów Cathedral), monument to Barbara Kurozwęcka (d. 1545) by Girolamo Canavesi (1574, Poznań Cathedral), monument to Anna Śleszyńska née Dzierzgowska by the workshop of Jan Michałowicz (ca. 1578, Łowicz Cathedral), monument to Elżbieta Modliszowska née Dembińska by the workshop of Santi Gucci (1589, Łomża Cathedral), monument to Jadwiga Opalińska née Lubrańska (d. 1558) by Santi Gucci (ca. 1590, church in Kościan), monument to Barbara Firlejowa née Szreńska (d. 1588) by Santi Gucci (ca. 1597, church in Janowiec) and monument to Anna Uchańska née Herburt by the workshop of Tomasz Nikiel (1590-1614, church in Uchanie). The funerary monument of the elected queen Anna Jagiellon in the Sigismund Chapel, created by Santi Gucci between 1583 and 1584, also refers to this model. Many such monuments in Lithuania and Ruthenia were damaged or destroyed during the Deluge or during later invasions (for example monument to wives of Lew Sapieha in the Church of St. Michael in Vilnius or monument to Anna Sieniawska in Berezhany).
Women's education and activities
In 1390, through the personal efforts of Queen Jadwiga (Hedwig) at the papal court, the Kraków Academy was reactivated. In her will, the queen bequeathed her personal fortune to the academy, which enabled the university to be restored to its full form in 1400. After its restoration, female surnames took an important place among the supporters and benefactors of the reborn school. These included Alexandra of Lithuania (ca. 1370-1434), Duchess of Mazovia, Jogaila's favorite sister, and her daughter Anna, as well as Jogaila's two other wives, Elizabeth Granowska and Sophia of Halshany. There were also wives of dignitaries and nobles in the 15th century: Elżbieta Melsztyńska, Katarzyna Mężykowa, Joanna Gniewoszowa, Konstancja Koniecpolska, Catherine of Dąbrowa, and Margaret of Pokrzywnica. Wealthy townswomen, such as Katarzyna and Urszula Homan, contributed to this donation for scientific purposes.
In the following century, the academy's great supporter was Queen Anna Jagiellon. The tradition of Kraków townswomen who were generous towards the university was continued by Barbara Opatowczykowa, Małgorzata Danielewiczowa, Anna Zwierzowa and Zofia Golowa. The latter, a widow of an innkeeper, achieved the rare honour for a woman of her condition of being entered into the university's winter register of 1580/1, with the addition of de universitate benemerita ("well-deserved for the university"). Outside Kraków, we know that Barbara Zamoyska (ca. 1566-1610), née Tarnowska, was interested in the Zamość Academy, and in cities with Jesuit colleges, women such as Katarzyna Wapowska (1530-1596), a caring guardian of the home for poor students at the Jesuit college in Jarosław, showed great effort and help to students. Although "public" education was not available to girls, the abbot of the Benedictine "Scottish" abbey in Vienna, Martin of Spis (d. 1464), recalls the story of a female student at the Kraków Academy during the reign of Ladislaus Jagiello. In his work Senatorium sive dialogus historicus Martini abbatis Scotorum Viennae Austriae, written towards the end of his life, the chronicler writes that, during his studies in Kraków, around 1416, he learned that a woman, probably from Greater Poland, had been attending classes with students for two years, dressed in men's clothes, and was about to obtain her bachelor's degree. When her secret was revealed, the woman went, in accordance with her will, to a convent where she became abbess. Martin also adds that at the time he was writing these memoirs, the woman was still alive, as he had recently heard about her from a certain person who was in Kraków. This first female student of what is now the Jagiellonian University is known in Poland as Nawojka, because of the prayer book that bears that name and was previously thought to belong to her (after "Nawojka – pierwsza studentka Uniwersytetu Krakowskiego" by Stanisław A. Sroka, p. 130, 135-137). Since the Middle Ages, women have frequently been involved in medicine. In 1278, there lived in Poznań a woman whom the records call Joanna medica, a physician. Also during the reign of Casimir the Great, in the 14th century, a certain Katarzyna practiced medicine. In the 16th century, in Volhynia, the unknown Maria Holszańska carried religious books with her. "Noble and bourgeois girls learn to read and write in their mother tongue and even in Latin either at home or in convents," states priest Marcin Kromer (1512-1589) in his description of Poland published in Cologne in 1578 (Polonia sive de situ, populis, moribus ..., p. 61). Few formal oratorical speeches by women were commemorated. Queens usually used chancellors and secretaries for this purpose. Anna Jagiellon was an exception, as she personally raised toasts at the feasts she hosted. In the 16th and 17th centuries, many books were written or dedicated to women. Andrzej Glaber (c. 1500-1555) from Kobylin dedicated his Problemata Aristotelis. Gadki z pisma wielkiego philozopha Aristotela ..., the first Polish textbook of medicine and human anatomy, to Jadwiga Kościelecka, second wife of Seweryn Boner (1486-1549), court banker to King Sigismund I (published in Kraków in 1535). This dedication contains a very significant and insightful analysis of the reasons for the reluctance of Glaber's contemporary men to educate women: "[they] do it more out of jealousy [...] fearing to lose their fame, lest women surpass them in intelligence, they forbid them to read profound writings, except for prayers and rosaries". The author, however, believed that all knowledge should be accessible to women and wrote this book: "so that women who know letters may, as it were, try the writings in which wisdom is enclosed". In this work, Glaber also warned women against gluttony and, above all, against the consumption of raw fruit and wine, especially during pregnancy (after "Aristotle for women" by Marta Wojtkowska-Maksymik, p. 350). It contain a description of body parts, while the tondo woodcuts could be seen as portraits of Glaber's patients or Kraków inhabitants in general. The author also included an anatomical image of the main internal organs (section of a human body - naked man). On the back of the title page and on the last page bearing the date "1535", one can see the coat of arms of Kościelecka - Ogończyk. Jadwiga was the daughter of Mikołaj Kościelecki, voivode of Inowrocław, and Anna Łaska. As a member of the powerful Kościelecki family, she was a "relative" of Beata Kościeleca (1515-1576). Glaber also dedicated to her the adaptation of the Davidic Psalter (Żołtarz Dawidow ...), published in Kraków in 1539 by Helena Unglerowa, which quickly reached seven editions. The original translation was made before 1528 by Walenty Wróbel (ca. 1475-1537) for Katarzyna Górkowa née Szamotulska. There are many literary tributes to Queen Bona, including the Latin poem about the bison Carmen Nicolai Hussoviani de statura, feritate ac venatione Bisontis by Mikołaj Hussowski, published in Kraków in 1523. Polish books were created for Princess Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573), which she took with her to Brandenburg after her marriage. Later, she also received books dedicated to her, such as Apologia pro sexu foemineo, printed in Frankfurt in 1544 or Kxięgi probowane przez doctory y ludzie nauczone Kościoła rzymskiego, printed in Kraków in 1545. Several books were dedicated to Anna Jagiellon, such as Postille Catholiczney część trzecia ... by Jakub Wujek (1541-1597), published in Kraków in 1575, or Deliberatio de principe Svetiae Regno Poloniae praeficiendo by Łukasz Chwałkowski, published in Poznań in 1587. In the last quarter of the 16th century, books were also dedicated to Krystyna Opalińska, Dorota Barzyna and Anna Złotkowska née Sierpska. Reyna (Regina) Filipowska's "Pious Song" (Pieśń nabożna), published in Kraków in 1557, is one of the oldest Polish literary works written by a woman. In 1594, the "Meditations on the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ ..." (Rozmyślania Męki Pana naszego Jezusa Krystusa ...), published anonymously in Kraków, were undoubtedly written by a woman and dedicated to Queen Anna Jagiellon. Anna Siebeneicherowa (d. 1610), who signed the 1608 edition of this work, dedicated to Constance of Austria, wife of Sigismund III, is considered the author. "In addition to the quiet and gentle housewives, there were in old Poland many women full of temperament and energy, resolute matrons who equaled men in deeds, courage and ambition", said Łucja Charewiczowa (1897-1943) in her book "Woman in old Poland" (Kobieta w dawnej Polsce, p. 36-37, 40-41, 69-71, 80, 82-83, 88), published in 1938. The author died in the Nazi German concentration camp of Auschwitz. Women often took up arms, especially in the borderlands, exposed to enemy raids, where palaces and manor houses were constantly transformed into defensive fortresses resisting the enemy. In 1577 in Dubno, Beata Dolska, during her wedding festivities, interrupted by a sudden Tatar raid, personally shot at the khan's tent and caused him to withdraw from the siege of the castle. Barbara Rusinowska, a female robber from the early 16th century, ended her horse-thieving profession on the noose. Captured in her own castle in 1505, she was hanged, according to Bielski and Kromer, in her ordinary clothes, that is, in trousers, spurs, and sword at her side, during the session of the Diet in Radom, on the orders of King Alexander Jagiellon (1461-1506). A Polish medieval robber was a noblewoman, Katarzyna Włodkowa (or Skrzyńska) from Skrzynno, who used to raid on the roads in the 1450s. Around 1570, Hanna Borzobohata Krasieńska née Sokolska, was famous in Volhynia. She knew how to plunder in the Tatar manner and followed the path of quarrels and robberies, driven by the desire to earn money and her passion for horses. Łukasz Górnicki (1527-1603), in turn, mentions the custom of raiding the estates of wealthy widows. Many women gone to court for every inch of land, every lamb, but most often, they are sued for family, land, or neighborhood disputes. An example of such women is a Ruthenian lady, Mrs. Litavorova, born Princess Olshanskaya, related to the Jagiellons, widow of John Litavor Bohdanovitsh Khreptovitsh, who lived at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. Sometimes, the royal letter was even necessary to urge the wife to submit to her husband's will. For example, in 1540, Sigismund I, establishing a joint mortgage on several villages of the poet Mikołaj Rej (1505-1569), included a passage in this privilege: "By this means, king instructs Zofia Rejowa [née Kościeniówna] that she should respect her husband [literally "to be filled with love towards her spouse"]". In some cases, however, even royal pressure proved ineffective. After the death of her husband Albertas Gostautas (ca. 1480-1539), voivode of Vilnius, his wife Princess Sophia Vasilievna Vereyska (ca. 1490-1549) refused to cede the starostships held by the deceased to the king and sent her servants to occupy them. "That the lady voivodess of Vilnius, as you wrote to us, wants to rule after her husband's death, and with the impudence she displayed before, and now does not want to restrain this crazy and indecent stubbornness", King Sigismund Augustus informed Marshal Radziwill in a letter dated May 14, 1540 from Kraków. In February 1559, in Warsaw, Beata Kościelecka (1515-1576), to escape the persuasions of king Sigismund Augustus, who wanted her daughter Halszka to marry Lutheran Łukasz Górka, hid in the bathhouse (after "Cnoty i wady narodu szlacheckiego ..." by Antoni Górski, p. 38, 57, 64, 72, 78, 88). Some 16th-century women, such as Zofia Działyńska, wife of the Pomeranian voivode (as expressed in her letter of 1554), opposed the cult of beauty on the part of men. The figure of Giovanna Bianchetti (1314-1354), a learned woman from Bologna, is very interesting from the point of view of Polish-Italian contacts. Giovanna was the daughter of Matteo Bianchetti of Bologna and the wife of Bonsignore de' Bonsignori, a jurist. Francesco Agostino della Chiesa (1593-1662), later Bishop of Saluzzo (1642), in his book "Theater of Learned Women" published in 1620 in Mondovì, states that Giovanna "wrote and spoke Greek, Latin, German, Bohemian [Czech] and Polish correctly, and was very erudite in matters of philosophy" (scriueua, e parlaua correttamente Greco, Latino, Alamano, Boemio, e Polacco, e fù dottissima nelle cose di Filosofia). What is also very interesting is that among many notable women, the author also mentions Anna Jagiellon, "wife of Steffano Battori [Stephen Bathory], Prince of Transylvania, who, through her, was elected king of that state in 1576. She was a queen endowed with virtues so rare that few ladies equal her, and the kingdom has not had greater ones. For, having been trained by her mother Bona Sforza, who was extremely virtuous in all the exercises of the virtues due to queens, and principally in the Catholic religion, and in the study of letters, especially Latin, she made herself so illustrious and appreciated by her people, that she was deemed worthy of the succession of her ancestors, [...] by her prudence and authority, she brought the affairs of that State back to true tranquility, [...] in the affairs of the State, she wrote with her own hand to the Supreme Pontiff, to the kings of France and Spain, and to the other princes of Christendom, with such a beautiful style and such eloquence, that she was praised and exalted by all, one of the wisest Queens that Christianity had in those times" (Theatro delle donne letterate ..., p. 71-72, 165).
Costumes and works of art
The 15th-century preacher Michał of Janowiec, complaining that the wealthier classes do not like to go to church, also gives an image of an elegant woman: "Mothers know how to dress their daughters for dancing or for a walk, but they cannot dress them for church or buy suitable shoes; they teach them to talk frivolously to men, but they do not know how to pray or confess. [...] a silk dress cut out at the back, chains around the neck; a tight dress [...] a gold ring on each finger; cut-out shoes, barely covering the heel and toes" (after "Zwyczaje towarzyskie w dawnej Polsce" by Wacław Kosiński, p. 50).
Precious fabrics were not only imported from abroad on special order, but also purchased on the local market, in Gdańsk and other large cities. For example, before the planned departure of Sigismund Augustus to Wrocław for a meeting with Emperor Maximilian II, which did not take place, a large quantity of velvet, silk, satin and cloth was purchased in Lublin on May 16, 1569 for the clothes of the courtiers who were to accompany the king (after "Czarno-białe tkaniny Zygmunta Augusta" by Maria Hennel-Bernasikowa, p. 40). These were exclusively black and white fabrics and probably made in Italy or Turkey. From the late 1530s, a specialization began to develop among the royal suppliers of fabrics. The supplies of expensive fabrics: brocade, cloth of gold, damask, satin, velvet and taffeta interwoven with gold and silver threads were taken over by Kraków merchants of Italian origin, Gaspare Gucci and Simone Lippi, both from Florence, and Foltyn Szwab of German origin. For goods sold in the years 1538-1547, they received sums of almost 1,800 złoty at a time. In the years 1549-1550, Jewish merchants delivered fabrics to the court of Sigismund Augustus for a total value of 2,243 zlotys and 16 groszy, which constituted approximately 28% of the total amount (8,064 zlotys and 266 groszy) spent by the royal treasury during those years for the purchase of various types of fabrics and textile products. Among the Christian royal suppliers of fabrics in the years 1548-1559, the main role was played by the already mentioned Foltyn Szwab from Kraków (until 1559) and Simone Lippi (until 1552), and from 1552 by Bernardo Soderini from Kraków. The share of other Kraków merchants, as well as traders and merchants from Lviv, Poznań, Warsaw and Vilnius and the Italian merchants Fabiano Baldi, Giovanni Evangelista and Galleazzo, a citizen of Kraków, in the deliveries of fabrics to the royal court was less significant (after "Dostawcy dworów królewskich w Polsce i na Litwie ..." by Maurycy Horn, Part II, p. 10, 12). Authors like Klemens Janicki (1516-1543), Mikołaj Rej (1505-1569), Krzysztof Opaliński (1609-1655) and Wacław Potocki (1621-1696), condemned the variability of costumes as a national vice (after "Aemulatores Erasmi? ...", p. 253) and index of forbidden books of Bishop Marcin Szyszkowski of 1617 banned a large group of humorous, entertaining, often obscene texts, imbued with ambiguous eroticism, and for these reasons condemned by the counter-reformation and the new model of culture. Later, in 1625, in his "Votum on the improvement of the Commonwealth" (Votvm o naprawie Rzeczypospolitey) Szymon Starowolski railed against the Italian or Italianized women spoiling the youth, effeminacy of men and their reluctance to defend the eastern lands against invasions: "He, whom the caressed Italian courtesans have raised in pillows, being entangled with their gentle words and delicacies, he can't stand the hardships with us". "Well, many bad things are brought to Poland from Italy," comments Łukasz Górnicki (1527-1603) in a conversation between a Pole and an Italian about the judicial system in Sarmatia, without citing specific examples, so it must be related to the overall situation at that time. The great diversity of costume dates at least to the time of Sigismund I. Janicki in his poem "On the Variety and Inconstancy of Polish Dress" (In poloni vestibus varietatem et inconstanciam) describes King Ladislaus Jagiello rising from the grave and unable to recognize Poles. Pedro Ruiz de Moros, in his De apparatu nuptiarum ..., states about Sigismund Augustus's first wife, Elizabeth of Austria (1526-1545), that she was dressed in the German style (Teutonicum morem) and that her dress was richly adorned with jewels. He adds, about her entry into Kraków in 1543, that "if she had not known that they were Sarmatians, she would have thought she saw people of all nations. One wears a Spanish costume, another Italian, one pierces the air with his tall head draped in long shawls", so, many of them wore turbans (after "Jagiellonki polskie w XVI. wieku: Obrazy rodziny i dworu Zygmunta ..." by Aleksander Przezdziecki, Volume 1, p. 114). The anonymous author of the German description of the ceremony that accompanied the reception of Archduchess Elizabeth in Kraków and the wedding of the couple that took place there on May 4, written by an eyewitness and probably printed in Nuremberg (Kurtze beschreibung dess einzugs der Jungen Künigin zu Cracaw ...) also adds that "The next day, the fourth of May, the young king left Kraków about an hour before noon with all his lords, knights and nobles, four thousand in number, dressed in every manner, such as: German, Polish, Italian, French, Hungarian, Turkish, Tatar, Spanish, Muscovite, Cossack and Venetian style [stratyotka, stradiòtto - light cavalry of the Republic of Venice, notably Albanian, Greek and Dalmatian], His Royal Majesty in silver-white German robe, on a bay steed that was covered with a magnificent tack with pearls on his back and front, and magnificently dressed, arrived a quarter of a mile from the town, where there were three red tents pitched on a meadow" (after "Biblioteka Warszawska ...", Volume 3 [XXXI, 1848], p. 634). The scene of the "Ennoblement of the progenitor of the Odrowąż family by the emperor", a miniature from the Liber geneseos illustris familiae Schidloviciae, created by Stanisław Samostrzelnik before 1532 (Kórnik Library, MK 3641) and evidently inspired by the court of Sigismund I the Old, confirms this diversity of costumes, including the popularity of turbans. Mikołaj Rej in his "Life of the Honest Man" (Żywot człowieka poczciwego), published in 1568, writes about "elaborate Italian and Spanish inventions, those strange coats [...] he will order the tailor to make him what they wear today. And I also hear in other countries, when you happen to paint [describe] every nation, then they paint a Pole naked and put the cloth in front of him with scissors, cut yourself as you deign". Venetian-born Polish writer Alessandro Guagnini dei Rizzoni (Aleksander Gwagnin), attributes this to the habit of Poles of visiting the most distant and diverse countries, from which foreign costumes and customs were brought to their homeland - "One can see in Poland, costumes of various nations, especially Italian, Spanish, and Hungarian, which is more common than others" (after "Obraz wieku panowania Zygmunta III ..." by Franciszek Siarczyński, p. 71). Queen Bona is credited with introducing the Italian-style tight-fitting bodices with wide square necklines and outfits complemented with numerous jewels. She gifted Polish women with Italian fabrics, allowing some of them to use the services of royal tailors. The queen employed many Italian tailors, embroiderers and goldsmiths. From 1518, Stefano and his assistant Alessandro worked for Bona and later Pietro Patriarcha (Patriarca) from Bari and Francesco Nardozzi (Nardocci, Nardazzi) from Naples. Ladies, especially those close to the court, imitating the way Italian women dressed, began to replace unattractive dresses with much more colourful dresses more abundantly decorated with various applications and embroideries (after "Bona Sforza d'Aragona i rola mody w kształtowaniu jej wizerunku" by Agnieszka Bender, p. 48). Patriarcha, who remained in the service of the queen from about 1524 until her departure from Poland, joined the court of Sigismund Augustus in 1556 and adopted the law of the city of Kraków in the same year. He married the townswoman Jadwiga Irzykowa. He sewed for Queen Bona, Princess Hedwig, Princess Isabella and Sigismund Augustus, as well as for the ladies-in-waiting. In 1533 he had a lawsuit with the Kraków townswoman Anna Zapalina Brunowska, from whom he demanded the restitution of 32 florins. In the late 1530s, Nardozzi, who in 1529 received the citizenship of Kraków, had a years-long legal dispute with Jadwiga Kaletniczka and her son Erazm Ber, which reached the king (after "Działalność Włochów w Polsce ..." by Danuta Quirini-Popławska, p. 58-59). Since her betrothal, many Italian poets have praised the Polish queen. Their appreciation of her virtues seems to have increased in the 1540s, when in Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia the queen's opponents increasingly criticized her actions. A 1542 poem dedicated to Bona by Giovan Battista Nenna, a fellow countryman from Bari, praises her as the embodiment of princely qualities, endowed with "infinite providence, the highest justice, ... wise counsel, clemency, mercy, devoutness, faith, liberality, greatness of soul, humanity, doctrine, and learning". The writer and editor Lodovico Domenichi dedicated the first part of his "Poems" (Rime) of 1544 to her, presenting her as both maternal and noble, a unifying figure meant to alleviate "the bitterness of [Italy's] present woes" and the sharp-tongued Pietro Aretino sought Bona's patronage by presenting her as a national icon, as "the light of Italian women" and "the hope" of Italy itself (after "Twenty-Five Women Who Shaped the Italian Renaissance" by Meredith K. Ray, p. 71). With Sarmatians visiting Italy so frequently, Italian settlement, customs and clothing, also the fashion for hair dyeing, particularly the "art of bleaching" (l'arte biondeggiante), became widespread in Poland-Lithuania. Szymon Starowolski (1588-1656) is said to have asserted that women "adopt all the habits of European matrons and adapt them to their own country, as it pleases them, no matter rich or poor" (omnes Europaearum matronarum habitus sibi usurpant, et ad suum patrium accommodant, prout cuique tam diviti, quam pauperi libet). Already in 1456 Barbara of Brandenburg (1422-1481), Marchioness of Mantua sent to Bianca Maria Visconti (1425-1468), Duchess of Milan, three bottles of water from Florence (d'acqua di Fiorenza) which had the property of making her hair blonde and this fashion was so widespread in Renaissance Italy that contemporaries were often heard exclaiming: "in the entire peninsula, there is not one brunette to be found" (compare "A History of Women in the West ..." by Georges Duby, Michelle Perrot, Pauline Schmitt Pantel, p. 62). The light blonde hair of a half-naked lady depicted as the Roman heroine Lucretia in a painting by Venetian painter Vincenzo Catena, or his studio, from the first quarter of the 16th century (Sotheby's London, April 24, 2007, lot 207), could be considered a good example of this practice. Hair dyeing was also popular among men in the second half of the 15th century, as confirmed by the Croatian-Hungarian Latinist Janus Pannonius (1434-1472), in his poem Ad Galeottum Narniensem. According to Flavio Ruggieri, women outside the court were "not very beautiful, but kind and charming, rather thin than fat, it is a great shame for them to add charms by artificial means or to dye their hair; they are busy with housework, they go on errands in town just like German women", while Łukasz Górnicki (1527-1603) complained that "our Polish women are not as educated as Italian women" and that they do not tolerate more daring conversations (bo ani nasze Polki są tak uczone jako Włoszki, ani drugich rzeczy, które owdzie są, cirpiećby ich uszy nie mogły). Works of art were commissioned from the best masters in Europe - silverware and jewelry in Nuremberg and Augsburg, paintings and fabrics in Venice and Flanders, armours in Nuremberg and Milan and other centers. For the tapestries representing the Deluge (about 5 pieces) commissioned in Flanders by Sigismund II Augustus in the early 1550s, considered one of the finest in Europe, the king paid the staggering sum of 60,000 (or 72,000) ducats. More than a century later, in 1665, their value was estimated at 1 million florins, while the Żywiec land at 600,000 thalers and the richly equipped Casimir Palace in Warsaw at 400,000 florins (after "Kolekcja tapiserii ..." by Ryszard Szmydki, p. 105). It was only a small part of the rich collection of fabrics of the Jagiellons, some of which were also acquired in Persia (like the carpets purchased in 1533 and 1553). Made of precious silk and woven with gold, they were much more valued than paintings. "The average price of a smaller rug on the 16th-century Venetian market was around 60 to 80 ducats, which was equal to the price for an altarpiece commissioned from a famous painter or even for an entire polyptych by a less-known master" (after "Jews and Muslims Made Visible ...", p. 213). In 1586, second-hand rug in Venice cost 85 ducats and 5 soldi and wall hangings bought from Flemish merchants 116 ducats, 5 lire and 8 soldi (after "Marriage in Italy, 1300-1650", p. 37). Around that time, in 1584, Tintoretto was only paid 20 ducats for a large painting of Adoration of the Cross (275 x 175 cm) with 6 figures for the church of San Marcuola and 49 ducats in 1588 for an altarpiece showing Saint Leonard with more then 5 figures for the Saint Mark's Basilica in Venice. In 1564 Titian informed King Philip II of Spain that he would have to pay 200 ducats for an autograph replica of the Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, but that he could have one by the workshop for just 50 ducats (after "Tintoretto ..." by Tom Nichols, p. 89, 243). The lesser value of the paintings meant that they were not so prominently displayed in inventories and correspondence. The royal collections in Spain were largely unaffected by major military conflicts, so many paintings as well as related letters were retained. Perhaps we will never know how many letters Titian sent to the monarchs of Poland-Lithuania, if any. When Poland regained independence in 1918 and quickly began to rebuild the devastated interiors of Wawel Royal Castle, there was no effigy of any monarch inside (possibly except for a portrait of a ruling Emperor of Austria, as the building served the military). In 1919, the systematic collection of museum collections for Wawel began (after "Rekonstrukcja i kreacja w odnowie Zamku na Wawelu" by Piotr M. Stępień, p. 39). Antonio Niccolo Carmignano (Colantonio Carmignano, Parthenopeus Suavius), treasurer of Queen Bona Sforza from 1518, described the richness of the furnishings of Wawel Castle before 1525 (Viaggio de la Serenissima S. Donna Bona Regina ...) - the entrance to the first floor was via a wide staircase, to the left were the rooms decorated with many beautiful tapestries and fabrics. The second corridor led to the royal apartment, decorated with gold cloth. On the second floor there was a huge hall richly paneled with wood, full of sculptures, often gilded. The adjacent room was hung with tapestries, the next one was covered with brocade (probably a throne room), its beautiful floor was covered with red cloth. Against the background of a wall covered with a thick gold-woven fabric, there was a throne under a canopy. In another corridor there were four more rooms decorated with tapestries and brocades, two of them also having gilded fireplaces and carved wooden doors, framed by stone portals. In the rooms reserved for the coronation feast there were magnificent sideboards with impressive gold and silver tableware (after "Jan Zambocki: dworzanin i sekretarz JKM" by Kazimierz Hartleb, p. 22). Justus Ludwik Decjusz added about the royal bed that it was "very delicately constructed" and "covered with red gold on top, decorated on all sides with the art of painting" (delicatissime extructum [...] aureisque rossis desuper tectum, pictorum artifìcio undique decoratum).
Historical collections
The preserved inventories of the Lubomirski collection in Wiśnicz and the Radziwill collection of the Birzai branch, which survived the Deluge, confirm the great diversity and high class of the Polish-Lithuanian painting collections. The Venetian school and Cranach's workshop are particularly well represented.
Inventories drawn up in 1671 in Königsberg list the huge fortune inherited by the princess Louise Charlotte Radziwill (1667-1695) from her father Boguslaus Radziwill (1620-1669), whose estates were compared by contemporaries to "Mantua, Modena and other smaller states in Italy". Among over 900 paintings in the inventory, there were portraits, mythological and biblical scenes by Lucas Cranach (24 items) along "The Face of Jesus by Albert Duer", i.e. Albrecht Dürer, and a "painting of Pawel Caliaro", that is Paolo Caliari known as Veronese, about 25 Italian paintings, several portraits of unknown Italian, German, and French ladies and gentlemen, paintings with "naked" and "half-naked" women, Ruthenian and Russian icons, a Greek altar and one "Spanish Fantasy". Portraits of members of the Radziwill family, Polish kings from John I Albert (1459-1501), more than 20 effigies of the Vasas and their families, German emperors, kings of Sweden, France, England and Spain and various foreign personalities, collected over several generations, constituted the dominant part of over 300 pieces in the inventory (after "Galerie obrazów i "Gabinety Sztuki" Radziwiłłów w XVII w." by Teresa Sulerzyska, p. 90). The inventory also lists many paintings that may be by Cranach the Elder and his son or 16th-century Venetian or Netherlandish painters: A lady in a white robe, with jewels, a crown on her head (71), A lady in a lynx coat in black, a dog by her side (72), A lady in a czamara, a diamond crown on her head with pearls, holding gloves (73), A beautiful lady in a pearl dress and a robe embroidered with pearls (80), A woman who stabbed herself with a knife (292), A woman, semi-circular picture at the top (293), A man of this shape, perhaps the husband of this woman (294), Dido who stabbed herself with a knife (417), A large image of Venice (472), Lucretia who stabbed herself, golden frames (690), A naked lady who stabbed herself, golden frames (691), A well-dressed lady with a child, on panel (692), A lady in a red robe who stabbed herself (693), Small picture: a German with a naked woman (embracing, naked boys serve) (737), A person with a long beard, in black, inscription An° 1553 etatis 47 (753), A lady under the tent showed her breast (840), Venus with Cupid bitten by bees (763), two portraits of Barbara Radziwill, Queen of Poland (79 and 115) and a portrait of King Sigismund Augustus of Poland, on panel (595) (after "Inwentarz galerii obrazów Radziwiłłów z XVII w." by Teresa Sulerzyska). The inventory also includes several nude and erotic paintings and this is only a part of splendid collections of the Radziwills that survived the Deluge (1655-1660). Perhaps the paintings owned by a citizen of Kraków Melchior Czyżewski (d. 1542): Tabula Judith et Herodiadis ex utraque parte depicta and by Kraków councilor Jan Pavioli in 1655: "bathing Bathsheba", "Judith", "portrait of Christian, king of Denmark", "the duke of Saxony", had something in common with the Wittenberg workshop. In the collection of King John II Casimir Vasa, Bona Sforza's grandson, sold at an auction in Paris in 1672, there was Cranach's Madonna and Child (Une Vierge avec un petit Christ, peint sur bois. Original de Lucas Cronus), possibly bearing features of his famous grandmother. King Stanislaus Augustus (1732-1798), had 6 paintings by Cranach and his workshop, one of St. Jerome, the other five on mythological subjects: Venus et l'Amour sur bois (no. 941), Pyrame et Thisbe (no. 912), Venus Couchee (no. 913), Venus surprise avec Mars (no. 914), Venus et Mars (no. 915). Before the First World War, in the collection of the splendid Baroque Pidhirtsi Castle near Lviv in Ukraine, which belonged to the Koniecpolski, Sobieski, Rzewuski and Sanguszko families, there were five paintings considered to be originals or copies of Titian's works - The Creation of Eve, Galatea, The Doge of Venice, Venus and Cupid and Venus and Adonis (after "Dzieje rezydencji na dawnych kresach Rzeczypospolitej" by Roman Aftanazy, Volume 7, p. 464, 479). In 1842, in the Tyzenhauz (Tiesenhausen) Palace in Pastavy, Belarus, there were "Adam and Eve under the forbidden tree in paradise, a barbaric hand sawed off the lower half of this painting on wood by Albrecht Dürer", Judith by Andrea del Sarto and "Portrait of a man, half-figure, life-size. Magnificent Spanish costume, ruff, background of red drapery - Tintoretto", as well as two paintings considered to be works by Paolo Veronese - The Illness of Antiochus and The Continence of Scipio (after "Galeria obrazów Postawska" by Aleksander Przezdziecki, p. 196-197, 200, items 4, 5, 6, 9, 32). Before World War II, in the Rzewuski Palace in Pohrebyshche, Ukraine, there was a painting by Titian depicting the "half-reclining woman with a jug of water beside her" and two magnificent paintings by the Spanish painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (after "Materiały do dziejów rezydencji ..." by Roman Aftanazy, Volume 1, p. 279). In the Lubomirski Palace in Przeworsk, filled with national memorabilia, there was a painting by Titian depicting the "Madonna" (after "Zbiory polskie ..." by Edward Chwalewik, Volume 2, p. 131). Unfortunately, this palace was plundered during World War II. Many Venetian, Italian and German paintings were exhibited in Warsaw in the Bruhl Palace in 1880, some of these may have originally been in the royal collection: Lucas Cranach - Old man with a young girl (35, Museum), Jacopo Bassano - Vulcan forging the arrows (43, Museum), Moretto da Brescia - Madonna with Saint Roch and Saint Anne (51, Museum), Gentile Bellini - Christ after being taken down from the cross, surrounded by saints (66, Museum), Tintoretto - Baptism of Christ (71, 81, Museum), School of Paolo Veronese - Temptation of Saint Anthony (84, Museum), Jacopo Bassano - Adoration of the Shepherds, property of Countess Kossakowska (4, room D), School of Titian - Baptism of Christ, property of Countess Maria Łubieńska (6, room D), Giovanni Bellini - Madonna, property of Count Stanisław Plater-Zyberk (75, room D), Bernardo Luini - Christ and Saint John, property of Mrs. Chrapowicka (76, room D), Bassano - Bible scene, property of Mrs. Rusiecka (19, room E), Venetian school - Historical Item: Feast of the Kings, property of Jan Sulatycki (2, room F), Lucas Cranach - Reclining Nymph, property of Jan Sulatycki (35, room F) (after "Katalog obrazów starożytnych …" by Józef Unger). Other important paintings by Cranach and his workshop related to Poland and most likely the royal court include Stigmatisation of Saint Francis, created in about 1502-1503, today in the Belvedere in Vienna (inventory number 1273), in Poland, probably already in the 16th century and in the 19th century in the collection of the Szembek family in Zawada near Myślenice, comparable to paintings by Italian masters Gentile da Fabriano (Magnani-Rocca Foundation) or Lorenzo di Credi (Musée Fesch), the Massacre of the Innocents in the National Museum in Warsaw (M.Ob.587), which was in about 1850 in the Regulski collection in Warsaw, portrait of Princess Sibylle of Cleves (1512-1554) as a bride from the Skórzewski collection, signed with artist's insignia and dated "1526" (National Museum in Poznań, lost), portrait of George the Bearded, Duke of Saxony, husband of Barbara Jagiellon (Polish Academy of Learning in Kraków, deposit at Wawel Castle), alleged portrait of Henry IV the Pious, Duke of Saxony (Frąckiewicz collection, lost) and miniature portrait of Katharina von Bora "the Lutheress" (collection of Leandro Marconi in Warsaw, destroyed in 1944) (paritally after "Polskie Cranachiana" by Wanda Drecka). In 1900, Seweryn Tymieniecki (1847-1916) had in his collection in Kalisz a portrait of Elector Frederick III of Saxony (1463-1525) with the imperial crown, painted on panel by a follower of Cranach (Exhibition held at the Kalisz Town Hall in May and June 1900, National Library of Poland, F.84013/IV). Ukrainian magnate Volodyslav Valentyn Fedorovich (1845-1917) owned in his palace in Vikno near Ternopil many paintings by Polish painters of the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as about 300 paintings by good Italian and Flemish schools of the 16th and 17th centuries, while the painting "The Old Man and the Girl" (The Ill-Matched Couple) was considered an original by Cranach the Elder (after "Materiały do dziejów rezydencji ..." by Roman Aftanazy, Volume 8a, p. 145). Christ blessing the children by Lucas Cranach the Elder at Wawel Castle (ZKnW-PZS 1716), was acquired in 1922 by the director of the State Art Collections in Warsaw from Ignacy Dubowski (1874-1953), bishop of Lutsk, who probably acquired it in former territories of Poland-Lithuania or in St. Petersburg. Before 1924, Count Zygmunt Włodzimierz Skórzewski (1894-1974) donated to the Greater Poland Museum (now the National Museum) in Poznań, in addition to the aforementioned portrait of Sibylle of Cleves, also the portrait of Emperor Charles V by Cranach the Elder (inv. Mo 473) and a fragment of a hunting scene, attributed to Cranach the Younger (after "Muzeum Wielkopolskie w Poznaniu" by Marian Gumowski, Feliks Kopera, p. 14-15), which was lost during the Second World War. The Nativity from the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder in the National Museum in Poznań (inv. Mo 108) comes from the Zaborowski collection in Mchówek near Konin and Włocławek. The epitaph of Jan Sakran (Sacranus, 1443-1527) from Oświęcim, court theologian and confessor of the Jagiellonian kings: John Albert, Alexander and Sigismund I, is a good example of how quickly Cranach's art reached Poland-Lithuania. The painting, now in the Museum of the Missionary Fathers in Kraków, was probably painted shortly before or after Jan's death, i.e. around 1527 (tempera on panel, 144.5 x 133 cm). Originally it was located in the Holy Trinity Chapel of Wawel Cathedral, founded by Queen Sophia of Halshany (died 1461), Jogaila's fourth wife, and hung above the deceased's unpreserved bronze tombstone. In the first half of the 18th century the epitaph was transferred to the Missionary Monastery in Stradom (after "Wawel 1000-2000: wystawa jubileuszowa" by Magdalena Piwocka, p. 83). The style of the painting indicates the local Kraków workshop, but the painter used the composition of Cranach's painting, dated around 1525 - The Man of Sorrows with the Virgin and Saint John. The painting by the German master is now in the Stadtmuseum Baden-Baden (on permanent loan by Baden-Baden Collegiate Church) and must have been created in several copies, one of which also arrived in Silesia, because it was borrowed by an unknown painter in a scene with a donor, now in the Archdiocesan Museum in Wrocław. The Kraków master was also inspired by Cranach's style and colours, especially in the way he painted the trees in the background, the sky and the landscape, which means that he must have seen Cranach's original painting, but his individual style prevails in the epitaph. If we assume that the approximate dating of the Baden-Baden painting is correct, then Cranach's painting became well known in Kraków within just two years. In 1592, Jan Ponętowski (ca. 1540-1598) bequeathed to the Kraków Academy (Jagiellonian University) a rich and valuable collection of books, prints, paintings, liturgical vestments, tapestries and abbot's insignia. Born in the village of Ponętów near Łęczyca, he received in 1577 from Emperor Rudolf II the dignity of abbot of the Hradisko Monastery near Olomouc. In 1588 or 1589, he returned to Poland and settled permanently in Kraków. The list of items donated to the Kraków Academy, drawn up by Ponętowski himself, dated May 11, 1592, opens with the most valuable works of art, which have not survived, including Flemish tapestries described as tapecie […] virides Flandricae, 14 of them (of different sizes) and 26 Flemish paintings on canvas, as well as 7 less defined paintings on panel. The Flemish paintings and tapestries were probably acquired by Ponętowski while he was abbot in Moravia or after his return to Poland. Since the tapestries were usually decorated with coats of arms, they were probably commissioned by Ponętowski in Flanders. The majority of the books are bound in valuable artistic bindings, most of them dating from the 1580s with supralibros of Ponętowski. Since the University collection contains objects bearing Ponętowski's ownership marks that are not included in the 1592 list, this donation was not the only one (after "The Collection of Jan Ponętowski" by Piotr Hordyński, p. 138-139, 143). His donation also contains two albums of woodcuts by Cranach, which illustrate the priceless contents of two treasures: the collegiate church of All Saints in Wittenberg Castle from 1509 (Dye zaigung des hochlobwirdigen hailigthums der Stifft kirchen aller hailigen zu Wittenburg) and the churches of St. Maurice and Mary Magdalene in Halle from 1520 (Vortzeichnus und Zceigung des hochlobwirdigen heiligthumbs der Stifftkirchen der Heiligen Sanct Moritz und Marien Magdalenen zu Halle, Jagiellonian Library, Cim. 5746-5747). Notable imports from Saxony to Gdańsk, the main port of Sarmatia, before the mid-16th century include the Altar of the Coronation of Mary founded by the Butchers' Guild for the Church of St. Catherine in the Old Town, created around 1515, whose main carved scene is based on a woodcut by Lucas Cranach from 1509, while the painted figures of Saints Christopher, Roch, Peter and Paul on the altar wings, as well as female saints in the lower part are believed to be products of Cranach's workshop. Before World War II, in the Church of Corpus Christi in Gdańsk there were portraits of Luther and Melanchthon from 1534, of which only the portrait of Melanchthon has survived (National Museum, inv. MNG/SD/4/MED). The epitaph of the family of Johann III Connert in the form of a triptych in St. Mary's Church in Gdańsk, painted in 1556, is considered to have technical similarities with the works of Cranach's workshop (after "Commemoration and Family Identity in Sixteenth-Century Gdańsk ..." by Aleksandra Jaśniewicz-Downes, p. 214). Cranach, his collaborators and followers also depicted Sarmatians in their traditional costumes, albeit often in a pejorative manner, as unbelievers in religious scenes, such as the Crucifixion in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (inv. 6905) in which the costume of one of the horsemen is clearly Sarmatian or generally eastern (compare "Studien zur Frühzeit Lukas Cranachs d.Ä." by Fedja Anzelewsky, p. 125). The costumes of two horsemen in the Crucifixion of 1549 by Antonius Heusler (ca. 1500-1561), a follower of Cranach, now in the Salzburg Museum (inv. 123-29), signed with the monogram AH and dated lower right, are also Sarmatian. A painting by Heusler depicting the Allegory of Salvation with a naked man (Adam) standing before the crucified Christ, probably connected with the spread of Protestantism in Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia, is in the National Museum in Warsaw (inv. M.Ob.2151). Typically Sarmatian are also the fur hats of the men on the left of the scene of Christ and the Adulteress by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his workshop, painted around 1520, today kept in the Franconian Gallery in Kronach (inv. 692) and in the Cathedral Museum in Fulda. The painting in the Franconian Gallery comes from the collection of Elector Maximilian I of Bavaria (1573-1651), and when Aleksander Lesser (1814-1884), a Polish painter of Jewish origin, saw this painting in the Pinakothek in Munich, most likely during his studies there between 1835 and 1846, he also noticed the eastern character of the man's hat and left a drawing of him, now in the National Museum in Warsaw (inv. DI 31735 MNW). The same can be said of the epitaph of Franz von Nostitz (d. 1576) in the village church of Klix in Wulka Dubrawa (Grossdubrau) in East Saxony, painted by the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger in 1576 with portraits of the deceased, his wife and children as donors and several figures in eastern costumes.
Venetian links
The 2020 temporary exhibition at the Royal Castle in Warsaw - "Dolabella. Venetian Painter of the House of Vasa" (September 11 - December 6) was dedicated not only to the life and work of Tommaso Dolabella (1570-1650), but also to the economic and artistic relations between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Republic of Venice.
This exhibition and its catalogue recall the Polish students at the University of Padua, including Copernicus, Jan Kochanowski and Jan Zamoyski, who created a separate Natio regni Poloniae et magni ducatus Lithuaniae at the end of the 16th century, as well as the supply of grain and the export of Polish cochineal. In 1591, Marco Ottoboni, secretary of the Venetian Senate, stayed in Gdańsk and in the autumn of 1591 concluded a major transaction for the purchase of Polish grain and the organization of a complicated maritime transport to Venice. Although Ottoboni conducted the transaction with the help of Nuremberg bankers, the first phase of the negotiations involved the Montelupi trading house from Kraków, which granted the Venetian Republic a large loan, which was placed at Ottoboni's disposal in Gdańsk. Important imports included books, glassware and luxury goods. The publishing house of the Manutius family, active between 1494 and 1585, maintained intensive contacts with Poland throughout most of the 16th century. Missale secundum ritum insignis ecclesie cathedralis Cracouiensis with coat of arms of Piotr Tomicki (1464-1535), Archbishop of Kraków and Vice-Chancellor of the Crown, Saint Stanislaus and Saint Florian, published by Peter Liechtenstein in Venice in 1532 (National Library of Poland, SD XVI.F.31) and Partitura pro organo by Mikołaj Zieleński, published at the publishing house of Giacomo Vincenti in Venice in 1611 (Czartoryski Library in Kraków, 40102 III/1 Saf.), are the best examples of books published in the Serenissima. Many individual books were purchased in Venice by Polish bibliophiles travelling in Italy, as evidenced by the provenance notes preserved in many copies, which provide information, sometimes very precise, on the date and place of purchase, such as the register of the buyer, probably Paweł Henik, in Italian, from 1614, who purchased in Venice the Etymologicum Magnum, printed there in 1499. Venetian "health passport", issued on September 9, 1578 to "Mr. Nikodem, a Polish nobleman from [...] numbering 2, with goods", found in one of these books, is further confirmation (Jagiellonian Library in Kraków, BJ Cam. M. IX. 46 (a)). Luxurious Venetian bindings also enjoyed considerable popularity in Poland and the binding of a copy of Missale secundum ritum ... with a super ex-libris of Bishop Tomicki (Cathedral Chapter Library in Łowicz), executed by Andrea di Lorenzo, dubbed the "Mendoza Binder", who was active in Venice between 1518 and 1555, is the best example. The 1544 inventory of the Kraków pharmacy at Main Square 8, owned by Franciszek Scheinborn, whose father was referred to by profession as a vitreator (stained glass artisan), mention large quantities of Venetian glass (vitra venetiana) – in this particular case over 250 vessels, probably imported from Venice by the owner of the pharmacy, who may also have been an intermediary in this field. Scheinborn also placed four Venetian majolica bowls (scutellae de terra Veneziana quatuor pictae in fenestra) in the window of his pharmacy – undoubtedly for decoration, but also perhaps for advertising purposes. A few examples of expensive Venetian silk fabrics, such as velvets and brocades used to sew liturgical vestments, have been preserved, among others, in the treasury of the Wawel Cathedral and the National Museum in Gdańsk (objects from the St. Mary's Basilica in Gdańsk). It is possible that the altar with scenes of the Annunciation, the Crucifixion and Noli me tangere and figures of saints, made of bone at the beginning of the 15th century in the Embriachi workshop in Venice (Diocesan Museum in Sandomierz, inv. MDS-3/Dep.), was imported to Poland already in the 15th century. As Venice was at that time an important centre of pictorial production, many paintings were commissioned and acquired there, but unfortunately the sources on this subject are very modest. According to Władysław Tomkiewicz (1899-1982), paintings by Titian, Paris Bordone and Paolo Veronese were undoubtedly in the collection of Sigismund II Augustus, and he cites one specific work, which could have been in the royal collections in the 16th century, the now lost painting "Christ at the Feast of Simon the Pharisee", attributed to the workshop of Veronese, which was in a private collection near Vilnius before the Second World War. The exhibition catalog also refers, although not directly, to an important and largely forgotten phenomenon of cryptoportraiture citing the portrait of the Byzantine cardinal Bessarion (1403-1472), Catholic theologian and humanist, depicted as Saint Augustine in his study by the Venetian painter Vittore Carpaccio in 1502 (Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni in Venice, compare "Dolabella. Wenecki malarz Wazów. Katalog wystawy", ed. Magdalena Białonowska, p. 28, 29, 42, 44-49, 158, 174). Given that the portrait was made two decades after the cardinal's death and shows him as a relatively young man, it is also a perfect example of creating an effigy from other portraits (paintings, miniatures, drawings, sculptures or reliefs). Among the paintings evacuated to New York around September 1939 and exhibited in 1940 by the European Art Galleries, Inc. "to help to maintain the exhibit of Poland at the World's Fair", the Venetian School of painting is particularly well represented. Most come from the Łańcut collection, as well as Potocki collection in Tulchyn (after "Tajemnicza kolekcja Starych Mistrzów" by Przemysław Jan Bloch, p. 9). Although some of them are now considered incorrectly attributed, they were, by and large, created by painters active mainly in the territories belonging to the Republic of Venice or trained in Venice. The catalog of this exhibition includes paintings by Giovanni Bellini (Madonna and Child with Four Saints and a Donor, item 40), Vincenzo Catena (Madonna and Child, item 35), Paris Bordone (Portrait of a Lady [Laura Effrem], item 20), Lorenzo Lotto, now attributed to Giovanni Cariani (Portrait of a Man [Stanisław Lubomirski (d. 1585)], item 23), Titian (Portrait of Aretino, item 19), Moretto da Brescia (Portrait of a Gentleman [Marco Antonio Savelli], item 24), Tintoretto (A Venetian Doge [Pietro Gradenigo (1251-1311)], item 15), Sebastiano del Piombo (The Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine, item 44), Jacopo Bassano (The Agony in the Garden, item 39), Paolo Veronese (The betrothal of Mary and Joseph, item 30), Palma il Giovane (The Last Supper, item 26), Tintoretto, now attributed to Palma il Giovane (The Woman Taken in Adultery [Susanna and the Elders], item 13), Domenico Tintoretto (Portrait of a Nobleman [Tomasz Zamoyski (1594-1638)], item 37) and Carlo Ceresa (Portrait of a Lady, item 22, National Library of Poland, DŻS XIXA 3a).
Portraits from abroad and based on other effigies
From the perspective of the Renaissance artist's travels and drawing inspiration from the works of other painters, three watercolors by Albrecht Dürer depicting Livonian women, preserved in the Louvre in Paris (inv. 19 DR/ Recto; 20 DR/ Recto; 21 DR/ Recto), are interesting. In 1521, according to the date on two of them, the painter depicted six wealthy women from the present-day territories of Estonia and Latvia, dressed in their characteristic traditional dresses, lined with precious furs (reichen frawen in Eiffland / Eyflant, according to Dürer's annotations). It is not known exactly how and where the painter met these women, as he probably never visited Livonia. In 1520, he went to Cologne, and then to Antwerp, where he lived on a street frequented by English merchants. As in the case of a similar drawing depicting a group of five Irish soldiers and two barefoot "peasants" (Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, inv. KdZ 37), he either had occasion to see the women in Antwerp or elsewhere during his journey, or he copied these models from a collection of costumes circulating at the time.
The bill from 1531 confirms that the drawing made by Sigismund I's court painter Hans Dürer in Kraków and sent to Nuremberg was sufficient to create the silver altar in Sigismund's Chapel (Exposita extraordinaria in aedificia Capellae Regiae et castri Cracoviensis 1531: Item dedi pro tele ulnis 21, super qua deliniamentum alias visirungk tabulae Nurembergae argenteae fabricandae depictum est ... Item dedi Johanni Durer pictori Regis a labore et pictura dicti deliniamenti ..., after "Peter Flötner: ein Bahnbrecher der deutschen Renaissance ..." by Konrad Lange, p. 86). In Modena in 1570, Ludovico Monti, agent of Sigismund Augustus, mediated in ordering a medal with a bust of the king from a renowned sculptor, most probably Leone Leoni (d. 1590), "but the poor fellow despairs because he has never seen Your Majesty and cannot find any portrait of Your Majesty in profile as is needed, since mine and Soderini's are frontal representations and were made sixteen years ago, and it will be difficult to be satisfied with these" (ma il poverino si dispera perché non ha mai veduto Vostra Maestà et non trova alcuno ritratto di Vostra Maestà in profilo come bisognaria, che il mio et quello del Soderini sono in faccia et sono fatti già XVI anni sono, et male potrà sodisfare con questi, after "Lodovicus Montius Mutinensis ..." by Rita Mazzei, p. 37), Monti complained to the king. The practice of creating portraits for clients from the territories of present-day Poland from study drawings can be attested from at least the early 16th century. The oldest known is the so-called "Book of effigies" (Visierungsbuch), which was lost during World War II. This was a collection of preparatory drawings depicting the Pomeranian dukes, who were related to the Jagiellons, mainly by Cranach's workshop. Among the oldest were portraits of Boguslaus X (1454-1523), Duke of Pomerania and his daughter-in-law Amalia of the Palatinate (1490-1524) by circle of Albrecht Dürer, created after 1513. All were probably made by members of the workshop sent to Pomerania or less likely by local artists and returned to patrons with ready effigies. On the occasion of the division of Pomerania in 1541 with his uncle Duke Barnim XI (IX), Duke Philip I commissioned a portrait from Lucas Cranach the Younger. This portrait, dated in upper left corner, is now in the National Museum in Szczecin, while the preparatory drawing, previously attributed to Hans Holbein the Younger or Albrecht Dürer, is in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims. A monogramist I.S. from Cranach's workshop used the same set of study drawings to create another similar portrait of the duke, now in the Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg. Studies for the portraits of Princess Margaret of Pomerania (1518-1569) and Anne of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1502-1568), wife of Barnim XI (IX), both dating from around 1545, were meticulously described by a member of the workshop sent to Pomerania to create them indicating colors, fabrics, shapes to facilitate work in the artist's studio. Undoubtedly, based on similar drawings, Cranach's workshop created miniatures of the Jagiellons in the Czartoryski Museum. In the 1620s a court painter of Sigismund III Vasa created drawings or miniatures after which Peter Paul Rubens painted the portrait of the king (Heinz Kisters collection in Kreuzlingen), most likely as one of a series. The same court painter painted the full-length portrait of Sigismund at Wilanów Palace. Between 1644-1650 Jonas Suyderhoef, a Dutch engraver, active in Haarlem, created a print with effigy of Ladislaus IV Vasa after a painting by Pieter Claesz. Soutman (P. Soutman Pinxit Effigiavit et excud / I. Suÿderhoef Sculpsit) and around that time Soutman, also active in Haarlem, created a similar drawing with king's effigy (Albertina in Vienna). After the destructive Deluge (1655-1660), the country slowly recovered and the most important foreign orders were mainly silverware, including a large silver Polish eagle, the heraldic base for the royal crown, created by Abraham I Drentwett and Heinrich Mannlich in Augsburg, most likely for the coronation of Michael Korybut Wiśniowiecki in 1669, now in the Moscow Kremlin. Foreign commissions for portraits revived more significantly during the reign of John III Sobieski. French painters such as Pierre Mignard, Henri Gascar and Alexandre-François Desportes (a brief stay in Poland, between 1695 and 1696), active mainly in Paris, are frequently credited as authors of portraits of members of the Sobieski family. Dutch painter Adriaen van der Werff, must have painted the 1696 portrait of Hedwig Elisabeth of Neuburg, wife of James Louis Sobieski, in Rotterdam or Düsseldorf, where he was active. The same Jan Frans van Douven, active in Düsseldorf from 1682, who made several effigies of James Louis and his wife. In the Library of the University of Warsaw preserved a preparatory drawing by Prosper Henricus Lankrink or a member of his workshop from about 1676 for a series of portraits of John III (Coninck in Polen conterfeyt wie hy in woonon ...), described in Dutch with the colors and names of the fabrics (violet, wit satin). Lankrink and his studio probably created them all in Antwerp as his stay in Poland is not confirmed. A few years later, around 1693, Henri Gascar, who after 1680 moved from Paris to Rome, painted a realistic apotheosis of John III Sobieski surrounded by his family, depicting the king, his wife, their daughter and their three sons. A French engraver Benoît Farjat, active in Rome, made a print from this original painting which has probably not survived, dated '1693' (Romae Superiorum licentia anno 1693) lower left and signed in Latin upper right: "H. Gascar painted, Benoît Farjat engraved" (H. GASCAR PINX. / BENEDICTVS FARIAT SCVLP.). Two workshop copies of this painting are known - one in Wawel Castle in Kraków, and the other, most likely from a dowry of Teresa Kunegunda Sobieska, is in the Munich Residence. Such a realistic depiction of the family must have been based on study drawings created in Poland, as Gascar's stay in Poland is not confirmed in the sources. The French painter Nicolas de Largillière, probably worked in Paris on the portrait of Franciszek Zygmunt Gałecki (1645-1711), today in the State Museum in Schwerin. Also one of the most famous portraits in Polish collections - Equestrian portrait of Count Stanisław Kostka Potocki by Jacques Louis David from 1781 was created "remotely". A collection catalogue of the Wilanów Palace, published in 1834 mentioned that the portrait was completed in Paris "after a sketch made from life in the Naples Riding School". One of such modello or ricordo drawings is in the National Library of Poland (R.532/III). It was the same for the statues and reliefs with portraits. Some of the most beautiful examples preserved in Poland were ordered from the best foreign workshops. Among the oldest and most beautiful are the bronze epitaphs made in Nuremberg by the workshop of Hermann Vischer the Younger, Peter Vischer the Elder and Hans Vischer in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, such as the epitaph of Filippo Buonaccorsi, called Callimachus, in Kraków, epitaph of Andrzej Szamotulski (d. 1511), voivode of Poznań, in Szamotuły, tomb of Piotr Kmita of Wiśnicz and of Cardinal Frederick Jagiellon (d. 1503), both at the Wawel Cathedral, and tomb of King Sigismund I's banker, Seweryn Boner and his wife Zofia Bonerowa née Bethman at St. Mary's Basilica in Kraków. Particularly splendid were the unpreserved Flemish funerary monument of Archbishop Janusz Suchywilk (ca. 1310-1382) in Gniezno Cathedral (sub lapide in Flandria per ipsum ad pompam preciose comparato), and that of Archbishop Wojciech Jastrzębiec (ca. 1362-1436) in Beszowa, commissioned in Bruges for the sum of 400 grivnas "in Prussian coin" (lapis iam paratus in Brugis). This was a very high sum, as the tombstone of Archbishop Jan Sprowski (ca. 1411-1464), made in Wrocław by the famous sculptor Jodok Tauchen, although partly cast with a silver mixture, was four times less expensive. For its production, transportation from Wrocław and installation in Gniezno Tauchen was to receive 172 florins (after "Polskie nagrobki gotyckie" by Przemysław Mrozowski, p. 59). Around 1687, "Victorious King" John III Sobieski ordered large quantities of sculptures in Antwerp from the workshop of Artus Quellinus II, his son Thomas II and Lodewijk Willemsens and in Amsterdam from the workshop of Bartholomeus Eggers for the decoration of the Wilanów Palace in Warsaw, including busts of the royal couple, today in Saint Petersburg. All of these statues and reliefs were based on drawings or portraits, possibly similar to the triple portrait of Cardinal Richelieu, made as a study for a bust to be made by the Italian sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini in Rome. For the equestrian statue of Prince Józef Poniatowski (1763-1813), made between 1826 and 1832 and inspired by the statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, the Danish-Icelandic sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844), although he arrived from Rome to Warsaw in 1820, had to use other effigies of the prince. The initiator of the construction of the monument was Anna Potocka née Tyszkiewicz (1779-1867). The monument was confiscated by the Russian authorities after the November Uprising (1830-1831) and was returned to Warsaw in March 1922. After the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising, the Nazi German invaders ordered the statue to be blown up on December 16, 1944. A new cast of the sculpture, made in the years 1948-1951, was donated to Warsaw by the Kingdom of Denmark. Some sources also confirm this practice. During his second stay in Rome, Stanisław Reszka (1544-1600), who admired the paintings by Federico Barocci in Senigallia or the work of Giulio Romano in Mantua, again buys paintings, silver and gold plates. He sends many works of this kind as gifts to Poland. To Bernard Gołyński (1546-1599) he sends paintings, including a portrait of the king and his own effigy and for King Stephen Bathory a portrait of his nephew. These portraits of the monarch and his nephew were therefore made in Rome or Venice from study drawings or miniatures that Reszka brought. On another occasion, he sends eight porcelain "vessels" in a decorative casket to the king, purchased in Rome and to Wojciech Baranowski (1548-1615), Bishop of Przemyśl, a relief of St. Albert, carved in ebony. Through Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandini (later Pope Clement VIII), papal nuncio in Poland between 1588-1589, he sends paintings purchased for the king, one of the Savior, embroidered "of the most excellent work" and St. Augustine, made of bird feathers, "the most beautiful" (pulcherrimum), as he says. To the royal secretary Rogulski, who came to Rome, he gives a silver inkwell, and the chamberlain of the chancellor Jan Zamoyski entrusts him with a precious stone to be repaired in Italy, but before that, Reszka consulted the Kraków goldsmiths. All of these objects, including the paintings, must have been the work of the best Italian artists, but names rarely appear in the sources. In 1584, King Stephen's nephew, Andrew Bathory, with his companions, purchased and commissioned many exquisite items from Venice, including gold cloth with coats of arms, gold-embossed Cordovan (cuir de Cordoue) leather wallpapers, made by the goldsmith Bartolomeo del Calice. Another time he bought "12 bowls, 16 silver orbs" (12 scudellas, orbes 16 argenteos) from Mazziola and supervised the artist working on the execution of "glass vessels" (vasorum vitreorum). In Rome, they visit a certain Giacomo the Spaniard to see the "marvels of art" (mirabilia artis), where Bathory probably bought the trinkets and fine paintings, later shown to the delegates of the Jędrzejów Abbey. Visitors from Poland-Lithuania gave and received many valuable gifts. In 1587, the Venetian Senate, through two important citizens, offered Cardinal Andrew Bathory, who came as an envoy of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with the announcement of the election of Sigismund III, two silver basins and jugs, four trays and six candelabra "of beautiful work" (pulchri operis). The Pope gives two medals with his image to Rogulski, and a gold chain to Cardinal Aldobrandini. After returning to Poland, Cardinal Bathory gives Queen Anna Jagiellon a coral cross, received from Cardinal Borromeo, and a box of nacre (ex madre perla), receiving a beautiful, expensive ring in return. Many artists were also engaged in Italy for the Commonwealth. King Stephen entrusts his nephew with the mission of bringing to the royal court architects who master the art of building fortresses and castles. Urged by the king, Reszka makes efforts through Count Taso, however, only a few months after his arrival he manages to get into the royal service Leopard Rapini, a Roman architect for an annual salary of 600 florins. On his way back to Poland, Simone Genga, architect and military engineer from Urbino, was admitted as a courtier in the presence of the Archbishop of Senigallia. We learn from Giorgio Vasari that Wawrzyniec Spytek Jordan (1518-1568), an art lover who frequented the thermal baths near Verona, was offered a small painting depicting the Deposition from the Cross, painted by Giovanni Francesco Caroto. Stanisław Tomkowicz (1850-1933) speculated that the Lamentation of Christ, inspired by Michelangelo's "Florentine Pieta" in the Biecz Collegiate Church, could be this painting. However, it is very likely that it was brought to Poland by a member of the Sułkowski family and its attribution to Caroto is rejected. Wawrzyniec, "a man of great authority with the King of Poland", according to Vasari, also brought to Poland-Lithuania the Italian sculptor Bartolomeo Ridolfi and his son Ottaviano, where they created numerous works in stucco, large figures and medallions and prepared designs for palaces and other buildings. Ridolfi was employed by King Sigismund Augustus "with honorable salaries" (Spitech Giordan grandissimo Signore in Polonia appresso al Re, condotto con onorati stipendi al detto Re di Polonia), but all his works were most likely destroyed during the Deluge. Bartolomeo Orfalla, a townsman from Verona, carried out exploratory drilling in the Spytek's estates to find salt similar to that mined in Bochnia and Wieliczka and Wawrzyniec's magnificent tombstone in the Church of St. Catherine and St. Margaret in Kraków was sculpted by Santi Gucci in 1603. The funerary monuments preserved in churches that survived wars and accidental fires testify to the excellent artistic taste and wealth of the 16th century Sarmatians. They are also another example of effigies based on other liknesses, since most of them were executed after the death of the persons depicted in the statues. The best example is probably one of the oldest Renaissance funerary monuments in Poland - the so-called monument of the Three Johns in Tarnów Cathedral. This masterpiece of sepulchral statuary is attributed to the workshop of Bartolomeo Berrecci (ca. 1480-1537), an Italian architect and sculptor from Tuscany, who was active in Poland and died in Kraków. It was probably made around 1536, so several years after the death of the persons to whom it was dedicated. The monument was founded by Jan Amor Tarnowski (Joannes Tarnovius, 1488-1561) to commemorate his closest relatives, i.e. his father - Jan Amor Iunior (d. 1500), voivode and later castellan of Kraków, his half-brother - Jan (d. 1514/15), voivode of Sandomierz, and the founder's son, Jan Aleksander (d. 1515), who died in infancy. The sculptor had to receive the effigies of the deceased, painted or sculpted, to create the statues. To meet the high demand for such sculptures, like painters, sculptors and their workshops produced semi-finished products in the "shape" of figures, ready to be refined and given individual characteristics. A document dated January 15, 1545 mentions that a wax model of an "armed man" (sculpturam ceream effigiem viri armati habentem), on the basis of which stone funerary figures were probably sculpted, was destroyed in the workshop of Padovano (Giovanni Maria Mosca) in Kraków. The sculptor also later used wax models as mentioned in another document dated March 22, 1546 (statuas cereas alias ffizirinki). The wax models made it easier to make workshop replicas. In 1562, another Italian sculptor, Girolamo Canavesi, active in Kraków, appeared before the court sued by Katarzyna Orlikowa. He was accused of not having honored the contract, because the funerary statue of Stanisław Orlik in armor that he had made did not correspond to the agreements concluded with the deceased's wife (after "Nagrobek „trzech Janów” Tarnowskich ..." by Rafał Nawrocki, p. 496). The trial ended only in 1574, when the family accepted Canavesi's already satisfactory work. When the statue did not resemble the person who commissioned it or a deceased person, the sculptor often had to make a new one, which was connected with the need to use a new material, such as expensive imported marble or alabaster. In the case of paintings, they could be easily repainted by the author in place or by another painter in the case of imported images. To attract clients and secure important commissions, painters from the major centers of European painting also traveled abroad. Coronations and royal weddings were events that generated a demand for new effigies: portraits commemorating the event, as well as those presented to dignitaries at home and sent abroad to friendly or allied courts. Based on the similarity with the print reproducing the portrait of the last elected monarch of the Commonwealth Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski (1732-1798) and other works, the portrait of the king in a beautiful frame with his coat of arms in the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków (inv. MNK XII-363), is attributed to the Bolognese painter Ubaldo Buonvicini (1732-1799), or Bonvicini, perhaps a relative of Alessandro Bonvicino, known as Moretto da Brescia (d. 1554). The mentioned print by Johann Esaias Nilson (1721-1788) was made in Augsburg after a painting by Buonvicini, who made it in Warsaw (Bonvicini Warsov: pinx:), most likely on the occasion of the king's coronation in 1764. Buonvicini's stay in Warsaw was probably very short, as his presence in Bologna is confirmed in 1765 and 1766.
Oblivion
The Italians had many effigies of Polish-Lithuanian monarchs, many of which were forgotten when the Commonwealth ceased to be a leading European power after the Deluge (1655-1660). According to Maciej Rywocki's peregrination books from 1584-1587, written by the mentor and steward of the Kryski brothers from Masovia, during their three-year journey to Italy for study and education, in the Villa Medici in Rome, owned by Cardinal Ferdinando, later Grand Duke of Tuscany, in the gallery of portrait paintings, he saw "with all Polish kings and King Stephen and the queen [Anna Jagiellon] very resembling". This effigy of the elected queen of the Commonwealth, possibly by a Venetian painter, undoubtedly resembled the portraits of her dear friend Bianca Cappello, a noble Venetian lady and Grand Duchess of Tuscany. According to Stanisław Reszka, who was Ferdinando's guest in Florence in 1588, the Grand Duke owned a ritrat (portrait, from the Italian ritratto) of King Sigismund III Vasa and his father John III of Sweden. Reszka sent him a map of the Commonwealth made on satin on which there was also a portrait of Sigismund III (Posłałem też księciu Jegomości aquilam na hatłasie pięknie drukowaną Regnorum Polonorum, który był barzo wdzięczen. Tam też jest wyrażona twarz Króla Jmci, acz też ma ritrat i Króla Jmci szwedzkiego, a także i Pana naszego) (after "Włoskie przygody Polaków ..." by Alojzy Sajkowski, p. 104). A few decades earlier, Jan Ocieski (1501-1563), secretary of King Sigismund I, wrote in his travel diary to Rome (1540-1541) the information about a portrait of King Sigismund, which was in the possession of the cardinal S. Quatuor with an extremely flattering note: "this is a king like never before" (hic est rex, cui similis non est inventus), and "who is the wisest king, and the most experienced in dealing with things" (qui est prudentissimus rex et usu tractandarum rerum probatissimus), according to this cardinal (after "Polskie dzienniki podróży ..." by Kazimierz Hartleb, pp. 52, 55-57, 67-68).
The inventory of the Gonzaga collections of 1540-1542 mentions two clay figures, perhaps busts, of Sigismund I, "King of Sarmatia", and one of his wife Bona Sforza (items 6638-6640, una figura de Sigismondo re de Salmatia de terra cotta, in una scatola tornita; una figura de Sigismondo re di Pollonia, de terra, in una scatola tornita; una figura de Bona Sforcia regina de Pollonia, de terra, in una scatola, after "Le collezioni Gonzaga ..." by Daniela Ferrari, p. 313). It is also possible that these were busts of Sigismund I and his son Sigismund Augustus, who became king during his father's lifetime. Bernardo Soderini (Italus Florentinus), who was a merchant in Kraków between 1552 and 1583, had in his villa in Montughi near Florence "three paintings of kings and queens of Poland" (tre quadri di re et regine di Pollonia, after "Lodovicus Montius Mutinensis ..." by Rita Mazzei, p. 37-38). Soderini made a great fortune in Poland and returned to Florence, where, besides a residence in Montughi, he owned a palace in Florence, the furnishing of which cost him 60,000 scudi, and his villa Castiglioncello had a circumference of about 27 miles. The inventory of the Ducal Garden Palace (Palazzo Ducale del Giardino) in Parma dating from around 1680 lists a "Portrait of Stephen the First [Stephen Bathory], King of Poland" in the dressing room next to the second bedroom (Un quadro alto br. 1. on. 8., largo br. 1. on. 2. e 1/2. Ritratto di Stefano Primo Re di Polonia, di ...) and the 1662 catalogue of paintings belonging to Cristoforo and Francesco Muselli of Verona mentions the portrait of the court jeweller of King Sigismund II Augustus - Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio (d. 1565) with a white eagle, now in Wawel Castle (inv. ZKnW-PZS 5882), without mentioning his name. Interestingly, this painting is now attributed to Paris Bordone, while in the Muselli collection it was considered "one of the most refined and beautiful by Titian" (de' più fiuiti e belli di Titiano, after "Raccolta di cataloghi ed inventarii inediti di quadri, statue, disegni ...", ed. Giuseppe Campori, p. 190, 297). The situation was similar in other European countries. After the death of Ladislaus IV Vasa in 1648, Francesco Magni (1598-1652), lord of Strážnice in Moravia, ordered the portrait of the Polish-Lithuanian monarch to be moved from the representative piano nobile, a gallery with portraits of the Habsburgs, his ancestors, relatives, and benefactors, to his private room on the second floor of the castle (after "Portrait of Władysław IV from the Oval Gallery ..." by Monika Kuhnke, Jacek Żukowski, p. 75). The original portraits of King Ladislaus IV and Queen Marie Casimire, after which copies were made in the 18th century for the Ancestral Gallery (Ahnengalerie) of the Munich Residence, were considered to represent Charles X Gustavus of Sweden (CAROLUS X GUSTAVUS) and his granddaughter Ulrika Eleonora (1688-1741), Queen of Sweden (UDALRICA ELEONORA). In Hungary, a research by Szabolcs Serfőző published in 2021 reveals that the iconic painting depicting Ilona Zrínyi (Jelena Zrinska, 1649-1703), the heroine who defended Mukachevo Castle against the imperial army during the Thököly Uprising, does not depict Ilona, but Queen Marie Casimire (Hungarian National Museum in Budapest, inv. 48). This portrait was probably acquired by Countess Elisabeth Rakoczi (1654-1707) in Kraków after 1684 (Egy képmás metamorfózisa ...). The style of the painting, although less elaborate, indicating the involvement of the painter's students, recalls the works of the most important portraitist active in the city at that time, Jan Tricius (1620-1692), comparable to the portrait of the queen in Wilanów Palace (inv. Wil.1584). The massive destruction of the Commonwealth's heritage and post-war chaos also contributed to such mistakes in Poland. Thus, in the gallery of 22 portraits of the kings of Poland, painted between 1768 and 1771 by Marcello Bacciarelli to embellish the so-called Marble Room of the Royal Castle in Warsaw, King Sigismund II Augustus is Jogaila (VLADISLAUS JAGIELLO, inventory number ZKW/2713/ab) and son of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), Archduke Charles II of Austria (1540-1590) was presented as Sigismund II Augustus (SIGISMUNDUS AUGUSTUS, ZKW/2719/ab), according to the descriptions under the images. These portraits are copies of paintings by Peter Danckerts de Rij dating from around 1643 (Nieborów Palace, NB 472 MNW, NB 473 MNW, deposited at the Royal Castle in Warsaw), based on lost originals. During the Deluge (1655-1660), when the situation was desperate and many people expected the barbarian invaders to totally destroy the Realm of Venus - they plundered and burned the majority of the Commonwealth's cities and fortresses and planned the first partition of the country (Treaty of Radnot), King John Casimir Vasa, a descendant of the Jagiellons, turned to a woman - the Virgin Mary for protection. At the initiative of his wife Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga in the fortified city of Lviv in Ruthenia on April 1, 1656, he proclaimed the Virgin his Patroness and Queen of his countries (Ciebie za Patronkę moją i za Królowę państw moich dzisiaj obieram). Soon, when the invaders were repelled, the medieval Byzantine icon of the Black Madonna (Hodegetria) of Częstochowa with scars on her face, revered by both Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians, and already surrounded by a cult, became the holiest of all Poland. The fortified sanctuary of the Black Madonna at Bright Mountain (Jasna Góra) was defended from pillage and destruction by the armies of the "Brigand of Europe" in late 1655, a Ruthenian-style riza (robe) was made for the Virgin and adorned with the most beautiful examples of Baroque and Renaissance jewelry offered by pilgrims, a perfect illustration of the country's culture and its diversity. The main statue of the beautiful residence of the "Victorious King" John III Sobieski, who saved Vienna from plunder and destruction in 1683 - Wilanów Palace, except for the planned equestrian monument of the king, was not the statue of Mars, god of war, nor of Apollo, god of the arts, nor even of Jupiter, king of the gods, but of Minerva - Pallas, goddess of wisdom. It was most likely created by the workshop of Artus Quellinus II in Antwerp or by Bartholomeus Eggers in Amsterdam and placed in the upper pavilion crowning the entire structure. Unfortunately, this large marble statue, as well as many others, including busts of the king and queen, were looted by the Russian army in 1707. In "The Register of Carrara marble statues and other objects taken from Willanów in August 1707" (Connotacya Statui Marmuru Karrarskiego y innych rzeczy w Willanowie pobranych An. August 1707), it was described as a "Satue of Pallas [...] in the window of the room above the entrance to the palace, resting her right hand on a gilded marble shield with the inscription Vigilando Quiesco [In watching I rest]" (Statua Pallas [...] w oknie salnym nad weysciem do Pałacu podpierayacey ręką prawą o tarczę z Marmuru wyrobioną pozłocistą, na ktorey Napis Vigilando Quiesco). Later, it most likely decorated the Kamenny Theater in Saint Petersburg (demolished after 1886), which Johann Gottlieb Georgi described in his "Description of the Russian Imperial Capital ...", published in 1794: "Above the main entrance is the image of a seated Minerva made of Carrara marble, with her symbols, and on the shield: Vigilando quiesco". The fact that nothing (or almost) preserved does not mean that nothing existed, so perhaps even the stay of some or several great European artists in Poland-Lithuania is still to be discovered. 
Portrait of Royal jeweller Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio aged 47 receiving a medallion from the Polish Royal Eagle with monogram of King Sigismund Augustus (SA) on his chest by Paris Bordone, 1547-1553, Wawel Royal Castle.
Adoration of the Magi with portraits of Elizabeth of Austria, Casimir IV Jagiellon and Jogaila of Lithuania by Stanisław Durink
The portrait of King Ladislaus II Jagiello (Jogaila of Lithuania) as one of the Biblical Magi, venerated as saints in the Catholic Church, in the scene of the Adoration of the Magi is one of the oldest effigies of the first monarch of the united Poland-Lithuania. The painting is a section of the Our Lady of Sorrows Triptych in the Holy Cross Chapel (also known as the Jagiellon Chapel) at the Wawel Cathedral, which was built between 1467-1477 as a burial chapel for King Casimir IV Jagiellon (1427-1492) and his wife Elizabeth of Austria (1436-1505) - lower section, reverse of the right wing.
The triptych is considered the foundation of Queen Elizabeth mourning the death of her son Casimir Jagiellon (1458-1484), future Saint - her coat of arms, of the Habsburg family, as well as the Polish eagle and Lithuanian knight are in the lower part of the frame. The text of the Stabat Mater anthem on the frame could also indicate this (after "Malarstwo polskie: Gotyk, renesans, wczesny manieryzm" by Michał Walicki, p. 313). It is because of the great and unmistakable resemblance to the king's effigy on his tombstone in the same cathedral, the context and European tradition that one of the Magi is identified as a portrait of Jogaila. He was also depicted as one of the scholars in the scene of the Christ among the doctors in the same triptych. Consequently, the other two Magi are identified as effigies of other Polish rulers - Casimir the Great and Louis of Hungary. The other men in the background could be courtiers, including the painter's self-portrait (the man in the center, looking at the viewer), according to the well-known European tradition. Paintings in this triptych are attributed to Stanisław Durink (Durynk, Doring, Durniik, Durnijk, During, Dozinlk, Durimk), "painter and illuminator of king Casimir of Poland" (pictor et, illuminaitor Casimiri regnis Poloniae), as he is called in the documents of 1451, 1462 and 1463, born in Kraków (Stanislai Durimk de Cracovia). Durink was a son of Petrus Gleywiczer alias Olsleger, an oil merchant from Gliwice in Silesia. He died childless before 26 January 1492. If the majority of these effigies are disguised portraits of real people, why not the Madonna? This effigy seems too general, however, there are two important features that are not visible at first glance - the protruding lower lip of the Habsburgs and Dukes of Masovia and the depiction of the eyes, similar to the portrait of Queen Elizabeth, presumed founder of the triptych, in Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum, GG 4648). Therefore Melchior, the oldest member of the Magi, traditionally called the King of Persia, who brought the gift of gold to Jesus, is not Casimir the Great, but Casimir IV Jagiellon, Elizabeth's husband and the son of Jogaila. His effigy can also be compared to the counterpart of the portrait of Elizabeth in Vienna (GG 4649), which, like the Queen's portrait, was based on the depiction of the couple from the Family Tree of Emperor Maximilian I by Konrad Doll, painted in 1497 (Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, reproduced in a lithograph by Joseph Lanzedelly from 1820). Casimir IV was depicted with a longer beard in a print in Theatrum virorum eruditione singulari clarorum by Paul Freher (Berlin State Library), published in 1688 in Nuremberg. The last monarch (Louis of Hungary on the right) was depicted from behind, so it is less likely to be a "disguised portrait". The purpose of these informal portraits was ideological - to legitimize the dynastic rule of the Jagiellons in the elective monarchy, a reminder that despite their rule is dependent on the will of the magnates, their power was bestowed on them by God. The Roman Catholic Chapel of the Holy Cross was decorated with Russo-Bizantine frescoes created by Pskov painters in 1470, so its ideological program was dressed for followers of the two main religions of Poland-Lithuania: Greek and Roman. Byzantine Patriarchal cross became the symbol of Jagiellonian dynasty (Cross of Jagiellons) and reliquary of the True Cross (Vera Crux) of Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos (1118-1180), given to Jogaila in 1420 by emperor Manuel II Palaiologos (1350-1425), was a coronation cross of the Polish monarchs (today in the Notre-Dame de Paris - Croix Palatine). 
Adoration of the Magi with portraits of Elizabeth of Austria as Madonna and Casimir IV Jagiellon and Jogaila of Lithuania as the Magi by Stanisław Durink, ca. 1484, Wawel Cathedral.
Portrait of Queen Elizabeth of Austria by Giovanni Bellini
"A large painting from His Majesty King Casimir in a box. Sub letter R. This image is of the Blessed Virgin, the Lord Jesus standing in front of her on a table covered with a carpet, there is a jug with flowers and behind him a beautiful landscape" (Obraz niemały od Krola Je° Mći Kazimierza w Puzdrze. Sub litera R. Ten Obraz iest Nayswiętsza Panna Pan Jezus przed nią stoi na stole Kobiercem przykrytym, y Dzban z Kwiatami i zanim pękny Lanszawt), this is how the inventory of the collection of paintings belonging to the influential Helena Tekla Lubomirska née Ossolińska (1622-1687), written in Wiśnicz on January 28, 1678 after the death of her husband, describes the painting which was offered to her by the last Vasa on the Polish-Lithuanian throne John II Casimir (1609-1672), descendant of the Jagiellons (National Archives in Kraków, Sanguszko Archive, WAP nr 201, p. 28). Helena Tekla put her signature under this entry, indicating that the painting may have been given to her directly by the king, perhaps shortly after his abdication and before departure for France in 1668. The king took many of his possessions, including those he had inherited from his ancestors and which he managed to evacuate during the Deluge (1655-1660). Many of these belongings were later sold in Paris in 1673. He also offered paintings to different monasteries (several paintings were given to the Visitandines Monastery in Warsaw) and friends. The Lubomirska's painting was probably destroyed during the Great Northern War (1700-1721) or during the great fire of Wiśnicz Castle in 1831.
Nothing more is known about this painting, but the description indicates that it was an Italian painting from the turn of the 15th-16th centuries, since such depictions with a standing Child are the most typical of Italian Renaissance painting. A somewhat similar composition was painted by Pinturicchio in the late 15th century, now in the National Gallery, London (tempera on panel, 53.5 x 35.5 cm, NG703), decorated with the coats of arms of the patrons, but this painting is rather small. At that time, larger Madonnas were "produced" in Venice. For example, the Virgin and Child enthroned with an oriental carpet, made by Gentile Bellini around 1475-85, in the same collection, is much larger (oil on panel, 121.9 x 82.6 cm, NG3911), as well as the Madonna and Child blessing, painted in 1510 by his brother Giovanni, today at the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan (oil on panel, 85 x 115 cm, inv. 298, signed lower left: IOANNES / BELLINVS / M D X). Given Poland-Lithuania's contacts with Venice during the Renaissance, as well as those with the Bellini workshops, it is quite possible that the painting offered by John Casimir was created in their workshop. When I saw for the first time in November 2023 the painting by Giovanni Bellini, acquired by Wawel Castle, Virgin and Child in front of a green curtain and a landscape (oil on panel, 74.6 x 57.3 cm, ZKnW-PZS 10475, signed lower center: IOANNES BELLINVS P), I was struck by the great resemblance of the woman represented as the Virgin to Queen Elizabeth of Austria (1436/7-1505), wife of Casimir IV Jagiellon (1427-1492). In the effigy we can see a similar shape of the nose and protruding lower lip as in the later copy of the queen's effigy in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (GG 4648) and in the portrait of her son Sigismund I in Gołuchów Castle (Mo 2185). The painting was also exhibited at the Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania in Vilnius in 2024. What a coincidence that one of the most important female monarchs of Central Europe returned to Poland and Lithuania after several centuries of oblivion. This painting has probably never been here before, although we cannot exclude that other versions were in Poland-Lithuania. The sad thing about all this is that I seem to be the only one who noticed it. It is difficult, though, to believe in resemblance and an intuition, when it is not explicitly confirmed in the sources or in the painting itself (inscription, coat of arms) and experts say that it is not a portrait. It should be noted, however, that the general context and symbols are enough to identify the models in the paintings, but when it comes to Poland-Lithuania, it seems that many researchers want to believe that it was an artistic desert, especially before 1655-1660 and as regards the royal heritage. In recent years, research has revealed that the National Gallery of Victoria's "Portrait of a young man" (inv. 1587-5), attributed to Dosso Dossi or his younger brother Battista, is not a man at all but Lucrezia Borgia (1480-1519), daughter of Pope Alexander VI, called by a Venetian chronicler Girolamo Priuli (1476-1547) "the greatest courtesan of Rome" (Lucrezia la piú gran cortigiana che fosse in Roma, after "Lucrezia Borgia: La sua vita e i suoi tempi" by Maria Bellonci, p. 124). It contains symbolic references to Venus and the ancient Roman heroine Lucretia. The oldest known provenience of the Wawel painting is the collection of Henry Woods (1822-1882) or his son William at Warnford Park, Hampshire (compare "De la propriété de la Fondation collection Château de Rohoncz", p. 14) or the Moroni collection in Milan (a copy?), reported in 1934 (Fototeca Zeri, Numero scheda 28285) and although it is not confirmed, such a splendid painting was most likely owned by important patrons, such as the Tudor dynasty in England or the Sforza family that ruled Milan when the painting was executed in the late 15th or early 16th century. Portraits were part of diplomacy since the beginnings of portraiture as a distinct domain (portraits sent to allies, potential brides or grooms, influential family members abroad etc.) and the contacts of Poland-Lithuania with the Kingdom of England and with the Duchy of Milan are very old. In 1469, Alexander Soltan, son of the Ruthenian Orthodox boyar from Lithuania, visited England. He was sent there as an envoy of Casimir IV. The purpose of his trip was political negotiations and King Edward IV presented him with a gold chain. In December 1468, before arriving in England, Soltan was at the court of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan, who recommended him to other rulers in a special document. Nearly two decades earlier, on August 4, 1450, the English King Henry VI had granted Casimir the Order of the Garter. Nicolaus von Popplau (Mikołaj z Popielowa), described as a Silesian born in Wrocław, who visited England in 1484, as well as several other European countries in the years 1483-1485, stated that "the English also do not regret spending a lot on feasts and a comfortable life, but they are not equal in this respect to the Poles" (after "Mikołaj z Popielowa" by Xawery Liske, p. 6), which gives an idea of the material status of Poland-Lithuania at the end of the 15th century. While in England it is not difficult to find traces of the country's wealth, such as numerous portraits of the queens of England - Elizabeth Woodville (d. 1492) or Elizabeth of York (1466-1503), what happened to the heritage of Poland-Lithuania? The painting is compared to very similar composition painted by Giovanni Bellini in 1487 - Madonna of the Small Trees (Madonna degli alberetti), which takes its name from the two poplar trees standing symmetrically on the sides of the green curtain which forms the backdrop to the group of the Virgin and Child, now kept in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice (oil on panel, 71 x 58 cm, inv. 596, signed lower center: IOANNES BELLI ... / 1487). The Madonna of the Small Trees was gifted with other works by the aristocrat Girolamo Contarini, a member of one of Venice's founding families, in 1838, so it had probably been in the city since its creation and perhaps represents a member of the Contarini family. Another Contarini - Ambrogio (1429-1499), left a description of the court of Casimir IV during his visit to Poland-Lithuania in 1474 and 1477. The painter used the same set of study drawings for both compositions (Madonna of the Small Trees and the Wawel painting), changing only a few elements. Besides the trees in the background - poplar in the Madonna of the Small Trees and perhaps a chestnut tree or an oak at the beginning of winter in the Wawel painting, which undoubtedly has an important symbolic meaning, color of the child's hair, he notably changed the face of the Madonna. The lips, nose and eyebrows are different - she's definitely a different woman. If the Madonna was not a portrait, why did the painter change the face of a woman? Especially to the image with less classic features? He already had a beautiful model for his Madonna of the Small Trees, why look for another?, especially for a painting which probably left Venice shortly after its creation (possibly sent as a diplomatic gift). Each Madonna should be unique and the majority of Bellini's Madonnas are unique. Patrons paid to have a unique image, which is another indication that Wawel painting was not intended for Venetian customers, otherwise two Venetian noble families would have very similar paintings representing two different women. The Bellini workshop was very popular, so the artist and his students had to work quickly to meet the number of orders. This, however, means that they must rely on the reuse of other compositions. In the Madonna and Child with Saint Paul and Saint George in the same gallery (Gallerie dell'Accademia, inv. 610), which comes from the collection of Count Bernardino Renier, member of another old Venetian family, offered in 1850, they borrowed some elements from the Madonna of the Small Trees, notably the woman's face. In the 16th century, Italian paintings reached as far as China, as evidenced by the Chinese Salus Populi Romani - The Madonna Scroll by Tang Yin (1470-1524), now in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago (inv. 116027). In the context of disguised portraits, it is possible that this fashion also reached China with other Christian images, so the Madonna Scroll could in fact be a portrait of a member of the imperial family or an aristocrat disguised as a Madonna or Guanyin. Disguised portraits or cryptoportraits (kryptoportrety), from the Greek word kryptós meaning hidden, concealed, have been known in Polish literature on the subject since at least the mid-20th century and among the best known is the portrait of Jogaila of Lithuania (King Ladislaus II Jagiello) as one of the Biblical Magi in the triptych of Our Lady of Sorrows (Wawel Cathedral), the portrait of his descendant King Sigismund I as one of the Three Kings in the prayer book of the Chancellor of Lithuania Albertus Gastold/Vaitiekus Gostautas (University Library in Munich) or the Mystical marriage of Saint Catherine with the disguised portrait of Katarzyna Franciszka Denhoffowa née von Bessen (d. 1695), mistress of King John II Casimir Vasa, represented as Saint Catherine of Alexandria (compare "Dzieje sztuki polskiej ..." by Janusz Kębłowski, p. 143). Such representations have origins in ancient times (e.g. the sculptural self-portrait of Phidias on the shield of Athena Parthenos, as described by Plutarch, which depicts him naked in battle against the Amazons) and they often had additional meaning. One of Giovanni Bellini's best-known portraits - the portrait of Fra Teodoro of Urbino in the National Gallery, London (on loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum, L1115), painted in 1515 (M D XV), is in fact a disguised portrait. It represents the monk of the Dominican monastery of San Zanipolo, located not far from Bellini's workshop, with the attributes of Saint Dominic. The painting from Giovanni Bellini's workshop, now in the Khanenko Museum in Kyiv (panel, 93.5 x 77 cm), described in the "Introduction", is most likely a copy of a painting made in 1469 depicting the Byzantine princess living in Rome Sophia Palaiologina (d. 1503), mother of Helena of Moscow (1476-1513), Grand Duchess of Lithuania and Queen of Poland. The original painting was brought to Moscow by the Venetian merchant Giambattista della Volpe (alias Ivan Fryazin), who, accompanied by a certain Pole, stopped off in Venice on his journey from Russia to Rome. The theory that della Volpe was also accompanied by a member of Bellini's workshop on his trip to Rome and took with him drawings of the Byzantine princess, which were transformed into paintings in Venice, is very likely in this case - one painting was taken to Moscow and copies may have been sent to the Pope, to Sophia's family or to other important courts in Europe. According to sources, Sophia's effigy "was written [painted] on the icon". It is also possible that the princess's "face" was "pasted" into a previously painted painting or a painting created while waiting for the drawings of her face from Rome, as in the case of a later painting by Cranach of the daughter of Elizabeth of Austria, Elizabeth Jagiellon (1482-1517), now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest (inv. 4328), also identified by me. More and more disguised portraits, many of which have been forgotten since the time of the Council of Trent (1545-1563), which indirectly prohibited such representations ("there be nothing seen that is disorderly, or that is unbecomingly or confusedly arranged, nothing that is profane, nothing indecorous", after "The Canons and Decrees ..." by James Waterworth, p. 236), are currently being rediscovered, such as the portrait of a lady as Saint Lucy by Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, painted around 1509 (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, inv. 52 (1934.44)), portrait of a young woman as Saint Agatha by Giovanni Busi Cariani, painted between 1516-1517 (National Galleries Scotland, NG 2494) or portrait of a lady as Saint Agatha (probably Giulia Gonzaga), painted by Sebastiano del Piombo in Rome in the early 1530s (National Gallery, London, NG24), although the exact identity of many of these effigies still remains a mystery. "This painting, then, is not only a religious painting but also a portrait, bringing together in one canvas two categories of early modern image making that have long been understood as not only distinct but binarily opposed to each other", comments Adam Jasienski on the portrait of a woman in the guise of Saint Barbara from the first half of the 17th century (after "Praying to Portraits", p. 1-2). Church reformers could not openly prohibit such depictions, as this tradition largely concerned Europe's most powerful ruling dynasties, such as the Habsburgs and Medici. The woman with the jewelled headband, depicted as Madonna and Child, painted by Ercole de' Roberti, court painter of the Este family in Ferrara, between 1490-1496 (The Art Institute of Chicago, 1947.90), bears a strong resemblance to the effigies of Beatrice d Este (1475-1497), Duchess of Bari and Milan, who, on January 18, 1491, in Pavia, married Ludovico il Moro (1452-1508), regent of Milan. Some popes and other church officials also lent their features to images of saints (Pope Leo X as Saint Pope Leo I in the Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila by Raphael or the Supper of Saint Gregory the Great with portrait of Pope Clement VII by Giorgio Vasari). Many of these rediscovered disguised portraits can still be found in the temples for which they were painted or offered, such as Descent of Christ into Limbo with many contemporary portraits (Alessandro Allori as Isaac, Costanza da Sommaia as Judith), painted by Bronzino in 1552 (Medici Chapel at the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence), Mystical marriage of Saint Catherine with the disguised portraits of counts of Silvano Pietra, painted by Lucrezia Quistelli della Mirandola in 1576 (Chiesa Santa Maria e San Pietro in Silvano Pietra, compare "In mostra a Milano la pala di Silvano Pietra" by Maurizio Ceriani), Adoration of the Magi with portraits of King Sigismund III Vasa, his son Prince Ladislaus Sigismund and their courtiers from the second quarter of the 17th century (Church of St. Nicholas and St. Lawrence in Dłużec near Olkusz, compare "W asystencji, w przebraniu ..." by Jacek Żukowski, p. 21) or mentioned triptych of Our Lady of Sorrows (Holy Cross Chapel at the Wawel Cathedral). Certain works by Giovanni Bellini, his workshop, his entourage or followers are present in different collections of the former Poland-Lithuania. A painting by Bellini is also linked to the Jagiellons - Lamentation of Christ, painted after 1475, which was located before the Second World War in the Kaunas Cathedral (oil? on wood, 90 x 74 cm). This painting was probably donated by King Alexander Jagiellon (1461-1506), son of Elizabeth of Austria, in 1503, and mentioned in the 1522 inventory of the Kaunas parish church made by Canon Joannes Albinus (Imago Depositionis de Cruce Domini Jesu Christi in assere, erecta a quo et quamdiu in hac ecclesia est, non constat, solum varij sexus hominum linguis et testimonijs fertur ab 80 plus minus annis in liac parochiali ecclesia existere ..., after "Viešpaties Jėzaus Kristaus apraudojimo ..." by Laima Šinkūnaitė, p. 156-158). While it should be noted that the Kaunas painting was a version of a painting generally attributed to the Florentine school (Davide Ghirlandaio and Bastiano Mainardi), the compositions were nevertheless frequently copied at that time by different painters, especially if they contained disguised portraits. In Kaunas there is also the Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist by the circle of Giovanni Bellini from the beginning of the 16th century (National Museum of Art, ČDM MŽ 1549) and in Kraków there is the Virgin with the Blessing Child by Giovanni Bellini from around 1480 (Czartoryski Museum, MNK XII-202). The latter painting comes from the Czartoryski collection and was mentioned in a register of paintings from their collection published in 1914 (compare "Galerja obrazów: katalog tymczasowy" by Henryk Ochenkowski, p. 37, item 158). The paiting was attributed to pupil of Giovanni Bellini, Niccolò Rondinelli (d. 1520), active mainly in Ravenna, similar to his composition in the Indianapolis Museum of Art (24.6) and repeating the Bellini's composition from Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist and St. Anne or St. Elizabeth in Städel Museum (inv. 853) and another version from Fonte Avellana Monastery, now in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche (inv. 643). Two similar Madonnas are in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (inv. III.126 and B.12). Earlier provenance has not been established, so an acquisition in the late 15th century and a provenance from the royal collection of Polish-Lithuania can be considered. The Holy Family from the collection of the architect Stanisław Zawadzki (1743-1806), today kept in the Church of Saint Catherine of Alexandria in Rzeczyca, is attributed to the circle of Giovanni Bellini (compare "Nieznane aspekty biografii architekta Stanisława Zawadzkiego" by Ryszard Mączyński, p. 72-73), but it is another version of a painting attributed to Francesco Bissolo, a student of Bellini, now kept in the Crema Cathedral. Aleksander Przezdziecki (1814-1871) provides some information on Queen Elizabeth's Italian connections in his article on the queen published in 1852. According to this author, Juan Andrés y Morell (1740-1817), director of the Royal Library of Naples, had a manuscript with the following title: Elisabeth Alberti secundi Imperatoris filia nupta Casimiro IV Poloniae Regi, Hungariae et Bohemiae haeres nata A. D. 1439, denata 1505, hanc institutionem conscripsit filio suo Wladislao Hungariae, Bohemiaeque Regi clarissimo ("Elizabeth, daughter of Albert the Second Emperor, married to Casimir IV, King of Poland, heiress of Hungary and Bohemia, born A. D. 1439, died in 1505, wrote this document to her son Wladislaus, the most serene king of Hungary and Bohemia"). The manuscript, written in beautiful and elegant Latin, had 140 pages and was acquired from the library of Pope Pius VI (1717-1799) by a citizen of Naples. In the former Habsburg collections in Vienna there is another manuscript under the title Helisabetha Poloniae Regina Wladislao Pannoniae, Воhemiaeque Regi, filio Carissimo S. P. D. De Institutione Regii Pueri, written by the queen (Austrian National Library, Cod. 10573). This small manuscript of 138 pages is decorated with a double coat of arms of Bohemia and Hungary on the first page and the crowned letters W and A (Wladislaus, Anna), undoubtedly belonging to Elizabeth's son King Vladislaus II Jagiellon (1456-1516), king of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia. In this manuscript, written after September 1502 and before July 1503, before the expected childbirth of her daughter-in-law, Vladislas's second wife, Anne of Foix-Candale (1484-1506), Queen Elizabeth sends her son advice on the upbringing of the child, whom she calls a son and calls by her favorite name - Casimir. However, her premonition was wrong, because instead of a son, a daughter, Anna Jagiellonica, was born (July 23, 1503). The queen advises her eldest son: "Casimir, your father, congratulated himself and considered it a blessing that he had with him Callimachus [Filippo Buonaccorsi], the Italian poet, who taught you and your other brothers Latin literature" and "Casimir, your father, praised the custom of the Italians, who used to eat three or at most four kinds of dishes and add water to their wine; and he did not attribute this moderation in life to stinginess, as many people understand, but to temperance, the most beautiful virtue and care for health". She also adds that "Alexander, also your brother and the invincible King of Poland, who recently gave a certain young man as many pieces of gold and a beautiful horse for twenty-four poems published in his praise, shines with a similar generosity" and that "Often, in my presence, Callimachus told of a cardinal who was killed in the night by his bedchamber servant, simply because he never looked at him with a cheerful eye". "If Casimir and Albert [King John I Albert (1459-1501)] had not treated Callimachus generously and graciously, I don't think any memory of them would have come down to posterity. And you, if you despise the wisdom of scholars, consider what will happen to you after death!", she further praises the court poet (who commissioned portraits in Venice) basing the fame of her husband and son on his activities. She also mentions the Venetian diplomat Sebastiano Giustiniani (1460-1543), who was ambassador to the court of Vladislas for three years: "a learned and prudent man, I heard that he praises your seriousness in a strange way" and advises that the boy should learn Italian and German, in addition to Polish, French and Hungarian. The predominance of Italian and Venetian influences in this single document is astonishing. The queen also references ancient mythology, heroes and poets, such as Venus and her son Cupid, Artemis (Diana), Aeneas, Alexander the Great and Homer (p. 15 and 18 of the original manuscript), among others. Przezdziecki, praising the style of the manuscript and its "foreign elegance", speculates that it was not the queen herself who was the author, but her courtiers, supposedly one of the Florentines or other Italians, companions of Callimachus, many of whom were at the court of the Polish kings of the time, such as Arnolfo Tedaldi, to whom Callimachus dedicated his "Elegies of Love", Collenuccio da Pesaro, Ottaviano Calvani di Gucci, who wrote a letter in Italian on the death of Callimachus and Bernardino Galli, author of verses on Callimachus' tombstone. He also describes the wealth of the court of Casimir IV Jagiellon and the richness of the costumes, that in 1487 Elizabeth had a satin dress embroidered with pearls (Vestem ex athlassio et margaritis) and that Jakub Dembiński (1427-1490), chancellor in 1469, ordered from Florence silk fabrics for King Casimir, woven with gold, as evidenced by his letter to Lorenzo de' Medici, preserved in the Medici archives in Florence (after "O królowej Elżbiecie żonie Kazimierza Jagiellończyka ...", p. 524-527, 536, 543-547). Elizabeth was born in Vienna in 1436 or 1437 as the daughter of Duke Albert V of Austria (1397-1439), later king of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia and king of the Romans from his union with Elizabeth of Luxembourg (1409-1442), the daughter of Emperor Sigismund (1368-1437). After death of their parents Elizabeth and her brother Ladislaus the Posthumous (1440-1457) were raised in the court of Frederick III (1415-1493), son of Cymburgis of Masovia (d. 1429). Frederick's secretary, Enea Silvio Piccolomini (1405-1464), future Pope Pius II, had an impact on their education and mentioned Juvenal, a Roman poet and author of the collection of satirical poems, as one of the authors for the young Ladislaus to study. Her marriage to Casimir was happy, although when he first saw Elizabeth he did not want to marry her. The queen also exercised some political influence. She gave birth to 13 children to her husband and thus she is known as the Mother of the Jagiellons and the Mother of Kings (Elizabeth regina Polonia mater plurium regum), because four of her sons became kings and Elizabeth's daughters, through their marriages, were associated with important ruling dynasties. Among the few artistic foundations of Queen Elizabeth that have been preserved, we can count the finest examples of late 15th and early 16th century art, such as the late Gothic tombstone of Casimir IV Jagiellon by Veit Stoss and Jörg Huber, made between 1492-1496, and the gold reliquary for the head of Saint Stanislaus by Marcin Marciniec, made in 1504, as well as the tombstone of King John Albert, created by Jörg Huber around 1502 and the niche sculpted by Francesco Fiorentino between 1502 and 1505, considered the first fully Renaissance work in Poland, all in Wawel Cathedral. In January 1504, Wojciech Krypa from Szamotuły (d. 1507), who had obtained his doctorate in Padua a year earlier, was appointed by King Alexander as his mother's physician (Albertus de Schamothuli, physicus regine Polonie Elizabeth). Based on examination of her skeleton discovered in 1972, scientists concluded that the queen suffered from a spinal abnormality, as well as a deformed skull and protruding teeth. Her known effigies confirm that an important feature of her face was prognathism, visible in the miniature in Vienna, in a woodcut from the so-called Łaski's Statute (Commune incliti Poloniae Regni privilegium ...), published in Kraków in 1506 and showing her as a progenitor of the Jagiellons, engraving with her portrait (Elisabetha, Imperatoris Alberti II filia, Casimiri Jagellonidis Uxor), made by the Flemish engraver Gilliam van der Gouwen in 1684 after an original from the second half of the 15th century (National Library of Poland, G.9796), representing her in a costume typical of European fashion of the time, and in a portrait taken from the family tree of Emperor Maximilian I, lithograph from 1820 by Joseph Lanzedelly after the original painting from 1497 by Konrad Doll (Austrian National Library). Protruding lower lip is also a feature visible in effigies of Elizabeth's father, Albert V. The queen undoubtedly gave her features to the Madonna in the scene of the Adoration of the Magi from the triptych of Our Lady of Sorrows in the Holy Cross Chapel (Wawel Cathedral), painted by Stanisław Durink around 1484. Facial expression with partially closed eyes looking down, resembles Bellini's painting. The Virgin from the Annunciation scene in the mentioned triptych is also strikingly similar. It is also worth noting a great resemblance to the features of Elizabeth's mother in a miniature from the same series in Vienna. The conclusion of a Latin poem written in her honor by an Italian poet, included by Elizabeth in her De Institutione Regii Pueri, also fits perfectly as a conclusion and summary for the description of this disguised portrait: "No mortal person receives such fame, such honors, You must be a Goddess!" (Non capit has laudes, non tot mortalis honores, / De superis aliquam te decet esse Deam!). Certainly, it was not only in poems that the great queen was a divine being. 
Annunciation with disguised portrait of Queen Elizabeth of Austria (1436/7-1505) by Stanisław Durink, ca. 1484, Wawel Cathedral.
Portrait of Queen Elizabeth of Austria (1436/7-1505), the "Mother of Kings" (Mater Regum), as Madonna and Child in front of a green curtain and a landscape by Giovanni Bellini, after 1487, Wawel Royal Castle.
Portrait of the Byzantine princess Sophia Palaiologina (died 1503) as Madonna and Child with a view of Rome by workshop of Giovanni Bellini, ca. 1469 or after, Khanenko Museum in Kyiv.
Family of Nicolaus Copernicus as donors by Michel Sittow
In 1484 Michel Sittow (ca. 1469-1525), a painter born in the Hanseatic city of Reval in Livonia (now Tallinn in Estonia) moved to Bruges in the Low Countries, at that time a leading economic center of Europe where painting workshops flourished. It is thought that he worked as an apprentice in the workshop of Hans Memling till 1488 and that he traveled to Italy. When in Bruges Sittow undoubtedly had the opportunity to meet Mikołaj Polak (Claeys Polains), a painter from Poland, who in 1485 was sued by the Bruges Guild of Saint Luke for using inferior Polish lazurite.
From 1492 Sittow worked in Toledo for Queen Isabella I of Castile as a court painter. He left Spain in 1502 and was presumably working in Flanders for Joanna of Castile and her husband Philip the Handsome. Michel probably visited London between 1503-1505, although this trip is not documented. Several portraits of English monarchs attributed to him could also have been made in Flanders on the basis of drawings sent from London. In 1506 the painter returned to Reval, where he joined the local guild of painters in 1507, and married in 1508. In 1514 he was called to Copenhagen to portray Christian II of Denmark. The portrait was intended to be a gift to Christian's fiancée, Isabella of Austria, a granddaughter of Isabella of Castile. From Denmark he traveled to Flanders, where he entered the service of Margaret of Austria, then regent of the Netherlands, and from there to Spain, where he returned to the service of Ferdinand II of Aragon, husband of Queen Isabella. When Ferdinand died in 1516, Sittow continued as court painter for his grandson Charles I, future Emperor Charles V. On an unknown date (between 1516 and 1518) Michel Sittow returned to Reval, where he married Dorothie, daughter of a merchant named Allunsze. In 1523, Sittow held the position of Aldermann (guild leader) and he died of plague in his hometown between December 20, 1525 and January 20, 1526. It is possible that between 1488-1492 Sittow returned to Tallinn. If he traveled by sea to or from Bruges or Spain, his possible stop was one of the largest seaports on the Baltic Sea - Gdańsk in Polish Prussia, the main port of Poland-Lithuania. If he traveled by land, he undoubtedly traveled through Polish Prussia and one of the biggest cities on the route from Bruges to Livonia - Toruń, where king Jagiello built a castle between 1424 and 1428 (Dybów Castle). One of the major works from this period in Toruń is a late Gothic painting depicting the Descent from the Cross with donors, today in the Diocesan Museum in Pelplin (tempera on oak panel, 214 x 146 cm, inventory number MDP/32/M, earlier 184984). It was earlier in the Toruń Cathedral and originally, probably, in the demolished church of St. Lawrence in Toruń or as the property of the Brotherhood of Corpus Christi at the Cathedral. The work was showcased during an international exhibition at the National Museum in Warsaw and the Royal Castle in Warsaw - "Europa Jagellonica 1386-1572" in 2012/2013, devoted to the period in which the "Jagiellonian dynasty was the dominant political and cultural force in this part of Europe". Many authors underline inspirations and influences of Netherlandish painting in this panel, especially by Rogier van der Weyden (after "Sztuka gotycka w Toruniu" by Juliusz Raczkowski, Krzysztof Budzowski, p. 58), the master of Memling, who had served his apprenticeship in his Brussels workshop. The landscape and technique can even bring to mind works by Giovanni Bellini (d. 1516), like Deposition (Gallerie dell'Accademia) and colors the works by Spanish masters of the late 15th century. It is known that in 1494 a Dutch painter named Johannes of Zeerug stayed at the court of king John I Albert. He could be the possible author of Sacra Conversazione with Saint Barbara and Saint Catherine and donors from Przyczyna Górna, created in 1496 (Archdiocesan Museum in Poznań). This painting was founded to the Parish church in Dębno near Nowe Miasto nad Wartą by Ambroży Pampowski of Poronia coat of arms (ca. 1444-1510), Starost General of Greater Poland, an important official close to the royal court, who was depicted as donor with his first wife Zofia Kot of Doliwa coat of arms (d. 1493). The style of the painting in Pelplin is different and resembles the works attributed to Michel Sittow - Portrait of a man with a pink - Callimachus (Getty Center), Portrait of King Christian II of Denmark (Statens Museum for Kunst), Madonna and Child (Gemäldegalerie in Berlin) and Portrait of Diego de Guevara (National Gallery of Art in Washington). He was also the only known artist of this level from this part of Europe, educated in the Netherlands, to whom the work can be attributed. The Descent from the Cross in Pelplin was a part of a triptych. However, the two other panels were created much later in different workshops. Basing on style and costumes these two other paintings are attributed to local workshop under Netherlandish and Westphalian influences and dated to around 1500. All three paintings were transferred to the Museum in Pelplin in 1928 and the central panel showing the Christ crowned with thorns was lost during World War II. The left wing representing Flagellation of Christ is now back in the Toruń Cathedral. This painting has almost identical dimensions as the Descent from the Cross (tempera on oak panel, 213 x 147 cm) and one of the soldiers tormenting Jesus has a royal monogram under crown embroidered with pearls on his chest. This intertwined monogram can be read as IARP (Ioannes Albertus Rex Poloniae), i.e. John I Albert, King of Poland from 1492 to his death in 1501. The founder of this painting depicted as kneeling donor in the right corner of the panel was therefore closely connected with the royal court. This man bears a striking resemblance to known likenesses of the most famous man from Toruń - Nicolaus Copernicus (born on 19 February 1473), who was baptized in the Toruń Cathedral. Some authors consider it to be an authentic image of the astronomer (after "Utworzenie Kociewskiego Centrum Kultury", 29.06.2022) founded by him in his lifetime. If the donor from the Flagellation painting is Copernicus, therefore the donors from the earlier Descent from the Cross should be his parents and siblings. Nicolaus' father, also Nicolaus was a wealthy merchant from Kraków, son of John. He was born around 1420. There is much debate as to whether he was German or Polish, perhaps he was just a typical representative of the Jagiellonian multiculturalism. He moved to Toruń before 1458 and before 1448 he traded in Slovak copper, which was transported by the Vistula to Gdańsk and then exported to other countries. In 1461, he granted a loan to the city of Toruń to fight against the Teutonic Order. Copernicus the Elder married Barbara Watzenrode, sister of Lucas Watzenrode (1447-1512), Prince-Bishop of Warmia, who studied in Kraków, Cologne and Bologna. The couple had four children, Andreas, Barbara, Catharina and Nicolaus. Copernicus the father died in 1483 and his wife, who died after 1495, founded him a portrait epitaph, known today only from a copy, on which we can see a man with a mustache, with folded hands in prayer, with similar features to his son. This copy was commissioned in about 1618 by astronomer Jan Brożek (Ioannes Broscius) for the Kraków Academy and it was repainted around 1873 (Jagiellonian University Museum, oil on canvas, 60 x 47 cm). The father of astronomer died at the age of about 63, while depicted man in much younger, therefore the original epithaph was probably based on some earlier effigy. The facial features of a man from the Descent from the Cross are very similar. Elongated face with wider cheekbones of the woman from the painting is similar to effigies of Barbara Watzenrode's brother Lucas and her famous son. As it was said Nicolaus the Elder died in 1483, while Sittow moved to the Netherlands in about 1484. Such a wealthy merchant or his widow could afford to order a painting from the artist, who at that time was possibly in Gdańsk or Toruń or even created in Bruges, when he settled there, and sent to Toruń. The appearance of younger of boys match the age of future astronomer, who was 10 when his father died. Barbara and Nicolaus had two daughters Barbara and Catharine, while on the painting there is only one. The elder Barbara, entered the convent in Chełmno, where she later became an abbess and died in 1517. It is generally believed that it was she who was mentioned in the list of nuns under the year 1450 there (after "Cystersi w społeczeństwie Europy Środkowej" by Andrzej Marek Wyrwa, Józef Dobosz, p. 114 and "Leksykon zakonnic polskich epoki przedrozbiorowej" by Małgorzata Borkowska, p. 287), therefore she "left" her family over 20 years before Nicolaus the astronomer was born. Apart from costly Polish azurite, painters in Bruges and other locations needed Copernicus' copper, which although is naturally green, "with the addition of ammonia (easily obtained from urine), it turns blue. The color became chemically stable if lime was added, and this chemistry process produced a cheap, bright blue that became an allpurpose paint for walls, wood, and books" (after "All Things Medieval" by Ruth A. Johnston, p. 551). In Gdańsk English and Dutch merchants purchased cenere azzurre, a blue pigment prepared from carbonate of copper (after "Original treatises dating from the XIIth to XVIIIth centuries on the arts of painting in oil ... ", p. cc - cci), similar to that visible in the Descent from the Cross in Pelplin. 
Portrait of merchant Nicolaus Copernicus the Elder (d. 1483) and his two sons as donors from the Descent from the Cross by Michel Sittow, ca. 1483-1492, Diocesan Museum in Pelplin.
Portrait of Barbara Watzenrode and her daughter as donors from the Descent from the Cross by Michel Sittow, ca. 1483-1492, Diocesan Museum in Pelplin.
Descent from the Cross with family of Nicolaus Copernicus as donors by Michel Sittow, ca. 1483-1492, Diocesan Museum in Pelplin.
Portraits of Filippo Buonaccorsi, called Callimachus by Michel Sittow and workshop of Giovanni Bellini
"A face brighter than Venus' and the hair of Phoebus Apollo ... [more striking] than the stone polished by Phidias or the paintings of Apelles", this is how Philippus Callimachus Experiens (1437-1496) describes in his poem the beauty of the young clergyman Lucio Fazini Maffei Fosforo (Lucidus Fosforus, d. 1503), who became bishop of Segni near Rome in 1481. He advises elsewhere an elderly man: "Although the reverence of a wrinkled brow with white hair is esteemed ... Quintilius should prefer to be effeminate, so that he might always be ready for the prostitutes and the boys" (after "A Sudden Terror: The Plot to Murder the Pope in Renaissance Rome" by Anthony F. D'Elia, p. 96, 98).
Callimachus, humanist, writer and diplomat, was born Filippo Buonaccorsi de Tebadis Experiens in San Gimignano in Tuscany, in Italy. He moved to Rome in 1462 and he become a member of the Roman Academy of Giulio Pomponio Leto (Julius Pomponius Laetus, 1428-1498), who was later charged with sodomy, conspiracy against Pope Paul II and heresy. Filippo was accused of participating in the assassination attempt on the pope in 1468 and fled through southern Italy (Apulia-Sicily) to Greece (Crete-Cyprus-Chios) and Turkey, and then to Poland (1469/1470). The homo-erotic verses were discovered among his papers, including one dedicated to Fazini. The punishment for love between two men in Poland-Lithuania was similar as probably in most of the countries of Medieval/Renaissance Europe, nevertheless in Poland-Lithuania, like Rheticus almost a century later, he easly found powerful protectors, who undobtedly perfectly knew about his "inclinations". First he found work with the Bishop of Lviv, Gregory of Sanok (d. 1477), a professor at the Kraków Academy. Later he became tutor to the sons of the King of Poland Casimir IV Jagiellon and carried out various diplomatic missions. In 1474 he was appointed royal secretary, in 1476 he became ambassador to Constantinople and in 1486 he was the king's representative in Venice. With the accession to the throne of his former pupil John Albert, his power and influence reached its maximum. The envoy of the Republic of Venice, Signor Ambrogio Contarini (1429-1499), confirms the influences of Callimachus at the Polish-Lithuanian court: "On the 10th day (April 1474) I arrived in the land called Lublin. It is quite arable and has a decent castle where four of the king's sons stayed. [...] And they lived there in a castle with a very enlightened teacher who raised them. [...] One of them welcomed me with a short speech, as honorable and reasonable as one could ask for, and they showed extraordinary respect for their master". On his return from Persia, three years later, Contarini was again lavishly received by the king at Trakai in Lithuania and during the farewell, "the king charged me with greeting the most illustrious Signoria of Venice from His Majesty, and he added many kind words, and bade his sons speak to me in the same way" (after "Matka Jagiellonów" by Karol Szajnocha, p. 21, 23). In his writings, Buonaccorsi advocated the reinforcement of royal power. He also wrote poems and prose in Latin, although he is best known for his biographies of Bishop Zbigniew Oleśnicki, Bishop Gregory of Sanok, and King Ladislaus III Jagiellon. When in Poland, he also wrote love poems, many of which were addressed to his benefactress in Lviv with the name of Fannia Sventoka (Ad Fanniam Sventokam elegiacon carmen, In coronam sibi per Fanniam datam, In eum qui nive concreta collum Fanniae percusserat, De passere Fanniae, Narratio ad Fanniam de ejus errore, De gremio Fanniae, In picturam Fanniae, In reuma pro Fannia dolente oculos). This name is sometimes considered to be a pseudonym of Anna Ligęzina, daughter of Jan Feliks Tarnowski, or interpreted as Świętochna or Świętoszka (prude in Polish). The word Sventoka is also similar to Polish świntucha (rake, debauchee). Nevertheless, taking into consideration that some gay guys and transvestites like to use female nicknames, we cannot even be sure the "she" was indeed a woman. After the scandal in Rome, the poet had to be careful, fanatics could be anywhere. Almost two centries later, in 1647, transgender people were at the court of Crown Court Marshall Adam Kazanowski and Chancellor Jerzy Ossoliński. They were probably also at the royal court earlier. As a diplomat, Callimachus traveled a lot. His first stay in the royal city of Toruń is confirmed by his letter from this city to the Florentine merchant and banker Tommaso Portinari, dated June 4, 1474, regarding Hans Memling's altar "The Last Judgment", today in Gdańsk. In 1488 he settled for a few months, or maybe even longer, in the residence of bishop Piotr of Bnin, in Wolbórz near Piotrków and Łódź. That same year he went to Turkey and he took with him his young servant or secretary Nicholo (or Nicholaus), whom he calls "Nicholaus, my inmate", possibly Nicolaus Copernicus. Callimachus was on July 3, 1490 in Toruń and he lived there between 1494-1496, although in 1495 he left for Vilnius, Lublin, and finally to Kraków, where he died on September 1, 1496. Shortly before his death, on February 5, 1496, he purchased two houses in Toruń from Henryk Snellenberg, one was adjacent to the house of Lucas Watzenrode the Elder, maternal grandfather of Nicolaus Copernicus (after "Urania nr 1/2014", Janusz Małłek, p. 51-52). During his extended stay in Venice in 1477 and 1486, Callimachus established relations with the most eminent politicians, scholars and artists, like Gentile Bellini (d. 1507) and his younger brother Giovanni (d. 1516), a highly sought-after portraitist, who most probably created his portrait (after "Studia renesansowe", Volume 1, p. 135). In Getty Center in Los Angeles there is a "Portrait of a man with a pink", attributed to Michel Sittow (oil on panel, 23.5 cm x 17.4 cm, inventory number 69.PB.9). This painting was before 1938 in different collections in Paris, France and it was formerly attributed to Hans Memling. The man is holding a red carnation, a symbol of pure love (after "Signs & Symbols in Christian Art" by George Ferguson, p. 29). Clear inspiration of Venetian painting is visible in composition, especially by works of Giovanni Bellini (blue background, wooden parapet). The man's black costume, cap and hairstyle are also very Venetian, similar to that visible in Giovanni's self-portrait in the Capitoline Museums in Rome. The self-portrait shows Giovanni as a young man, hence it should be dated to about 1460, as it is generally belived that he was born in about 1430. The costume and apperence of a man from the portrait in Los Angeles also resemble that in bronze epitaph of Filippo Buonaccorsi, called Callimachus, created after 1496 by workshop of Hermann Vischer the Younger in Nuremberg to design by Veit Stoss (Basilica of Holy Trinity in Kraków). An exact copy of the Los Angeles portrait, attributed to Hans Memling or follower, is in the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków (oil on panel, 24.5 x 19 cm, inventory number V. 192). It was mentioned in a catalogue of the Museum from 1914 by Henryk Ochenkowski (Galerja obrazów: katalog tymczasowy) under the number 110 among other paintings by Italian school and a portrait of a man by school of Giovanni Bellini (oil on panel, 41 x 26.5 cm, item 4). The same catalogue catalogue also lists under number 158 a painting of Madonna and Child sitting before a curtain, which today is attributed to follower of Giovanni Bellini, and dated to about 1480 (Czartoryski Museum, inventory number MNK XII-202). The Kraków copy is also considered to be a work by a 17th-century Flemish painter. It was probably framed in the first half of the 19th century in a neoclassical frame and covered with a glossy varnish, which makes correct attribution difficult. It is exhibited in the museum together with other notable copies from the Czartoryski collection, such as the copy of the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne by Albrecht Dürer (original in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 14.40.633) and a copy or rather a version, due to some differences, of the Portrait of a lady by Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis (original in the Ambrosiana, inv. 100), which according to the most recent research could be the effigy of Anna Maria Sforza (1476-1497), wife of Alfonso d'Este (1476-1534), aunt of Queen Bona Sforza. The same man, although younger, was depicted in a painting attributed to Italian school, sold in Rudolstadt in Germany (oil on panel, 36 x 29 cm, Auktionshaus Wendl, October 29, 2022). His outfit, cap and hairstyle closely resemble those seen on the bronze medal with bust of Giovanni Bellini, created by Vittore Gambello and dated to about 1470/1480. The man stands in front of a curtain, which gives a view of a mountainous landscape. Inscription in English on verso on old adhesive label "The Portrait of Antonio Lanfranco ... at Palermo by J. Bellini", seems unreliable, because Jacopo Bellini, the father of Bellini brothers, died in about 1470 and no such inhabitant of Palermo who might have commissioned his portrait in Venice is mentioned in the sources. The style of this painting is close to workshop of Giovanni Bellini. It is highly possible that portrait of King John I Albert, Callimachus' pupil, commissioned by Toruń City Council to the Royal Chamber of the City Hall around 1645, which follows the same Venetian/Netherlandish pattern, was based on a lost original by Giovanni Bellini or Michel Sittow, created around 1492. If the author of inscription in English acquired the painting in Palermo, Sicily, then the mountin depicted in the background could be Mount Etna (Mongibello), an active volcano on the east coast of Sicily between the cities of Messina and Catania. In Quattrocento verse the hellishly boiling Mongibello was symbol of the vain torments of love and the insane fires of passion (after "Strong Words ..." by Lauro Martines, p. 135). The man's costume is also very similar to that seen in the portraits by Antonello da Messina (d. 1479), a painter from Messina, from the 1470s (Louvre Museum, MI 693 and Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, 18 (1964.7)). "I said: It's a joke, he pretends to love [...] I believe that you burn not only with the dim, weak, gentle flame of love. But as much violent fire Has ever accumulated on earth, So much of it burns in you with all its might, Or how many islands of the Tyrrhenian Sea and Sicily, famous for their volcanoes Exploding fire, brought here From the depths and locked in you" (Dicebam: Iocus est, amare fingit [...] Flammis et placido tepere amore / Credam, sed rapidi quod ignis usquam / In terris fuerat simul cohactum / In te viribus extuare cunctis / Aut incendivomo inclitas camino / Tyreni ac Siculi insulas profundi), writes Callimachus about his torments in his poem "To Gregory of Sanok" (Ad Gregorium Sanoceum, ad eundem) (after "Antologia poezji polsko-łacińskiej: 1470-1543", Antonina Jelicz, Kazimiera Jeżewska, p. 59). 
Portrait of Filippo Buonaccorsi, called Callimachus (1437-1496) by workshop of Giovanni Bellini, ca. 1477 or after, Private collection.
Portrait of Filippo Buonaccorsi, called Callimachus (1437-1496) holding a red carnation by Michel Sittow, ca. 1488-1492, Getty Center.
Portrait of Filippo Buonaccorsi, called Callimachus (1437-1496) holding a red carnation by workshop or follower of Michel Sittow, after 1488, Czartoryski Museum.
Portrait of John I Albert, King of Poland (1492-1501) in coronation robes by Toruń workshop, ca. 1645, Old Town City Hall in Toruń.
Portraits of John I Albert Jagiellon and Charles VIII of France as donors by Italian painters
The inventory of the sale of the possessions of King John II Casimir Vasa (1609-1672), great-grandson of Queen Bona Sforza (1494-1557), on February 15, 1673 in Paris, mentions "A painting representing a Virgin in glory, with a king below who adores her, and a Saint John, original" (after "Vente du mobilier de Jean-Casimir en 1673" by Ryszard Szmydki, item 458). This painting was probably destroyed during the French Revolution.
Such depictions were typical of Renaissance painting, and a somewhat similar painting with an adoring donor, attributed to the Florentine painter Raffaellino del Garbo (1466-1524), was in the Potocki collection before World War II, most likely in Łańcut Castle, evacuated to the United States around 1939 ("For Peace and Freedom. Old masters: a collection of Polish-owned works of art ...", item 29, National Library of Poland, DŻS XIXA 3a). The painting from the Potocki collection depicted the Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saint James the Great, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Saint Mary Magdalene, Saint Francis of Assisi and donor and was auctioned in New York in 1981 (tempera on panel, 179 x 155 cm, Christie's, June 12, 1981, lot 108). Federico Zeri (1921-1998) attributed this painting to Michele Ciampanti, an Italian painter active mainly in Lucca between 1463 and 1510 (Fototeca Zeri, Numero scheda 15488). Interestingly, the kneeling donor from Potocki painting resembles the well-known portraits of Charles VIII (1470-1498), King of France between 1483-1498, who invaded Italy with his army in 1494. The facial features and costume are reminiscent of the portraits of the French monarch preserved in the Condé Museum (inv. PE 576) and the Palace of Versailles (inv. MV 3101), as well as the miniatures: Saint Michael appearing to Charles VIII (Bibliothèque nationale de France - BnF, Français 14363, folio 3 recto) or Charles VIII presented by Charlemagne and Saint Louis to the celestial assembly (BnF, Vélins 689, folio 1 recto). Charles VIII was frequently depicted wearing the golden collar of the Order of Saint Michael, composed of scallop shells, also known as shells of Saint James (the insignia of pilgrims, particularly those to Santiago de Compostela), linked with double knots. These knots are visible on the hat of the donor in Potocki painting. The latter is presented to the Virgin and the other saints by Saint James the Great, carrying a banner adorned with a scallop shell. The previous provenance of the painting from the Potocki collection is unknown, so the painting could be related to the royal collection of Sarmatia and constitute a diplomatic gift to King John I Albert (1459-1501), who succeeded his father as King of Poland in 1492. Taking into account the described contexts, the painting sold in Paris in 1673 could depict King John I Albert, whose patron was Saint John, and its probable author was the workshop of the Venetian painter Giovanni Bellini (d. 1516). 
Hypothetical reconstruction of a painting depicting the Virgin in glory with Saint John the Baptist and King John I Albert Jagiellon (1459-1501) as donor by workshop of Giovanni Bellini, ca. 1492-1501, lost. AI-generated image with my corrections, © Marcin Latka
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saint James the Great, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Saint Mary Magdalene, Saint Francis of Assisi and King Charles VIII of France (1470-1498) as donor from the Potocki collection by Raffaellino del Garbo or Michele Ciampanti, ca. 1494-1499, Private collection.
Crypto-portraits of Beatrice d'Aragona of Naples and Stephen III of Moldavia
Stephen III (ca. 1433-1504), the longest-reigning and most prominent ruler of medieval Moldavia, ruled in very difficult times, fighting and maneuvering various powers in the region. In 1459, after an unsuccessful campaign against Poland, he signed a treaty recognizing the suzerainty of Casimir IV Jagiellon.
When King Matthias Corvinus died unexpectedly on 6 April 1490, Casimir's sons Vladislaus and John Albert and Maximilian I, King of the Romans vied for the Hungarian and Croatian crown. Stephen sided with Maximilian and remained loyal to him even after Vladislaus' election (July 15, 1490). Vladislaus was able to gain the throne with the financial support of Matthias Corvinus' ambitious widow, Beatrice d'Aragona of Naples (1457-1508), who initially wanted to take power for herself, but, realising her unpopularity, supported Vladislaus to rule the country in place of Matthias's illegitimate son, John Corvinus. In October 1490, Vladislaus secretly married her, but the ceremony was deliberately accompanied by several formal errors, so after consolidating his power, Vladislaus divorced her. After the union was made public, it caused a scandal because the new king was already formally married to Barbara of Brandenburg (1464-1515). After a long procedure, Pope Alexander VI Borgia finally dissolved and annulled both of Vladislaus' marriages on April 7, 1500. With the support of Beatrice, as well as the Hungarian lords, Vladislaus (King of Bohemia since 1471), was crowned king on September 21, forcing Maximilian to withdraw from Hungary. It was only after the Peace of Bratislava, concluded by Maximilian with Vladislaus (November 7, 1491), that Stephen recognised the new king of Hungary and Croatia, who ceded him two castles in Transylvania in 1492. In the Belvedere Gallery in Vienna there is an interesting painting from the late Gothic and early Renaissance periods (oil on panel, 97 x 59 cm, inv. 4870). It was purchased in 1916 by the Austrian State Gallery in Vienna and was previously in Berlin in the collection of Friedrich Lippmann (1838-1903), a German art historian born and raised in Prague, capital of Bohemia. The painting depicts the scene of the Adoration of the Magi with Mary and the infant Jesus venerated by the Three Wise Men from the East. One of the biblical Wise Men, the crowned man on the right, has the features of Maximilian I Habsburg. His crown is not an imperial corona clausa but an open royal crown, so this effigy was created before his election as emperor in 1508. This effigy is very similar to many of his portraits created by Bernhard Strigel, and Maximilian also wears the collar of the Burgundian Order of the Golden Fleece. Behind the King of Rome is his father, Emperor Frederick III (1415-1493). Both were depicted as Saints Melchior and Caspar in a similar scene of the Epiphany by the Master of Frankfurt (The Phoebus Foundation). Although Frederick's effigy may be part of his son's campaign before his imperial election, which is why the painting is dated to around 1505-1508, it is also possible that it was created during Frederick's lifetime, i.e. before 1493. The inclusion of these two obvious cryptoportraits indicates that the scene has additional meaning. Such "disguise", intended to convey additional meaning to those familiar with the context and symbolism, was popular at the time and is best illustrated by the splendid diptych of the Judgement of Cambyses by the Early Netherlandish painter Gerard David, commissioned in 1488 and completed in 1498 (Groeningemuseum in Bruges, inv. 0000.GRO0040.I-0041.I). It depicts the arrest and flaying of the corrupt Persian judge Sisamnes on Cambyses' orders, based on Herodotus' "Histories". The corrupt judge bears the likeness of the deposed mayor Pieter Lanchals, who betrayed the city of Bruges to Maximilian I and was executed as a conspirator (after "Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography ..." ed. edited by Helene E. Roberts, p. 457). The author of the Vienna painting, whose name is unknown, is considered to be from North Tyrol, but some similarities can nevertheless be found in late Gothic painting from the territories of present-day Slovakia and Hungary, such as the painting of the Adoration of the Child from the Spisska Kapitula in Slovakia from the 1480s (Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, inv. 55.917.2). It is also generally accepted that his works show strong influences from contemporary trends in Netherlandish painting and that he was active between 1490 and 1520. Because of the painting depicting disguised portraits of Habsburg rulers, this painter is known as the Master of the Habsburgs (Meister der Habsburger) and apart from the Adoration, the Madonna and Child, also in the Belvedere in Vienna, can be attributed to him with certainty. Other works are in the Staatsgalerie Burghausen in Bavaria (Saints Christopher and Sebastian, inv. 10401), two religious paintings in the Tyrolean State Museum, the Ferdinandeum in Innsbruck (inv. Gem 1058 and Gem 1516) and another Madonna and Child attributed to the same master is in the Museo Correr in Venice (inv. CL.M.0237). The painter could therefore be an itinerant painter who worked for some time at the Innsbruck court of Maximilian I, so that neither his stay in Buda nor even his Hungarian origins can be excluded. The Madonna and Child in the Belvedere (panel, 55 x 43.5 cm, inv. 4954), comes from the collection of Baron di Pauli in Brixen and closely resembles the effigy of the Virgin from the Adoration of the Habsburgs and it is the Virgin and the old man kneeling before her who are the main protagonists of this scene. The Madonna is dated around 1490. Two other protagonists are missing from the Adoration of the Habsburgs - Saint Joseph on the left and the third of the Magi on the right. They were cut either because of the poor condition of these parts of the painting or for some other reason, such as the desire to destroy the controversial image, which is very possible in this case. If these effigies represented Maximilian's "adversaries" around 1490, Vladislaus II Jagiellon was most likely one of the Three Kings on the right and Matthias Corvinus was Saint Joseph, so the Virgin Mary is the effigy of Beatrice of Naples. She wears a similar thin black headband in her hair in her crypto-portrait by Cranach in Opatów. Maximilian looks at "Vladislaus" and points to Corvinus' widow as if he approves of the new king of Hungary and his marriage to Beatrice. One of the biblical Magi, Saint Balthazar, traditionally referred to as the King of Arabia, is often, but not always, depicted as a black man, sometimes associated with Muslims in Gothic and Renaissance art of this period (compare the paintings in the National Museum in Warsaw, Śr.254 MNW and Śr.94 MNW). Was the Hungarian king therefore depicted as the enemy of the Habsburg Empire and Christianity? If the painting was commissioned by the Habsburgs and this part of the painting was cut not because it was damaged, this would be a logical explanation. The old man kneeling before the Queen of Hungary is therefore the prince (or voivode) of Moldavia Stephen III, who was almost 60 years old if we assume that he was born in 1433 and the painting was painted in 1492. The man is wearing a rich princely costume in eastern style and his hat is decorated with a princely crown. On his hat there is also a beautiful brooch with a white bird, perhaps an eagle and perhaps a reference to the sovereignty of Poland. The same old man can be identified in another painting now preserved in Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum, panel, 58.5 x 45 cm, inv. GG 6905). It represents the Crucifixion and was painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder at the beginning of the 16th century, when the 30-year-old painter was staying in the capital of Austria. In the foreground on the right, three horsemen can be seen in the place traditionally reserved for unbelievers in medieval paintings. One of them wears a large, typically Ottoman turban. The old man, thus Stephen III, raises his hand as if making a gesture of approval of the crucifixion of Christ. His costume was identified as typically Polish of the time by Fedja Anzelewsky, who also concluded that Cranach must have been in Kraków before coming to Vienna (after "Studien zur Frühzeit Lukas Cranachs d.Ä.", p. 125). The earliest confirmed provenance of this painting is the inventory of the Scottish monastery in Vienna from 1800, where it is listed as a work by Lucas van Leyden. The painting may have originally belonged to the Habsburgs or people in their circle, the main patrons of the relatively young Cranach in Vienna. Corpses of people lie beneath the riders and a hyena gnaws at bones. The sex-changing and corpse-eating hyena has mainly pejorative connotations in medieval art, as a symbol of greed and malice and sexual aberration (after "Marks of Distinctions: Christian Perceptions of Jews in the High Middle Ages" by Irven M. Resnick, p. 50-51). The commissioner of the painting clearly wanted to portray the Moldavian voivode negatively, and the events of 1503, when Cranach was probably still in Vienna (he moved to Wittenberg in 1504), provide an explanation. That year, the general peace between the Sultan and Christendom was concluded in Buda, which officially recognized Moldavia's vassal status, and Stephen III agreed to pay an annual tribute of 4,000 gold ducats to the Porte. In this context, the third horseman in Cranach's painting - the man in the yellow hat and red cloak - could be the effigy of the Hungarian King Vladislaus II Jagiellon. Such negative portrayals of Eastern rulers were nothing new in Habsburg circles. The best example are the crypto-portraits of Vlad III the Impaler or Vlad Dracula (1428/31-1476/77), voivode of Wallachia, regardless of his reputation, made by various painters active in Austria in the 1460s and 1470s. Vlad Tepes, with his characteristic long hair, moustache and pearl cap, was depicted as an unbeliever in the Crucifixion of Christ from around 1460 (Maria am Gestade Church in Vienna), as Pontius Pilate in the scene of Christ before Pilate by the Master of the Velenje Panels from around 1460 (National Gallery of Slovenia in Ljubljana, inv. NG S 1176), as the proconsul Aegeus who ordered the crucifixion of Saint Andrew in a painting of the Martyrdom of Saint Andrew by the Styrian painter from around 1470 (Belvedere Gallery in Vienna, inv. 4974) and as a Roman soldier in the group of Christ's enemies in the Crucifixion of Christ from the circle of the Master of the Schotten Altarpiece from around 1475 (Belvedere Gallery in Vienna, inv. 4975) (compare "Dracula in Hermannstadt?" by Thomas Schares, p. 68-69). Most of the "standard" portraits of Tepes were made well after his death in the 16th and 17th centuries – for example the paintings in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (inv. GG 8285) and in Forchtenstein Castle (inv. B 523). There are no known effigies of Stephen III in Western European painting. Most of his portraits are idealized images inspired by Byzantine painting, such as the one in the Dobrovat Monastery founded in 1503 and completed the following year, in which he is depicted as a young man in traditional costume. A gilded silver censer donated by Stephen to the Putna Monastery and dated April 12, 6978 (1470) is decorated with Gothic motifs. The inscription around this censer in the local language indicates that it was most likely made by a local craftsman inspired by Western European motifs. It may also have been commissioned in Transylvania or in Lviv. As a vassal of Poland, he undoubtedly also dressed in the Polish style, as in the painting by Cranach. A late 19th century imaginative drawing by Sava Hentia (1848-1904), depicting the death of Stephen III, shows a very similar bearded old man. 
Portrait of Beatrice d'Aragona of Naples (1457-1508) as Madonna and Child by Central European painter, ca. 1490-1492, Belvedere Gallery in Vienna.
Adoration of the Magi with crypto-portraits of Beatrice d'Aragona of Naples (1457-1508) and Stephen III (ca. 1433-1504), Prince of Moldavia by Central European painter, ca. 1492, Belvedere Gallery in Vienna.
Crucifixion with crypto-portrait of Stephen III (ca. 1433-1504), Prince of Moldavia by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1503, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Pope Alexander VI Borgia by the Vergós group and disguised portraits of Giulia Farnese by Pinturicchio
"Over the door of an apartment in the said palace he portrayed the Signora Giulia Farnese in the countenance of a Madonna, and, in the same picture, the head of Pope Alexander in a figure that is adoring her" (In detto palazzo ritrasse, sopra la porta d'una camera, la signora Giulia Farnese nel volto d'una Nostra Donna; e nel medesimo quadro, la testa d'esso papa Alessandro che l'adora), describes the fresco titled "The Divine Investiture" by Pinturicchio Giorgio Vasari (compare "Regesto dei documenti di Giulia Farnese" by Danilo Romei, Patrizia Rosini, p. 357 and "Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti" by Giorgio Vasari, Volume 5, National Library of Poland, 50.750, p. 269).
According to this description, published in 1568, this controversial fresco represented Giulia Farnese (1474-1524), mistress of Pope Alexander VI Borgia (1431-1503) and sister of Pope Pope Paul III Farnese (1468-1549), in the guise of the Madonna, in the scene of a intimate encounter of Pope Alexander and the Virgin Mary holding the Child Jesus. The Pope, kneeling before them, held the foot of the Child in his left hand, and little Jesus, holding a globus cruciger (cross-bearing orb), confirmed Alexander's authority in a gesture of blessing. Like other frescoes in the so-called Borgia Apartments of the Vatican Apostolic Palace, this one was also painted by Pinturicchio, painter active at the Vatican court under five popes, between 1491 and 1494 and the effigy of Borgia resembled his portrait in prayer in the fresco in the Room of the Mysteries of Faith (The Resurrection), kneeling at the feet of Christ. The pope wanted this family picture right in front of his bed where he could see it well, above the door that led to the dressing room. Upon his death, Julius II, does not want to sleep in the same bedroom with the work considered scandalous in front of his eyes. The new pope then commissioned Raphael to paint the upper rooms where he went to reside. The Borgia apartments were closed, no one could enter there except a very few absolutely trustworthy. Around 1612 the Duke of Mantua, Francesco IV Gonzaga (1586-1612), receives the news from his ambassador that the legendary fresco really exists and is hidden in the Vatican. After bribing a guardarobiere valet with a pair of silk stockings, his ambassador Aurelio Recordati manages to have the fresco, hidden with a piece of cloth, revealed and Pietro Facchetti, the painter and copyist, then makes a copy on canvas and sends it to Mantua. The Duke thus finds himself in the hands of a rather inconvenient testimony for the rival Farnese family, Dukes of Parma and Piacenza. Pope Alexander VII (1599-1667), after his inauguration, wanted to erase all traces of the infamous Borgia, in particular the much incriminated fresco, but his nephew prevented him from doing so. Rather than being destroyed, the work is removed by detaching the entire portion of the wall. The scene was divided into 3 parts, while the effigy of Alexander VI was certainly destroyed. The two parts, one with the Child Jesus and that of the Madonna, Chigi takes home to his personal collection at Palazzo Chigi, separated from each other by other works to disguise the recognition. And so it was for centuries, until in 1940 they were rediscovered in the Chigi collection and again after 2004 (compare "Il Bambin Gesù delle mani del Pinturicchio" by Isabella Ceccarelli). Giulia, a symbol of Renaissance beauty, that the populace called "the pope's concubine" (concubina papæ) or "the bride of Christ" (sponsa Christi) because of her well-known relationship with the pontiff, was married to Orsino Orsini, a relative of Alexander VI, on May 20, 1489, at the age of fifteen, in the palace of then Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia. The relationship between Giulia and Alexander VI could have been instrumental in the cardinal appointment for her brother, who later became pope under the name Paul III. The fresco in Borgia's bedroom was surely not the only effigy of Madonna Giulia Farnese (old Italian phrase ma donna means "my lady"). Researchers identify her effigies, or Vannozza Cattanei (1442-1518), chief mistress of Cardinal Borgia before he became pope, among the images of the Virgin in the Borgia Apartments, such as a tondo with the Virgin and Child with cherubim, scenes of Annunciation and Visitation. The effigy of Saint Catherine of Alexandria in the scene of the Dispute of Saint Catherine (Hall of the Saints) is considered to represent Pope Alexander VI's daughter Lucrezia Borgia (1480-1519), while the Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine in the Vatican Museums (MV.40314.0.0) is most likely another disguised portrait of the pope's daughter as Saint Catherine and his mistress as the Virgin. Our Lady of the Fevers (Mare de Déu de les Febres) by Pinturicchio kept at the Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia (inv. 273), painted around 1495, should also be considered as Giulia's cryptoportrait. The painting was commissioned by Francisco de Borja (1441-1511), a relative of the pope, depicted as a donor kneeling before the Virgin and Child, to send to the family chapel of the collegiate church of Xativa in Spain, perhaps to celebrate his appointment as Bishop of Teano (Campania) in 1495. It includes the Borja/Borgia coat of arms with the typical bull (on a stool on which the Child stands), which is also a dominant motif of the Borgia Apartments. The painting was sent to Spain between 1497 and 1499 from Rome. Such disguised effigies, originating in antiquity, were certainly not a novelty in the Vatican. Many frescoes in the Borgia Apartments are directly inspired by the Roman statuary and one of the oldest mosaics from the St. Peter's Basilica - Mater Misericordie (Our Lady of Mercy) is most likely a disguised portrait of the Byzantine empress and wife of Emperor Justinian - Theodora (d. 548), a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church, allegedly a former prostitute, known for her promiscuity. The mosaic comes from the Oratory of the Holy Door, built in 703 by Pope John VI, a Greek from Ephesus who reigned during the Byzantine Papacy (VETVSTA HÆC DEI GENITRICIS IMAGO, IN VATICANA BASILICA SVPRA PORTAM SCAM / ORATORIO OLIM A IOHANNE VII PONT-MAX SAL ANNO DCCIII CONSTRUCTO DIV SERVATA / ATQ. AD HVNC DIEM RELIGIOSISSIME CVLTA ...). It was removed in 1606, today in the Church of San Marco in Florence. The Madonna della Clemenza (Our Lady of Clemency), an encaustic painting on panel, in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome, possibly commissioned by the Greek-born Pope John VII, is another similar effigy. Pope Alexander VI was very active in European international relations. In a bull Inter cætera published on May 4, 1493, he divided the world outside Europe between Spain and Portugal by drawing a vertical line between the north and south poles. He encouraged the King of France in his plan to conquer Naples and even attempted to ally himself with the Ottoman Sultan Bayazid II. In Poland-Lithuania, the pope, known for his extremely promiscuous lifestyle and illegitimate children, ordered King Alexander Jagiellon (1461-1506) to confiscate the dowry and belongings of his wife Helena of Moscow (1476-1513), who refused to convert to Catholicism, and even "exclude her from the bed, home and any marital community" (compare "Jagiellonowie: leksykon biograficzny" by Małgorzata Duczmal, p. 254). Fortunately for the ruler, Erazm Ciołek obtained a rescission of Pope Alexander's orders to convert her from the next pope, Julius II, in August 1505. Such extensive international relations were undoubtedly accompanied by portraits. The counterparts were not only interested in the effigy of the pope, but also in the effigies of his family. Rodrigo Borgia undoubtedly had an interest in ensuring that the effigies were well distributed to his allies in Europe and Rome, as well as to members of his family and his entourage. A well-known portrait of Alexander VI in the Vatican Museums (oil and gold on panel, 40 x 29 cm, MV.40463.0.0) is a good example. The painting comes from the collection of Cardinal Stefano Borgia (1731-1804), member of the collateral branch of the House of Borgia of Velletri, so it was probably a family heirloom (since 1805 in the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, n. 185). The style of this painting is clearly Spanish for the second half of the 15th century, it is thus conditionally attributed to a Spanish painter, whose stay in Italy is highly possible (and therefore the meeting with the pope) - Pedro Berruguete (d. 1504) or the Valencian School, as the pope was also Valencian (Valentinus - his epithet indicating his birth in the Kingdom of Valencia). It is speculated that Berruguete, a painter from the Kingdom of Castile, travelled to Italy in 1480 and worked in the court of Federico III da Montefeltro in Urbino, however he appears documented in Toledo in 1483, while the portrait of the pope can be dated between August 11, 1492 and August 18, 1503, the period of his pontificate. The style of the painting, with stucco reliefs and gold leaf in the background, is very similar to the painting kept in the National Art Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona depicting the Consecration of Saint Augustine, painted around 1463-1470/ 1475 (inv. 024140-000). This large painting, undoubtedly filled with several cryptoportraits of the local clergy, is attributed to the Catalan painter Jaume Huguet, who died between February 14, 1492, the date on which he made his will, and the month of May of the same year, when his wife is listed as a widow. The Consecration of Saint Augustine comes from the altarpiece of Saint Augustine, commissioned by the Guild of Tanners in 1463 from Jaume Huguet, but it was completed in 1486 and required the participation of several members of the Huguet workshop, as well as members of the Vergós group, to which another similar painting from this cycle is attributed - Saint Augustine disputing with the heretics (inv. 024141-000). Although it cannot be excluded that members of the Vergós group, such as Pau Vergós (died 1495), Rafael Vergós (died 1500) or Jaume Vergós (II) (died 1503), traveled to Italy during the pontificate of Alexander VI, it is more likely that they created the portrait in Barcelona based on other effigies, most likely by Pinturicchio. Battista Dossi or his circle (painted between 1535-1545, private collection) and Cristofano dell'Altissimo (second half of the 16th century, Uffizi Gallery, inv. 2989 - 1890), probably also based on the paintings of the Perugian painter creating their portraits of the pope. The question remains open as to why, having in his service a painter such as Pinturicchio, Borgia ordered his portrait (or portraits) abroad. Perhaps it was a gift from Barcelona, an advertisement of the Vergós workshop, or their fame prompted the Pope to order something in a different style, something more unusual or something from the country of his youth (in 1448 Rodrigo Borgia became canon of the cathedral chapters of Valencia, Barcelona and Segorbe, thanks to the influence of his uncle in Rome) and closer to his taste (glitter and abundance of gold in the decorations of the Borgia Apartments are attributed to the Hispano-Moorish taste of the Pope, compare "Pittori del Rinascimento: Pintoricchio" by Cristina Acidini, p. 192). Despite that, Pinturicchio and his workshop could not complain about the lack of work. In particular, they created numerous effigies of the Madonna, many of which closely resemble the "bride of Christ" from "The Divine Investiture", as if they were intentionally reusing the same face in different compositions. Some may argue that these compositions were not intended to depict Giulia, but the use of her features from the famous fresco indicates that they were in fact her cryptoportraits. We must keep in mind that since the time of Pope Julius II, effigies of Borgia and his family were subject to damnatio memoriæ and that many of these sometimes controversial effigies survived because people simply forgot that they were disguised portraits. While effigies of Alexander VI were easy to identify (and destroy) due to his characteristic features, the beautiful Madonna is only an effigy of the Virgin. We can identify the reuse of the same effigy in the Pinturicchio's Madonnas at the National Museum in Warsaw (tempera on panel, 45.5 x 37 cm, inv. M.Ob.4, earlier 5), Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (inv. 1481), Cleveland Museum of Art (inv. 1944.89), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (P15w35), Ashmolean Museum (WA1899.CDEF.P10), Fitzwilliam Museum (inv. 119) and others. The Warsaw Madonna is generally dated to around 1495 and is one of the first acquisitions of the Warsaw Museum of Fine Arts, purchased from the collection of Johann Peter Weyer (1794-1864) in Cologne in 1862, the year in which the museum was established (Partitioned Poland). Weyer, the city of Cologne's most notable architect, collected mainly paintings from the Germanic schools, which he undoubtedly acquired locally. Pinturicchio's painting could therefore come from the collection of Hermann IV of Hesse (1442-1508), archbishop-elector of Cologne from 1480 to 1508, who allied himself with Pope Alexander VI and thanks to whom he was elected bishop of Paderborn on March 7, 1498. 
Portrait of Pope Alexander VI Borgia (1431-1503) by the Vergós group, ca. 1492, Paintings Gallery of the Vatican Museums.
Madonna bearing the features of Giulia Farnese (1474-1524), known as "the pope's concubine" (concubina papæ) or "the bride of Christ" (sponsa Christi), by Pinturicchio, ca. 1495, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus by Matthias Gerung after original by Giovanni Bellini or circle
Szto piszesz do nas o tot wschod, kotoryi esmo tam tobe u Wilni s palacu naszoho do sadu urobiti roskazali, comments in Belarusian (Old Ruthenian) the Italian-born Queen Bona Sforza on the alterations in the renaissance palace loggia in Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, to be made by Italian architect and sculptor Bernardo Zanobi de Gianottis, called Romanus in a letter of August 25, 1539 from Kraków in Poland (after "Królowa Bona ..." by Władysław Pociecha, p. 185). It is a perfect example of Polish-Lithuanian diversity in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Many material traces of this diversity and Polish-Italian connetions were lost. When the monarchs of Poland-Lithuania spoke and maintained chancelleries in different languages since the Middle Ages, the countries that partitioned the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the end of the 18th century, during the "Age of Enlightenment", tried to eradicate its culture and languages and all traces of its glorious past. Even today it is sometimes hard to believe that the great European artists and scientists could have had anything to do with poor and devastated Poland. Following Cicero's famous dictum "History is life's teacher" (Historia est magistra vitae) it is worth remembering controversial and painful facts, perhaps thanks to this they will not be repeated. According to some researchers, it was probably the young Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) who accompanied Filippo Buonaccorsi, called Callimachus, tutor of king's sons and diplomat, on his mission to Turkey in 1488. He also sent him to Venice. Callimachus calls this boy "Nicholaus, my inmate" in a letter of May 15, 1488 from Piotrków to Lactantius Thedaldus (after "Urania nr 1/2014", Janusz Małłek, p. 51). From 1491 to 1494, Copernicus attended the University of Kraków with his brother Andreas and between 1496 and 1503 he studied in Italy, first in Bologna and from 1501 in Padua in the Venetian Republic. According to Jeremi Wasiutyński (1907-2005) it was him who was depicted in a portrait of a young man by Giorgione (Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, inventory number 12A). Nicolaus also travelled to other cities in Italy and Poland. In 1500 he left Bologna and spent some time in Rome on the occasion of the Holy Year, before returning to Frombork in 1501. He requested permission to extend his studies in Italy and that same year began studying medicine at the University of Padua. At the same time, he continued his law studies. During this time Copernicus was given the office of scholastic of the Church of the Holy Cross in Wrocław in Silesia, which he did not hold personally and he relinquished the sinecure in 1538. Copernicus and his brother Andreas, who had also received a study permit, also temporarily stayed with the curia in Rome as representatives of the Frombork cathedral chapter, it is however unclear whether Nicolaus was ever ordained a priest. Copernicus received his doctorate on May 31, 1503 at the University of Ferrara to become a Doctor of Canon Law (Doctor iuris canonici). Copernicus never married and is not known to have had children. Anna Schilling, a live-in housekeeper, is sometimes mentioned as his mistress, however, according to Copernicus' letter of December 2, 1538, she was "a related and honest housekeeper", i.e. his niece named Anna von den Schellings née Krüger (after "Anna Schilling nie była kochanką Mikołaja Kopernika" by Krzysztof Mikulski). It was most likely the young astronomer, who between 1492-1501 founded the painting of Flagellation of Christ, today in the Toruń Cathedral, where he was depicted as a kneeling donor. A soldier showing off his tight panties and buttocks just above his head, could be an allusion to his real "preferences". In 1554 Georg Joachim de Porris (1514-1574), also known as Rheticus, Nicolaus Copernicus's sole pupil, who was found guilty in his trial in absentia and consequently exiled from Leipzig for 101 years following the alleged drunken homosexual assault, relocated to Poland, where he continued his work within mathematics and astronomy, further compiling his calculations of trigonomic functions. Nicolaus undoubtedly also knew personally Callimachus, who wrote poetry with homosexual themes. The astronomer died at age 70 on 24 May 1543 in Frombork. Around 1580 the town physician and humanist, Melchior Pirnesius (1526-1589), who came to Toruń from Kraków founded an epitaph of Copernicus in the Toruń Cathedral. Later a portrait of King John I Albert was added to the epitaph in the form of a semi-circular element crowning it. Copernicus' epitaph in Frombork Cathedral was created in 1735. The earlier from 1580, founded by Bishop Marcin Kromer, was destroyed in 1626 by Swedish soldiers. People often require written confirmation that a particular painter painted a particular person, but there are many inaccuracies in the documents and, as with many works of art, many documents have been lost or destroyed. Princess Izabela Czartoryska saved many items from the royal collections in keeping with her motto: "The Past to the Future". She founded the museum in Puławy to preserve Polish heritage - Temple of the Sibyl, also known as the Temple of Memory, opened in 1801. Similar to the 1914 catalogue of the Czartoryski collection by Henryk Ochenkowski, the 1929 catalogue by Stefan Saturnin Komornicki (Muzeum Książąt Czartoryskich w Krakowie) also list two important portrait paintings from the collection, both created in the late 15th century. In this publication they were also reproduced - one is a portrait of Callimachus holding a red carnation, a symbol of pure love, by Michel Sittow (V. 192), attributed there to Hans Memling (item 67), the other is a portrait of a man by school of Giovanni Bellini (oil on panel, 41 x 26.5 cm, inventory number MNK XII-210), attributed in the 1929 catalogue to Filippo Mazzola (1460-1505), item 50: "School of Cremona; educated on the influences of Giovanni Bellini - Portrait of a young man, bust-length; a dark red cap on chestnut hair; an olive green caftan and a black cloak. Gray-brown background". This attribution was later rejected (after "Malarstwo weneckie ..." by Agnes Czobor, p. 51, and "Wystawa malarstwa Trecenta i Quattrocenta" by Marek Rostworowski, p. 100). All authors, however, emphasize the undeniable influence of Giovanni Bellini. Two paintings from old Polish collections are attributed to circle or workshop of Giovanni Bellini - The Holy Family (Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist and his parents Elizabeth and Zacharias) from the collection of Stanisław Zawadzki (1743-1806), today in the Saint Catherine of Alexandria church in Rzeczyca and Madonna and Child with Saints and a donor from the Potocki collection in Łańcut Castle, exhibited in 1940 in New York, lost. The young man is dressed in typical costume known from many Venetian portraits from the turn of the 15th and 16th century. His elongated face with wider cheekbones resemble greatly the features known from the portraits of Copernicus, especially the Gołuchów portrait by Crispin Herrant (inscription in Latin: R · D · NICOLAO COPERNICO), which was most probably commissioned by Jan Dantyszek (1485-1548) in about 1533 (collection of Izabella Działyńska née Czartoryska in the Gołuchów Castle, lost during World War II). A great resemblance to a portrait from the Town Hall in Toruń, created in 1580, can also be indicated, as well as to mentioned effigy as donor from the painting of Flagellation, today in the Toruń Cathedral. This latter painting reveals some similarities with works from Wrocław workshops from the end of the 15th century, notably paintings by Leonhart Hörlen. When he returned to Frombork in 1501 Copernicus possibly travelled via Wrocław and according to Aleksander Birkenmajer, he received the Wrocław sinecure already in 1501 through the intercession of his uncle, Lucas Watzenrode, Bishop of Warmia, who wanted to secure his nephew's Italian studies with the income from this benefice. On this occasion, Copernicus could have ordered a painting from local workshops. During the recent conservation of the painting from the Czartoryski Museum, some repaintings have been removed, which distances the work from Bellini's style and the man now has red hair and black eyebrows (it is possible that he dyed his hair which was popular in Venice), but the resemblance to the mentioned effigies of Copernicus, including that at early age by Sittow (Pelplin) is still unmistakable. As in the case of King Ladislaus IV Vasa and Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg, who have different hair colors (including mustache) in some of their portraits or Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596), who has brown eyes in portrait by Cranach and blue in later portrait by Kober, hair and eye color cannot be decisive for considering (or rejecting) the portrait as the effigy of Copernicus. Portraits of Emperor Maximilian I (1459-1519), produced by the circle of Bernhard Strigel, possibly entourage of the Master of Messkirch and Jörg Kölderer (Kunstmuseum Basel, inv. 2276, and Dorotheum in Vienna, June 8, 2021, lot 4), closer to the time of the execution of the Kraków portrait, are another perfect example. In both mentioned portraits, the emperor has dark facial hair and blonde hair, indicating that he dyed his hair or wore wigs. Additionally, Maximilian has different hair colors, from dark brown, red to blonde in many of his other portraits, such as in the paintings in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (inv. 2110, 2111) or in two very similar paintings in the Upton House, Warwickshire (NT 446803) and the Louvre Museum (INV 2073; C 325). His eye color also differs in these paintings, ranging from shades of brown to gray-blue. The fashion for hair dyeing was probably introduced to the emperor's court by his third wife Bianca Maria Sforza (1472-1510), whose stepsister Caterina Sforza (1463-1509), Countess of Forlì and lady of Imola, was the author of a treatise Experimenti, in which she explained the most renowned methods of her time in beauty care and hair dyeing, including various means by which the beard can be made black. Caterina also shared many of her alchemical secrets with the emperor (compare "Twenty-Five Women Who Shaped the Italian Renaissance" by Meredith K. Ray, p. 1480). Hair dyeing among men was popular in the second half of the 15th century, as confirmed by Janus Pannonius (1434-1472), Croatian-Hungarian Latinist, poet, diplomat and bishop of Pécs, in his poem Ad Galeottum addressed to the Italian poet, writer and physician Galeotto Marzio (Galeottus Martius Narniensis, ca. 1427-1497), who between 1460 and 1486 often traveled to Hungary: "You teach the boys the basics, Galeotto; If you taught them how to dye their hair, you would earn more" (Qui pueros elementa doces, rutilare capillum Si doceas, facias plus, Galeotte, lucri). The dark-haired Galeotto apparently lightened his hair, as evidenced by the word rutilare "to dye gold, to give the color of gold" or "to shine like gold" (aurum rutilat), and he frequently changed his hair color, because in the next poem Ad eundem Pannonius continues "What until recently was blacker than pitch, Galeotto's head suddenly turned yellowish-red?" (Unde tibi, ut, nuper quod erat pice nigrius atra, Tam subito rutilum sit, Galeotte caput? compare "Nauczyciele, uczeni i poeci ..." by Agata Łuka, p. 126). Regarding the authorship of the painting after restoration, an option now seems more likely, which had not been considered before, namely that it is not the Italian school but the German school of painting. The composition and costume of the sitter are clearly Italian from the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, but the style of the painting is very similar to that of Portrait of a lady holding a book, signed and dated by Matthias Gerung (oil on panel, 60 x 42.3 cm, Sotheby's London, July 7, 2016, lot 107, monogram and date top left: ·1·5·2·5· / MG), which also more closely resembles works of the Italian school. Gerung, in older literature also Mathias Geron (d. 1570), painter and engraver from Nördlingen in Bavaria, was perhaps the apprentice of Hans Leonhard Schäufelein (d. 1540). In 1525 he moved to Lauingen and from 1530/31 he worked for Count Otto-Henry of Palatine (1502-1559), grandson of Hedwig Jagiellon (1457-1502), Duchess of Bavaria, who visited Kraków in 1536. If the German painter received a general painting or drawing by Bellini to copy, this would explain the difference in eye color, which was later corrected and removed during the recent conservation of the Copernicus portrait (the more expensive blue color was used less frequently in copies). The lady in the mentioned portrait sold in London wears a costume typical for Italy in the 1520s. Her dress is black and she is firmly holding a small prayer book, which indicates that she is in mourning, however her décolletage indicates she is probably not a widow. The lady could be of Spanish origin as a similar outfit in Habiti Antichi Et Moderni di tutto il Mondo ... by Cesare Vecellio, published in Venice in 1598 (National Library of Poland, 2434 I Cim) is described as Donna antica di Spagna. Around 1525, at the time of the painting's creation, Queen Bona Sforza (1494-1557) was mourning the death of her mother Isabella of Aragon (1470-1524), suo jure Duchess of Bari, who died in February 1524. On July 5, 1525, John of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1493-1525), viceroy of Valencia, cousin of King Sigismund I (as son of Sophia Jagiellon), died in Valencia. During her widowhood, the queen wore no jewelry and very modest clothing, as evidenced by her famous portrait painted by Lucas Cranach the Younger (Czartoryski Museum, MNK XII-537). The portrait also resembles the effigy of her mother created by an anonymous engraver (Austrian National Library in Vienna, inv. 00041426, inscription: ISABELLA ARAGONIA ALPHONSI REG · FILL · IO · GALEATII MA · VX), the cameo by Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio with the queen's bust (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 17.190.869) and medal by Pastorino dei Pastorini (National Museum in Kraków, MNK VII-Md-70). Both in terms of composition and the model's costume, the work also resembles two portraits of unknown women attributed to Piero di Cosimo, both in Florence - Portrait of a pregnant woman (Casa Martelli Museum in Florence, inv. Martelli 45) and Portrait of a woman in profile (Pitti Palace in Florence, inv. 1890, 604), being identified as Bona's aunt, Caterina Sforza, Countess of Forlì and Lady of Imola. If Gerung frequently worked for Polish-Lithuanian clients, many of his works were undoubtedly destroyed or are awaiting rediscovery hidden under the label "Italian school". "It is also heard that with our Poland, the Hospodar seeks agreement under certain conditions, whether they will be accepted we do not know. Therefore, after reporting all that is important in the letters, I recommend my services and myself to Your Grace", ends his letter, written around 1536 to Jan Dantyszek, the astronomer, who was active in the diplomacy of Poland-Lithuania (after "Zbiór pamiętników historycznych o dawnej Polszcze ..." by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Volume 4, p. 55). This letter was in 1839 in the Czartoryski collection at the Temple of the Sibyl. 
Portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) as donor in the scene of Flagellation of Christ by workshop of Toruń or Wrocław, ca. 1501, Toruń Cathedral.
Portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) by Matthias Gerung after original by Giovanni Bellini or circle, ca. 1525 after original from 1496-1503, Czartoryski Museum (before restoration).
Portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) by Matthias Gerung after original by Giovanni Bellini or circle, ca. 1525 after original from 1496-1503, Czartoryski Museum (after restoration). Original photo: Archiwum Fotograficzne Muzeum Narodowego w Krakowie.
Portrait of a lady in mourning, probably Queen Bona Sforza (1494-1557) by Matthias Gerung, 1525, Private collection.
Crucifixion from the Kraków Missal by Lucas Cranach the Elder
"The influence of Cranach the Elder on the formation and development of the artistic form of the Polish illustrated book began very early, before 1500," Anna Lewicka-Kamińska states in her article published in 1973 ("Na marginesie „Polskich Cranachianów”", p. 146). The author refers first of all to the beautiful woodcut by Lucas Cranach the Elder, printed on parchment and hand-coloured, first used in the undated Kraków Missal (Missale Cracoviense), printed by Georg Stuchs (d. 1520) in Nuremberg around 1500 (Jagiellonian Library, 21.4 x 15.2 cm, BJ St. Dr. Inc. 2850, leaf 178). The printing was commissioned by Johann Haller (d. 1525), a German merchant, printer and publisher, owner of a printing house in Kraków and citizen of the royal city (Johannes Haller, civis cracoviensis), who secured the privilege of Cardinal Frederick Jagiellon (1468-1503) and the protection of his copyright: "The most illustrious Prince Frederick [...] has firmly sanctioned that none of his dioceses would dare to print this Kraków missal to the detriment of the aforesaid Johannes Haller under a certain penalty" (Illustrissimus princeps Fridericus [...], firmiter sanxit, quas non alter suarum dyecesium quispiam de novo in præfati Johannis Haller detrimentum hoc missale cracoviensis rubrice imprimere audebit sub certa indicta pena). Interestingly, Cranach does not seem to care about his authorship and copyright in this case. Perhaps he was too young (about 28 at the time) and inexperienced, or perhaps there were other reasons. Lewicka-Kamińska speculated that Haller, a native of Rothenburg in Bavaria, could have received or purchased the block with the woodcut of the Crucifixion directly from Cranach as his countryman, or indirectly from Stuchs, who after engraving the Kraków Missal left Haller the woodcut block to use in the Kraków printing house, since this engraving is not found in Stuchs' later missals.
Another hypothesis, however, seems more likely. Around 1500, in search of wealthy patrons, the young Franconian painter settled in Vienna (compare "Cranach the Untamed. The Early Years in Vienna"). He produced his earliest extant works in the Austrian capital and it was there that he took the name Lucas Cranach after his birthplace and began to use the initials "LC". His close association with a circle of humanist writers, in particular Johannes Cuspinian (1473-1529), a poet and diplomat in the service of the Habsburgs, proved very formative. Around 1502, in Vienna, he painted splendid portraits of Cuspinian and his wife. The poet was later active in the Habsburgs' relations with the Jagiellons and in January 1518 he accompanied Bona Sforza on her journey to Kraków. Earlier, around 1500, Cranach had painted the scene of the Crucifixion of Christ, which comes from the Scottish monastery in Vienna, now preserved in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (inv. GG 6905). In 1999, Fedja Anzelewsky concluded that the costume of one of the horsemen is Polish and that before going to Vienna, Cranach must have been in Kraków between 1498 and 1502 ("Studien zur Frühzeit Lukas Cranachs d.Ä.", p. 125). Cranach's works from this early period are considered to be strongly influenced by the style of Jan Polack (Joannes Alasco Polonus, d. 1519), a Polish painter, who was the most important painter in Munich at the time. The artist could create the woodcut for the Missal in Kraków and offer it to Cardinal Frederick Jagiellon, whose patronage he could have solicited at that time. Frederick, the youngest son of King Casimir IV Jagiellon and his wife Elizabeth of Austria, could also recommend the painter to his Habsburg relatives. If such a stay of Cranach in Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia would be confirmed in written sources, the young artist experienced a difficult situation in Kraków, faced with the monopoly of local workshops and the increasing presence of agents of foreign workshops, particularly Italian and Netherlandish. This stay would also explain the later popularity of his art in the territories of the former Poland-Lithuania, thanks to valuable connections he gained in the capital. Cardinal Frederick attended the Jagiellonian Congress in Levoča, Slovakia, held between April and May 1494, where he appeared with an extremely impressive retinue, thus testifying to his high position and wealth. In 1499 he went to Hungary and in December he participated in the Congress of Bratislava, where he met his brothers Vladislaus II and Prince Sigismund to discuss the dynasty's policy towards Turkey and the Habsburgs. In March 1500, in Kraków, the primate participated in a congress of senators, where financial issues related to the country's defense were discussed. In 1500 he also decided to pay the royal treasury the jubilee sums collected for Rome (after "Zaangażowanie polityczne królewicza ..." by Grzegorz Grąbczewski, p. 138, 140). The cardinal was depicted as a donor, kneeling before Saint Stanislaus resurrecting the knight Piotrawin, in a woodcut by the Nuremberg engraver, placed just after Haller's privilege. This woodcut is similar to another, published in 1493 also in Nuremberg by Haller and Stuchs (Jagiellonian Library, BJ St. Dr. Inc. 2861). In both cases, the engraver must have used other effigies of the cardinal and the Polish saint or drawings were sent from Kraków to Nuremberg. The woodcut of 1493, now in Kraków, was painted and decorated with floral decoration by a local illuminator. The Kraków Missal with Crucifixion by Cranach was owned before 1504 by a nobleman of Juńczuk coat of arms and later by Marcin Bałza (1477-1542). The Crucifixion was also colorized, possibly in Kraków, but in this context, Cranach's authorship of the colouring cannot be excluded. The best-known coloured imprint of this woodcut is in the Kupferstich-Kabinett in Dresden (inv. A 1888-74). Later, around 1502, Cranach created another version of the woodcut from the Kraków Missal, changing the landscape in the background. It was used in the Olomouc Missal (Missale Olomucense), printed by Johann Winterburger in Vienna in 1505. The Olomouc Missal was dedicated to Stanislaus Thurzo (1470-1540), the Kraków-born Bishop of Olomouc. 
Hand-colored woodcut with Cardinal Frederick Jagiellon (1468-1503) kneeling before Saint Stanislaus from the Kraków Missal, printed by Georg Stuchs in Nuremberg, ca. 1493, Jagiellonian Library.
Woodcut with Cardinal Frederick Jagiellon (1468-1503) kneeling before Saint Stanislaus from the Kraków Missal, printed by Georg Stuchs in Nuremberg, ca. 1500, Jagiellonian Library.
Hand-colored woodcut with Christ on the Cross between the Virgin and Saint John, from the Kraków Missal, by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1500, Jagiellonian Library.
Portrait of Crown Prince Sigismund Jagiellon by Niklas Reiser
Like his Habsburg relatives, Crown Prince Sigismund Jagiellon (1467-1548), future king under the name Sigismund I, was a true Renaissance prince. The son of King Casimir IV (1427-1492) and Elizabeth of Austria (1436/7-1505) was Duke of Głogów from 1499, Duke of Opava from 1501 and governor of Silesia from 1504 in the name of his brother Vladislaus II (1456-1516), king of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia.
During his stay in Buda, capital of Hungary, Vladislaus allocated many rooms to his brother, however, Sigismund was content with only a few of the most necessary ones for himself and his servants. He brought some of his household equipment from Kraków. He slept on a bed covered with a dark damask duvet, and the pillows were stuffed with light moss. In spring and summer there were always flowers scattered on the bedding. Right next to the bed was a large sword in a scabbard with an expensive hilt. Next to the sword, there was a Turkish saber, a heavy crossbow and a quiver full of arrows. In his room there was also a decorative Latin prayer book, made by a Hungarian illuminator, beautifully bound in leather and always kept in a suede bag to prevent damage. In addition, Sigismund had special correspondence boxes, one for private matters, the other for public affairs. In these years, Sigismund was always accompanied by his favorite little dog, called "Whitey" (Bielik). He liked to relax in the bathhouse, where he always took his dog with him, which was washed and bathed by the servants. The prince liked a certain luxury in clothing and dressed fashionably. Instead of armor he wore soft, sometimes silk robes. He usually put a velvet cap on his head and wore wreaths of roses, violets or other fragrant flowers. He didn't have much armor, but his treasury contained plenty of robes, bed and table linens, and anything that served the comforts of daily life, such as a beautifully polished steel mirror, in front of which the court barber rubbed the prince's long hair with egg yolk to make it stick better. Right next to the mirror there was also a special gold-framed toothbrushing device, an ordinary bone comb and a box in which scented oils were stored, as well as a tiny box where Sigismund kept small jewels, including a commemorative diamond ring, which was a gift from his mother (after "Zygmunt Stary w Głogowie" by Zygmunt Boras, p. 21-22). Prince Sigismund spent considerable amounts of money on the purchase of jewels. When he was prince of Głogów and Opava, he collected them in his apartments. From the preserved records, it is known that in the years 1500-1507, everyday items made of silver and gold as well as jewelry such as chains, belts and rings were purchased. In 1502, the goldsmith Marcin Marcinek worked for Prince Sigismund, making a gold chain for him (catena aurea domini principis) and also making and repairing many vessels (after "Klejnoty w Polsce" by Ewa Letkiewicz, p. 37). One of the earliest painted effigies of Sigismund, now kept at Wawel Castle in Kraków (oil on paper, mounted on panel, 49.5 x 34.1 cm, ZKnW-PZS 7029), confirms this information. It depicts Sigismund at a relatively young age, perhaps around 1499, when he became Duke of Głogów or around 1504, when he became governor of Silesia. He wears fashionable clothes, a jeweled gold chain with a pendant with Madonna on a crescent moon and a hat decorated with large pearls. Men with pearls or flowers in their hair, all of this seems unnatural today, like memories of a destroyed and long-forgotten civilization. The painting comes from the collection of Count Leon Jan Piniński (1857-1938) in Lviv and was offered together with a somewhat similar portrait of king's nephew Louis II Jagiellon (1506-1526), son of his brother Vladislaus (oil on paper, mounted on panel, 42 x 31.5 cm, ZKnW-PZS 7028), in 1935. Both paintings were previously thought to be 19th century copies, but the 2023 examination revealed that they were made in the 16th century (pigment analysis, after "Dziedzictwo zachowane i na nowo odkryte" by Oliwia Buchwald-Zięcina, p. 138). The inscription at the bottom of Sigismund's portrait was painted on a strip of paper and was probably added later. It titles Sigismund king of Poland and brother of his predecessor Alexander Jagiellon (SIGISMVNDVS POLONIAE REX / ALEXANDRI POL. REGIS FRATER.), so it was added in 1506 (Sigismund was elected king on December 8 of that year) or later. The two portraits were obviously made by different painters, which is visible not only in the composition but also in the style of the painting. The effigy of Louis, although heavily restored, resembles portraits of Emperor Maximilian I (1459-1519), made by circle of Bernhard Strigel (d. 1528), court painter of the emperor (Kunstmuseum Basel, inv. 2276, and Dorotheum in Vienna, June 8, 2021, lot 4). He was depicted by Strigel in the famous family portrait of Maximilian and in a separate portrait, both in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (GG 832, GG 827). The earliest known portrait of young Louis, in the scene of Saint Ladislaus requesting the patronage of the Virgin Mary, is also attributed to Strigel (Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, inv. 7502). A portrait of him is also attributed to the Habsburg court painter in Brussels - Bernard van Orley (Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, inv. 77.6), who did not have the opportunity to meet the king in person. Therefore Orley or his workshop based on other effigies. A similar portrait by Bernard van Orley, clearly depicting the same man, is in the Lázaro Galdiano Museum in Madrid (oil on panel, 26.5 x 37 cm, inv. 02710). The man's pose, costume and jewelry are truly regal, which is why this "Portrait of a gentleman" (Retrato de caballero) was identified earlier as depicting Christian II of Denmark (1481-1559), however "this identification seems unfounded when compared with the portraits of the sovereign made in 1515 (Sittow) and 1523 (Cranach)" (esta identificación parece desprovista de fundamento al confrontarlo con los retratos del soberano realizados en 1515 (Sittow) y 1523 (Cranach), according to the catalog note). On the reverse is a Latin inscription: A . FRVCTIBVS. EORVM./. COGNOSCETIS. EOS ("You will know them by their fruits", Matthew, 7:15-20). The painting was acquired, through Luis Tristan, from the Duke of Ánsola in 1934, so an earlier provenance from the Spanish royal collection is possible. Through his marriage to Mary of Austria (1505-1558), also known as Mary of Hungary (later governor of the Habsburg Netherlands), Louis was a brother-in-law of Emperor Charles V (1500-1558), who frequently resided in Spain. Besides the mentioned portrait by Orley or circle in Budapest, in the Hungarian capital there are also two other portraits of Louis, apparently made by Netherlandish painters, both kept in the Hungarian National Museum (inv. MNB-letét 1, inv. 1391). One of them is dated "1526" (M D / XXVI), the other is undated, but it resembles the full-length portrait of Louis in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, which, according to the inscription, was made according to the original from 1525 (LVDOVICVS REX HUNGARIÆ / ET BOHEMIÆ. ÆTATIS. 20. / ANNO 1525, NMGrh 596). In the Stockholm portrait, like his uncle Sigismund I from the same series (NMGrh 570) and unlike the effigy of his brother-in-law Ferdinand I (NMGrh 598), he does not wear any order of the Golden Fleece. The style of Sigismund's portrait greatly resembles the profile portraits of Mary of Burgundy (1457-1482), first wife of Emperor Maximilian I, both kept at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (GG 4400, GG 4402). These paintings are attributed to Niklas Reiser, an Austrian painter, active between 1498 and 1512 in Schwaz near Innsbruck. The portraits of Mary are dated around 1500, almost twenty years after her death. Stylistically close is also the profile portrait of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria (1503-1564), attributed to the South German school (Kunsthistorisches Museum, GG 6914), which, according to the inscription (top in the center: REX.PHILIPVS), depicts Philip the Handsome (1478-1506), Duke of Burgundy and King of Castile (son of Mary of Burgundy). The Wawel portrait is very unique for Sigismund's iconography, and does not resemble any other known effigy of the Jagiellon. Fortunately, the inscription was added, otherwise the model would be considered a man from Austria or Germany. For many art historians, the equation is simple: Germanic painter, therefore the model must also be Germanic. This is another factor contributing to the fact that fewer effigies of monarchs and aristocrats from Central Europe, particularly multicultural Poland-Lithuania, are known today. 
Portrait of Crown Prince Sigismund Jagiellon (1467-1548), Duke of Głogów by Niklas Reiser, ca. 1499-1506, Wawel Royal Castle.
Portrait of Louis II Jagiellon (1506-1526), King of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia by circle of Bernhard Strigel, ca. 1525, Wawel Royal Castle.
Portrait of Louis II Jagiellon (1506-1526), King of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia by Bernard van Orley, ca. 1525, Lázaro Galdiano Museum in Madrid.
Disguised portraits of Casimir of Brandenburg-Kulmbach by Jacopo de' Barbari
"The person depicted does not appear as an ideal heavenly figure, but like a human being of flesh and blood" (Der Porträtierte wirkt nicht wie eine himmlische Idealfigur, sondern wie ein Mensch aus Fleisch und Blut), comments the author of the catalog note for a small painting by Jacopo de' Barbari representing Christ, now kept at the Klassik Stiftung Weimar (panel, 32.3 x 25.4 cm, inv. G2, signed with a caduceus and monogram I A [D B]). The painter, described as Venetian by his contemporaries, including Albrecht Dürer (einen man Jacobus genent, van Venedig geporn, ein liblicher moler), captured the specific facial features of a model, which was often the case in Renaissance painting.
The painting comes from the collection of Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna (1786-1859), donated in 1838, who acquired it in Germany or Russia. It is also considered to come from the collection of the merchant Paulus II Praun (1548-1616), who died in Bologna, later transferred to Nuremberg (compare "Catalog des Grossh. Museums zu Weimar", p. 21). It is interesting to note that the painter or his workshop created a copy of this painting, which was however painted with cheaper pigments, notably with very less blue color (tempera on panel, 34 x 25.5 cm, Dorotheum in Salzburg, March 27, 2018, lot 3). Barbari, who moved to Germany in 1500, used the same model in another similar painting of Blessing Christ, now in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden (oil, transferred from panel to canvas, 61 x 48 cm, inv. Gal.-Nr. 57), which comes from the Elector's Art Chamber in Dresden (added around 1588), and half a century later, in 1553, Lucas Cranach the Elder (ca. 1472-1553) or his son Lucas Cranach the Younger (1515-1586), copied the painting (or a copy of it) in a woodcut describing it as "Effigy of Our Savior Jesus Christ painted fifty years ago by the most excellent artist Iacobo de Barbaris Italo, recently copied, Wittenberg 1553" (Effigies Salvatoris Nostri lesv / Christi ante L. Annos Picta a Praestantissimo Artifice / Iacobo de Barbaris Italo, recens de exemplo illo foeliciter expressa / Vuitenbergae Anno 1553, British Museum, 1864,1210.489), signed with the winged serpent within the image. All these elements (specific facial features of the model, copies, as well as provenance from aristocratic collections), indicate that the effigies are portraits disguised as Christ rather than purely religious paintings. At first, Jacopo was employed as a "portrait painter and miniaturist" (Contrafeter und Illuminist) from April 8, 1500 in Nuremberg by king (and later emperor) Maximilian I. There he met Albrecht Dürer, who later reported that Jacopo de' Barbari had introduced him to the theory of proportion in painting. Barbari is also considered as a teacher of Hans von Kulmbach and Matthias Grünewald. From 1503 to 1505, he worked as court painter to Frederick the Wise (1463-1525), elector of Saxony. The man in the paintings bears a striking resemblance to Casimir of Brandenburg-Kulmbach (1481-1527), based on his portrait by Hans von Kulmbach in the Alte Pinakothek (inv. 9482, signed and dated: MARGGRAVE • CASIMIR • HET • DISE • GESTALT • ALS • ER • WAS • / DREISSICK • IAR • ALT • C • 1511 / HK). The eldest son of Sophia Jagiellon (1464-1512), received his first name in honor of his maternal grandfather, King Casimir IV Jagiellon (1427-1492). In 1498 Casimir's father Frederick I granted him the position of stadtholder of the margraviate and from 1502 he was involved in disputes with the imperial city of Nuremberg. Earlier, in May 1494, even Sophia's brothers, Vladislaus II (1456-1516), king of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, and John I Albert (1459-1501), king of Poland, had intervened in Frederick's disputes with Nuremberg. As a vassal of Emperor Maximilian I, who later married the emperor's niece, Susanna of Bavaria (1502-1543), Casimir was undoubtedly a frequent guest at Maximilian's court. His portrait by Kulmbach was painted either in Kraków, where the painter arrived in 1509, or in Nuremberg. Another portrait-like effigy of a Christian saint, made by Barbari, is in the Slovak National Museum in Bratislava, Castle Betliar (oil on panel, 51.4 x 40 cm, inv. VU 316). It represents the Anglo-Saxon king Oswald of Northumbria, venerated as a saint of whom there was a particular cult in the Middle Ages. Saint Oswald was often portrayed with a pet raven which carried his ring to the Wessex princess he intended to marry. The painting is signed with a caduceus and the number [5]00 on the left probably refers to the date of creation - 1500. It comes from the collection of the Hungarian noble Andrássy family. From the mid-19th century, the painting has long been considered as an effigy of a woman - Elizabeth Szilágyi (d. 1483), mother of King Matthias Corvinus (1443-1490) and was even published as such in 1857 in "The Hunyadi Era in Hungary" (Hunyadiak kora Magyarországon, XII) by József Teleki. The identification was linked to the coat of arms of the Hunyadis, which represents a raven (corvus in Latin) with a gold ring in its beak. In 1500, on the death of Leonard (Leonhard von Görz, 1444-1500), the last descendant of the junior branch of the counts of Gorica/Gorizia, Maximilian I succeeded to Gorizia, Gradiska, Pazin (Mitterburg), and the Puster Valley. Shortly after the death of his second wife Paola Gonzaga (1464-1496), daughter of Ludovico III Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, Count Leonard concluded an inheritance contract with Maximilian regarding the county (February 27, 1497). In the event of Leonard's death without children, the county was to be incorporated into the Habsburg domains. It appears that the fifty-three-year-old count was hoping for a third marriage. After his death Maximilian sent troops to occupy Gorizia to prevent Venice from claiming his newly inherited lands. The facial features of Saint Oswald resemble those of Count of Gorica from his votive statue by Master of the Sonnenberg-Künigl Altar, created around 1470 (Tyrolean State Museum "Ferdinandeum" in Innsbruck). The Count of Gorica was represented in a splendid costume embroidered with pearls, kneeling as a donor in the scene of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, painted by Simon von Taisten around 1495 (Chapel of Bruck Castle in Lienz). 
Portrait of a man as Saint Oswald, most probably Count Leonard of Gorica (1444-1500), by Jacopo de' Barbari, ca. 1500, Slovak National Museum.
Christ bearing the features of Casimir of Brandenburg-Kulmbach (1481-1527) by Jacopo de' Barbari, ca. 1503, Klassik Stiftung Weimar.
Christ bearing the features of Casimir of Brandenburg-Kulmbach (1481-1527) by workshop of Jacopo de' Barbari, ca. 1503, Private collection.
Christ bearing the features of Casimir of Brandenburg-Kulmbach (1481-1527) by Jacopo de' Barbari, ca. 1503, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.
Christ bearing the features of Casimir of Brandenburg-Kulmbach (1481-1527) by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger after Jacopo de' Barbari, 1553, British Museum. © The Trustees of the British Museum
Venetian portraits by Albrecht Dürer and portraits of Bishop Erazm Ciołek and Agnieszka Ciołkowa
In 1923, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna acquired a portrait of a young "Venetian woman" by Albrecht Dürer from the collection of Witold Klemens Wańkowicz (1888-1948) in Warsaw, signed with a monogram and dated '1505'. Earlier it was most probably in the Potocki collection and in second half of the 18th century the portrait was owned by Gottfried Schwartz (1716-1777), Mayor of Gdańsk, then the main port of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It is possible that the "Venetian woman" arrived to Poland already in the 16th century.
Dürer, famous painter and printmaker, arrived in Venice in the late autumn of 1505. As a son of a goldsmith, also Albrecht or Adalbert, who was born around 1427 in Ajtós, near Gyula in Hungary, he undoubtedly had some links with the Jagiellonian elective monarchies. Elder brother of king Sigismund I, Vladislaus II, ruled in Hungary from 1490. The reason for the trip to Venice is unknown. Perhaps Dürer wanted not only to make money, but was also going to solve the dispute over reprints and copies of his engravings by the artist Marcantonio Raimondi. He also received a commission from the German merchants based at the Fondaco dei Tedeschi to make a painting for their parish church - the Feast of the Rosary, now in the National Gallery in Prague. By the beginning of the 16th century, Venice become one of the main printing and publishing centers in Europe. Although the first printing house was probably established in Kraków as early as 1465, in the less densely populated Poland-Lithuania printing was still developing at that time, therefore many important publications were published in Venice. The printing shops there offered better quality and were undoubtedly much more competitive. In 1501 Sebastian Hyber, a citizen of Kraków (impensis Sebastiani Hyber Co[n]civis Kracovie[n]sis), publishes Viaticum Wratislaviense in Venice for the diocese of Wrocław. Four years later, in 1505, the same Hyber, together with Jan Haller from Rothenburg, undertakes to publish a missal for the Wrocław diocese (Missale Wratislavien[se]) in Kraków. The privilege for the sale of the missal granted by John V Thurzo, Bishop of Wrocław (and a son of a Hungarian nobleman), together with his coat of arms and effigy of Saint Stanislaus was included in the missal. In 1505 Haller obtained from the Kraków chapter the privilege for the exclusive sale of breviaries imported from Venice and on September 30, that year, Haller's publishing house was granted a royal privilege for the exclusive printing of state printed matter (after "Drukarze dawnej Polski od XV do XVIII wieku" by Alodia Kawecka-Gryczowa, Volume 1, Issue 1, p. 330). Both Haller and Hyber were undoubtedly interested in the work of a well-known graphic artist active in Venice at the time - Albrecht Dürer. Jan Haller become a citizen of Kraków in 1491 and married Barbara Kunosch, the daughter of a wealthy Kraków furrier and he made a fortune on trading wine and Hungarian copper. Of Hyber, also Hübner or Hybner, very little is known. Judging by his name, he belonged to the German-speaking community in the capital of Poland. Both undoubtedly traveled frequently to Venice. In the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, a city once in the Republic of Venice, there is a portrait of a red-headed man by Albrecht Dürer or his workshop, created in about 1505. It was acquired in 1866 from Guglielmo Lochis' collection. The man in the picture is holding arrows and according to the inscription in a golden halo around his head - SANCTVS SEBASTIANVS MARTYR, he was depicted as Saint Sebastian. Among Venetian artists active at that time in Poland-Lithuania were goldsmith and jeweler of king Alexander Jagiellon (1461-1506), Hieronim Loncza or Leoncza (Hieronimus Leoncza aurifer), confirmed in Kraków in 1504 and in 1505, and his son Angelo. The Venetian glass workshops in Murano were the main suppliers of high-quality glass to the Polish-Lithuanian royal court. A Venetian goblet belonging to Alexander Jagiellon with the heraldic symbols of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, created between 1501-1502, is in the Jagiellonian University Museum in Kraków and Bishop Erazm Ciołek ordered a whole service in Venice for Alexander (after "Z kręgu badań nad związkami polsko-weneckimi w czasach jagiellońskich" by Ewelina Lilia Polańska). Also other works of art were commissioned in Venice since the Middle Ages. Marble tomb monument of King Ladislaus II Jagiello (Jogaila of Lithuania) in the Wawel Cathedral, carved in about 1421, is attributed to an artist from Northern Italy, and, according to the hypothesis of Juliusz Chrościcki, Venetian painter Jacopo Bellini created around 1444 the design for the tomb of his son Ladislaus of Varna. The royal secretary and tutor to the sons of King Casimir IV Jagiellon, including mentioned Alexander and Sigismund I, Callimachus (Filippo Buonaccorsi, a Venetian after his father), eminently known as a homoerotic poet and a diplomat, is said to have returned from his mission to Venice in 1486 with his portrait probably made by Giovanni Bellini. In 1505, a young royal scribe Jan Dantyszek (1485-1548) from Gdańsk, who received a scholarship from the king, went to Italy to deepen humanistic studies. Having reached Venice, he boarded a ship and went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land (after "Polacy na morzach i oceanach: Do roku 1795" by Jerzy Pertek, p. 79). That same year also Erazm Ciołek (1474-1522), known as Vitellius, Bishop of Płock, diplomat and patron of arts who amassed a large collection of books, visited Venice on his way to Rome. Some minatures in his beautiful missal (Missale Polonicum), created in about 1515 (National Library of Poland, Rps 3306 III), were inspired by Dürer's engravings. The popularity of Dürer's prints in Poland-Lithuania is perfectly illustrated by the case of the Prayer Books of Sigismund I the Old and his second wife Bona Sforza by Stanisław Samostrzelnik (British Library and Bodleian Library) in which also many scenes were inspired by his works. Another example is the so-called Trilogy of Piotr Wedelicki in the Museum of the Warsaw Archdiocese, a collection of Dürer's woodcuts: the Apocalypse (1498) - 15 woodcuts, Large Passion (1498-1510) - 11 woodcuts, the life of the Virgin (1501-1511) - 20 woodcuts, created for Piotr Wedelicki (1483-1544) from Oborniki near Poznań, a physician at the court of Sigismund I and Bona Sforza and a rector of the Kraków Academy. On Ciołek's initiative the Synod of 1506 decided that not only missals and breviaries should be printed, but also synodal statutes and agendas of the Diocese of Płock. It was probably he who commissioned the printing of the Płock Breviary (Breviarium Plocense) in Venice in 1506 (a unique copy from the National Library in Warsaw burned down during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944). In 1520 another Płock Breviary was printed in Venice and almost simultaneously in Kraków a missal for the Płock diocese. After the death of Bishop Ciołek in 1522, his magnificent collection of books, including many incunabula, mainly Venetian, became the property of the Collegiate Church in Pułtusk (after "Miejsce Płocka w kulturze średniowiecznej Polski" by Stefan Krzysztof Kuczyński, p. 25). One of the most sublime examples of his patronage is the Kraków Pontifical (Pontificale Cracoviense), created between 1506-1518 by anonymous master called the Master of the Bright Mountain Missal (considered sometimes to be Maciej Ryczyński), today in the Czartoryski Library (1212 V Rkps), with the scene of the Crucifixion being particularly beautiful and comparable to the works of Dürer (possibly created by young Samostrzelnik, as stylistically different from the others). Most of the miniatures in the Pontifical depict various activities of the bishop, like pontifical blessing or blessing of the image of the Virgin, the life of the Virgin, and the coronation and enthronement of the king, two, however, are particularly intriguing. One is a visitation of the construction of the church by the founder, the other is portrait-like miniature of Saint Agnes, the only female saint in the Pontifical. If we consider all miniatures as the accurate observation of real people and events from Ciołek's life including Coronation of the King of Poland (Accipe coronam Regni) as depicting the coronation of Alexander Jagiellon in 1501 or Sigismund I in 1507, also these two miniatures are closely related to him. Ciołek was the founder of many new churches, so the visitation of the construction of the church depicts him in princely attire in the company of his courtiers. The woman in guise of Saint Agnes was apparently very close to him, so that he ordered to put her image in the Pontifical. This effigy can be compared to Young woman with unicorn by Raphael (Galleria Borghese in Rome), created in about 1505-1506, and considered to be the effigy of Giulia Farnese (1474-1524), a mistress to Pope Alexander VI. Erazm was in Rome when this painting was created and his mother as well as his relative's wife, both were named Agnieszka, that is Agnes. The woman from the miniature is too young to be his mother and elderly women at the time, especially widows, wore bonnets, so she should be identified as Agnieszka Ciołkowa née Zasańska (Vitreator), who died in 1518. Agnieszka was a wife of a Kraków burgher, Maciej Ciołek, who made soap. She was a mother of three sons: Erazm Ciołek, born around 1492, abbot of Mogiła Abbey and suffragan of Kraków, Stanisław, canon of Pułtusk and Płock and Jan, a doctor in Kraków. So was Agnieszka a mistress to the Bishop of Płock and her son or sons, were his sons, as was almost customary at the time? While in Rome, Erazm probably had the opportunity to admire the beautiful decorations of the Borgia Apartments, commissioned by Pope Alexander VI, where a fresco in the Hall of the Saints, created by Pinturicchio between 1491-1494, shows the pope's son Cardinal Cesare Borgia (1475-1507) in guise of Roman Emperor Maxentius and his daughter Lucrezia (1480-1519) as Saint Catherine of Alexandria in the scene of Dispute of Saint Catherine. The young woman from Dürer's painting is dressed in an Italian outfit and her hair is bleached in the Venetian style. She may have been the wife of a wealthy merchant or printer, like Haller or Hyber, or to be a Venetian noblewoman or courtesan who caught the eye of a famous humanist, like Dantyszek or Ciołek, the last option with the rich bishop being the most likely. 
Portrait of a young Venetian woman from the Wańkowicz collection by Albrecht Dürer, 1505, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of a man as Saint Sebastian, possibly Sebastian Hyber from Kraków by Albrecht Dürer or workshop, ca. 1505, Accademia Carrara.
Miniature portrait of Erazm Ciołek (1474-1522), Bishop of Płock in the scene of visitation of the construction of the church from the Kraków Pontifical by Master of the Bright Mountain Missal, 1506-1518, Czartoryski Library.
Miniature portrait of Agnieszka Ciołkowa née Zasańska (d. 1518) as Saint Agnes in the Kraków Pontifical by Master of the Bright Mountain Missal, 1506-1518, Czartoryski Library.
Crucifixion of Christ from Pontifical of Erazm Ciołek by Stanisław Samostrzelnik, 1506-1518, Czartoryski Library.
Portraits of Henrique Alemão and monarchs of Portugal by Netherlandish painters
On August 4, 1444 Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini (1398-1444), who insisted that Ladislaus III Jagiellon, King of Poland, Hungary and Croatia should break the treaty with the Turks, absolved the king of his oath given to the infidels with the power bestowed upon him by the pope. Cesarini did so after confirming that a fleet of Venetian galleys had set out for the Bosphorus to prevent the sultan from bringing in reinforcements by sea. Although Ladislaus and the majority of the War Council were in favor of peace, they wanted to comply with the papal will (after "Der Raub der Stephanskrone" by Franz Theuer, pp. 149-153). The decisive Battle of Varna took place on November 10, 1444 in present-day Bulgaria. Ladislaus led an outnumbered army against the Ottomans to attack. The battle ended in a crushing defeat of the Polish-Hungarian coalition and the king himself fell on the battlefield at the age of 20, his body was never found.
According to Turkish chronicles, Ladislaus' head was cut off and "to keep it from corruption, the king's head was immersed in honey". An envoy was sent from Venice, who was shown a preserved male head in Istanbul, however, it had bright curls, and the king was dark-haired (after "Odyseja ..." by Leopold Kielanowski, p. 19). Due to rumors that Ladislaus survived the battle, the interregnum after his death lasted three years and in 1447 his younger brother, Grand Duke of Lithuania Casimir IV Jagiellon, was elected and crowned. Around that time, the king's sarcophagus was also ordered in Venice, but probably due to the unsuccessful search for his body, it was not created. A drawing by the Venetian painter Jacopo Bellini showing the death of the king was most likely a design for one of the scenes to be placed on the royal tomb in the Wawel Cathedral (after "La vie et la mort de Ladislas III Jagellon ..." by Juliusz Chrościcki, p. 245-264). Ladislaus III was the eldest son of Ladislaus II Jagiello (Jogaila of Lithuania), King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, and princess Sophia of Halshany. He had no children and did not marry. The chronicler Jan Długosz alleged that "Ladislaus, King of Hungary and Poland, who was too inclined to the lust of men, himself was the principal author of the downfall of his whole army in his first and in that second campaign against the Turks, which he then continued, his incestuous and abominable pleasures" (ipsum Wladislaum Hungariae et Poloniae Regem suae et totius sui exercitus ruinae principalem auctorem fuisse, qui in marium libidinem proclivus, nec in priori sua contra Turcos, nec in ea secunda, quam tunc gerebat, expeditione incestus suos et abominabiles voluptates, in: "Joannis Długossii seu longini canonici ..." by Żegota Pauli, p. 729). This fragment is interpreted that the king was a homosexual (or bisexual). A letter found in the archives of the Teutonic Knights in the 20th century, dated 1452 (or 1472) and written from Lisbon by the Monk of the Predicant Order, Nicolau Floris to the Grand Master of the Order, indicates that King Ladislaus III managed to escape after the Battle of Varna and settled on a Portuguese island (vivit in insulis regni Portugaliae): "I personally heard from the owner of this letter, John the Pole, that you are a special friend of King Ladislaus, in another time honorable Sovereign and Lord, by the Grace of God, of the kingdoms of Poland and Hungary. I wish to reveal the miraculous news that king Ladislaus actually lives on the islands of the Kingdom of Portugal and I am his companion and comrade hermit" (after "Nieznana saga ..." by Jordan Michov, p. 36). This led to the identification of the king with a certain Henrique Alemão (Henry the German), one of the first settlers of Portuguese island of Madeira. Many Jagiellonian kings were fluent in German, as it was one of the languages of multicultural Poland-Lithuania and of Central Europe in general, which could be a possible explanation for this pseudonym. Henrique was also known as "Knight of Saint Catherine of Mount Sinai" (cavaleiro de Santa Catarina do Monte Sinai), which indicate that he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and there he become a member of dynastic knightly order of the de Lusignan family, which has existed since the 12th century. The Knights of this Order protected the roads and ensured the safety of pilgrims traveling to Mount Sinai. Madeiran nobles referred to Henrique as príncipe polónio or prince of the nação polónia, i.e. Polish nation (after "Uma nuvem num pote de barro" by Miguel Castro Henriques, p. 13). Little is known about him apart from that in 1457 a land was assigned to him under a sesmaria regime by João Gonçalves Zarco and confirmed in a letter by Prince Henry the Navigator and by King Afonso V of Portugal, that same year. He married a woman from Algarve called Senhorinha Anes de Sá. The couple had two children, Segismundo (Sigismund) Henriques (the true identity of Christopher Columbus, according to Portuguese historian Manuel da Silva Rosa), who was lost at sea on his way to Lisbon, and Bárbara Henriques, who married Afonso Anes do Fraguedo. Called to the court by the king, Henrique died in a landslide, in the Cabo Girão area, when he was returning from Algarve. Senhorinha Anes later married João Rodrigues. Henrique ordered the construction of the first chapel in Madalena do Mar between 1454-1457. A small painting from the church in Madalena do Mar, today in the Museu de Arte Sacra do Funchal, is believed to represent the founder of the first temple - Henrique Alemão and his wife Anes de Sá in guise of biblical parents of the Virgin Mary - Saint Joachim and Saint Anne, in a popular scene of Meeting at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem, upon learning that she will bear a child (oil on panel, 51 x 39 cm, inventory number MASF26). The rich costume of Saint Joachim and the portrait like depiction of their faces reinforce this interpretation. This work is generally dated to the last decade of the 15th century or early 16th century and representation as parents of the Virgin suggest that it was probably the children of the couple that founded the painting. Henrique was also depicted in the background in the scene of the Annunciation of the Angel to Saint Joachim. The man bears a striking resemblance to the alleged father of Henrique Alemão - Jogaila of Lithuania from his tomb in the Wawel Cathedral, possibly by circle of Donatello, created in about 1421, and painted effigies in the scenes of Adoration of the Magi (as one of the Magi) and Christ among the doctors (as one of the scholars) by Stanisław Durink, also in the Wawel Cathedral, created between 1475-1485 (Triptych of Our Lady of Sorrows). The shape of the nose and the downward-pointing mouth are almost identical. It is often said that children resemble their parents. The prayer book of King Ladislaus III Jagiellon (of Varna) dealing with divination by means of a crystal (crystallomancy), created in Kraków between 1434-1440 (Bodleian Library), is filled with effigies of the owner in different poses. In most of the prayers Ladislaus, the unworthy sinner and servant of God, prays for the angels to clarify and illuminate the crystal in order that he may learn all the secrets of the world (after "Angels around the Crystal: the Prayer Book of King Wladislas ..." by Benedek Lang, p. 5). It is another mysterious aspect of the king's life and patronage. What is also intriguing about the painting from Madalena do Mar is that it is attributed to the so-called Master of Adoration of Machico, anonymous painter, active in Antwerp in the last decades of the 15th century and beginning of the 16th century, and his works show the influence of Joos van Cleve, as well as the Master of 1518 (after "Arte Flamenga, Museu de Arte Sacra do Funchal", Luiza Clode, Fernando António Baptista Pereira, p. 56). So the painting is an import to Madeira, like the Adoration of the Magi with a donor of Odrowąż coat of arms by Master of 1518 was an import to Poland (National Museum in Warsaw). There are two other important paintings by Master of the Adoration of Machico in the same museum - Adoration of the Magi and Saint Nicholas. The first is the central panel of what was probably a triptych ordered for the Chapel of the Magi at the Parish Church of Machico, founded by Branca Teixeira, daughter of the first donatory captain of Machico (most likely disguised portraits of Branca's family, including her father Tristão Vaz Teixeira). The other comes from the House of Mercy in Funchal (possibly a disguised portrait of Diogo Pinheiro Lobo, first bishop of Funchal). The style of all these paintings can be compared with works attributed to Jan Joest van Calcar (d. 1519), a Dutch painter born around 1455 in Kalkar or Wesel in the Duchy of Cleves, who visited Genoa and Naples, among other places, especially the wings of the high altar in the St. Nicholas' Church in Kalkar. The mentioned museum in Funchal (Museu de Arte Sacra) is a veritable treasure trove of early Netherlandish paintings. Large triptychs and other works by painters such as Dieric Bouts (Saint James from the former Chapel of Santiago at Funchal Cathedral), Jan Provoost (panels with Annunciation scene from the Matriz da Calheta church), Joos van Cleve (triptych of the Incarnation from the Church of Nossa Senhora da Encaração in Funchal, Annunciation from the Church of Bom Jesus da Ribeira in Funchal and triptych of Saint Peter, Saint Paul and Saint Andrew, commissioned by Simão Gonçalves da Câmara, Funchal's third captain-major) and follower of Jan Gossaert (Virgin of Amparo from the chapel of Nossa Senhora do Amparo in the Funchal Cathedral) are on display. Commissioning artworks from Flanders was widely practised among Madeiran merchants throughout the 15th and 16th centuries and some of these works could be disguised portraits, while in others the effigy of a patron was included in the sacred scene in the popular form of a donor. Triptych of the Descent from the Cross with portrait of Jorge Lomelino, the only son of Giovan Batista Lomellini from Genoa, and his wife Maria Adão Ferreira by Gerard David or workshop and triptych of Saint James the Minor and Saint Philip with portraits of D. Isabel Silva and her husband Simão Gonçalves da Câmara and members of their family as a donors by Pieter Coecke van Aelst, are the best examples. Art historians outside of Madeira often forget that the successful painting workshops of the 16th century were above all well-functioning businesses which, in order to gain a customer and money, could not look only locally. These portraits in religious scenes were therefore based on drawings sent from Madeira, made by a local painter or a member of the workshop sent from Flanders to the island, because it is difficult to imagine that the whole workshop would move from Flanders or the whole family from Madeira will travel to the Netherlands just to pose for a painting. Other exquisite Flemish orders from Madeira were presented during an exhibition on the occasion of the 600th anniversary of the discovery of Madeira and Porto Santo in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon - "The islands of the White Gold. Art Commissions in Madeira: 15th-16th Centuries" (November 16, 2017 to March 31, 2018). "The introduction of sugar cane farming into the archipelago of Madeira towards the end of the first half of the fifteenth century, coupled with the subsequent large-scale development of its production, meant that sugar could be exported, at first through Lisbon and then directly, to the ports of Flanders. [...] The newly-formed local elites cemented their status by commissioning works of art - paintings, sculptures and silverware - from Flanders, the Portuguese mainland, and even from the Orient" (description by curators Fernando António Baptista Pereira, Francisco Clode de Sousa). Flourishing sugar industry and export attracted foreigners, Flemings and Italians, such as Lomelino from Genoa and Acciaiuoli from Florence. One of such Madeiran commissions not in Funchal, displayed during the exhibition in Lisbon, is the triptych of Adoration of the Magi with portrait of a nobleman Francisco Homem de Gouveia and his wife Isabel Afonso de Azevedo as donors by circle of Pieter Coecke van Aelst, created in the 1520s (Reis Magos Chapel in Estreito da Calheta). The other is a large triptych of Our Lady of Mercy in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon, created by Jan Provoost, who run two workshops, one in Bruges, where he was made a burgher in 1494, the other simultaneously in Antwerp (oil on panel, 155 x 145 cm - central panel, inventory number 697 Pint). It comes from the church of Saint John Lateran (igreja de S. João de Latrão) in Gaula and was purchased in 1876 from Agostinho de Ornellas from Madeira. The triptych is most likely tantamount to the painting mentioned in the will of the wealthy merchant and sugar producer, Nuno Fernandes Cardoso and his wife, Leonor Dias, who ordered the building of the church of Saint John Lateran, in 1511, in the their lands of Gaula. It is dated to around 1515. The figures kneeling in veneration in the lower part of the painting are identified as Pope Leo X (1475-1521) and King Manuel I of Portugal (1469-1521), based on attributes (crowns) and traditional iconography. Similar effigy of the king was included in another large painting ordered in Flanders - the Fons Vitae (Fountain of Life), attributed to Colijn de Coter and dated to around 1515-1517 (oil on panel, 267 x 210 cm, Museu da Misericórdia do Porto). He is accompanied by his second wife Maria of Aragon (1482-1517), followed by king's daughters from the first marriage Isabella of Portugal (1503-1539), future empress, and Beatrice of Portugal (1504-1538), future Duchess of Savoy. Consequently the women behind the king in the Lisbon triptych by Jan Provoost are his wife, two daughters and his sister, the widowed queen Eleanor of Viseu (1458-1525). The young age of the king's wife, in green dress, indicates that it was based on an earlier effigy and unlike other women, she wears no headdress, indicating that this is her "heavenly effigy". This woman bear a great resemblance to effigies of Manuel's first wife (and elder sister of the second) Isabella of Aragon (1470-1498), especially in the painting of Virgin of Mercy with the Catholic Kings and their family by Diego de la Cruz (Abbey of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas near Burgos). If the first wife was depicted as a donor near the king and her daughters, the second, Maria of Aragon, is depicted as the Virgin Mary. On October 7, 1515 Maria gave bith to her son Duarte (d. 1540), Duke of Guimarães. Later Duarte and his elder brother, Louis of Portugal (1506-1555), Duke of Beja, were depicted in guise of Christian saints - Saint Edward the Confessor and Saint Louis, King of France in paintings by Portuguese painter, today in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (431 Pint, 188 Pint). The family resemblance of two women - Madonna and the first wife of king Manuel, to mother of the two queens, Isabella I of Castile (1451-1504), is undeniable. The shape of their nose and lower lip as well as the hair color is very similar to that seen in Isabella's portrait by Juan de Flandes (Royal Palace of Madrid). Like in the Fons Vitae by Colijn de Coter, Isabella of Portugal, future empress, the first daughter of king Manuel and Isabella of Aragon, in dark dress, was represented first, closer to her mother and father. The same woman, in similar costume, was depicted in another painting attributed to Jan Provoost - a portrait, traditionally identified as Queen Isabella of Castile, today in the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven (oil on panel, 33.3 x 23.5 cm, 2020.37.4). It comes from the collection of German Emperor and King of Prussia Frederick III (1831-1888) and his wife Victoria, Princess Royal (1840-1901) in Schloss Friedrichshof (Friedrichshof Castle) in Kronberg im Taunus. Her attire is also similar to that visible in the Fons Vitae and facial features to the portrait of the empress by a follower of Titian from the English Royal collection, today in the Charlecote Park, Warwickshire (NT 533873, Charles II's inventory in Whitehall, number 223). Another interesting Flemish painting in the Museu de Arte Sacra in Funchal is very portrait like Saint Mary Magdalene, attributed to Jan Provoost (oil on panel, 216 x 120 cm, MASF29). It comes from the same church as effigy of Henrique Alemão and his wife - Church of Saint Mary Magdalene in Madalena do Mar, founded by Henrique. This large panel was commissioned by Isabel Lopes, according to her will dated 1524, intended for the high altar of the Church in Madalena do Mar. According to the terms of her will, the commission for the painting was to be completed within a maximum of two years of her death. Isabel Lopes was the maid of Dona Maria de Noronha, wife of Simão Gonçalves da Câmara, captain-major of Funchal. She was married to João Rodrigues de Freitas, a native of the Algarve and widower of Senhorinha Anes who, in turn, was the widow of Henrique Alemão. Exactly as in the triptych of Our Lady of Mercy by Provoost, it is also an effigy of a royal, and the face of the woman bears a strong resemblance to the portraits of Eleanor of Austria (1498-1558), third wife of king Manuel, by Joos van Cleve and his workshop (Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga - 1981 Pint, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna - GG 6079 and Musée Condé - PE 98). She became a widow in 1521. As Queen Dowager of Portugal, she went to Xabregas (or Enxobregas), where she lived almost like a nun and left Portugal in May 1530 to marry King Francis I of France. Around that time, Eleanor's younger sister, Catherine of Austria (1507-1578), who married her cousin, King John III of Portugal (son of King Manuel I) in February 1525, was represented as Saint Catherine of Alexandria in a painting by the Portuguese painter Domingo Carvalho, which was sent to her relatives in Spain (Prado Museum in Madrid, P001320). Eleanor's husband, King Manuel I was also depicted in several religious scenes by Portuguese painters, most notably in the scene of Blessing of Saint Aukta by Pope Siricius from the St. Auta Altarpiece (Retábulo de Santa Auta) by Master of Santa Auta, possibly Cristóvão de Figueiredo, Gregório Lopes, Garcia Fernandes or several painters, painted between 1518-1525, founded by Queen Eleanor of Viseu (1458-1525), sister of King Manuel, as biblical King David in the Holy Trinity from the Monastery of the Trinity in Lisbon by Garcia Fernandes, painted in 1537, as one of the Magi in the Adoration of the Magi from the Monastery of Santos-o-Novo in Lisbon by Gregório Lopes, painted between 1540-1545, most probably commissioned by Jorge de Lencastre (1481-1550), Duke of Coimbra, cousin of King Manuel I, all three in the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon, and finally as Saint Alexis in the scene of Wedding of Saint Alexis from the Holy House of Mercy in Lisbon by Garcia Fernandes, created in 1541, today in the Museu de São Roque in Lisbon. For a long time the latter painting was identified as depicting the third marriage of King Manuel I to Eleanor of Austria and is now believed to depict only a religious scene. Both interpretations are disputed by historians, however, no one takes into account that both are correct. Like in the disguised portrait of Alemão, also here there is a secondary scene of penitent Mary Magdalene, praying naked in front of a cave. Such naked effigies were known since the ancient times. "During the Republican period nudity and other divine guises as well as the cuirass were worn by generals and politicians as signs of outstanding, even super-human achievements, but during the imperial period, when displayed in public spaces, these costumes were reserved for members of the imperial family and very few high officials. In people's houses, villas, and tombs, other rules applied and freedmen typically preferred the divine guise for their tomb statues" (after "A Companion to Roman Art. Roman Portraits" by Jane Feifer, p. 245). Following death of his handsome favourite and lover Antinous (ca. 111-ca. 130 AD), the Roman emperor Hadrian (76-138) deified him and founded an organised cult devoted to his worship that spread throughout the Empire. The worship of Antinous proved to be one of the most enduring and popular of cults of deified humans in the Roman empire, and events continued to be founded in his honour long after Hadrian's death - "we have more portrait statues of Antinous than of anyone else in antiquity except Augustus and Hadrian himself" (after "Mark Golden on Caroline Vout, Power and Eroticism", pp. 64-66). Naked and disguised sculptures of this divine gay youth can be found in major museums around the world, including the National Museum in Warsaw (inventory number 148819 MNW). The renaissance "rediscovered" many forgotten aspects of Roman culture, such as the concept of "divine nakedness" or disguised portraits. Leonardo da Vinci used the effigy of his lover and lifelong companion Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno (1480-1524), better known as Salaì, as the model for his Saint John the Baptist, Bacchus and Angelo incarnato (after "Leonardo da Vinci : l'Angelo incarnato & Salai ..." by Carlo Pedretti, Margherita Melani, Daniel Arasse, p. 201). Salaì, which means "little dirty one" or "little devil" and comes from Arabic (after "The Renaissance in Italy: A History" by Kenneth Bartlett, p. 138), portrayed himself as Monna Vanna (nude Mona Lisa, Museo Ideale Leonardo da Vinci), almost like a reminiscence of bust of Antinous Mondragone, similar to the Lemnian Athena (Louvre Museum). He also depicted himself as Christ the Redeemer and Saint John the Baptist in two paintings, now at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan (inventory number 2686 and 98). According to Derek Bair's theory (Discovering da Vinci), Leonardo's famous Mona Lisa is an anagram of Mon Salai ("My Salai" in French) - "Leonardo was known for word and title games and the Mona Lisa is no different. [...] Since they were two men and could not have a child together they, instead, painted one". Other researchers also claim that the image was primarily based on a young man who was Leonardo's apprentice and lover (after "Was the 'Mona Lisa' Based on Leonardo's Male Lover?" by Sarah Cascone). Yet the renaissance was also a time when the majority of people unreservedly believed in traditional canons, so Copernicus with his theory that the sun, not the earth, is the center of the universe (Copernican heliocentrism) was considered a fool. Martin Luther referred to Copernicus as that fool who wished "to reverse the entire science of astronomy" (Der Narr will die ganze Kunst Astronomiae umkehren, 1539) and he was seconded by Philip Melanchthon, who cited the Bible at length on behalf of the traditional world view (1549). In 1616 the Holy Office branded the heliocentric theory as "foolish and absurd philosophically, and formally heretical" (after "Man and Nature in the Renaissance" by Allen G. Debus, p. 98). Many valuable works of art in Portugal were destroyed in horrific earthquakes (in 1531, 1755, 1761 in Lisbon and in 1748 in Madeira), but many have also been preserved. In Poland, wars, invasions and the subsequent impoverishment of the country, when many paintings that survived were sold, were much more effective in stripping it of the paintings of the so-called European Old Masters, so now very few original works ordered by the clienst from Poland-Lithuania can be seen. Among the few surviving orders from the territories of today's Poland to the Netherlands are the Pruszcz Polyptych by Colijn de Coter and Saint Reinhold Altar by Joos van Cleve (both in the National Museum in Warsaw), as well as pentaptych with Passion of Christ by workshop Jan de Molder (Church of the Assumption in Żukowo). The Baptism of Christ group by Dutch sculptor Nikolaus Gerhaert van Leyden in St. Florian's Collegiate Church in Kraków was most likely also an import as his stay in Poland is unconfirmed. Eleanor of Austria mentioned, before marrying King Manuel and becoming Queen of Portugal, was a candidate to marry widowed King Sigismund I. Her grandfather, Emperor Maximilian I, through Brzetysław Świchowski, urged Sigismund to marry Eleanor or Bona, the niece of his second wife Bianca Maria Sforza, and to meet in Vienna or elsewhere about it, where Sigismund could get to know the two princesses and decide on his choice. The emperor would also like the wedding to take place in his presence, but in the meantime he asks Sigismund for a decision before St. Martin (November 11), as there are many competitors for the hands of the aforementioned princesses. The king wrote letters to the most important senators, and among them to Krzysztof Szydłowiecki, officially communicating the imperial proposals and asking for their opinion. Meanwhile, Jan Boner, the Wieliczka żupnik, had already arranged for a portrait of Eleanor. The effigy pleases the king enough, but he doubted that it was painted "fairly and honestly". So the king asks Szydłowiecki to send him another portrait of the princess, to compare both and thus form a better, more truthful opinion. As the princess was living in the Netherlands at the time (at her aunt's court in Mechelen), both must have been made by Netherlandish painters, although it cannot be ruled out that Szydłowiecki arranged another painter, from the German or Italian school or sent a painter from Poland. The king decided to choose Princess Eleanor and to inform the emperor about it through his envoy Rafal Leszczyński. He also declared to Maximilian that due to the war with Moscow the wedding could not take place in the summer of 1517. Nevertheless, due to "unforeseen obstacles" on the side of the Habsburgs, this marriage was not contracted, so Sigismund decided to marry Bona Sforza, niece of Empress Bianca Maria. If Eleanor's portrait pleased Sigismund only "enough", then the king writes to the chancellor about Bona's portrait that he liked it very much (bene nobis placet). Nevertheless, in the country there were many people who were reluctant to Sigismund's marriage project. The most influential of them was Archbishop Jan Łaski (1456-1531), who would gladly have married the king to Princess Anna of Masovia. He allegedly received as a gift 1,000 ducats for supporting this candidature from Princess' mother Duchess Anna Radziwill (1476-1522). Already in 1504, as a prince, when he was in Kraków, Sigismund "had his portrait painted and ... sent it to Anna, Duchess of Masovia" (after "Kanclerz Krzysztof Szydłowiecki ..." by Jerzy Kieszkowski, Volume 1, pp. 211-214, 715). He undoubtedly received the likenesses of the Duchess and her daughters. Such effigies were frequently exchanged, unfortunately almost all of them from the Jagiellonian epoch in Poland-Lithuania have been lost or forgotten. 
Portrait of Henrique Alemão (probably Ladislaus III Jagiellon) and his wife Anes de Sá as Saint Joachim and Saint Anne by Master of the Adoration of Machico, possibly Jan Joest van Calcar, 1490s or early 16th century, Museu de Arte Sacra in Funchal.
Central panel of triptych of Our Lady of Mercy with Queen Maria of Aragon (1482-1517) as Madonna and King Manuel I of Portugal (1469-1521) and members of his family as donors by Jan Provoost, ca. 1515, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon.
Portrait of Infanta Isabella of Portugal (1503-1539) by Jan Provoost, ca. 1515-1517, Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven.
Portrait of Eleanor of Austria (1498-1558) as Saint Mary Magdalene by Jan Provoost, ca. 1524-1526, Museu de Arte Sacra in Funchal.
Portraits of Simonetta Vespucci, Beatrice d'Aragona and Barbara Zapolya as Venus and as Madonna
Around 850 the church of Santa Maria Nova (New St Mary), was built on the ruins of the Temple of Venus and Roma between the eastern edge of the Forum Romanum and the Colosseum in Rome. The temple was dedicated to the goddesses Venus Felix (Venus the Bringer of Good Fortune) and Roma Aeterna (Eternal Rome) and thought to have been the largest temple in Ancient Rome. Virgin Mary was from now on to be venerated in ancient site dedicated to the ancestor of the Roman people, as mother of Aeneas, the founder of Rome. Julius Caesar claimed Venus as his ancestor, dictator Sulla and Pompey as their protectress, she was the goddess of love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity, and victory.
In April 1469, at age of sixteen, a Genoese noblewoman Simonetta Cattaneo (1453-1476), married in Genoa in the presence of the Doge and all the city's aristocracy Marco Vespucci from the Republic of Florence, a distant cousin of the navigator Amerigo Vespucci. After the wedding, the couple settled in Florence. Simonetta quickly became popular at the Florentine court, and attracted the interest of the Medici brothers, Lorenzo and Giuliano. When in 1475 Giuliano won a jousting tournament after bearing a banner upon which was a picture of Simonetta as a helmeted Pallas Athene, painted by Sandro Botticelli, beneath which was the French inscription La Sans Pareille, meaning "The Unparalleled One", and he nominated Simonetta as "The Queen of Beauty" at that event, her reputation as an exceptional beauty further increased. She died just one year later on the night of 26/27 April 1476. On the day of her funeral she was carried through Florence in an uncovered coffin dressed in white for the people to admire her one last time and there may have existed a posthumous cult about her in Florence. She become a model for different artists and Botticelli frequently depicted her as Venus and the Virigin, the most important deities of the Renaissance, both of which had pearls and roses as their symbol. Among the best are the paintings in the National Museum in Warsaw (tempera on panel, 111 x 108 cm, M.Ob.607) and the Wawel Castle (tempera on panel, 95 cm, ZKWawel 2176) in which the Virgin has her features, as well as the goddess from the famous Birth of Venus in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (tempera on canvas, 172.5 x 278.5 cm, 1890 n. 878) and Venus in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (oil on canvas, 158.1 x 68.5 cm, 1124). She was also very probably the model for the Venus in the Sabauda Gallery in Turin (oil on canvas, 176 x 77.2 cm, inv. 172), purchased in 1920 by Riccardo Gualino, thus known under the name of Venus Gualino. Giorgio Vasari, recalls that similar representations, produced in Botticelli's workshop, were found in various Florentine houses. If the greatest celebrity of this era lent her appearance to the goddess of love and the Virgin, it is more than obvious that other wealthy ladies wanted to be represented similarly. On 22 December 1476 Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, Bohemia and Croatia married other Renaissance beauty Beatrice d'Aragona of Naples, a relative of Bona Sforza, Queen of Poland (Bona's grandfather Alfonso II of Naples was Beatrice's brother). Matthias was fascinated by his young, intelligent and well-educated wife. Her marble bust created by Francesco Laurana in the 1470s (The Frick Collection in New York, 1961.2.86) is inscribed DIVA BEATRIX ARAGONIA (Divine Beatrice of Aragon) to further enhance her remote and ethereal beauty. Numerous Italians followed Beatrice to Hungary, among them Bernardo Vespucci, brother to Amerigo, after whom America was named (after Catherine Fletcher's "The Beauty and the Terror: The Italian Renaissance and the Rise of the West", 2020, p. 36). Corvinus commissioned works of art in Florence and the painters Filippino Lippi, Attavante degli Attavanti and Andrea Mantegna worked for him. He also recived works of art from his friend Lorenzo de' Medici, like metal reliefs of the heads of Alexander the Great and Darius by Andrea da Verrocchio, as Vasari cites. It is highly possible that Venus by Sandro Botticelli or workshop in Berlin was also sent from Florence to Matthias Corvinus or brought by Beatrice to Hungary. After Corvinus' death, Beatrice married in 1491 her second husband, Vladislaus II, son of Casimir IV, King of Poland and elder brother of Sigismund I. Two paintings of Madonna and Child from the 1490s by Perugino, a painter who between 1486 and 1499 worked mostly in Florence, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (tempera and oil on panel, 86.5 x 63 cm, GG 132, from old imperial collection) and in the Städel Museum (tempera and oil on panel, 67.7 x 51.5 cm, inv. 843, acquired in 1832) depict the same woman as the Virgin. Both effigies are very similar to Beatrice's bust by Francesco Laurana. The painting in the Städel Museum was most probably copied or re-created basing on the same set of study drawings by other artists, including young Lucas Cranach the Elder. One version, attributed to Timoteo Viti, was offered to the Collegiate Church in Opatów in 1515 by Krzysztof Szydłowiecki, who was initially Treasurer and Marshal of the Court of Prince Sigismund since 1505, and from 1515 Great Chancellor of the Crown. He was a friend of king Sigismund and frequently travelled to Hungary and Austria. Other two versions by Lucas Cranach the Elder are in private collections, including one sold in Vienna in 2022 (oil on panel, 76.6 × 59 cm, Im Kinsky, June 28, 2022, lot 95). The same woman was also depicted as Venus Pudica in a painting attributed to Lorenzo Costa in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest (oil on panel, 174 x 76 cm, inv. 1257). It was purchased by the Budapest Museum in Brescia in 1895 from Achille Glisenti, an Italian painter who also worked in Germany. Between 1498-1501 and 1502-1506 the fifth of six sons of Polish King Casimir IV Jagiellon, Prince Sigismund frequently travelled to Buda, to live at the illustrous court of his elder brother King Vladislaus II. On his way there his stop was Trenčín Castle, owned by Stephen Zapolya, Palatine of the Kingdom of Hungary. Stephen was married to Polish princess Hedwig of Cieszyn of the Piast dynasty and also owned 72 other castles and towns, and drew income from Transylvanian mines. He and his family was also a frequent guest at the royal court in Buda. At the Piotrków Sejm of 1509 the lords of the Kingdom insisted on Sigismund, who was elected king in 1506, to get married and give the Crown and Lithuania a legitimate male heir. In 1509 the youngest daughter of Zapolya, Barbara, reached the age of 14 and Lucas Cranach, then Court painter to the Duke of Saxony, was despatched by the Duke to Nuremberg for the purpose of taking charge of the picture painted by Albrecht Dürer, son of a Hungarian goldsmith, for the Duke. That same year Cranach created two paintings showing the same woman as Venus and as the Virgin. The painting of Venus and Cupid, signed with initials LC and dated 1509 on the cartellino positioned against a dark background was acquired by Empress Catherine II of Russia in 1769 with the collection of Count Heinrich von Brühl in Dresden, now in the State Hermitage Museum (oil on canvas transferred from wood, 213 x 102 cm, ГЭ-680). Its prior history is unknown, therefore it cannot be excluded that Count Brühl, a Polish-Saxon statesman at the court of Saxony and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, purchased it in Poland. The painting is inspired by Botticelli and Lorenzo Costa's Venuses. However, the direct inspiration may not have been a painting but a statue, such as that of Venus and Cupid discovered near the church of Santa Croce de Gerusalemme in Rome before 1509. This large marble sculpture, now kept at the Pio Clementino Museum (214 cm, inv. 936), which is part of the Vatican Museums, was in turn inspired by Aphrodite of Cnidus (Venus Pudica) by Praxiteles of Athens. According to the inscription on the base: VENERI FELICI / SALLVSTIA / SACRVM / HELPIDVS D[onum] D[edit] (dedicated by Sallustia and Helpidus to the happy Venus), it was long believed to represent Sallustia Barbia Orbiana, a third-century Roman empress, with the title of Augusta as wife of Severus Alexander from 225 to 227 AD, represented as Venus Felix and dedicated by her liberti (freed slaves), Sallustia and Helpidius. The portrait heads are also interpreted to represent unknown Sallustia as Venus and her son Helpidus as Cupid and the origins described as possibly coming from the temple near the Horti Sallustiani (Gardens of Sallust). Nowadays, the statue is considered to be a "disguised portrait" of Empress Faustina Minor (died ca. 175 AD), wife of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (compare "The Art of Praxiteles ... " by Antonio Corso, p. 157). It resembles another disguised statue of Faustina, represented as Fortuna Obsequens, Roman goddess of indulgent fate (Casa de Pilatos in Seville) and her bust in Berlin (Altes Museum). The second painting, very similar to effigies of Beatrice of Naples as Madonna, shows this woman against the landscape which is very similar to topography of the Trenčín Castle, where Barbara Zapolya spent her childhood and where she met Sigismund. This painting, now kept at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid (oil on panel, 71.5 x 44.2 cm, 114 (1936.1)), comes from the collection of the British art critic Robert Langton Douglas (1864-1951), who lived in Italy from 1895 to 1900, and was acquired in New York in 1936. She offeres the Child a bunch of grapes a Christian symbol of the redemptive sacrifice, but also a popular Renaissance symbol for fertility borrowed from the Roman god of the grape-harvest and fertility, Bacchus. Both women resemble greatly Barbara Zapolya from her portrait with B&S monogram. In the main altar of the 13th century church in Strońsko near Sieradz in central Poland, there is very similar version of this painting by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder. The Latin inscription on Venus in Saint Petersburg warns the man for whom it was intended: "Drive out the excesses of Cupid with all your strength, so that Venus may not take over your blinded heart" (PELLE · CVPIDINEOS · TOTO / CONAMINE · LVXVS / NE · TVA · POSSIDEAT / PECTORA · CECA · VENVS). 
Statue of Empress Faustina the Younger as Venus Felix, Ancient Rome, ca. 170-175 AD, Pio Clementino Museum.
Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci as Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist and an angel by Sandro Botticelli, 1470s, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci as Madonna and Child with angels by Sandro Botticelli or workshop, 1470s, Wawel Royal Castle in Kraków.
The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, 1484-1485, Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci as Venus by Sandro Botticelli or workshop, fourth quarter of the 15th century, Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.
Venus by Sandro Botticelli or workshop, fourth quarter of the 15th century, Sabauda Gallery in Turin.
Portrait of Beatrice of Naples as Venus by Lorenzo Costa, fourth quarter of the 15th century, Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.
Portrait of Beatrice of Naples as Madonna and Child with Saints by Perugino, 1490s, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Beatrice of Naples as Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist by Perugino, 1490s, Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main.
Portrait of Beatrice of Naples as Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist by Timoteo Viti or Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1490s, St. Martin's Collegiate Church in Opatów.
Portrait of Beatrice of Naples as Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1490s, Private collection.
Portrait of Barbara Zapolya as Venus and Cupid by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1509, The State Hermitage Museum.
Portrait of Barbara Zapolya as Madonna and Child with a bunch of grapes by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1509-1512, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.
Portrait of Barbara Zapolya as Madonna and Child against a landscape by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1509-1512, Parish church in Strońsko.
Disguised portraits of George the Bearded, Duke of Saxony and his wife Barbara Jagiellon by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop
Between 1530 and 1535, the Saxon Duke George the Bearded (1471-1539) rebuilt the old medieval Dresden Castle in the Renaissance style. He had the Georgenbau, which literally means "George's building", built with the Georgentor, i.e. "George's gate". The newly built wing was also named Georgenschloss ("George's castle") in honour of the builder. The building, which was later extensively modified and of which only fragments remain, was one of the most important buildings of Renaissance architecture in Germany. Its figurative architectural decoration, created in the workshop of the sculptor Christoph Walther I (1493-1546), originally from Wrocław in Silesia, was also of great importance. Duke George had the old, heavily fortified Elbe Gate on the left bank of the Elbe river leading to the bridge replaced by a residential building almost 30 metres high. All new arrivals in the ducal residence were greeted by a splendid north portal with a two-storey bay window decorated with portraits of the Duke, his wife Barbara Jagiellon (1478-1534) and their two sons John (1498-1537) and Frederick (1504-1539).
The Renaissance decorations were removed after the great fire of the castle in 1701 and the gate was remodelled. The current exterior appearance of the neo-Renaissance façade of the Georgenbau dates back to a reconstruction after 1899. Nevertheless, the engraving published in Nuremberg in 1680 ("Der Chur-Fürstlichen Sächsischen weitberuffenen Residentz- und Haupt-Vestung Dresden Beschreib ..." by Anton Weck, p. 71), shows the splendid decorations of the north and south facades of the Georgentor. The date above the portal of the north facade "1534" is the date on which the work was completed or begun, but it can also commemorate an important event. At the beginning of that year, the Duke was struck by two family tragedies: on January 25, his daughter Magdalena, Margravine of Brandenburg, died and on February 15, his wife Barbara died. The decoration of the gate was largely influenced by these two events, as the upper part, with its two tondos depicting the Duke and his wife, was accompanied by a large relief depicting the Dance of Death, now preserved in the Church of the Three Kings (Dreikönigskirche) in Dresden. Directly above the door there was a skull with crossed bones, the date and a fragment from the Bible: "But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world" (PER INVIDIAM DIABOLI MORS INTRAVIT IN ORBEM, The Book of Wisdom 2:24), which is interpreted that it refers to Adam, the first man and the "image of God". Above the inscription there was a niche with a depiction of the fratricide of Cain and lions holding the coats of arms of George and his wife. The most important part of the decoration was the tree of life (tree of the knowledge of good and evil) and the serpent that coiled around it. On either side of the tree were the figures of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit and the tree was a base from which rose the pillars of the bay window as the branches of the tree framing the portraits of the Duke, his wife and sons and the coats of arms of Saxony and Poland (compare "Das königliche Dresden …" by Friedrich Kracke, p. 13). Interpretations may vary, however this symbolism, particularly that of the tree of life and the first parents, was particularly important to the Duke since he ordered it to be placed on the main gate of his main residence. As trees and snakes played a special role in Slavic and Lithuanian mythology, this symbolism was undoubtedly also important for George's wife, the Jagiellonian princess Barbara. In Slavic mythology, the sacred and cosmic tree was the oak, whose branches supported the sky and were inhabited by the gods. The roots of the oak were entangled by the serpent of chaos and the guardian of the afterlife, while in the middle of the tree was the world inhabited by people. They believed that the oak contained three components of their world, three different realities, called: Prawia (driving force, reason), Jawia (reality, visible world) and Nawia (underworld), supervised by Veles, god of the earth, waters, cattle and the underworld (compare "Odradzanie się kultury słowiańskiej w Polsce" by Piotr Gulak, p. 13-15). In Lithuanian mythology and folklore, Žaltys (literally snake) was a household spirit, a symbol of fertility and prosperity, meeting him meant marriage or birth, and killing him was considered sacrilege. The Venetian envoy Pietro Duodo (1554-1610) confirms in his 1592 report to the Venetian Senate that a small black snake was still worshiped in Lithuania at that time (after "Zbiór pamiętników historycznych o dawnej Polszcze ..." by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Volume 4, p. 71). The portrait of George by the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder at Wawel Castle (oil on panel, 20.4 x 14.7 cm), was probably also created in 1534 because it recalls the dated effigy of the duke on the wing of the triptych in Meissen Cathedral (date "1534" on the central panel), probably commissioned after his wife's death. Two paper cards on the back of the painting confirm the identity of the sitter, one of which reads: HERTZOG GEORGE ZU SACHSEN / NATUS ANNO 1471. 27. AUG. / DENATUS D. 17. APRIL: A ° 1539. / AETATIS 68. / SEPULTUS MISNIAE, the other mentions that he was elector of Saxony (Georgius I elector Saxoniae barbatus ...), which is inaccurate. The painting has been a deposit of the Polish Academy of Learning in Kraków since 1938 and is considered to have been bequeathed to the Academy by Karol Boromeusz Hoffman (1798-1875), husband of Klementyna née Tańska (1798-1845). Hoffman had been living in Dresden since 1848, which is why it is believed that he acquired the painting there, but there is no evidence for this. Lepszy Leonard (1856-1937) thought that it might have come from the former collection of the Wawel Royal Castle (after "Studia nad obrazami krakowskiemi", p. 61). Such a provenance cannot be entirely excluded, since Barbara's brother, King Sigismund I must have had portraits of his brother-in-law. The inventory of the Radziwill collection from 1671 mentions two portraits of George's relatives, the electors John the Constant (1468-1532) and his brother Frederick III (1463-1525), most likely made by Cranach (items 486/6 and 487/7, compare "Inwentarz galerii obrazów Radziwiłłów z XVII w." by Teresa Sulerzyska). It is interesting to note that the Yearbook of Polish Numismatists and Bibliographers for 1869, published in Kraków in 1870, mentions that before May 13, 1869, Mrs. Julia Załęska née Konopka, owner of the Iskań estate near Przemyśl, donated "the portrait of George I, Elector of Saxony, husband of Barbara, daughter of Casimir the Great" to the Kraków Scientific Society (after "Rocznik dla archeologów, numizmatyków i bibliografów polskich", ed. Stanisław Krzyżanowski, p. 58), transformed in 1872 into the Academy of Learning. This means that Karol Boromeusz Hoffman owned a different portrait. The portrait of Duke George as a donor from a painting by Cranach, now in the National Art Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona (Thyssen-Bornemisza collection, inv. 110.a (1928.14.2)) was made around 1514, making it one of the oldest known effigies of the Duke. Maike Vogt-Lüerssen (Georg „der Bärtige“ (1471-1539), Herzog von Sachsen (Albertiner), kleio.org) believes that the Duke lent his facial features to his namesake - Saint George by Cranach in the same museum (inv. 111.b (1928.14.3)), which, together with the aforementioned panel, was part of a triptych whose central image is now lost. This seems very likely given the resemblance to the effigy as donor, the context and the fact that the Saint is looking at the viewer. Saint Anne from the panel with the portrait of Barbara Jagiellon as donor (inv. 111.a (1928.14.4)) is also looking at the viewer, which means that probably the duchess lends her features to this saint. It could also be a crypto-portrait of wife of Barbara's brother - Barbara Zapolya, because the facial features resemble the Venus in the Hermitage (inv. ГЭ-680). If this painting was created around 1515 and not 1514 as it is assumed, such depiction would be connected with a sudden death of the Polish queen that year. Like his Ernestine relatives Frederick III and John the Constant, Duke George not only used the same painting workshop, but also the same tradition of disguised portraiture in religious painting. Frederick III lends his features to Alphaeus and John to Zebedee in Cranach's The Holy Kinship, known as the "Torgau Altarpiece", painted in 1509 (Städel Museum, inv. 1398B and 1398C), and the two brothers appear in the same roles in a painting from around 1522 by Cranach's circle in Cologne (Wallraf-Richartz Museum, inv. WRM 382). It is possible that the Saint George from a 1506 woodcut by Cranach (Cleveland Museum of Art, inv. 1926.258) is a cryptoportrait of Frederick's favourite Degenhart Pfäffinger (1471-1519), since the man bears a striking resemblance to Pfäffinger as depicted on his marble epitaph erected by the Elector of Saxony in his honour around 1520. A woodcut from around 1511 depicting Pfäffinger's coat of arms was made by Cranach. Although there are many portraits of the Duke made after Barbara's death, the portrait as donor is very exceptional, indicating that many other disguised portraits of George await discovery. In well-confirmed effigies, the Duke displays a considerable variety of his appearances. In a woodcut by Cranach from around 1533 (Bassenge Auctions in Berlin, November 30, 2022, lot 5550) and in a 17th-century painting in the National Museum of Slovenia in Ljubljana (inv. N 13336), the Duke is bald and shaved, in a mentioned Wawel portrait he has a shorter beard, and in the painting in the Historical Museum of the City of Leipzig, attributed to Hans Krell, he has a longer beard. Cranach's portrait in the Coburg Fortress (inv. M.326), dated "1524", is now considered to depict Christian II, King of Denmark, hence the inscription, probably added in the second half of the 16th century, identifying the sitter as "Duke George of Saxony, died 1539" (Herzog Georg von Sachsen. obyt, 1539) is incorrect, although the author of the inscription probably knew another portrait of the duke, showing him when he still had hair. At the Museum of Fine Arts and Archaeology in Besançon there are two paintings depicting Adam and Eve on either side of the Tree of Knowledge on a dark background (panel, 139 x 53.9 cm, inv. 896-1-54a and 896-1-54b). They are traceable in Besançon since 1607 - in the inventory of the gallery of the Granvelle Palace, built for Nicolas Perrenot de Granvelle (1486-1550), between 1534 and 1547. It is very likely that these paintings belonged to Granvelle, a Burgundian politician who was a close advisor to Emperor Charles V. In 1515, George the Bearded sold Friesland to the future Emperor Charles V (then Duke of Burgundy). The paintings are dated to around 1508-1510, while the facial features of a man depicted as the first biblical man bear a striking resemblance to Duke George from Cranach's woodcut of around 1533 and the Ljubljana painting. The woman depicted as Eve is clearly the same as the one depicted in Cranach's Salome in the Bavarian National Museum (inv. R8378), which, according to my identification, is a portrait of George's wife, Barbara Jagiellon. Representations in the guise of first parents were popular in the Renaissance, as evidenced by the portraits of Joachim Ernest (1536-1586), Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst as Adam and his wife Agnes of Barby-Mühlingen (1540-1569) as Eve, painted around 1570 (Dessau Castle, inv. I-58 and I-59). The Adam in a painting by Cranach in Antwerp (Royal Museum of Fine Arts, inv. 42) bears the features of Ernest of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1497-1546), while Eve is his wife Sophia of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1508-1541), according to my identification. Cranach's 1509 woodcut Adam and Eve in Paradise features the coat of arms of his patron, Elector Frederick III (Cleveland Museum of Art, inv. 1925.115), so Adam's characteristic features are most likely those of the Elector. Due to the great similarity of the models, Cranach's painting in Warsaw (National Museum, 59 x 44 cm, inv. M.Ob.588 MNW) is considered a reduced version of the painting in Besançon. However, the painter changed their poses and Adam does not look at Eve, but at the sky or at the branches of a large tree, which, judging by the thickness of the trunk, undoubtedly covered the night sky and the stars. What is striking in this painting is that the tree is not an apple tree, typical for most paintings of this genre, especially in northern art, but an oak, the sacred tree of the Slavs and Baltic tribes. Eve-Barbara looks at the viewer and holds in her hands a mysterious fruit that looks more like an orange, typical along with the apple for such representations in Renaissance painting and which symbolizes the fall of man and his redemption (after "Signs & Symbols in Christian Art" by George Ferguson, p. 35). This painting comes from the collection of the Dukes of Hohenzollern-Hechingen, a branch of the family that ruled Brandenburg. Furthermore, near Hechingen is Hohenzollern Castle, the seat of the Hohenzollern family, reconstructed between 1850 and 1867 by the Brandenburg-Prussian and the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen lines of the Hohenzollern family. It is possible that the painting came from the dowry of Magdalena of Saxony, Margravine of Brandenburg, who probably took many effigies of her parents with her to Brandenburg or that it found its place there through other family connections. A good copy of the Warsaw painting is known, probably made by Cranach's workshop (panel, 30.8 x 23.3 cm, Neumeister in Munich, July 2, 2003, lot 530). It was in the collection of C. Mori in Paris before 1929. It was probably commissioned to be given to other members of the family or to be sent to important friendly courts in Europe. The copy sold in Mexico City (Morton Subastas, June 18, 2013, lot 121) was most likely made in the early 20th century in Paris or Wrocław, at the time when the painting now in Warsaw was in a private collection in France or in the collection of the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts (acquired in 1925). If the concept of these disguised portraits was the initiative of Duchess Barbara, which is very likely, the interpretations according to Slavic and Lithuanian mythology are more appropriate. Unlike her husband, whose confirmed portraits present a great diversity, Barbara was known before this article from a very uniform set of effigies, almost always depicted in a black dress and white bonnet. It should be noted, however, that her facial features were interpreted differently by Cranach's workshop, as evidenced by the painting as a donor in Barcelona and the portrait from around 1546 in the Collection of portraits of Saxon princes (Das Sächsische Stammbuch, p. 91, Saxon State and University Library in Dresden, Mscr.Dresd.R.3) 
Adam and Eve with disguised portraits of George the Bearded (1471-1539), Duke of Saxony and his wife Barbara Jagiellon (1478-1534) by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1508-1510, Museum of Fine Arts and Archaeology in Besançon.
Adam and Eve with disguised portraits of George the Bearded (1471-1539), Duke of Saxony and his wife Barbara Jagiellon (1478-1534) by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1508-1510, National Museum in Warsaw.
Adam and Eve with disguised portraits of George the Bearded (1471-1539), Duke of Saxony and his wife Barbara Jagiellon (1478-1534) by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, after 1508, Private collection.
Portrait of George the Bearded (1471-1539), Duke of Saxony by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1534, Wawel Royal Castle.
Portrait of Magdalena Thurzo by Lucas Cranach the Elder
One of the earliest and the best of Cranach's Madonnas is in the Archdiocesan Museum in Wrocław (oil on panel, 70.3 x 56.5 cm). The work was initially in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Wrocław and is believed to have been offered there in 1517 by John V Thurzo, Prince-Bishop of Wrocław, who also founded a new sacristy portal, considered to be the first work of the Renaissance in Silesia. Thurzo, who came from the Hungarian-Slovak-Polish-German patrician family, was born on April 16, 1464 or 1466 in Kraków, where his father built a smelter in Mogiła. He studied in Kraków and in Italy and he began his ecclesiastical career in Poland (scholastic in Gniezno and in Poznań, a canon in Kraków). Polish King John I Albert sent him on several diplomatic missions. Soon afterwards he moved to Wrocław in Silesia and become a canon and dean of the cathedral chapter in 1502 and Bishop of Wrocław from 1506.
Thurzo owned a sizable library and numerous works of art. In 1508 he paid 72 florins to Albrecht Dürer, the son of a Hungarian goldsmith, for a painting of Virgin Mary (Item jhr dörfft nach keinen kaufman trachten zu meinem Maria bildt. Den der bischoff zu Preßlau hat mir 72 fl. dafür geben. Habs wohl verkhaufft.), according to artist's letter from November 4, 1508. According to Jan Dubravius, he also owned Dürer's Adam and Eve, for which he paid 120 florins. In 1515, John's younger brother Stanislaus Thurzo, Bishop of Olomouc commissioned Lucas Cranach the Elder to create an altarpiece on the themes of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist and the Beheading of St. Catherine (Kroměříž Castle), while his other brother George, who married Anna Fugger, was portrayed by Hans Holbein the Elder (Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin). In 1509 or shortly after, he completed the reconstruction of the episcopal summer residence in Javorník. The medieval castle built by the Piast duke Bolko II of Świdnica was converted into a Renaissance palace from 1505, according to two stone plaques on the castle wall created by the workshop of Francesco Fiorentino (who later worked in Poland) in Kroměříž, one starting with the words "John Thurzo, bishop of Wroclaw, a Pole, repaired this citadel" (Johannes Thurzo, episcopus Vratislaviensis, Polonus, arcem hanc bellorum ac temporum injuriis solo aequatam suo aere restauravit, mutato nomine montem divi Joannis felicius appellari voluit M. D. V.). He also renamed the castle as John's Hill (Mons S. Joannis, Jánský Vrch, Johannisberg or Johannesberg), to honor the patron of the Bishops of Wrocław, Saint John the Baptist. In Thurzo's time, the castle became a meeting place for artists and scholars, including the canon of Toruń, Nicolaus Copernicus. Together with his brother Stanislaus, the bishop of Olomouc, he crowned the three-year-old Louis Jagiellon as King of Bohemia on March 11, 1509 in Prague. Bishop Thurzo had two sisters. The younger Margaret married Konrad Krupka, a merchant from Kraków and the elder Magdalena was first married to Max Mölich from Wrocław and in 1510 she married Georg Zebart from Kraków, who were both involved in financial undertakings of her father John III Turzo in Poland, Slovakia and Hungary. The painting of the Wrocław Madonna is generally dated to about 1510 or shortly after 1508, when Cranach was ennobled by Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, because a signet ring decorated with the inverted initials 'L.C' and Cranach's serpent insignia is one of the most important items in the painting. The castle on a fantastic rock in the background with two round towers, a small inner courtyard and a gate tower on the right match perfectly the layout and the view of the Jánský Vrch Castle in the early 16th century (hypothetical reconstruction drawings by Rostislav Vojkovský). Scaffolding and a ladder are also visible, the building is clearly being rebuilt and extended. The child is holding grapes, Christian symbol of Redemption, but also an ancient symbol of fertility. The woman depicted as the Virgin bears resemblance to effigies of George Thurzo (Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid and Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin), she sould be therefore identified as Magdalena Thurzo, who around that time was about to get married. 
Portrait of Magdalena Thurzo as Madonna and Child with a bunch of grapes against the idealized view of Jánský Vrch Castle by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1509-1510, Archdiocesan Museum in Wrocław.
Portrait of Barbara Zapolya as Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist by Lucas Cranach the Elder
"In the Christian world well through the Renaissance, males were associated with the head (and therefore with thinking, reason, and self-control) and females with the body (and therefore with senses, physicality, and the passions)" (Gail P. Streete's "The Salome Project: Salome and Her Afterlives", 2018, p. 41).
During Renaissance Salome became an erotic symbol of daring, uncontrollable female lust, dangerous female seductiveness, woman's evil nature, the power of female perversity, but also a symbol of beauty and complexity. One of the oldest representations of Dance of Salome is a fresco in the Prato Cathedral, created between 1452 and 1465 by Filippo Lippi, who also created some paintings for Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary. In April 1511, Sigismund informed his brother, King Vladislaus, that she wants to marry a Hungarian noblewoman. He chose Barbara Zapolya. The marriage treaty was signed on 2 December 1511 and Barbara's dowry was fixed at 100,000 red złotys. Barbara was praised for her virtues, Marcin Bielski wrote of her devotion to God and obedience to husband, kindheartedness and generosity. The painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder in Lisbon depict her as Salome wearing a fur-trimmed coat and a fur hat. It was offered to the Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon by Luis Augusto Ferreira de Almeida, 1st Count of Carvalhido. It is possible that the painting was sent to Portugal in the 16th century by the Polish-Lithuanian court. In 1516 Jan Amor Tarnowski, who was educated at the court of the Jagiellonian monarchs, and two other Polish lords were knighted in the church of St. John in Lisbon by King Manuel I. More than one decade later, in 1529 and again in 1531 arrived to Poland-Lithuania Damião de Góis, who was entrusted by King John III of Portugal with a mission to negotiate the marriage of Princess Hedwig Jagiellon, a daughter of Barbara Zapolya, with king's brother. In 1520, Hans Kemmer, a pupil of Lucas Cranach the Elder in Wittenberg, probably shortly after his return to his native town of Lübeck (first mentioned in the Town Book on May 25, 1520), created a copy or rather a modified version of this painting. He signed this work with a monogram HK (linked) and dated '1520' at the edge of the dish. It comes from private collection in Austria and was sold in 1994 (oil on panel, 58 x 51 cm, Dorotheum in Vienna, October 18, 1994, lot 151). Her costume is more ornate in this version, but the face is not very elaborately painted. The sitter's velvet fur-lined hat is evidently Eastern European and similar was depicted in a Portrait of a man with a fur hat by Michele Giambono (Palazzo Rosso in Genoa), created in Venice between 1432-1434, which is identified to represent a Bohemian or Hungarian prince who came to Italy for the coronation of Emperor Sigismund. Her left hand is unnatural and almost grotesque or "naively" painted (repainted in the Lisbon version most likely in the 19th century), which is an indication that the painter based on a study drawing that he received to create the painting and not seen the live model. Few years later Laura Dianti (d. 1573), mistress of Alfonso I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, was depicted in several disguised portraits by Titian and his workshop. Her portrait with an African page boy (Kisters Collection at Kreuzlingen) is known from several copies and other versions, some of which depict her as Salome. The original by Titian in guise of biblical femme fatale was probably lost. Paintings of Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist by Titian and his workshop (Uffizi Gallery in Florence and Musée Fesch in Ajaccio) are also identified to depict Laura as well as Saint Mary Magdalene by circle of Titian (Private collection). They all followed the same Roman pattern of portraits in the guise of deities and mythological heroes. The image of Herodias/Salome preserved in the Augustinian monastery in Kraków and the posthumous inventory of Melchior Czyżewski, who died in Kraków in 1542, lists as many as two such paintings. The popularity of such images in Poland-Lithuania is reflected in poetry. In the fragmentarily preserved works of Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński (ca. 1550 - ca. 1581) there are four epigrams on paintings, including "On the image of Saint Mary Magdalene" and "On the image of Herodias with the head of Saint John" (after "Od icones do ekfrazy ..." by Radosław Grześkowiak). 
Portrait of Barbara Zapolya as Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1510-1515, National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon.
Portrait of Barbara Zapolya as Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist by Hans Kemmer, 1520, Private collection.
Portraits of Barbara Zapolya and Barbara Jagiellon by Lucas Cranach the Elder
On November 21, 1496 in Leipzig, Barbara Jagiellon, the fourth daughter of Casimir IV Jagiellon, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania and Elizabeth of Austria, Princess of Bohemia and Hungary, that reached adulthood, married George of Saxony, son and successor of Albert III the Bold, Duke of Saxony and Sidonie of Podebrady, a daughter of George, King of Bohemia, in a glamorous and elaborate ceremony. 6,286 German and Polish nobles are said to have attended the wedding. The marriage was important for the Jagiellons because of the rivalry with the Habsburgs in Central Europe.
As early as 1488, while his father was away on campaigns in Flanders and Friesland, George, Barbara's husband, held various official duties on his behalf, and succeeded him after his death in 1500. George's cousin, prince-elector Frederick the Wise, was a very pious man and he collected many relics, including a sample of breast milk from the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 1509 the elector had printed a catalogue of this collection, produced by his court artist Lucas Cranach and his inventory of 1518 listed 17,443 items. In 1522, Emperor Charles V proposed engagement of Hedwig Jagiellon, the eldest daughter of Sigismund I, Barbara's brother, with John Frederick, heir to the Saxon throne and Frederick the Wise's nephew, as the elector most probably homosexual in relationship with Degenhart Pfäffinger, remained unmarried. The portrait of Frederick by circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder from the 1510s is in the Kórnik Castle near Poznań. On November 20, 1509 in Wolfenbüttel, Catherine (1488-1563), a daughter of the Duke Henry IV of Brunswick-Lüneburg, married Duke Magnus I of Saxe-Lauenburg (1470-1543). Soon after the wedding she bore him a son, future Francis I (1510-1581). Magnus was the first of the Dukes of Saxe-Lauenburg to renounce Electoral claims, which had long been in dispute between the two lines of the Saxon ducal house. He carried neither the electoral title nor the electoral swords (Kurschwerter) in his coat of arms. The electoral swords indicated the office as Imperial Arch-Marshal (Erzmarschall, Archimarescallus), pertaining to the privilege as prince-elector. On August 12, 1537, the eldest daughter of Catherine and Magnus, Dorothea of Saxe-Lauenburg (1511-1571), was crowned Queen of Denmark and Norway in the Copenhagen Cathedral. "That they may see a great kingdom and a mighty people, that they may bear their lord's queen under the stars, O happy virgin, happy stars who have borne you, for the glory of your country" (Ut videant regnum immensum populumque potentem: Reginam domini ferre sub astra sui, O felix virgo, felicia sidera, que te, Ad tantum patrie progenuere decus), wrote in his "Hymn for the Coronation of Queen Barbara" (In Augustissimu[m] Sigisimu[n]di regis Poloniae et reginae Barbarae connubiu[m]), published in Kraków in 1512, the queen's secretary Andrzej Krzycki. Queen Barbara Zapolya was crowned on February 8, 1512 in the Wawel Cathedral. She brought Sigismund a huge dowry of 100,000 red zlotys, equal to the imperial daughters. Their wedding was very expensive and cost 34,365 zlotys, financed by a wealthy Kraków banker Jan Boner. A painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder in the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen dated to about 1510-1512 shows a scene of the Mystical marriage of Saint Catherine (panel, transferred to canvas, 96.5 x 80.5 cm, inv. KMSsp731). The Saint "as a wife should share in the life of her husband, and as Christ suffered for the redemption of mankind, the mystical spouse enters into a more intimate participation in His sufferings" (after Catholic Encyclopaedia). Virgin Mary bears features of Queen Barbara Zapolya, similar to paintings in the Parish church in Strońsko or in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid (inv. 114 (1936.1)). The woman on the right, depicted in a pose similar to some donor portraits, is identified as effigy of Saint Barbara. It was therefore she who commissioned the painting. Her facial features bears great resemblance to the portrait of Barbara Jagiellon by Cranach from the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts in Wrocław, today in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (inv. 1312). The effigy of Saint Catherine bears strong resemblance to the portrait of Dorothea of Saxe-Lauenburg, queen of Denmark and daughter of Catherine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Duchess of Saxe-Lauenburg, in the Frederiksborg Castle, near Copenhagen. Described painting comes from the Danish royal collection and before 1784 it was in the Furniture Chamber of the royal Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen. The painting bears coat of arms of the Electorate of Saxony in upper part. The message is therefore that Saxe-Lauenburg should join the "Jagiellonian family" and thanks to this union they can regain the electoral title. A good workshop copy, acquired in 1858 from the collection of a Catholic theologian Johann Baptist von Hirscher (1788-1865) in Freiburg im Breisgau, is in the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe (panel, 43.5 x 32.5 cm, inv. 107). The painting is very similar to other Mystical marriage of Saint Catherine by Lucas Cranach the Elder, which was in the Bode Museum in Berlin before World War II, lost (panel, 95 x 76 cm, inv. 1970). In this scene Queen Barbara is most probably surrounded by her Hungarian and Moravian court ladies in guise of Saints Margaret, Catherine, Barbara and Dorothea. One such Morawianka, hence originally from Moravia, was later a court lady of Barbara's daughter, Hedwig Jagiellon (after "Królewna Jadwiga i jej książeczka do spowiedzi" by Urszula Borkowska, p. 85). It was purchased from a private collection in Paris, hence the provenance from the Polish royal collection cannot be excluded - John Casimir Vasa, great-grandson of Sigismund I in 1668 and many other Polish aristocrats transferred to Paris their collections in the 17th century and later. The copy of this painting from about 1520 is in the church in Jachymov (Sankt Joachimsthal), where from 1519 Louis II, King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia minted his famous gold coin, Joachim thaler. A detail visible on an old black and white photograph of the painting indicates that it was one of the many copies of this composition, one of which was also copied into the Jachymov Altarpiece. There is a brighter part indicating an exposed forearm of the Virgin near the Child's left hand in the lost painting, while logically this part of her hand should have been covered with red cloth, as in the Jachymov painting. This was probably a mistake, when working on a large royal commission, which went unnoticed. If the work was unique, for a particular client from Germany, such a defect could be much easier to point out and correct. Customers from more distant areas had difficulty making complaints, which is probably why this defect was not corrected. The woman in an effigy of Lucretia, a model of virtuous woman by Lucas Cranach the Elder, which was in the late 19th century in the collection of Wilhelm Löwenfeld in Munich (panel, 60 x 47 cm, Sotheby's New York, February 1, 2018, lot 10), is very similar to the effigy of Barbara Jagiellon in Copenhagen. It is one of the earliest of the surviving versions of this subject by Cranach and is considered a pendant piece to the Salome in Lisbon (Friedländer). Both paintings have similar dimensions, composition, style, the subject of an ancient femme fatale and were created in the same period. The work in Lisbon depicts Barbara Jagiellon's sister-in-law, Queen Barbara Zapolya. Similar effigy of Lucretia, also by Cranach the Elder, was auctioned at Art Collectors Association Gallery in London in 1920 (panel, 60.3 x 48.9 cm, Sotheby's New York, January 26, 2012, lot 34). The effigy of the Virgin of Sorrows in the National Gallery in Prague (panel, 63.1 x 47.2 cm, inv. O 528), which was donated in 1885 by Baron Vojtech (Adalbert) Lanna (1836-1909), is almost identical with the face of Saint Barbara in the Copenhagen painting. In 1634 the work was owned by some unidentified abbot who added his coat of arms with his initiatials "A. A. / Z. G." in right upper corner of the painting. On the other hand, the face of Madonna from a painting in the National Museum in Warsaw (oil on panel, 78.5 x 52 cm, inv. M.Ob.2542 MNW) is very similar to that of Salome in Munich. This painting is attributed to follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder and dated to the first quarter of the 16th century. As for the Warsaw painting, inspirations from Italian painting are indicated, as well as a fig held by the Child in his left hand, which is quite unusual, as it is generally considered a symbol of lust and fertility (compare "Signs & Symbols in Christian Art" by George Ferguson, p. 31). The effigy of Salome from the same period by Lucas Cranach the Elder, acquired in 1906 by the Bavarian National Museum in Munich from the Catholic Rectory in Bayreuth (panel, 72.5 x 54.3 cm, inv. R8378, on loan to the Franconian Gallery in Kronach), also depict Barbara Jagiellon. A modified copy of this painting by Cranach's workshop or a 17th century copist, possibly Johann Glöckler, with the model shown wearing a dress made of exquisite brocade fabric was in the Heinz Kisters collection in Kreuzlingen in the 1960s (panel, 34.8 x 24.5 cm). It is one of the many known variants of the composition. A reduced version of this "Salome", but without the head of Saint John the Baptist and depicting the model in a richer costume, was sold in Vienna in 2024 with an attribution to a follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder (oil on panel, 60 x 54 cm, Dorotheum in Vienna, February 6, 2024, lot 138-082018/0001). This painting is also considered to be a work of a 19th-century imitator of Cranach. Such copyists, such as Franz Wolfgang Rohrich (1787-1834), frequently copied original paintings, so even though the painting does not date from the 16th century, it can be considered a copy of a lost original. This painting bears a Latin inscription, which also appears to be original from the 16th century and refers to the perception of beauty and how "a head can be lost" (NON CAPVT IN TOTO FVERAT FORMOSI VS ORBE HOC / QoD DOCTA EXPALLET EMORITVRQ MANV). In the mentioned paintings, the model wears a richly decorated headdress, which resembles the Italian balzo of the 1530s. The balzo is assumed to be a fashion invention of Isabella d'Este, first documented in letters in 1509 and 1512. The Duchess of Saxony was depicted in a similar dress on the title page of the Marian Psalter by Marcus von Weida (1450-1516), published in Leipzig in 1515 (Der Spiegel hochloblicher Bruderschafft des Rosenkrantz Marie, der allerreinsten Jungfrawen: vff begere, der durchlauchtigen hochgebornen Furstin, vnd frawen [...] Barbara geborn auß königliche[m] Stam[m] czu Poln, Hertzogin czu Sachssen [...], Bavarian State Library in Munich, Res/4 Asc. 1031). This Psalter also reflects the her particular cult for the Virgin Mary. Possibly around that time or later, when her sister-in-law Bona Sforza ordered her portraits in about 1530, the Duchess also commissioned a series of her portraits as another biblical femme fatale, Judith. The portrait by workshop or follower of Cranach from private collection, sold in 2014 (panel, 73 x 52 cm, Auktionshaus Wendl in Rudolstadt, October 25, 2014, lot 4431), is very similar to the painting in Munich, while the pose essentially corresponds to the portrait of her niece Hedwig Jagiellon from the Suermondt collection, dated 1531 (Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, inv. 636A). George of Saxony and Barbara Jagiellon were married for 38 years. After her death on February 15, 1534, he grew a beard as a sign of his grief, earning him the nickname the Bearded. He died in Dresden in 1539 and was buried next to his wife in a burial chapel in Meissen Cathedral. 
Portrait of Queen Barbara Zapolya (1495-1515), Barbara Jagiellon (1478-1534), Duchess of Saxony and Catherine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1488-1563), Duchess of Saxe-Lauenburg as the Virgin and Child with Saints Barbara and Catherine by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, ca. 1512-1514, National Gallery of Denmark.
Portrait of Queen Barbara Zapolya (1495-1515), Barbara Jagiellon (1478-1534), Duchess of Saxony and Catherine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1488-1563), Duchess of Saxe-Lauenburg as the Virgin and Child with Saints Barbara and Catherine by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1512-1514, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe.
Portrait of Queen Barbara Zapolya (1495-1515) and her court ladies as the Virgin and Saints by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, ca. 1512-1514, Bode Museum in Berlin, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Barbara Jagiellon (1478-1534), Duchess of Saxony as Salome by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1512, Bavarian National Museum in Munich.
Portrait of Barbara Jagiellon (1478-1534), Duchess of Saxony as Salome by workshop or follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, after 1512 (17th century?), Private collection.
Portrait of Barbara Jagiellon (1478-1534), Duchess of Saxony by follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 19th century after original from about 1512, Private collection.
Portrait of Barbara Jagiellon (1478-1534), Duchess of Saxony as Judith with the head of Holofernes by workshop or follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1512-1531, Private collection.
Portrait of Barbara Jagiellon (1478-1534), Duchess of Saxony as Lucretia by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1512-1514, Private collection.
Portrait of Barbara Jagiellon (1478-1534), Duchess of Saxony as Lucretia by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1512-1514, Private collection.
Portrait of Barbara Jagiellon (1478-1534), Duchess of Saxony as the Virgin of Sorrows by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1512-1514, National Gallery in Prague.
Portrait of Barbara Jagiellon (1478-1534), Duchess of Saxony as Madonna and Child by follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, first quarter of the 16th century, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portraits of Elizabeth Jagiellon by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop
"Towns and villages are scarce in Lithuania; the main wealth among them are particularly animal skins, to which our age gave the names of Zibellini and armelli (ermine). Unknown use of money, skins take its place. The lower classes use copper and silver; more precious than gold. Noble ladies have lovers in public, with the permission of their husbands, whom they call assistants of marriage. It is a shame for men to add a mistress to their legitimate wife. Marriages are easily dissolved by mutual consent, and they marry again. There is a lot of wax and honey here which wild bees make in the woods. The wine use is very rare, and the bread is very black. Cattle provide food to those who use much milk" (Rara inter Lithuanos oppida, neque frequentes villae: opes apud eos, praecipuae animalis pelles, quibus nostra aetas Zibellinis, armellinosque nomina indidit. Usus pecuniae ignotus, locum eius pelles obtinent. Viliores cupri atque argenti vices implent; pro auro signato, pretiosiores. Matronae nobiles, publice concubinos habent, permittentibus viris, quos matrimonii adiutores vocant. Viris turpe est, ad legitimam coniugem pellicem adiicere. Solvuntur tamen facile matrimonia mutuo consensu, et iterum nubunt. Multum hic cerae et mellis est quod sylvestres in sylvis apes conficiunt. Vini rarissimus usus est, panis nigerrimus. Armenta victum praebent multo lacte utentibus.), wrote in the mid-15th century Pope Pius II (Enea Silvio Piccolomini, 1405-1464) in his texts published in Basel in 1551 by Henricus Petrus, who also published the second edition of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium by Nicolaus Copernicus (Aeneae Sylvii Piccolominei Senensis, qui post adeptum ..., p. 417). Some conservative 19th century authors, clearly shocked and terrified by this description, have suggested that the Pope was lying or spreading false rumors.
Elizabeth Jagiellon, the thirteenth and the last child of Casimir IV, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania and his wife Elizabeth of Austria (1436-1505), was most probably born on November 13, 1482 in Vilnius, when her mother was 47 years old. In 1479 Elizabeth of Austria with her husband and younger children, left Kraków for Vilnius for five years. The Princess was baptized with her mother's name. Just few months later on March 4, 1484 in Grodno died Prince Casimir, the heir apparent and future saint, and was buried in the Vilnius Cathedral. Casimir IV died in 1492 in the Old Grodno Castle in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. After her father's death Elizabeth strengthen her relationship with her mother. In 1495, together with her mother and sister Barbara, she returned to Lithuania to visit her brother Alexander Jagiellon, Grand Duke of Lithuania. When she was 13 years old, in 1496, John Cicero, Elector of Brandenburg intended to marry her to his son Joachim, but the marriage did not materialize and on April 10, 1502 Joachim married Elizabeth of Denmark, daughter of King John of Denmark. In 1504, Alexander, who became the king of Poland in 1501, granted her a jointure (lifetime provision), secured on Łęczyca, Radom, Przedecz and the village of Zielonki. Between 1505-1509, the Voivode of Moldavia, Bogdan III the One-Eyed, sought to win Elizabeth's hand, but the girl was categorically against it. In the following years, marriage proposals from the Italian, German and Danish princes were considered, and it was even planned to marry Elizabeth to the widowed Emperor Maximilian I, who was over 50 when in 1510 died his third wife Bianca Maria Sforza. In 1509 Princess Elizabeth purchased a house at the Wawel Hill from the cathedral vicars, situated between the houses of Szydłowiecki, Gabryielowa, Ligęza and Filipowski and her brother, king Sigismund I, commissioned in Nuremberg a silver altar for the Wawel Cathedral after victory over Bogdan III the One-Eyed, created in 1512 by Albrecht Glim. Elizabeth also raised the children of the king. Without waiting for a clear response from Emperor Maximilian, Sigismund and his brother Vladislaus II decided to marry their sister to Duke Frederick II of Legnica. First, however, Sigismund wanted to communicate with his sister for her opinion. "We have no doubts, that she would easily agree to everything that Your Highness and We will consider right and grateful", he wrote to Vladislaus. The union was supposed to strengthen King Sigismund's ties with the Duchy of Legnica. The marriage contract was signed in Kraków on September 12, 1515 by John V Thurzo, Bishop of Wrocław, who was replacing the groom. Elizabeth received a dowry of 20,000 zlotys, of which 6,000 were to be paid upon marriage, 7,000 on St. Elizabeth's day in a year, and the last 7,000 on St. Elizabeth's day in 1517. In addition, the princess was given a trousseau in gold, silver, pearls and precious stones, estimated at 20,000 zlotys, apart from the robes of gold and silk and ermine and sable furs. The husband was to transfer a jointure of 40,000 zlotys, secured on all income from Legnica and to pay her annually 2,400 zlotys. On November 8, 1515, Elizabeth set off for Legnica from Sandomierz, accompanied by Stanisław Chodecki, Grand Marshal of the Crown, priests Latalski and Lubrański, voivode of Poznań and bishop Thurzo. The wedding of 32-year-old Elizabeth with 35-year-old Frederick took place on November 21 or 26 in Legnica and the couple lived in the Piast castle there. On February 2, 1517, she gave birth to a daughter, Hedwig, who died two weeks later, followed her mother on February 17. The duchess was buried in the Carthusian church in Legnica and in 1548, her body was transferred to another temple in Legnica - the Church of St. John. A painting of Lucretia, the epitome of female virtue and beauty, by Lucas Cranach the Elder or his workshop was acquired by Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Kassel from the art dealer Gutekunst in Stuttgart in 1885 (panel, 41.5 x 28.5 cm, inv. GK 14). According to inscription on reverse of the panel it was earlier in private collection in Augsburg, a city frequently visited by Emperor Maximilian I. The tower on a hilltop visible on the left in the background is astonishingly similar to the dominant of the 16th century Vilnius, the medieval Gediminas Tower of the Upper Castle. Lucretia's pose, costume and even facial features are very similar to the portrait of Elizabeth's elder sister Barbara Jagiellon (1478-1534), Duchess of Saxony as Lucretia from Wilhelm Löwenfeld's collection in Munich. A study drawing for this painting by an artist from Cranach's studio, possibly a student sent to Poland-Lithuania to prepare initial drawings, is in the Klassik Stiftung Weimar (paper, 16.3 x 16.9 cm, inv. CC 100). The same woman was also depicted as reclining water nymph Egeria, today in the Grunewald hunting lodge in Berlin (panel, 58.2 x 87.1 cm, inv. GK I 1926). The painter most likely used the same template drawing to create both effigies (in Kassel and in Berlin). Egeria, the nymph of the sacred source, probably a native Italic water goddess, had the power to assist in conception. "Her fountain was said to have sprung from the trunk of an oak tree and whoever drank it water was blessed with fertility, prophetic visions, and wisdom" (after Theresa Bane's "Encyclopedia of Fairies in World Folklore and Mythology", p. 119). Medieval tower on a steep slope in the background is also similar on both paintings. This painting was presumably in the Berlin City Palace since the 16th century and in 1699 it was recorded in the Potsdam City Palace. It cannot be excluded that it was sent to Joachim I Nestor, Elector of Brandenburg or his brother Albert of Brandenburg, future cardinal, or it was taken from Poland during the Deluge (1655-1660). Initial drawing for this painting is in the Graphic Collection of the Erlangen University Library (paper, 7.6 x 19.6 cm, inv. H62/B1338). Another similar Lucretia was sold in Brussels in 1922 (panel, 41.5 x 27 cm, Christie's London, Auction 1576, December 3, 2014, lot 113). Brussels was a capital of the Habsburg Netherlands, a dominium of Emperor Maximilian. It is highly possible that his daughter Archduchess Margaret of Austria, Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands from 1507 to 1515, who resided in nearby Mechelen, received a portrait of possible stepmother. This portrait is also very similar to another portrait of Elizabeth's sister Barbara as Lucretia, which was auctioned in London in 1920. The Lucretia from Brussels was copied in another painting, today in Veste Coburg (panel, 27 x 17, inv. M.039), which according to later inscription is known as Dido the Queen of Carthage. It was initially in the Art Cabinet (Kunstkammer) of the Friedenstein Palace in Gotha, like the portrait of Elizabeth's niece Hedwig Jagiellon by Cranach from 1534. The costume of Dido is very similar to the dress of Salome visible in a painting of the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist (Kroměříž Castle), dated '1515' and created by Cranach for Stanislaus Thurzo, Bishop of Olomouc, brother of Bishop John V Thurzo. This painting bears the inscription in Latin DIDO REGINA and date M.D.XLVII (1547). Friedenstein Palace was built for Ernest I, Duke of Saxe-Gotha, and one of the most important events in the history of his family was the Battle of Mühlberg in 1547, lost by his great-grandfather John Frederick I, who was stripped of his title as Elector of Saxony and imperial forces blew up the fortifications of Grimmenstein Castle, the predecessor of the Friedenstein Palace. It is possible that a portrait of Elizabeth as Lucretia, whose identity was already lost by 1547, become for John Frederick's family a symbol of their glorious past and tragic fall, exactly like in the Story of Dido and Aeneas. The same facial features were also used in a series of paintings of Nursing Madonna (Madonna lactans), a symbol of maternity and Virgin's capacity for protection. This popular image of Mary with the infant Jesus is similar to the ancient statues of Isis lactans that is the Egyptian goddess Isis, worshiped as the ideal, fertile mother, shown suckling her son Horus. The best version is now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest (panel, 81.6 x 54 cm, inv. 4328). This painting was donated to the museum in 1912 by Count János Pálffy from his collection in the Pezinok Castle in Slovakia. The painting was earlier, most probably, in Principe Fondi's collection which was auctioned in Rome in 1895. The work is exquisitely painted and the landscape in the background resemble the view of Vilnius and Neris river in about 1576, however the face, was not very skilfully added to the painting, most likely as the last part, and the whole effigy looks unnatural. The same mistake was replicated in copies and the face of the Virgin in the copy in the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt has almost grotesque appearance (panel, 59 x 38 cm, inv. GK 69). The latter painting was acquired before 1820, probably from the collection of the Landgraves of Hesse-Darmstadt and the hilltop tower behind the Virgin is almost identical with that in the painting of Lucretia in Kassel. Other versions are in the Capuchin monastery in Vienna (panel, 87 x 58 cm, inv. 11500/179, before 1787 in the Capuchin Monastery in Tulln an der Donau, built after 1635), most probably from the Habsburg collection, one was sold in Lucerne in 2006 (Galerie Fischer, May 31 to June 6,2006, lot 1461) and another in 2011 in Prague (oil on canvas, 91 x 63 cm, Arcimboldo, May 28, 2011, lot 30). The painting sold in Prague at the Arcimboldo Auctions, in a beautiful Renaissance frame, is attributed to the German school of the late 16th century, but its style indicates Italian influences and is comparable to works attributed to Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593), such as a series of portraits of the daughters of Emperor Ferdinand I and Anna Jagiellonica in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It is quite possible that Arcimboldo's workshop copied a painting that was in the collection of Elizabeth's relatives in Prague. The sitter's face in all mentioned effigies with distinguish Habsburg/Masovian lip, resemble greatly Elizabeth's sister Barbara Jagiellon, her mother Elizabeth of Austria and her brother Sigismund I. The mentioned features of the woman's face are also visible on another Madonna, now in a private collection (panel, 41.6 x 28.6 cm, Christie's London, July 8, 2009, lot 198). The painting came onto the art market in 1954 from the collection of Croatian art dealer Ante Mimara (1898-1987), who was involved in numerous dubious restitution cases after World War II. It depicts the sitter as the Virgin and Child with the infant Saint John offering an apple, in front of a curtain held by two angels. The work is inscribed on the rocks of the castle hill in the background with the monogram LC, while the partially illegible date below is usually read as 1512 (center left). This could be also a later copy of a painting created in the 1510s. The composition is generally similar to that of Cranach's Madonna under the Apple Tree, now in the Hermitage Museum (inv. ГЭ-684), which, according to my identification, is a disguised portrait of Bona Sforza. Not only is the composition similar, but so is the landscape in the background, although disguised like the model. As in Bona's portrait, the Wawel Royal Castle and the Vistula River are seen looking south towards Tyniec Abbey, as in an engraving published in 1550 in Basel in Cosmographiae uniuersalis Lib. VI ... by Sebastian Münster (National Library of Poland, ZZK 0.354, p. 889). The painter also used it in the portrait of Elizabeth's niece, Hedwig Jagiellon, now kept at the Veste Coburg (inv. M.163), also identified by me. There is also a painting in the Klassik Stiftung Weimar (panel, 75.5 x 58 cm, inv. G 984), created by workshop or follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, representing the Virgin Mary flanked by two female saints, very similar to the compositions in the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen and in the Bode Museum in Berlin, lost during World War II. The painting was acquired before 1932 on the Berlin art market. The effigy of Mary is a copy of a painting in Strońsko near Sieradz in central Poland, the portrait of Barbara Zapolya. The woman on the left, receiving an apple from the Child, is identical with effigies of Barbara Jagiellon, Duchess of Saxony and the one on the right resemble Elizabeth Jagiellon. The castle in the background match perfectly the layout of the Royal Sandomierz Castle in about 1515 as seen from the west. The Gothic castle in Sandomierz was built by king Casimir the Great after 1349 and it was rebuilt and extended in about 1480. On July 15, 1478 Queen Elizabeth of Austria gave birth to Barbara Jagiellon there and the royal family lived in the castle from about 1513. In 1513 Sigismund I ordered to demolish some ruined, medieval structures and to extend and reconstruct the building in the renaissance style. Two-storey arcaded cloisters around a closed courtyard (west, south and east wings) were constructed between 1520-1527. The castle was destroyed during the Deluge in 1656 and the west wing was rebuilt between 1680-1688 for King John III Sobieski. Before 1515, a clergyman, Baltazar Opec (also Opeć, Opetcz, Opecius or Balthazar de Cracovia), son of a baker from Kraków, Wacław Opec, educated at the Kraków Academy, with the support of Princess Elizabeth, undertook the first translation of "The Life of Christ" into Polish. The work, entitled Żywot wssechmocnego syna bożego, pana Jezu Krysta ..., was published in Kraków in 1522 by Hieronymus Vietor (Jagiellonian Library, BJ St. Dr. Cim. 8032). The author included the following dedication: "Baltazar Opec, master of Kraków, to the enlightened noble lady Elizabeth, princess of Poland of good memory" (Baltazar Opec, mistrz krakowski, dobrey pamięci ślachetney pannie oświeconey Elżbiecie, królewnie Polskiey), dated May 4, 1522. Most interesting in this publication is the use of woodcuts depicting scenes from the life of Christ, produced before 1507 in Nuremberg by Hans Leonard Schäufelein, Hans Baldung Grien and Hans Suess von Kulmbach. They were originally used in Speculum passionis domini nostri Ihesu Christi, printed in 1507 by Ulrich Pinder (d. 1519), personal physician to Elector Frederick III of Saxony, editor and printer. The original blocks used for the 1507 publication were either borrowed or acquired by Vietor, perhaps through Opec or even someone in the entourage of Sigismund I or Frederick III, who was Cranach's most important early patron. 
Portrait of Princess Elizabeth Jagiellon (1482-1517) as Madonna against the idealized view of Wawel Castle by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1512 or after, Private collection.
Study drawing for portrait of Princess Elizabeth Jagiellon (1482-1517) as reclining water nymph Egeria by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1510-1515, Graphic Collection of the Erlangen University Library.
Portrait of Princess Elizabeth Jagiellon (1482-1517) as reclining water nymph Egeria by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1510-1515, Grunewald hunting lodge.
Study drawing for portrait of Princess Elizabeth Jagiellon (1482-1517) as Lucretia by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1510-1515, Klassik Stiftung Weimar.
Portrait of Princess Elizabeth Jagiellon (1482-1517) as Lucretia by Lucas Cranach the Elder or workshop, ca. 1510-1515, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Kassel.
Portrait of Princess Elizabeth Jagiellon (1482-1517) as Lucretia by Lucas Cranach the Elder or workshop, ca. 1510-1515, Private collection.
Portrait of Elizabeth Jagiellon (1482-1517), Duchess of Legnica as Lucretia (Dido Regina) by workshop or follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1515, Veste Coburg.
Portrait of Elizabeth Jagiellon (1482-1517), Duchess of Legnica as Madonna lactans by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1515, Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.
Portrait of Elizabeth Jagiellon (1482-1517), Duchess of Legnica as Madonna lactans by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1515, Capuchin Monastery in Vienna.
Portrait of Elizabeth Jagiellon (1482-1517), Duchess of Legnica as Madonna lactans by workshop or follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1515, Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt.
Portrait of Elizabeth Jagiellon (1482-1517), Duchess of Legnica as Madonna lactans by workshop of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, second half of the 16th century, Private collection.
Portrait of Queen Barbara Zapolya (1495-1515), Barbara Jagiellon (1478-1534), Duchess of Saxony and Elizabeth Jagiellon (1482-1517), Duchess of Legnica as the Virgin flanked by two female saints by workshop or follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1515, Klassik Stiftung Weimar.
Christ taking leave of his mother from Żywot wssechmocnego syna bożego, pana Jezu Krysta ... by Hans Leonard Schäufelein, published in Kraków in 1522, Jagiellonian Library.
Disguised portraits of Szczęsna Morsztynówna by Hans Suess von Kulmbach
Renaissance painters frequently placed religious scenes in surroundings that they knew from everyday life. This kind of Renaissance mimesis reproduced reality and, as it included real people in the form of saints and historical figures, interiors and landscapes, it gave rise to other genres, such as portraiture, still life or the landscape.
The wealthy patrons who commissioned such religious scenes often wanted to be included, either as donors or protagonists. Sometimes they also wanted to show off their wealth and power, like Nicolas Rolin (1376-1462), chancellor of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and one of the richest and most powerful men of his time. In the so-called Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, painted by Jan van Eyck around 1435 (Louvre, INV 1271; MR 705), the chancellor kneels before the Virgin herself in a splendid room or chapel offering a magnificent view. German painter Hans Suess von Kulmbach during the creation of panels of the Altar of Saint Catherine and the Altar of Saint John for the Church of Saint Mary in Kraków, created between 1514 and 1519, also inspired by real life. Both cycles are considered to have been created in Kraków on the orders of the merchant and banker Johann (Hans) Boner (1462-1523), also Hannus Bonner (Bonar, Ponner), a native of Landau in the Palatinate, who settled in Kraków in 1483. Unfortunately, several paintings from these cycles, as well as other paintings by Kulmbach, were lost after the Nazi German invasion of Poland in 1939. Around 1493, Johann married Szczęsna Morsztynówna (died before 1523), Felicia Morrensteyn or Morstein in German sources, the youngest daughter of Stanislaus Morsztyn the Elder, a patrician from Kraków, who brought him houses worth 2,000 zlotys as a dowry. In 1498 he became a city councilor. In 1514 he was ennobled (Bonarowa coat of arms) and obtained the office of burgrave of Kraków Castle, then the starosty of Rabsztyn and Ojców. In 1515 he became manager of the Wieliczka salt mines and was at that time the main banker of Sigismund I. As a painter of the Boner family, who enjoyed special royal protection, Kulmbach did not need to join the Kraków painters' guild, which probably explains why the city documents did not preserve his name. Johann probably met the painter while serving as intermediary between King Sigismund I and his sister Sophia Jagiellon (1464-1512), Margravine of Brandenburg-Ansbach. He probably carried letters from one court to another, and it is quite possible that he represented the king at Sophia's funeral (after "Hans Suess z Kulmbachu" by Józef Muczkowski, Józef Zdanowski, p. 12). In 1511, the Kraków city council granted him the Chapel of the Holy Spirit in St. Mary's Church, which Pope Leo X approved on July 19, 1513 encouraged by the message provided by the Bishop of Płock, Erazm Ciołek, that the king treated the Boner Chapel with special devotion. In 1513, the chapel received a new patron, Saint John the Baptist, and in 1515 its invocation was supplemented with Saint John the Evangelist. The two cycles were most likely created for this chapel. Most interesting is the panel from the altar of Saint Catherine depicting the Disputation in which Saint Catherine converted pagan philosophers to Christianity (tempera and oil on panel, ca. 118 x 62 cm), as it makes a direct reference to the Boners - their coat of arms in the stained glass quatrefoil which adorns the window. The style of the painting is also very interesting because it refers to Jacopo de' Barbari and Albrecht Dürer, thus joining the Venetian and German tradition, so popular in Poland-Lithuania at that time. The scene obviously takes place in Johann's house in Kraków. Interestingly, apart from paintings by Kulmbach, he also commissioned luxury items from Venice, like exquisit glass pilgrim fask adorned with his coat of arms and mongram (initials H and P), now in the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon (41.3 cm, inv. D 697). The collection of the Museum of Applied Arts Vienna includes a large footed glass plate which also bears Boner's coat of arms, supplemented by his initials (diameter: 44.9 cm, inv. F 180), and suggests that a large set was probably made for Hans in Venice at the beginning of the 16th century. In 1510/1511, he received the following merchandise from Venice alone: 10,054 pieces of window glass, three crates of Venetian glass (luxury glass), and 4,090 glass containers for everyday use (after "An early 16th century Venetian Pilgrim Flask ..." by Klaas Padberg Evenboer, p. 304, 306, 308). The glass in the windows of his house was certainly also imported from Venice, which is why Boner wanted to boast to the other citizens of Kraków. They were probably designed by Hans Suess - one of his most important drawings, made in Kraków in 1511 (dated upper right) is a tondo with the Martyrdom of Saint Stanislaus, which is most likely a design for a stained glass window (Kunsthalle Bremen, inv. 1937/613). All these elements, combined with a very portrait-like effigy in profile of one of the philosophers on the right, standing directly under the quatrefoil with the coat of arms, indicate that this is the cryptoportrait of Johann. The same man was also depicted on the left of the scene of the self-burial of Saint John the Evangelist, painted in 1516 (St. Mary's Basilica in Kraków), which takes place in the Wawel Cathedral before the original Gothic reliquary-sarcophagus of Saint Stanislaus, as well as one of the Apostles in the Ascension of Christ, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, attributed to Kulmbach and dated around 1513 (oil on panel, 61.5 x 35.9 cm, inv. 21.84, compare "Just what is it that makes identification-portrait hypotheses so appealing? ..." by Masza Sitek, p. 3, 7, 11-12, 17). Other members of the Boner family were also depicted in the paintings commissioned by Johann, including his wife. Already at the beginning of the 20th century, an interpretation was proposed according to which Empress Faustina from the Conversion of the empress was the disguised portrait of Johann's wife. The empress is the secondary figure of the cycle, while Szczęsna was the central female figure in Johann's life and household, just like Saint Catherine in the Dispute scene by Kulmbach. The woman in rich crimson attire, typical for the Polish nobility, wearing a pearl necklace and a headpiece decorated with pearls (symbols of the Virgin Mary and Venus), points towards the quatrefoil with the image of the Madonna and Child. As the mystical bride of Christ, Saint Catherine ranked second only to the Virgin Mary. The painting of the Madonna also played a decisive role in the conversion of the pagan-born princess, as shown in the first panel of the Kulmbach cycle. A lapdog at her feet, a symbol of marital fidelity, similar to that visible in portrait of Catherine of Mecklenburg, painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder in 1514 (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, inv. 1906 H), indicate that she is a wealthy lady of the Renaissance. Her costume reflects her husband's status and the fashion of Kraków at that time. It is comparable to the dresses of the ladies in the Miracle at the tomb of the Patriarch from the polyptych of John the Merciful, painted by Jan Goraj around 1504 (National Museum in Kraków, MNK ND-13) or costume of Agnieszka Ciołkowa née Zasańska (died 1518), depicted as Saint Agnes in the Kraków Pontifical from 1506 to 1518 (Czartoryski Library, 1212 V Rkps, p. 37). The clothing of the wife of Erazm Schilling (d. 1561) from Kraków is so rich that her portrait was considered to represent Sibylle of Cleves (1512-1554), electress of Saxony. It was sold as a pendant to the portrait of Frederick III the Wise (1463-1525), prince-elector of Saxony, who was never married (Lempertz in Cologne, Auction 1017, September 25, 2013, lot 112). All copies of this portrait were probably painted by the Nuremberg painter Franz Wolfgang Rohrich (1787-1834), who also copied the portrait of Sigismund I's sister Sophia (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 07.245.2), yet, one copy bears an inscription in German confirming that the woman was a daughter of Stenzel from Poznań and that she married Erazm in 1521. The coat of arms of the Silesian noble family Schilling joined to that of the woman also confirms that she was the wife of this patrician of Kraków (oil on panel, 64.5 x 46 cm, Galeria Staszica in Poznań, December 15, 2022, lot 3, inscription: ANNO MDXXI IST DEM EDLENE VND VESTEN ERASMO SCHILLINGIN CROCAVVER ...). The Venetian-style portrait of the Kraków goldsmith Grzegorz Przybyła or Przybyło (d. 1547) and his wife Katarzyna (d. 1539) is another confirmation of the great prosperity of the Kraków bourgeoisie at the beginning of the 16th century (National Museum in Warsaw, inv. 128874). The big décolletage of Szczęsna's dress in turn confirms that it was popular in Poland-Lithuania long before Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga (1611-1667), who is said to have introduced it upon her arrival in 1646. 
Tondo drawing with Martyrdom of Saint Stanislaus by Hans Suess von Kulmbach, 1511, Kunsthalle Bremen.
Conversion of Saint Catherine with disguised portrait of Szczęsna Morsztynówna by Hans Suess von Kulmbach, 1515, St. Mary's Basilica in Kraków.
Disputation of Saint Catherine with pagan philosophers with disguised portraits of Szczęsna Morsztynówna and her husband Johann Boner (1462-1523) by Hans Suess von Kulmbach, 1515, St. Mary's Basilica in Kraków.
Self-burial of St. John the Evangelist with portrait of Johann Boner (1462-1523) by Hans Suess von Kulmbach, 1516, St. Mary's Basilica in Kraków.
Portrait of wife of Erazm Schilling (d. 1561), patrician of Kraków, by Franz Wolfgang Rohrich (?), before 1834 after original from the 1520s, Private collection.
Portrait of Barbara Zapolya by Lucas Cranach the Elder
In 1535 a lavish wedding ceremony was held at the Wawel Castle in Kraków. Hedwig, the only daughter of Sigismund I the Old and his first wife Barbara Zapolya was married to Joachim II Hector, Elector of Brandenburg.
The bride received a big dowry, including a casket, now in The State Hermitage Museum, commissioned by Sigismund I in 1533 and adorned with jewels from the Jagiellon collection, made of 6.6 kg of silver and 700 grams of gold, adorned with 800 pearls, 370 rubies, 300 diamonds and other gems, including one jewel in the shape of letter S. The same monogram is visible on the sleeves of Hedwig's dress in her portrait by Hans Krell from about 1537. A ring with letter S is on the Sigismund I's tomb monument in the Wawel Cathedral and he also minted coins with it. Hedwig undoubtedly took also with her to Berlin a portrait of her mother. The portrait of a woman with necklace and belt with B&S monogram, dated by the experts to about 1512, which was in the Imperial collection in Berlin before World War II, now in private collection (oil on panel, 42 x 30 cm), is sometimes identified as depicting Barbara Jagiellon, Duchess of Saxony and Barbara Zapolya's sister-in-law. A pendant with the monogram of the married couple SH (Sophia et Henricus) is visible on the tombstone of Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575), Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg, daughter of Sigismund and his second wife Bona Sforza, in the St. Mary's Church in Wolfenbüttel. Such jewelry with monograms, called "letters" (litera/y), were popular and are mentioned in many inventories. Among more than 250 rings of Queen Bona, there was a ring with black enamel, a diamond, rubies and an emerald, on which there were the letters BR (BONA REGINA) and three others with the letter B. Sigismond's daughters, Sophia, Anna and Catherine, owned the jewels with the letters S, A and C from the first letter of their names in Latin of which only Catherine's jewel has survived (Cathedral Museum in Uppsala). They were made in 1546 by Nicolaus Nonarth in Nuremberg and depicted in their portraits by the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger. Florian, court goldsmith between 1502-1540, elder of the guild in 1511 was paid in the years 1510-1511 for various works for the king and his illegitimate son John (1499-1538), later bishop of Vilnius and Poznań. He made silver belts for the king, a base for a clock, harnesses for horses, cups for king's mistress Katarzyna Telniczanka and silver utensils for the royal bathroom (after "Mecenat Zygmunta Starego ..." by Adam Bochnak, p. 137). The gold sheet with Saint Barbara made as the background of the painting of Our Lady of Częstochowa is considered to be a gift from Queen Barbara given during a pilgrimage to the monastery on October 27, 1512. The necklace and belt in form of chains with initials is clearly an allusion to great affection, thus the letters must be initals of the woman and her husband. If the painting would be an effigy of Barbara Jagiellon, the initials would be B and G or G and B for Barbara and her husband George (Georgius, Georg), Duke of Saxony. The monogram must be then of Barbara Zápolya and Sigismund I, Hedwig's parents, therefore the portrait is the effigy of her mother. Although his stay in Berlin is not confirmed by the sources, the mentioned portrait of Barbara's daughter Hedwig Jagellon, now in the Grunewald hunting lodge in Berlin (oil on panel, 49. x 35.8 cm, inv. GK I 2152) is attributed to Krell, who lived in Leipzig between 1533 and 1573. This portrait comes from the old collections of the House of Hohenzollern, formerly in the Hohenzollern Museum; the German inscription on the upper edge confirms the identity of the sitter (HEDEWICK GEBOREN AVS / KÖNIGLICHEM STAM. / ZV POLEN. MARGGREFIN / ZV BRANDENBVRG / ANNO DOM M D XX ...), while the style is also typical of Krell, who most likely relied on study drawings sent from Berlin to create the portrait of the Electress. 
Portrait of Barbara Zapolya (1495-1515), Queen of Poland with necklace and belt with B&S (Barbara et Sigismundus) monogram by Lucas Cranach the Elder or workshop, ca. 1512-1515, Private collection.
Portrait of Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573), Electress of Brandenburg, wearing a dress with her father's monogram S on the sleeves, by Hans Krell, ca. 1537, Grunewald hunting lodge in Berlin.
Portraits of King Sigismund I and Queen Barbara Zapolya by workshop of Michel Sittow
From July 15-26, 1515 The First Congress of Vienna was held, attended by the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, and the Jagiellonian brothers, Vladislaus II, King of Hungary and King of Bohemia, and Sigismund I, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. It became a turning point in the history of Central Europe. In addition to the political arrangements, Maximilian and Vladislaus agreed on a contract of inheritance and arranged a double marriage between their two ruling houses. After the death of Vladislaus, and later his son and heir, the Habsburg-Jagiellon mutual succession treaty ultimately increased the power of the Habsburgs and diminished that of the Jagiellons.
In the 1510s Michel Sittow, who worked as a court portrait painter for the Habsburgs and other prominent royal houses in Spain and the Netherlands, painted a portrait of a man with the embroidered cross of the Spanish Order of Calatrava on his chest, today in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. This man is identified as Don Diego de Guevara (died 1520), Treasurer to Margaret of Austria (Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands from 1507 to 1515, daughter of Emperor Maximilian I), Knight of the Order of Calatrava, who possessed one of the finest collections of Netherlandish art, including Jan van Eyck's famous Arnolfini Portrait. He also served other successive Dukes of Burgundy and as ambassador. This portrait originally formed a diptych together with Sittow's Virgin and Child and the bird, today in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. Virgin Mary has the features of a woman identified as Mary Rose Tudor (1496-1533), sister of Henry VIII of England, who was betrothed to Charles V, future Holy Roman Emperor, in 1507. This portrait by Sittow and a copy are in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (GG 5612, GG 7046). The wedding was planned for 1514, but did not take place, due to Charles' illness. The Habsburgs then commissioned the bride's portrait to appease the furious Henry VIII, nevertheless, the engagement was called off. For his efforts to bring about the double wedding in 1515, King Sigismund received a written assurance from Maximilian that he would work in the empire to have the Polish claims against the Teutonic Order recognized and ensured the end of the support of Muscovites directed against Poland (after "Schicksalsorte Österreichs" by Johannes Sachslehner, p. 71-77). The congress of the monarchs was commemorated in a series of woodcuts by the greatest artists working for the Habsburgs - a woodcut by Hans Burgkmair, Leonard Beck, Hans Schaufelein or Hans Springinklee from the Series "The White King" (Der Weisskunig) showing the first meeting between Bratislava and Hainburg an der Donau on July 15, 1515 (Austrian National Library in Vienna) and The Congress of Princes from the Triumphal Arch of Emperor Maximilian I by Albrecht Dürer (Metropolitan Museum of Art). Sigismund, as son of Elizabeth of Austria (1436-1505), was related to the Emperor, who in turn was a grandson of Cymburgis of Masovia (d. 1429). Undoubtedly, he received many family portraits of the Habsburgs by such artists like Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis, Albrecht Dürer, Bernhard Strigel, Hans Burgkmair, Hans Maler zu Schwaz, Joos van Cleve, Bernard van Orley, Jacopo de' Barbari and Michel Sittow, but now he had the opportunity to meet some of them. Beyond doubt he was amazed at the splendor of the imperial court. Contrary to strong national or imperial leaders: Henry VII in England, Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain, Louis XI in France and Maximilian I in the Holy Roman Empire, whose rule was increasingly conceived and expressed in 'absolutist' terms (after "A Cultural History of Theatre in the Early Modern Age" by Robert Henke, p. 16), as an elective monarch (election 20 October and 8 December 1506) whose budget was strictly controlled by Polish, Lithuanian and Ruthenian nobles and parliament, he could not afford to spend large sums to keep such artists at his court. Already at the coronation Sejm in 1507, Sigismund I undertook to provide the Senate with the accounts of the Crown Treasurer from public expenses (after "Sejm Rzeczypospolitej... " by Stefania Ochmann-Staniszewska, Zdzisław Staniszewski, p. 204). However, he might have commissioned some paintings from them. Between 1514 and 1516 Sittow carried out different assignments for the Habsburgs. In 1514 he visited Copenhagen, to paint the portrait of Christian II of Denmark for Margaret of Austria. The portrait was part of the diplomacy for the betrothal of Danish king to Margaret's niece Isabella of Austria. In 1515 he was again in the Netherlands and he went to Spain. Portrait of a man with a big fur collar by follower of Michel Sittow (oil on oak panel, 33.8 x 23.5 cm, sold at Sotheby's London, 06 December 2012, lot 101) is largely based on Sittow's portrait of Diego de Guevara, created according to different sources between 1514 and 1518. The pose and costume are very similar, as well as composition and even the carpet on the parapet. However, the face is completely different. It appears that Sittow's pupil used the same set of study drawings for the composition and a different for the face. The model resemble greatly the effigy of Sigismund I from The Congress of Princes by Albrecht Dürer, and his portrait attributed to Hans von Kulmbach (Gołuchów Castle). The face with protruding lower lip of the Habsburgs and Dukes of Masovia is similar as in the portrait of the Polish king by Titian (Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, inv. GG 94), identified by me. Like the portrait of de Guevara, also this painting is a part of a diptych. Madonna and Child and the bird by follower of Sittow (oil on oak panel, 34 x 24 cm, sold at Koller Auktionen Zürich, 18 March 1998, lot 20) match perfectly in terms of composition, style and dimensions. Similar to the portrait sold in London, it is a copy of the painting of the Virgin from Berlin (Mary Rose Tudor), however, the face is different and resembles effigies of Queen Barbara Zapolya, first wife of Sigismund, who died on 2 October 1515, few months after his return from Vienna. This effigy also resemble the queen's marble bust in the Olesko Castle, most probably created by Netherlandish sculptor. Taking into account that royal effigies, such as the portraits of Emperor Maximilian by Strigel, were created in many copies and versions, the described effigies could be workshop copies of lost originals by Sittow. 
Portrait of King Sigismund I as donor by workshop of Michel Sittow, ca. 1515, Private collection.
Portrait of Queen Barbara Zapolya as Madonna and Child and the bird by workshop of Michel Sittow, ca. 1515, Private collection.
Portraits of Jan Dantyszek as Saint John the Baptist by Joos van Cleve
From around 1454 the Hanseatic city of Gdańsk become the main port of Poland-Lithuania and thanks to royal privileges, like the Great Privilege of 1457, one of the most important European transshipment points for grain. The economical and cultural ties of the city with the Netherlands were natural and strong. Grain was exported from Gdańsk and works of art like stone and metal tombstones and wooden altars, produced there in large quantities, were imported from Flanders (after "Złoty wiek malarstwa gdańskiego ..." by Teresa Grzybkowska, p. 44).
In the 16th century, the Netherlandish art market developed an efficient system of distributing works of art. Late Gothic retables were usually created without commissions and were sold on the free market. Artists also dealt with the sale of works outside the studio and traveled around the country or abroad for this purpose. In the case of works commissioned to another city or country, the artist was obliged deliver them to the ship. Artists also organized lotteries of objects of art, such as the one organized in 1559 by a painter from Mechelen - Claude Dorizi. In 1577, a merchant from Lüneburg, Michael Willing, organized a lottery of engravings and paintings in Gdańsk. Another method of selling the studio's products by the artist was participation in the fair in Antwerp or Bergen-op-Zoom, which were held twice a year and were visited by merchants from all over Europe (after "Mecheleńskie reliefy ..." by Aleksandra Lipińska, pp. 189-190). Probably the first major work from the Netherlands "imported" to Gdańsk was Memling's Last Judgment. However, the triptych was not intended there, but ordered around 1467 by an Italian banker Angelo di Jacopo Tani (1415-1482) for the St. Michael's Chapel in Badia Fiesolana near Florence. Tani was manager of the Medici Bank in Bruges from 1455 to 1465. The ship that was supposed to take the picture to Florence in 1473 was captured shortly after leaving port of Bruges by privateers commanded by Paul Beneke and the triptych was donated to St. Mary's Church in Gdańsk. Besides the portrait of the founder Angelo Tani as a donor on the reverse of the left wing, it contains the portrait of his wife Caterina di Francesco Tanagli (1446-1492) in a similar pose as a counterpart on the right wing. Caterina, who could not accompany her husband during his business trip to the Netherlands in 1467-1469, was portrayed in Italy by a Florentine artist (researchers suggest the circle of Filippo Lippi or Piero del Pollaiuolo), and then her image was delivered to Memling's studio. The painting also contains many disguised portraits such as the portrait of Charles the Bold (1433-1477), Duke of Burgundy as Saint Andrew, the patron saint of the Duchy of Burgundy, Tommaso di Folco Portinari (ca. 1424-1501) and his wife Maria Maddalena Portinari née Baroncelli (born 1456) as sinners and probably many more awaiting discovery. The triptych opened the gates to the intensive importation of Netherlandish art for two centuries. Netherlandish retables found buyers in Pomeranian churches in Pruszcz (1500-1510), Gdańsk-Święty Wojciech (ca. 1510) or Żuków (ca. 1520) and in 1520 the Mechelen workshop of Jan van Wavere created an altar for the chapel of St. Anthony, also in St. Mary's Church in Gdańsk, commissioned by the guild of porters (today in the Church of the Teutonic Order in Vienna). In 1526, the Malbork Brotherhood brought from Amsterdam a painting of the Madonna for the Artus Court in Gdańsk. Before 1516 the then young artist Joos van Cleve (born 1485/1490), who had been a member of the Guild of Saint Luke of Antwerp for only four or five years, adorned the wings of the Saint Reinhold Altar created by workshop of Jan de Molder in Antwerp, today in the National Museum in Warsaw (M.Ob.2190). The polyptych was commissioned by Brotherhood of Saint Reinhold in Gdańsk for the chapel of this saint in the St. Mary's Church and it was probably ready before September 1516. The artist portrayed himself in the guise of Saint Reinhold. It was one of the first of his "allegorical portraits" within religious compositions (after "Nieznane autoportrety Joosa van Cleve ... " by Jan Białostocki, p. 468). Joos' self-portraits are in the scene of the Last Supper (Altarpiece of the Lamentation, ca. 1525, Louvre Museum) and in the Adoration of the Magi of Jan Leszczyński (ca. 1527, National Museum in Poznań). Such disguised portraits were popular in the Netherlands since at least the 15th century. Early examples include effigies of Charles the Bold (1433-1477), Duke of Burgundy as one of the Biblical Magi in the Saint Columba Altarpiece by Rogier van der Weyden (ca. 1455, Alte Pinakothek in Munich), as Saint Andrew in mentioned Last Judgment and in the portrait like effigy of this saint holding a rosary (ca. 1490, Groeninge Museum in Bruges) by Hans Memling, as well as portraits of Mary of Burgundy (1457-1482) as Saint Catherine and Margaret of York (1446-1503), Duchess of Burgundy as Saint Barbara in the Saint John Altarpiece (ca. 1479, Memlingmuseum in Bruges) and the Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine (ca. 1480, Metropolitan Museum of Art), also by Memling. Apart from disguised portraits, they also contained other references to patrons, such as coats of arms, like in the Medici Madonna with portraits of Piero di Cosimo de' Medici (1416-1469) and his brother Giovanni (1421-1463) as Saints Cosmas and Damian by Rogier van der Weyden (1453-1460, Städel Museum in Frankfurt) or the Last Judgment by Memling in Gdańsk with heraldic emblems of Tani and his wife. The only coat of arms in the Saint Reinhold Altar is in the predella, which is sometimes attributed to different artist, possibly from Gdańsk. The predella represent Christ as Man of Sorrows with Virgin Mary and Saints: Barbara, Catherine of Alexandria, James the Elder, Sebastian, Adrian of Nicomedia, Anthony the Abbot and Roch and the coat of arms between the Christ and Saint Sebastian is a cross of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem - a gold Jerusalem Cross on a red shield, the colour of blood, to signify the five wounds of Christ. The most important knight of the Holy Sepulchre from Gdańsk (Latin Gedanum or Dantiscum) at that time was John of Gdańsk or Johannes von Höfen-Flachsbinder, better known as Johannes Dantiscus or Jan Dantyszek, royal secretary and diplomat in the service of the King Sigismund, who traveled frequently across Europe, notably to Venice, Flanders and Spain. The cross of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre and the attributes of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, commemorating Dantyszek's pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai in 1506, are visible in his ex libris (bookplate) by Hieronymus Vietor, created in 1530-32, and in reverse of wooden model for his medal by Christoph Weiditz, created in 1529. From 1515 Dantyszek was an envoy at the imperial court in Vienna. From there he traveled three times to Venice. Then he stayed with the imperial court first in Tyrol, from February 9, 1516, then in Augsburg, from October to the end of 1516. At the beginning of 1517, he went with Wilhelm von Roggendorf to the Netherlands and tried to persuade the emperor's granddaughter, Eleanor of Austria (1498-1558), to marry the Polish monarch (after "Jan Dantyszek ..." by Zbigniew Nowak, p. 109). He returned from the Netherlands by sea to Gdańsk. Dantyszek, who frequently commissioned works of art from various artists whom he met at the imperial court and during his travels and acted as an intermediary in such orders for his friends and patrons, was undeniably an important visitor for many artists in the Netherlands. There is no direct link connecting the Gdańsk retable with Dantyszek, hence any reference to the royal diplomat was probably a courtesy, like the mentioned effigy of the Duke of Burgundy as Saint Andrew in the Last Judgment, commissioned by an Italian client. It is possible that some members of the Brotherhood of Saint Reinhold were depicted in some of the scenes of the altar, but there should be a stronger reference to the new home of the polyptych, which was commissioned specifically for the St. Mary's Church in Gdańsk. The effigy of Saint John the Baptist on the reverse of the left wing and a companion to Saint Reinhold on the right wing should be considered as such. If Saint Reinhold is a self-portrait of the author, Saint John the Baptist is also a disguised portrait of a real person - John of Gdańsk, i.e. Jan Dantyszek. His face resemble other effigies of the royal secretary, especially his portrait by Dosso Dossi (Nationalmuseum in Stockholm), identified by me. Another very similar John the Baptist, attributed to Joos van Cleve is also in Poland, in the collection of the Royal Castle in Warsaw (ZKW/3629/ab). Some researchers see the painting as an Italian work, most likely Venetian - the composition, modelling, colors speak for this, but the technological construction proves its Netherlandish provenance (after "The Royal Castle in Warsaw: A Complete Catalogue of Paintings ..." by Dorota Juszczak and Hanna Małachowicz, pp. 542-544). This is most likely because the painter copied a Venetian painting, probably by Titian, and was inspired by his style of bold, blurry brushstrokes and composition. Such mutual impacts are visible in the portraits of Jan Dantyszek by workshop of Marco Basaiti (Jagiellonian University Museum) and by Jacob van Utrecht (Private collection) and portraits of Francis I of France - the fur in his portrait by workshop of Joos van Cleve (Royal Castle in Warsaw, ZKW/2124/ab) is painted in similar style as the Saint John the Baptist and the pose of the king in a painting by Venetian painter (Private collection), indicate that he copied a work by a Netherlandish master. Stylistically the painting was dated to about 1520, however, dendrochronological examination of the board indicates the beginning of the 1540s as the probable time of creation, which does not exclude the authorship of Joos because he died in 1540 or 1541, or his son Cornelis, who painted in similar style and died between 1567 and 1614. The painting was a property of Sosnicki in 1952, probably in Saint Petersburg, and in 1994 it was offered by Edward Kossoy to the reconstructed castle in Warsaw. 
Portrait of Jan Dantyszek as Saint John the Baptist and self-portrait as Saint Reinhold by Joos van Cleve, before 1516, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of Jan Dantyszek as Saint John the Baptist by Joos van Cleve or follower, 1520-1541, Royal Castle in Warsaw.
Portraits of Barbara Jagiellon against the idealized views of Meissen and Königstein by Lucas Cranach the Elder
"And since the Lechitic state happened to be founded in an area containing vast forests and groves that the ancient people believed to be inhabited by Diana and that Diana claimed power over them, Cerera, on the other hand, was considered the mother and goddess of the harvests the country needed, [therefore] these two goddesses: Diana in their language called Dziewanna and Cerera called Marzanna enjoyed a special cult and devotion", wrote Jan Długosz (1415-1480), chronicler and diplomat, in his "Annals or Chronicles of the famous Kingdom of Poland" (Annales seu Cronicae incliti Regni Poloniae), written between 1455 and 1480. In 1467 he was entrusted with tutoring the sons of King Casimir IV Jagiellon.
Devana (Polish Dziewanna), the goddess of wild nature, forests, hunting and the moon worshiped by the Western Slavs, is also mentioned by Maciej Stryjkowski in his "Chronicle of Poland, Lithuania, Samogitia, and all of Ruthenia of Kiev, Moscow ..." (Kronika Polska Litewska, Zmodzka, y wszystkiey Rusi Kijowskiey, Moskiewskiey ...), published in Königsberg (today Kaliningrad) in 1582: "Diana, the goddess of hunting, was called by the Sarmatians Zievonya or Devana in their language". Nevertheless, according to some researchers, like Aleksander Brückner (1856-1939), Długosz, inspired by Roman mythology, invented or modified beliefs to match with the Roman deity. In a multicultural country where many people spoke Latin, it was easy to have such inspiration. Another later invention inspired by the strong Latin culture in Poland-Lithuania and 16th century art, could be Milda, the Lithuanian goddess of love, compared to Roman Venus. In Roman mythology, the helpers of Diana are nymphs, whose closest Slavic counterparts are goddesses (boginki), or rusalkas (rusałki), frequently associated with water and represented as naked beautiful girls, like in the painting by Russian painter Ivan Gorokhov from 1912. The legendary water nymphs, supposedly living in the waters of Lake Svityaz in Belarus (Świteź in Polish), were called świtezianki. The legend says that świtezianki tempt boys who fall in love with them and then drown them in the waves of the lake (after "Duchy Kresów Wschodnich" by Alicja Łukawska, p. 151). Roman nymph of the sacred source, Egeria, is mentioned by Długosz in his Historiae Polonicae Liber XIII Et Ultimus, as counselor of Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome (Et exempla non defunt. Nam complures legiferi ita fecerunt: apud Græcos Pisistratus, apud Romanos Numa cum sua Nympha Egeria &c). According to legend, as the divine consort of Numa, she advised him on important decisions and thus showed him the way to wise rule. The 1885 painting by Spanish painter Ulpiano Checa in the Prado Museum in Madrid shows the nymph Egeria dictating the laws of Rome to Numa Pompilius. Egeria was worshipped by pregnant women because she, like Diana, could grant them an easy delivery. Before 1500, the interior of the residential part of the Albrechtsburg castle in Meissen was rebuilt for Barbara Jagiellon (1478-1534) and her husband George the Bearded (1471-1539), Duke of Saxony. This medieval castle was erected on the site of the former West Slavic settlement of Misni inhabited by Glomatians. Another reconstruction, on larger scale, occurred between 1521-1524, when Jacob Haylmann completed the Coat of Arms Hall on the 2nd floor and the 3rd floor of the palace and a separate sepulchral annex was created at the Cathedral, the so-called Capella Ducis Georgii for George and his wife. The couple mainly resided in the ancestral seat of the Albertine line of the House of Wettin, Dresden, originally also a Slavic settlement, called Drežďany in Sorbian. Barbara gave birth to 10 children, six of whom died in infancy, she died in Leipzig at the age of 55. She was buried in Meissen Cathedral in a burial chapel built by her husband. Barbara and George are the last Wettin couple to be buried in Meissen Cathedral. The altarpiece in the burial chapel was created by Lucas Cranach the Elder shortly after Barbara's death and depicts the couple as donors surrounded by apostles and saints. The painting of a nymph at a fountain by Lucas Cranach the Elder, today in the Museum der bildenden Künste in Leipzig (oil on panel, 59 x 91.5 cm, inventory number 757), comes from the collection of the art historian Johann Gottlob von Quandt (1787-1859) in Dresden, acquired by the museum in 1901. This painting is signed with artist's insignia and dated '1518' on the fountain whose pillar is adorned with statue of a naked faun. Fauns and nymphs were among the first inhabitants of early Rome, according to Aeneid by Virgil (Haec nemora indigenae Fauni nymphaeque tenebant). The landscape behind her is her magic and legendary kingdom, however, the topography and the general form of the buildings correspond perfectly to Meissen, like in the view of the city published in about 1820 in "The 70 picturesque sights and views of the environs of Dresden ..." (70 mahlerische An- und Aussichten der Umgegend von Dresden ...) by Carl August Richter and Ludwig Richter. It also seems to be a sort of riddle for the viewer. On the right we can see Albrechtsburg in guise of her abode, below there is the city of Meissen with the church and the Elbe river. The face of a woman greatly resemble Barbara Jagiellon, Duchess of Saxony, from her effigies as Lucretia and the composition is similar to portrait of Barbara's sister Princess Elizabeth Jagiellon (1482-1517) as Egeria (Grunewald hunting lodge in Berlin). Trough this image in guise of nymph Egeria, counselor to the king of Rome, the Duchess of Saxony wanted to express the power of feminine wisdom. Referring to rusalka, the duchess plays with the perilous aspect of female nature - "I am the Nymph of the Sacred Spring: Do not disturb my sleep. I am resting" (FONTIS NIMPHA SACRI SOMNVM NE RVMPE QVIESCO), reads the Latin inscription on the fountain below the statue of the defeated faun holding a broken lance. The same woman was depicted in another naked painting, showing her as Lucretia, a noblewoman in ancient Rome, the epitome of female virtue and beauty. Her face is very similar to Lucretia, which was in the late 19th century in the collection of Wilhelm Lowenfeld in Munich, the likeness of Barbara Jagiellon. The landscape behind her depict Königstein (lapide regis, "King's Rock") near Dresden, in Saxon Switzerland. The place takes its name from the castle belonging to the Bohemian kings, who controlled the Elbe valley. The fortress was probably a Slav stronghold as early as the 12th century, but it is not mentioned in chronicles before the year 1241 (after "The Story of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1768-1943" by Paul Robert Kruse, p. 896). In 1459 it formally passed to the margraves of Meissen. In 1516, Duke George the Bearded, a fierce opponent of the Reformation, founded a Celestine abbey on the Königstein, dedicated to Virgin Mary, nevertheless, more and more monks fled until only one monk and one woman in childbed remained, hence the monastery was closed in 1524. The rocky plateau, visible in Cranach's painting, resemble greatly the view of Königstein by Matthäus Merian, published in the Topographia Superioris Saxoniae (1650, part of Topographia Germaniae), as well as the view of Königstein Fortress in about 1900 (photochrom print). This painting is today in the Veste Coburg (oil on panel, 85.5 x 57.5 cm, inventory number M.162), where there are also portraits of Barabra's sister Elizabeth Jagiellon (1482-1517), Duchess of Legnica as Lucretia (M.039) and her niece Crown Princess Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) against the idealized view of Kraków (M.163), both by Cranach or his workshop. It comes from old ducal possessions in Coburg and was recorded in 1851 in Coburg Castle. The work is attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder or his son Hans Cranach and dated to about 1518-1519 or about 1530. With the fall of the Realm of Venus in Central Europe in the 17th century also many effigies of this important ruler of the Jagiellonian dynasty have been forgotten and she is known today from less favorable portraits in black costume with her hair covered with a bonnet, subdued to the power of God and her husband, exactly as men wanted to see her. 
Portrait of Barbara Jagiellon (1478-1534), Duchess of Saxony as reclining water nymph Egeria against the idealized view of Meissen by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1518, Museum der bildenden Künste in Leipzig.
Portrait of Barbara Jagiellon (1478-1534), Duchess of Saxony as Lucretia against the idealized view of Königstein by Lucas Cranach the Elder or Hans Cranach, ca. 1518-1519 or ca. 1530, Veste Coburg.
Portrait of Bona Sforza by Venetian painter
"As for beauty, it is in no way different from the portrait that Mr. Chryzostom brought, her hair is lovely light blonde, when her eyelashes and eyebrows are completely black, eyes rather angelic than human, forehead radiant and serene, nose straight without any hump or curvature", described Bona Sforza d'Aragona on December 21, 1517 in his letter to King Sigismund I, Stanisław Ostroróg, castellan of Kalisz (after "Zygmunt August: żywot ostatniego z Jagiellonów" by Eugeniusz Gołębiowski, p. 20).
Already in 1517 the royal banker and main supplier of Sigismund, Jan Boner, was ordered to bring from Venice satin in three colors: crimson, white and black, red velvet and brocade and to purchase a ring with a large diamond in Kraków or Venice for 200 or 300 red zlotys for the king's wedding. The effigies of the Queen from 1520s and 1530s confirms her particular liking for different types of hairnets, most probably to expose her beautiful hair, while chasubles she founded, possibly made from her dresses (in Kraków and Łódź), confirms that similar fabrics and embroideries to these visible in the portrait were in her possession. The arch, dress, hairnet and hair style in the effigy of Queen Bona published in Kraków in 1521, are astonishingly alike. The printmaker was undoubtedly basing on Queen's painted portrait, possiby another version of the painting in London. The rabbit hunt on her bodice is an allusion to Queen's fertility and ability to produce male heirs to over 50 years old Sigismund. The sources confirm not only the richness of Bona's clothes, but also the use of symbols in their decoration. During her opulent entry into Naples accompanied by Polish-Lithuanian ambassadors on November 21, 1517, she wore a golden dress with gold plates in the form of victory palms. The magnificent wedding ceremony per procura took place in the great hall of Castel Capuano on December 6. Bona wore a dress of turquoise Venetian satin, sewn with beehives of gold, which also adorned her azure beret. The decoration of the dress was probably intended to symbolise the diligence and foresight of the future queen and her ability to manage the kingdom. Her headdress was also adorned with other sewn-on jewels and pearls. The colour of the dress probably referred to the blue with a shade of green of the dragon from the Sforza coat of arms. The chronicler Giuliano Passero valued the entire outfit at 7,000 ducats. Bona was accompanied by six courtiers, dressed in robes of azure satin and brocade. Passero, describing her trousseau presented after the wedding, lists twenty-one richly decorated and expensive dresses, many of which were in crimson and beige-pink tabinet, satin, velvet and brocade, decorated with various symbolic motifs, such as the ostrich eggs, flames, golden branches, checkerboard pattern, gold and silver plates. In addition to splendid clothes and jewels, the queen owned magnificent tapestries and collected objects made of precious metals, clocks, furniture, as well as ancient vases (she allegedly had two hundred of them) from excavations in Apulia (after "Bona Sforza d'Aragona i rola mody w kształtowaniu jej wizerunku" by Agnieszka Bender, p. 35, 38-39, 42). The described painting by Venetian school, today in the National Gallery in London (oil on panel, 36.8 x 29.8 cm, inventory number NG631), is generally dated about 1510-1520. It was purchased from the collection of Edmond Beaucousin in Paris, in 1860, like the portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici (1492-1519), Duke of Urbino by Palma Vecchio (NG636) from the same period, identified by me. It is possible that the two effigies come from the Polish royal collection, because since the abdication of John II Casimir Vasa, who settled in Paris, many artistic collections from Poland have been transferred to France. This bust "with blond hair confined in a net, and in a rich dress of embroidered Byzantine stuff" was initially attributed to Francesco Bissolo (1470/72-1554), a Venetian painter described as a pupil of Giovanni Bellini, "distinguished for a delicacy of execution and a fine feeling for colour" (after "Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Pictures ..." by Ralph Nicholson Wornum, p. 38). The same woman was depicted in guise of the Virgin Mary in the painting by Francesco Bissolo, now in the National Museum in Warsaw (inventory number M.Ob.953, earlier 128830). The likeness of the blonde lady to other effigies of Queen Bona, notably the portrait by workshop of Giovanni Battista Perini (Royal Castle in Warsaw, ZKW/60) and a miniature by Lambert Sustris or circle (Czartoryski Museum, XII- 141) is unmistakable. A great similarity can also be underlined with the portrait of Bona's mother, Isabella of Aragon, Duchess of Milan, painted by Bernardino de' Conti or circle of Ambrogio de Predis (inscribed indistinctly: ISABELLA / SFORZAAL / LAS.DVCHESSA / DICASTRO), from the Rothschild collection - lips and dyed hair. Although the model's hairstyle is typical of Italian fashion around 1520, in this context the inspiration of Roman portraiture, in particular the busts of the Roman Empress Julia Domna (c. 160-217 AD), is noticeable - marble bust by Roman workshop from the late 2nd century AD - early 3rd century AD (Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon) and Renaissance bust carved in marble and porphyry from the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries (Wawel Royal Castle). Julia was the first empress of the Severan dynasty and in her marble statue from the portico of the fountain with oil-lamp in Ostia Antica (Archaeological Museum of Ostia in Rome), she was depicted in guise of Ceres (Demeter), goddess of agriculture, grain crops, fertility and motherhood. Bona drew inspiration from ancient Rome in many aspects of her life (her son was the new Augustus) and the busts of Roman emperors and empresses in medallions in a painted frieze in the upper part of the arcaded courtyard of Wawel Castle, created between 1535 and 1536 by Dionisius Stube, could be her initiative. According to 17th-century accounts the statues of Roman emperors decorated the Wawel interiors. It is most likely the queen who was depicted naked with a similar hairstyle, embraced by her husband, in the right corner of the small painting painted in 1527 by Hans Dürer depicting the Fountain of Youth (National Museum in Poznań, tempera and oil on panel, 56 x 83 cm, inv. MNP M 0110, signed and dated center left, on tree trunk: 1527 / HD). Hans, younger brother of Albrecht Dürer, was appointed court painter to King Sigismund I in 1527. 
Portrait of Bona Sforza d'Aragona (1494-1557), Queen of Poland against the backdrop of an arch by Venetian painter, possibly Francesco Bissolo, ca. 1520, National Gallery in London.
The Fountain of Youth by Hans Dürer, 1527, National Museum in Poznań.
Portrait of a Franciscan monk, most likely Marco de la Torre, by Paris Bordone
"There he said he met Brother Marco the Venetian of the Torre family, Friar Minor, a cunning and prudent man, who, as a queen's confessor, had immediately known the king's actions" (Illic dicit se nosse fratrem Marchettum Venetum e familia a Turri ordinis Minorum, hominem astutum et prudentem, fuisse a confessione reginae intellexisseque mox etiam regis factum), describes the favorite of Queen Bona Maria Sforza d'Aragona, Cardinal Girolamo Aleandro (1480-1542) in his note of February 10, 1539. Aleandro relied on information provided to him by Andrea Sbardellato (or Sbardellati), father guardian of Strygonia (Esztergom in Hungary), who in 1522 had visited Poland in the company of the Apostolic Nuncio Tommaso Nigri.
Sbardellato, a member of the noble Venetian family and grandfather of Andrzej Dudycz (1533-1589), also reported some rumors about the queen, that Aleandro noted in Greek, namely "that she gave birth to a child six months after her arrival in Poland, and that they said that she was pregnant by an ambassador of the king, whom he had sent to her country", as well as that her other favorite, the physician Valentino, had become a wealthy man (after "Nuntiaturberichte aus Deutschland ...", Volume 1 [1533-1559], p. 286-287). Marco de la Torre, also Marco della Torre Veneto or Marek od wieże Wenet (Marcus a Turri Venetus, Marco de la Turri in Latin) was a Franciscan monk who earned his university degree in Padua. His primary mission was to govern the queen's court, but he also became an advisor to Bona, thus acquiring considerable political power in Sarmatia. Internationally, della Torre worked to strengthen relations between Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia and the Republic of Venice. Domestically, he focused on religious matters, particularly curbing the spread of Protestantism. The Italian community of merchants, artists, and other court employees found in him a leader who also carried out their spiritual ministry in a separate chapel of the Franciscan church in Kraków (after "Isabella Jagiellon, Queen of Hungary (1539-1559)", ed. Ágnes Máté and Teréz Oborni, p. 167). The first news of the new provincial superior, Marco a Turre, dates back to December 14, 1518, but it is clear from its wording that he had been in office in Poland for some time. He was then in Lviv, as provincial and commissioner, and was relieving the burdens of his subjects in Czyszki (after "Franciszkanie polscy" by Kamil Kantak, Volume 2 [1517-1795], p. 17-18, 20, 28). It is therefore assumed that he arrived in Kraków in 1517, when he would have been between 30 and 40 years old. In 1519, he also assumed the functions of court chaplain and confessor to Queen Bona. It is also possible that he was the same age as the queen, born around 1494, which would explain why he gained her favor so quickly after her arrival in Poland. His belonging to the Venetian province indicates Venetian origin, which of course should be understood as referring to the entire Venetian territory. The Torre family, originally from France and bearing the name La Tour (de la Turre), settled in Northern Italy and then in Sicily at the end of the 14th century. It was probably with the cooperation of Father Marco that the queen established her diplomatic and commercial agency in Venice, which she maintained until her death. He was also used for confidential diplomatic services. For example, in the summer of 1524, on the orders of Vice-Chancellor Tomicki, he skillfully obtained from the imperial envoy Antonio de Conti, returning from Moscow, that the purpose of his mission was to renew the alliance between the Grand Prince of Moscow and the emperor against Poland. Marco's unofficial position as an influential advisor was well known abroad. Pope Paul III, sending his nuncio Pamphilus a Strasoldo to Poland in September 1536 to announce a general council, asked him to seek Father Marco's assistance (after "Królowa Bona ..." by Władysław Pociecha, p. 72). As a reward for his services in royal affairs, he obtained a rectory in the royal estates in Czchów before 1529. In a letter from the king to the Doge of Venice dated 1522 or 1523, Sigismund I speaks in glowing terms of Marco. He represented innovative trends. Thanks to Sigismund and Bona, he became a professor at the Kraków Academy in 1519, where he taught theology. As a professor, de la Torre initiated courses on biblical studies and patristics. Interestingly, Alifio, another of the queen's protégés, gave lectures on Roman law, and thanks to the queen's financial support, doctor Valentino was able to conduct research in the natural sciences. Marco gathered around him friars from the Venetian province, and at the monastery, Greek was also taught alongside Latin. The most talented students were sent to study in Padua. As commissioner of the Czech and Polish provinces of the Franciscans, Marco de la Torre also became a zealous reformer within his order. He attempted to compensate for the lack of new friars by bringing in Italians, his compatriots from the Venetian province, as did his predecessor Alberto Fantini (d. 1516). Already at the reception of the General of the Observants Francesco Lichetto in 1520, Marco appeared with two companions, one of whom was a very young Italian, perhaps Francesco Lismanini (ca. 1504-1566). Furthermore, in the years 1530 and 1531, we find Gabriel de Amicis, also a Venetian, as custodian of Kraków. In November 1531 he was in his native city, where Doge Andrea Gritti (1455-1538) gave him a letter of recommendation for his return journey. During the plague that struck Kraków in 1544, de la Torre remained in the city for five months. However, he did not isolate himself in the monastery and, together with other brethren, in the monastery garden, he distributed a powder with medicinal properties which, dissolved in wine, was supposed to help prevent a fatal infection, as confirmed by his letter to the Bishop of Warmia, Jan Dantyszek (1485-1548), dated April 12. In a letter dated March 23, 1545, he thanked Dantyszek for the muscat, which he used to treat his aging body. In February 1538 he resigned from the position of provincial in favour of Lismanini. He died sometime after June 26, 1545. The Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest houses a painting attributed to the Venetian painter Paris Bordone (1500-1571) depicting a Bearded man with a crucifix (oil on panel, 38.5 x 33.5 cm, inv. 835). The painting was donated in 1836 by János László Pyrker (1772-1847), a Hungarian Cistercian abbot who became Bishop of Spiš (1818), Patriarch of Venice and Primate of Dalmatia with the seat of Venice (1820), and later Archbishop of Eger (1827). He spent seven years in Venice, where he collected nearly 200 paintings, Italian works from the 16th and 17th centuries. There is, however, no clear evidence that he purchased the painting by Bordone in Venice. The man is wearing a dark monk's habit, very similar to that of the Franciscans. The work is generally dated to the 1520s and although the man appears relatively young, nothing is known of his age, as there is no inscription. His appearance could be the result of an idealization or that the painter based the image on general study drawings. Bordone is the author of the painting depicting the royal jeweler Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio (Wawel Castle, inv. ZKnW-PZS 5882). This fact, along with the Franciscan habit, could indicate that it was the influential friar Marco de la Torre who was depicted. If the painting was made in Venice for Marco's family, like the portrait of Caraglio, the lack of information on the identity of the sitter could be explained by his greater notoriety abroad, than in his home country. The portrait of the jeweler of Sigismund Augustus was in the collection of Andrzej Ciechanowiecki before 1972. In the second half of the 17th century, this painting, or a similar one, was mentioned in the Muselli collection in Verona, as follows: "Portrait of a jeweler. On the workbench are various art instruments and a gilded morion, on which rests a white eagle with outstretched wings, from whose beak hangs a chain, and on this chain a gold medal bearing the imprint of a man in armour, with the inscription: Sigismundus Augustus Poloniae Rex: [...]; three arms high and two arms wide, it is one of Titian's finest and most refined works" (Un ritratto d'un Gioielliero, sopra il banco vi sono diversi instrumenti per l'arte et un morione dorato, sopra il quale posa un' Aquila bianca con l'ali sparse, dalla bocca della quale pende una colonna, e dalla colonna una medaglia d' oro con l'impronta d'un uomo armato, scrittovi intorno: Sigismundus Augustus Poloniae Rex: [...]; è tre braccia in altezza, in larghezza due, de' più fiuiti e belli di Titiano, after "Raccolta di cataloghi ed inventarii inediti di quadri, statue, disegni ...", ed. Giuseppe Campori, p. 190). Caraglio was thus forgotten in his hometown, a century after his death in 1565 in Kraków, as was the author of the painting, if it is indeed the same painting now preserved in the Wawel collection. Besides the aforementioned portrait of Caraglio, there are three other notable paintings by Bordone in Polish collections, but all were transferred to Poland after the Second World War, namely Venus and Cupid from the collection of Adolf Hitler at the Berghof and Sacra conversazione from the collection of Frederick William IV of Prussia (National Museum in Warsaw, inv. M.Ob.628 MNW and M.Ob.630 MNW), as well as Daphnis and Chloe from the collection of Zbigniew and Janina Porczyński (Museum of John Paul II Collection in Warsaw). Before World War II, the Wilanów Palace in Warsaw housed a beautiful allegorical scene by Bordone: "Time reveals beauty" (oil on canvas, 126 x 177 cm, inv. 246, signed lower right on the stone: OPVS / PARIS · BOR). This painting was considered to have been acquired by the owner of Wilanów, Count Stanisław Kostka Potocki (1755-1821) in September 1785 in Venice. In his letter to his wife Aleksandra Lubomirska, dated Vicenza, October 2, 1785, Potocki states: "I have made some fine acquisitions in Venice. I have a magnificent Paolo Veronese, a Tintoretto, two Bassanos, a Schiavone and a Paris Bordone. These are choice paintings, pure and well-preserved originals" (J'ai fait quelques belles emplettes a Venise. J'ai un beau Paule Veronese, un Tintonet, deux Bassanus, un Schiavone, et un Paris Bordone, ce cont des tableaux de choix, pures originaux et bien conservés, Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw, 262 t. 1, Mikrofilm: 19007, page 78). However, since several paintings from his collection are considered lost or misattributed, it is difficult to determine whether he was actually referring to the lost painting from Wilanów. Bordone's Rest on the flight into Egypt, held at the Courtauld Gallery in London (oil on canvas, 49 x 68.9 cm, inv. P.1978.PG.35), comes from the Potocki collection in Kraków (after "Italian Paintings and Drawings at 56 Princes Gate London SW7 ..." by Antoine Silern, p. 14), and Bordone's "Portrait of a Cardinal" from the collection of Stanisław Potocki (1825-1887), grandson of Stanisław Kostka, was included in the auction organized on May 8, 1885 in Paris (Catalogue de beaux tableaux ancien [...] le tout composant la collection de M. le comte Potocki [...], item 8, p. 9). According to the inscription at top right: ANDREAS · CARS · A · PAVLO III, MDXXXVII, this painting probably depicted the Neapolitan cardinal Andrea Matteo Palmieri (1493-1537), appointed governor of Milan by Emperor Charles V shortly before his death. Palmieri's connections to Naples and Milan indicate that this painting, created in Venice, may have come from the collection of Queen Bona, and that it miraculously survived destruction during numerous military conflicts. Although its current location is unknown. The inventory of the sale of the possessions of King John II Casimir Vasa, great-grandson of Queen Bona Sforza, on February 15, 1673 in Paris, lists "A portrait of a monk holding a cross in his hands, painted on canvas" (after "Vente du mobilier de Jean-Casimir en 1673" by Ryszard Szmydki, item 393), which could potentially be a copy of the painting now in Budapest. 
Portrait of a Franciscan monk holding a crucifix, most likely Marco de la Torre, confessor and advisor to Queen Bona Sforza, by Paris Bordone, 1520s, Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.
Rest on the flight into Egypt from the Potocki collection in Kraków by Paris Bordone, 1520s, Courtauld Gallery in London.
Time reveals beauty by Paris Bordone, second quarter of the 16th century, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw, lost during World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portraits of courtiers of Queen Bona Sforza by Palma Vecchio and Giovanni Cariani
The royal and grand-ducal court of Sigismund I and Bona Sforza was certainly one of the most splendid in Renaissance Europe, comparable to those of Charles V in Spain, Francis I in France, John III in Portugal, Anna Jagellonica in Bohemia and Henry VIII in England. It was also probably the most diverse court, because in addition to the various indigenous nationalities of Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia, it included many Italians, who arrived there in large numbers with Bona. Their homeland was famous for the most outstanding painters and sculptors of the Renaissance, so they forgot this in a faraway country or maybe art historians of the modern era forgot about the Italian community in Poland-Lithuania?
At Bona's court, in addition to diplomats such as Andrea Carducci (from a Florentine patrician family), there were Neapolitan emigrants such as Gugielmo Braida, Baron Casalecti (Bona's court equerry), as well as members of Italian ruling families, such as Annibale Bentivoglio of Bologna, the queen's favourite, probably from the family of the sovereigns of Bologna, related to the Sforzas. Annibale arrived in Poland in the autumn of 1518. The queen accepted him into her court as a valet with a salary of 20 zlotys per year, set for him by the treasurer on February 3, 1519. His duties included supervision of the Queen's chambers and the valet service, so he had a very confidential and influential position (after "Studia z dziejów kultury polskiej ..." by Henryk Barycz, Jan Hulewicz, p. 200, 207). Before 1524, the queen built a small palace on Wawel Hill as Annibale's residence, often referred to after 1541 in royal accounts as domus olim Annibalis or domus Hannibalis reginalis M-tis. Bentivoglio died during his stay with Bona's court in Vilnius in April 1541. The royal secretary Stanisław Hozjusz did not fail to inform Dantyszek about this, adding that Annibale had always been in great favour with the queen (after "Królowa Bona, 1494-1557 ..." by Władysław Pociecha, p. 79, 90). She also had Renaissance palaces built for her favourites Alifio and Doctor Valentinis. Bona's cook in Kraków was a Neapolitan nobleman, Cola Maria de Charis, who also served her as a court musician and diplomat. He was married to Lucrezia Planelli, from a powerful family of Neapolitan barons, and lived in Poland until the end of his life. During the ceremony of the Prussian homage in 1525, Sigismund I invested him, along with two other Italians Andrea Carduccio and Verspaziano Dottula, with the title of golden knight (eques auratus). His nephew Cola married Giulia, the daughter of Bona's auditor, a learned lawyer, Vincenzo Massilli. A Neapolitan nobleman, Antonio Niccolo (Cola) Carmignano (d. 1544), who used the pseudonym Parthenopeus Suavius as a poet, was treasurer to Queen Bona and author of panegyrics praising the Polish royal family. The aforementioned Verspaziano Dottula from Bari, who also came to Poland with Queen Bona in 1518, was her cupbearer from 1534. After Bona left Poland, Dottula moved to the court of Sigismund Augustus. He retained his previous title of pocillator Sacrae Reginalis Mtis olim Bonae dei gratia Reginae Poloniae until 1567. Bona's servants who performed unpaid service for the queen and in her chambers in 1518 were Camillo Lampugnano, Ascanio Musatini, Ferdinando Carlini and Alessandro from Bari (after "Działalność Włochów w Polsce ..." by Danuta Quirini-Popławska, 16-17, 25). The list of income and expenses of the royal treasury in 1518, kept by the treasurer Mikołaj Szydłowiecki (1480-1532), lists several of the queen's courtiers, as well as her ladies, including noble matrons (Matrone nobiles): Beatrice Zurla and Ifigenia, noble maidens (Puelle nobiles): Lucrezia Alifio, Beatrice Roselli, Porzia Arcamone, Isabella de Dugnano (possibly Isabella of Venice, mentioned in 1551), Laodomia Caracciolo, Faustina Opizzoni and Laura Effrem, old women guarding maidens (Vetule custodientes puellas): Violenta the Greek and Laura the Neapolitan, chambermaids (Puelle cubicularie): Albina the Neapolitan and Samuela Armizana (compare "Wiadomość o dworze Bony i królewien w 1518 r., podał Tymoteusz Lipiński"). There were rumors about the "extremely loose morals" of these Italian women, who read Plato and Boccaccio (after "Opowieści o Włochach i Polakach" by Joanna Olkiewicz, p. 204). Bona, wishing to expand her influence, married her ladies to Poles. Beatrice Roselli was married to a royal courtier, Gabriel Morawiec from Mysłów (from 1525), Porzia Arcamone married Jan Trzcieński of the Rawicz coat of arms (in May 1525), and Faustyna Opizzoni married a royal courtier Mikołaj Skoruta (in September 1535). Even though most of these people came from Southern Italy (Bari and Naples), and not from Venice, it was they who spread and most likely further facilitated in Poland-Lithuania the custom of ordering paintings from the famous Venetian workshops. "For centuries, the Republic of St. Mark had an important role in the spread of works of art along the two shores of the Adriatic" (after "Venice and the Adriatic side of the Kingdom of Naples: Imports and influences of Venetian art" by Marialuisa Lustri, p. 1). Before 1439, the Venetian painter Jacobello del Fiore (ca. 1370-1439) painted the polyptych for the Cathedral of Teramo in Abruzzo (central Italy), commissioned by the Augustinian monk Nicholas (Nicola, MAGIST(ER) NICOLAUS), a Venetian citizen since 1413, who was depicted as a kneeling donor beneath the central panel of the polyptych. From the 1450s onwards, the Vivarini workshop in Venice, which dominated the local market for altarpieces from the 1440s onwards, also enjoyed a thriving export market in south-eastern Italy, where trade links with Venice were strong (after "Ell maistro dell anchona ..." by Susan Ruth Steer, p. 15, 29, 221, 223). In 1475 Bartolomeo Vivarini executed in Venice a polyptych commissioned for the Cathedral of Conversano near Bari (now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, inv. 581, purchased by the State in the 1880s), which is confirmed by a corresponding inscription in Latin in the lower part of the Nativity scene in the central part of the polyptych (HOC OPVS SVMPTIBVS DOMINI ANTHONII DE CHARITATE CA/NONICI ECCLESIE DE CONVERSANO IN FORMAM REDACTVM • EST • 1475 / OPVS FACTVM VENETIIS PER BARTOLOMEVM VIVARINVM). A year later, in 1476, he executed the Bari Altarpiece (Basilica of St. Nicholas) for Alvise Cauco, a Venetian expatriate, canon of the church of St. Nicholas in Bari. The Zumpano Triptych, considered a workshop work, was made for export to a "very obscure" and very distant village in Southern Italy near Cosenza. The inscription on Vivarini's Saint George Slaying the Dragon (FACTVM • VENETIIS), painted in 1485 (Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, inv. 1160, lost during the Second World War), also indicates that the work was made for export. Another example of export from Venice was the arrival at the Probi estate in Atri, Abruzzo, of Giovanni Bellini's Portrait of Giovanni Andrea Probi, painted in 1474, now in the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham (inv. 46.11). Giovanni Andrea was the son of Angelo Probi (d. 1474), Venetian ambassador to the King of Naples. This portrait formed the lid of an inheritance chest. In the archival documents of the Probi estate, the inheritance chest is described as an Arab casket containing a marble bust of Angelo Probi and a sonnet. In the Łańcut Castle, which houses some paintings from the former Lubomirski collection, there is a painting entitled "A Man and Two Courtesans", attributed to Lorenzo Lotto (oil on canvas, 92 x 118.5 cm, inv. S.850MŁ). It comes from the collection of Princess Izabela Lubomirska (1736-1816), patron and art collector, called the "Blue Marquise" and bears the inscription on the reverse: "Property of Prince Henryk / Izabella Lubomirska" (Xięcia Henryka własność / Izabella Lubomirska), it was therefore given by the princess to her adopted son Henryk Lubomirski (1777-1850). The scene depicts a man as a shepherd holding a flute and two ladies, one reaching seductively into the other's shirt. It is a copy of an "Allegory of Profane Love" (or "A Shepherd and Two Women", oil on panel, 69.2 x 94.6 cm) by Palma Vecchio (ca. 1480-1528), also known as Jacopo Negretti, presented during the exhibition "In In Light of Venice: Venetian Painting in Honor of David Rosand" in 2016 at the Otto Naumann gallery in New York, together with a copy of Bernardo Bellotto's Architectural capriccio with a self-portrait in the costume of a Venetian nobleman (the original given to the king Stanislaus Augustus in 1765 is in the National Museum in Warsaw, Dep.2438 MNW). The post-Renaissance tradition associates most similar scenes and portraits of "Venetian" women in negligee with famous courtesans of Venice, but in this case we have no evidence that the scene takes place in a brothel or that it involves courtesans. A somewhat similar scene from the 1520s, close to Dosso Dossi, but attributed to Giovanni Cariani, is in the Galleria Borghese in Rome (inv. 311). This "Allegory of Worldly Love" is interpreted as symbolizing the ephemeral nature of passions, so it is more likely a moralistic court scene. In the 18th century, the painting from the Lubomirski collection was located in the former royal residence in Wilanów (after "Mecenat artystyczny Izabelli z Czartoryskich Lubomirskiej 1736 - 1816" by Bożenna Majewska-Maszkowska, p. 475). If we assume that the painting was sent to Poland-Lithuania already in the 16th century, the possible owner could be Stanisław Lubomirski (died 1585), the grandfather of another Stanisław (1583-1649), who built the castle in Łańcut. In 1537, he married a lady from the court of Queen Bona, Laura Effrem. The provenance from the royal collection is also possible. A beautiful painting by Palma Vecchio, painted between 1516 and 1518 and depicting the Virgin and Child, St. John the Baptist and St. Sebastian, is mentioned in the catalogue of the Wilanów Gallery in 1834 ("Spis obrazów znaidujących się w galeryi i pokojach Pałacu Willanowskiego ...", p. 8, item 65). This painting, now kept in the National Museum in Poznań (tempera and oil on panel, 84.5 x 106 cm, inv. Mo 24), is considered to most likely belong to the collection of King John II Casimir Vasa, grandson of Queen Bona, who managed to evacuate several paintings from the royal collection to Silesia during the Deluge (compare "Dolabella. Wenecki malarz Wazów. Katalog wystawy", ed. Magdalena Białonowska, p. 54). The Łańcut painting, as well as the original by Palma in New York, could be considered a pure invention of the workshop, if not for the fact that the woman on the right, holding her hand on another woman's breast, was depicted in another painting from the Wilanów collection (oil on canvas, 75.8 x 63.5 cm, Wil.1753). This painting is attributed to a follower of Titian from the 17th or 18th century and was most likely mentioned in the 1834 catalogue under number 296 as "Portrait of a Woman, half-length: School of Titian" (Portret kobiety, pół fig: Szkoła Tycyana, p. 27). The style of this painting recalls works attributed to Giovanni Busi, known as Cariani (ca. 1485-1547), who worked in Lombardy and Venice, including Portrait of a Gentleman, Half-Length, Holding a Portrait of a Lady (Freeman's in Philadelphia, June 14, 2016, lot 32) and Portrait of a Young Woman as Saint Agatha (National Galleries of Scotland, inv. NG 2494). It is less finely painted than the portraits mentioned, indicating the involvement of assistants. The pose of the woman in the centre, as well as the woman herself, recall the model for Judith in a painting by Palma Vecchio, now kept in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (oil on panel, 90 x 71 cm, inv. 1890 / 939). The painting is considered to have been painted between 1525 and 1528 and comes from the Ducal Palace of Urbino, transferred in 1631 with the inheritance of Vittoria della Rovere (1622-1694). Interestingly, the woman at the centre of Palma's allegory can also be identified in a portrait by Cariani, now in a private collection (oil on canvas, 54 x 43 cm, Farsettiarte in Prato, April 21, 2023, lot 117), which was previously attributed to Palma Vecchio. This woman was depicted holding an attribute of Saint Catherine of Alexandria - breaking wheel, hence the title of this painting - Santa Caterina d'Alessandria. A workshop copy of this painting of inferior quality was auctioned in London in 2019 with an attribution to Palma Vecchio (oil on canvas, 54.4 x 38.9 cm, Sotheby's London, May 8, 2019, lot 9) and probably another copy from the collection of Marquess of Donegall, attributed to Cariani, was sold at auction in London from 22 to 25 June 1895 (oil on canvas, 48.9 x 41.3 cm, after "Catalogue of the highly important collection of pictures by old masters of Henry Doetsch ...", item 61, as "Portrait of a Lady as St. Catherine"). Since very little is known about the court ladies of Queen Bona, whether Italian or Polish noblewomen (Puelle nobiles Polone: Anna Zarembianka, Katarzyna Mokrska, Urszula Maciejowska and Elżbieta Pękosławska in 1518 and later Magdalena Bonerówna, Petronela Kościelecka and Zuzanna Myszkowska), it is difficult to determine the real names of the models in the paintings, but with great probability the persons depicted can be considered members of the Polish-Lithuanian royal-grand-ducal court. In the National Art Gallery in Lviv, Ukraine, there is another beautiful painting by the school of Palma Vecchio from the Lubomirski collection (oil on panel, 68 x 141, inv. Ж-2124). It depicts a naked woman sleeping on a green fabric - "Sleeping Venus". It is dated between 1510-1515. The landscape behind her shows a man sitting on the grass and admiring the sunset over the view of Venice. So was this painting a souvenir of a pleasant stay in the Venetian Republic or a place known only from the stories of others? Together with the portrait of Catherine de Medici (1519-1589), the future Queen of France, also from the Lubomirski collection (inv. Ж-1974), this painting is one of the forgotten treasures of the Lviv Gallery. According to my identification, Giovanni Cariani created a series of portraits of Catherine in the early 1530s - the so-called portraits of Violante with the letter V. 
Sleeping Venus with a view of Venice at sunset by School of Palma Vecchio, ca. 1510-1515, Lviv National Art Gallery.
Virgin and Child, St. John the Baptist and St. Sebastian by Palma Vecchio, ca. 1516-1518, National Museum in Poznań.
Allegorical court scene (Allegory of Profane Love) by Palma Vecchio, ca. 1518-1528, Private collection.
Allegorical court scene (Allegory of Profane Love) by workshop of Palma Vecchio or Lorenzo Lotto, ca. 1518-1528, Łańcut Castle.
Portrait of a lady as Judith by Palma Vecchio, ca. 1518-1528, Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Portrait of a lady as Saint Catherine of Alexandria by Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1518-1528, Private collection.
Portrait of a lady as Saint Catherine of Alexandria by workshop of Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1518-1528, Private collection.
Portrait of a lady by workshop or follower of Giovanni Cariani, after 1518, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
Portraits of Dukes of Masovia Stanislaus and Janusz III by Giovanni Cariani and Bernardino Licinio
"They both surpassed many kings by their household, world elegance and war gear, and were also worthy of their famous ancestors", wrote in his work Topographia siue Masoviæ descriptio, published in Warsaw in 1634 Andrzej Święcicki, a notary of the Nur region, about Stanislaus and Janusz III, Dukes of Masovia.
On 28 October 1503 died Konrad III the Red, Duke of Masovia. He was succeeded by his two minor sons jointly under the regency of their mother Anna (1476-1522), an ambitious member of the Lithuanian Radziwill family. Apart from Stanislaus (1500-1524) and Janusz III (1502-1526), she was the mother of two daughters Sophia (1497/1498-1543) and Anna (ca. 1498-1557). Anna's firm hand displeased the nobles. She was the regent of Masovia until 1518, when, as a result of a rebellion of the nobility, ignited by her former lover Mrokowski, she was forced to cede power to her grown-up sons. Despite the formal transfer of power, Anna retained real power until her death in 1522. In 1516 the Duchess asked the Emperor to support her daughter's candidacy as a wife for the Polish king Sigismund I, he however decided to marry Bona Sforza. In 1518 she and her children attended the wedding ceremony of Sigismund I with Bona in Kraków. The old Duchess was known for her lavish lifestyle and her inclination towards men. She had an affair with Jan Mrokowski, whom she promoted to the position of the Archdeacon of Warsaw in 1508 and later with Andrzej Zaliwski, who was made castellan of Wizna (the third most important office in the principality). She also cared for the sexual education of her sons having made available to them at one point in their adolescence 8 of her court ladies, among which was the daughter of the Płock voivode, Katarzyna Radziejowska, who was later accused of poisoning the dukes. Their love of drink and women and their dissolute lifestyle most likely contributed to the premature death of both dukes. Stanislaus died on August 8, 1524 in Warsaw and Janusz III during the night of 9 to 10 March 1526. They were buried in the Saint John's Cathedral in Warsaw. Their sister Anna founded a tomb monument, the earliest example of a Renaissance sculpture in Masovia, created by Italian sculptor around 1526, most probably Bernardino Zanobi de Gianotis, called Romanus, from Florence or Rome, who was active in Poland since 1517. The slab, made of "royal" red Hungarian marble, preserved the destruction of the temple during the World War II and depict the dukes together, embraced. Both dukes were shown together in all known, before this article, effigies - created in the 17th century after original from about 1510s (in the State Hermitage Museum and the Royal Castle in Warsaw). Upon death of young princes their Duchy was annexed by Sigismund I while Bona Sforza was frequently accused of poisoning Stanislaus and his brother. According to anatomical and anthropological studies of skeletons of both dukes, published in 1955, Janusz III (skeleton 1) was subnordic and approximately 176.4 cm high and Stanislaus (skeleton 2) nordic type with "reddish hair" and approximately 183 cm high. The specialist examinations did not reveal any traces of poison. Both princes were buried in costumes made of Venetian silk - fragment of fabric with medallions from Janusz III's coffin and fragment of damask fabric with a crown motif from Stanislaus' coffin. The coffins were probably covered with a silk fabric with eagles, a tree of life and a stylized flower-shaped crown (now in Museum of Warsaw), created in Lucca in the end of the 15th century. Apart from trade, significant contacts between Masovia and Venice date back to the Middle Ages. In 1226 Konrad I, Duke of Masovia and Kuyavia, having difficulty with constant raids over his territory and willing to become the High Duke of Poland, invited the religious military order of the Teutonic Knights to pacify his most dangerous neighbours and safeguard his territory. This decision had later much worse consequences for the entire Polish state. In 1309 the knights moved their headquarters from Venice to Malbork (Marienburg). Double portrait known as Bellini brothers is reported in French royal collection since at least 1683 (inventory number 107, as manner of Giovanni Bellini, now in the Louvre, oil on canvas, 45 x 63 cm, INV 101 ; MR 59). It is now atributed to Giovanni Cariani and the costumes are typical to about 1520, threfore this cannot be the Bellinis, who died in 1507 (Gentile) and in 1516 (Giovanni). Edgar Degas, beliving that this is the effigy of the famous Venetians, created a copy of this portrait (Saltwood Castle, oil on canvas, 43 x 63 cm). This portrait is known from several versions, some of which are attributed to Vittore di Matteo, called Vittore Belliniano, son of Matteo, a pupil of Gentile Bellini. The version in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (oil on canvas, 43.8 x 59.3 cm, 50.3412) is very similar to the Louvre painting. In the version in the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (oil on canvas, 45.7 x 63.2 cm, 44.553), which was in the Solly collection in London until 1821, the men changed places. Another, with the same composition as the Louvre painting, was cut in half (one indistinctly monogrammed lower right). Both paintings are now in private collections (oil on canvas, 44.3 x 35.3 cm, Christie's London, Auction 4936, May 4, 2012, lot 63 and oil on canvas, 44.8 x 31.8 cm, Christie's London, Auction 6360, July 6, 2012, lot 57). Half of another painting or a separate composition, attributed to Vittore Belliniano, was in the Hermitage before 1937 and previously in the Barbarigo collection in Venice (oil on canvas, 42.5 x 36.5 cm, Christie's London, Auction 17196, July 5, 2019, lot 174). The number of contemporary copies of this painting also indicates that both men were important European leaders whose effigies were spread throughout Renaissance Europe. These portraits perfectly match known iconography of both dukes of Masovia, as well as examination of their remains. The man with "reddish hair" was also depicted in another painting, also from the Solly collection, in the National Gallery in London (oil on wood, 64.5 x 49.2 cm, NG1052, bequeathed by Miss Sarah Solly, 1879). It is painted in the style of Andrea Previtali, an Italian painter also active in Venice. The "subnordic" man was depicted in several portraits by Bernardino Licinio, like the effigy holding a book in the Royal Palace of Turin (oil on canvas, 52 x 51.5 cm, 687, from the old collection of the dukes of Savoy), a portrait holding his fur coat, which was in the Manfrin Gallery in Venice before 1851, now in private collection (oil on canvas, 77.5 x 59.7 cm, Sotheby's New York, May 20, 2021, lot 2), another portrait holding gloves in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (oil on canvas, 58.8 x 53 cm, GG 1928, from the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in Brussels), and another against a landscape and holding a cane, in the Vittorio Cini Collection (oil on canvas, 32 x 25.5 cm). In almost all described portraits the sitters are depicted in rich furs, including lynx, which were very expensive and of which Poland and Masovia were leading exporters at that time. Distinctive protruding lower lip (prognathism), so-called Habsburg lip, or Habsburg or Austrian jaw, inherited trait which was present and clearly evident in the Habsburg family, was allegedly introduced into the family by Cymburgis of Masovia (1394/1397-1429), Duchess of Austria from 1412 until 1424. In his "Anatomy of Melancholy" (1621) Robert Burton, an English writer, uses it as an example of hereditary transmission (after Manfred Draudt's "Between Topographical Fact and Cliché: Vienna and Austria in Shakespeare and other English Renaissance Writing"). Protruding lower jaw is visible in all portraits by Cariani and Licinio. Also virtual reconstruction of faces of both dukes, shows the "Habsburg lip". 
Portrait of Stanislaus (1500-1524) and Janusz III (1502-1526), Dukes of Masovia by Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1520, Louvre Museum.
Portrait of Stanislaus (1500-1524) and Janusz III (1502-1526), Dukes of Masovia by Edgar Degas after original by Giovanni Cariani, 1858-1860, Saltwood Castle.
Portrait of Stanislaus (1500-1524) and Janusz III (1502-1526), Dukes of Masovia by workshop of Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1520, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Portrait of Stanislaus (1500-1524) and Janusz III (1502-1526), Dukes of Masovia by Vittore Belliniano or Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1520, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.
Portrait of Stanislaus (1500-1524), Duke of Masovia by Vittore Belliniano or Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1520, Private collection.
Portrait of Stanislaus (1500-1524), Duke of Masovia by workshop of Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1520, Private collection.
Portrait of Stanislaus (1500-1524), Duke of Masovia by Italian painter, most probably Andrea Previtali, ca. 1518, National Gallery in London.
Portrait of Janusz III (1502-1526), Duke of Masovia by workshop of Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1520, Private collection.
Portrait of Janusz III (1502-1526), Duke of Masovia holding a book by Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1518-1524, Royal Palace of Turin.
Portrait of Janusz III (1502-1526), Duke of Masovia by Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1518-1524, Private collection.
Portrait of Janusz III (1502-1526), Duke of Masovia holding gloves by Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1524-1526, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Janusz III (1502-1526), Duke of Masovia holding a cane by Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1524-1526, Vittorio Cini Collection.
Portrait of Duke Stanislaus of Masovia by Hans Krell
A German Renaissance painter, Hans Krell (1490-1565), who may have trained in the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder in Wittenberg, started his career as a court painter for George (1484-1543), Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach, a son of Sophia Jagiellon, at his court in Ansbach. He then followed the Margrave to the Hungarian court and entered the service of Louis II Jagiellon, king of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia, where he served as court painter in Prague, Bratislava and Buda from 1522 to 1526. Krell accompanied the king and queen on their journeys and produced several portraits of the king, his relatives and his courtiers.
In 1522 he produced a number of similar portraits including of Queen Mary of Austria (1505-1558), wife of Louis, on the occasion of her coronation as Queen of Bohemia (June 1, 1522). The portrait of Mary in Alte Pinakothek in Munich, was probably intended to serve as a gift, and the original date '1522' was most likely rewritten as '152(2)4'. That year he also painted Margrave George (Hungarian National Museum), his younger brother Albert of Prussia (1490-1568), Grand Master of the Teutonic Order and then first Duke of Prussia (known from a 19th century copy by Sixtus Heinrich Jarwart) and Jan Bezdružický of Kolowrat (1498-1526), chamberlain of Louis Jagiellon (Rychnov nad Kněžnou Castle, probably a copy by Jan Baltasar Rauch, created before 1716). According to Dieter Koepplin, a Swiss art historian, Krell also painted the Battle of Orsha, created around 1524-1530, which was previously attributed to the circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder. The painting, on display in the National Museum in Warsaw, depicts the 1514 battle between Poland-Lithuania and the Grand Duchy of Moscow. This work was most likely commissioned by Constantine (ca. 1460-1530), Prince of Ostroh, who commanded the main forces of Poland-Lithuania. The detailed knowledge of the battle has been interpreted as meaning that the artist himself participated in the battle. The painting contains a possible self-portrait, depicting the artist as an observer of the battle. After Louis's death, Krell moved to Leipzig, where he is documented in 1533. Around 1537 he created a portrait of Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573), Electress of Brandenburg (Grunewald hunting lodge in Berlin), portrayed in her wedding dress with monogram S of her father Sigismund I on sleeves. In 1522 he also created a portrait of a man in a fur coat, which was in Marczell von Nemes' collection in Munich before 1936 (oil on panel, 48.2 x 33.6 cm). According to inscription in Latin, tha man was 22 in 1522 (ETATIS · SVE · ANNORVM · XXII · 1522 ·), exactly as Stanislaus (1500-1524), Duke of Masovia, son of Anna Radziwill. The age of the Duke of Masovia was confirmed on a marble plaque from his tomb in Warsaw's Cathedral, destroyed during World War II. According to the inscription in Latin he died in 1524 at the age of 24 (OBIERVNT. STANISAVS ANNO SALVTIS M.DXXIV AETATIS SVAE XXIV). The man bear a great resemblance to effigies of the blond Duke by Giovanni Cariani and Andrea Previtali and his costume is very similar to that of King Louis from his portrait by Krell created in 1522 or 1526 (Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna). In 1518, Stanislaus and his brother Janusz began to rule independently in Masovia, however, their mother Anna Radziwill held real power until her death in March 1522. She was buried in the church of Saint Anne in Warsaw which she founded, constructed between 1515-1521 by Bartłomiej Grzywin of Czersk to design by Michael Enkinger from Gdańsk. Stanislaus commissioned a tomb monument for her, not preserved, one of the first Renaissance sculptures in Masovia. Between 1519-1520 Stanislaus and his brother participated on the side of Poland in the war against Albert of Prussia (1490-1568), Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, who waged war against his uncle Sigismund I. At the same time, Stanislaus secretly entered into talks with the Teutonic Knights for a ceasefire, which finally took place in December 1520. 
Portrait of Stanislaus (1500-1524), Duke of Masovia, aged 22 by Hans Krell, 1522, Private collection.
Portrait of Beatrice Zurla, chamberlain of Bona Sforza by Bernardo Licinio
Bona Sforza arrived to Poland in 1518 with a retinue of thirteen noble Italian ladies, among which the most important was Beatrice Zurla. She came from a Neapolitan noble family and become a chamberlain of queen's court. Beatrice and other Ifigenia of unknown family name were paid 100 florins annually and their presence in Poland is confirmed until 1521, but they probably stayed for much longer. The poet and secretary of queen Bona, Andrzej Krzycki, allegedly called Beatrice "the scare of black and white angels".
Very less is known about her later life and close family. She was probably married or widowed as some sources called her a matron (matrona) (after "Działalność Włochów w Polsce w I połowie XVI wieku" by Danuta Quirini-Popławska, p. 29), i.e. married woman in Roman society. The 1518 list of income and expenditures of the royal treasury, kept by treasurer Mikołaj Szydłowiecki (1480-1532), mentions her as Beatryxa Tarla, with a payment of 25 zlotys. For comparison, the master cook (magister coquine) Jerome received 20 zlotys, according to this register. It also mentions "a manservant of lady Beatrice" (Służący pani Beatryxy, after "Wiadomość o dworze Bony i królewien w 1518 r., podał Tymoteusz Lipiński", Biblioteka Warszawska, p. 641). Her great attachment to Bona was most probably a reason why she decided to leave her family. In 1520 a certain nobleman Leonardo Zurla, possibly Beatrice's brother or husband, built himself a magnificent palace in Crema, a city in Lombardy near Cremona, which from 1449 was part of the Venetian Republic and earlier belonged to the Duchy of Milan. In 1523 he wa sent to Venice with two other speakers, to greet the new Doge Andrea Gritti. The portrait attributed to Bernardo Licinio in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich from about 1520, shows a Mediterranean-looking woman (oil on panel, 57.2 x 59.7 cm, inv. 5093). The bodice of her rich gown is embroidered with a motif of vining plant, a symbol of attachment, and she holds her hand on her right breast. It is a reference to Amazons a Scythian race of female warriors, a close - knit sisterhood that valued friendship, courage, and loyalty and who supposedly, according to Hellanicus of Lesbos, removed their right breast to improve their bow strength (after "The Early Amazons ..." by Josine Blok, p. 22). It is therefore a symbol of attachment to another, very important woman. The book in her left hand, as not identifiable, could be a reference to the sitter's first name and the most famous literary Beatrice, Dante's muse, Beatrice Portinari. It is also possible that crimson color of her robe of Venetian fabric has symbolic meaning. By the mid-16th century Poland was the main exporter of Polish cochineal used to produce a crimson dye, it soon become a national symbol as majority of Polish nobility was dressed in crimson. Another symbol of her new homeland was White Eagle, just as in her bonnet. She is therefore dressed like today's Polish flag. The painting was transferred in 1804 to Munich from the Neuburg Castle in Neuburg an der Donau. On June 8, 1642 a great-granddaughter of Bona, princess Anna Catherine Constance Vasa, starost of Brodnica, married in Warsaw Philip William, heir of the Count Palatine of Neuburg. She brought a considerable dowry in jewels, estimated in 1645 at the astronomical amount of 443,289 minted thalers, and cash, calculated at a total of 2 million thalers. By the late 16th and early 17th century, such cabinet paintings, as the portrait in Munich, of not necessarily related people, become highly praised objects in princely and royal collections in Europe and their Kunstkammer (art cabinets). An avid collector of such items was Anna Catherine Constance's cousin Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, who had her portrait by Frans Luycx, and who accompanied her during her visit to her Austrian relatives and spa town of Baden-Baden from August and October 1639. It is highly probable that the portrait of the chamberlain of Queen Bona was on one of 70 wagons, that transported Anna Catherine Constance's enormous dowry to Neuburg. 
Portrait of Beatrice Zurla, chamberlain of Bona Sforza, Queen of Poland by Bernardo Licinio, ca. 1520, Alte Pinakothek in Munich.
Portrait of royal astrologer Luca Gaurico by Giovanni Cariani
Apart from noble ladies also some scientists arrived to Poland with Bona Sforza or for her wedding in April 1518. Among them were Celio Calcagnini (1479-1541) from Ferrara, who after his sojourn at the Polish court formulated a theory on the motions of the earth similar to that proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus, and Luca Gaurico (1475-1558), known as Lucas Gauricus, an astrologer and astronomer, born in the Kingdom of Naples. It is unknown when he left Kraków, but according to some theories he was to decide about th date and artistic program of the Sigismund Chapel at the Wawel Cathedral - "Year 1519. His Highness, king Sigismund of Poland, on May 17, on Tuesday after St. Sophia [...] at 11 o'clock, began the construction of the royal chapel in the cathedral church by Italian bricklayers", according to entry in the "Świętokrzyski Yearbook".
Considered as one of the most renowned and dependable fortune-tellers, Gaurico later served as an astrologer to Pope Paul III and Catherine de' Medici, Queen of France. In the 1520s he revised some books published in Venice, like De rebus coelestibus aureum opusculum (1526) or the first Latin translation from the Greek of Ptolemy's Almagest (1528), which constituted the basis of astronomical knowledge in Europe and in the Islamic world. The portrait by Giovanni Cariani in Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (oil on canvas, 91.9 x 82.1 cm, inv. 2201), created in about 1520, shows a man holding an armillary sphere with signs of the zodiac, against the landscape with hills (possibly Euganean Hills, from Greek Eugenes - well-born), and the bird flying through a gap in the stone wall toward the light of knowledge. He is holding a Greek/Byzantine manuscript (after Georgios Boudali's "The Codex and Crafts in Late Antiquity"). The inscription on the parapet in Greek and Latin is unclear and was probably understandable only to a person who commissioned or received the painting. Greek Σ ΣΕΠΙΓΙΝΟΜΕΝΟΙΣ (S Descendants) and a date in Latin AN XI VIII (Year 11 8). The year 1518, when Gaurico arrived to Poland, was the 11th year of reign of Sigismund I the Old, crowned 24 January 1507, and in August 1518 Ottoman forces besieged Belgrade, which was then under the rule of the Kingdom of Hungary. Louis II, king of Hungary was Sigismund's nephew. Turkish forces finally captured the city on 28 August 1521 and continued to march towards the heart of Hungary. Greek Σ is therefore monogram of Σιγισμούνδος - Sigismund for whom the painting was created. It is highly probale that Gaurico predicted in 1518 the Turkish invasion and the fall of the Jagiellonian Empire in Central Europe. Provenance of the painting is unknown. The museum's records only indicate that it was transferred from the Soviet Union in 1958, possibly as a restitution. It is possible that it was transferred to Berlin with dowry of Hedwig Jagiellon, Electress of Brandenburg or it was taken from Poland during the Deluge (1655-1660), as such "ancient" cabinet paintings become very popular in the 17th century cabinets of art (Kunstkammer). 
Portrait of royal astrologer Luca Gaurico (1475-1558) by Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1520, Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.
Portraits of Magdalena Bonerówna and Nicolaus II Radziwill by Giovanni Cariani
On 11 August 1527 lady-in-waiting of Queen Bona Magdalena Bonerówna (1505-1530) married in Kraków Stanislaus Radziwill (ca. 1500-1531), a son of Nicolaus II Radziwill (1470-1521), nicknamed Amor Poloniae, a magnate and statesman of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Their wedding took place in the chambers of the royal Wawel Castle, many eminent people participated in it, and the king himself mediated in a property settlement.
Magdalena, the youngest daughter of Kraków merchant Jakob Andreas Boner (1454-1517) and his wife Barbara Lechner, brought Stanislaus a huge dowry of 12,000 ducats, which is almost three times more than the magnate daughters used to receive at that time. Jakob Andreas was brother of Johann (Hans) Boner (1462-1523), a merchant from Landau in der Pfalz, who in 1483 emigrated to Kraków. He made a great fortune in paper mills and as tradesman dealing with spices, metals, timbers, livestock, etc. He become king's banker and main purveyor to the royal court. Jakob Andreas ran family business in Nuremberg and in Wrocław and in 1512 he settled in Kraków, where he bought from his brother a house in the Main Square. His daughter Magdalena become a court lady of the Queen around 1524 or possibly earlier. A painting by Giovanni Cariani from the Wawel Royal Castle in Kraków (oil on canvas, 85.5 x 73.5 cm, inv. ZKnW-PZS 5831), depict a blond lady in a dress from the 1520s. The painting was transferred to Wawel collection in 1931 from Stanisław Niedzielski's collection in Śledziejowice near Wieliczka. Earlier, it was in the collection of Wenzel Anton, Prince of Kaunitz-Rietberg, Austrian State Chancellor who contributed to the partitions of Poland. His collection was sold at an auction in Vienna in 1820 by his heirs. A good copy of this painting, although attributed to the workshop of Cariani and earlier to Giorgione, is in the Museum of Fine Arts and Archaeology in Besançon (oil on canvas, 78 x 64, INV. 896.1.322). The painting was bequeathed in 1894 by the French painter Jean François Gigoux (1806-1894), who was the lover of the Polish noblewoman Ewelina Hańska née Rzewuska (c. 1805-1882), wife of Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850). The earlier provenance is not known, however in this context it is quite possible that Gigoux received or inherited the painting from Hańska, who, like so many Polish aristocrats during the Partitions, moved her collections to France. There are several other copies of this portrait and the version that was in the Mieltke collection in Vienna before 1957 has been attributed by Bernard Berenson to Cariani (after "Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Venetian School", Volume I, p. 56). This number also testifies to the importance of the woman represented in Europe in the 1520s. The same woman in similar costume was depicted as Saint Mary Magdalene in another painting by Cariani showing Sacra Conversazione with Madonna and Child, Mary Magdalene and Saint Jerome from the same period (oil on canvas, 62 x 89 cm, Cambi Casa d'Aste in Genoa, Live Auction 192, April 15, 2014, lot 64). Mary Magdalene is a patron of women's preaching, moral rebirth and of sinful women and Saint Jerome, who encouraged the Roman women who followed him to study and identified how a woman devoted to Jesus should live her life, was a saint of particular importance to women during Renaissance. She can also be identified in another painting by the Venetian painter, now in a private collection (oil on panel, 45.7 x 34.9 cm), which is generally attributed to the school of Jacopo Palma il Vecchio (ca. 1480-1528). In some older publications Cariani is considered a pupil or imitator of Palma Vecchio. If the paintings were created by different workshops, they must be based on similar or identical study drawings. In the National Art Museum of Belarus in Minsk, there is another portrait from the same period, painted in Cariani's style, from the Radziwill collection. Basing on 17th and 18th century paintings and engravings it is identified as effigy of Nicolaus I Radziwill (ca. 1440-1509) or Petras Mantigirdaitis (d. 1459). However a drawing from the State Hermitage Museum (inv. ОР-45835), created in mid-17th century or earlier bears the inscription Nicolaus II Radziwill. It is therefore a portrait of Nicolaus I's son and Magdalena Bonerówna's father-in-law who was a voivode of Vilnius from 1507 and the Grand Chancellor of Lithuania from 1510. On 25 February 1518 he received, as the first member of the family, the princely title (Reichsfürst) from the emperor Maximilian I. 
Portrait of Magdalena Bonerówna (1505-1530) in white by Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1520-1527, Wawel Royal Castle in Kraków.
Portrait of Magdalena Bonerówna (1505-1530) in white by workshop of Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1520-1527, Museum of Fine Arts and Archeology in Besançon.
Sacra Conversazione with a portrait of Magdalena Bonerówna as Mary Magdalene by Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1520-1527, Private collection.
Portrait of Magdalena Bonerówna (1505-1530) in gold dress by circle of Palma Vecchio, ca. 1520-1527, Private collection.
Portrait of Prince Nicolaus II Radziwill (1470-1521) by Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1520, National Art Museum of Belarus in Minsk.
Portrait of Stanisław Łaski or Jobst von Dewitz by Hans Suess von Kulmbach
In the first quarter of the 16th century, Nuremberg, located between the Principality of Ansbach and the Principality of Bayreuth, ruled by Frederick (1460-1536), husband of Sophia Jagiellon (1464-1512), was an important craft center. Around 1514, therefore probably shortly before his arrival in Poland, Hans von Kulmbach designed the so-called window of the Margraves (Markgrafenfenster) in the St. Sebaldus Church in Nuremberg (drawing at the Kupferstich-Kabinett in Dresden, inv. C 2255) with the effigies of Frederick and Sophia (Sophia geborene P(rin)z(essi)n v. Polen).
When in 1520 the German bellfounder Hans II Beham, originally from Nuremberg, cast the most famous Polish bell - the Sigismund Bell - he proudly put his name and place of origin on his work: * M * D * X * X * / HANS BEHAM / VON * NVRMBERG. While Warsaw merchants transported wax to Wrocław and grain to Gdańsk and further afield, around 1520 the merchant Jerzy Baryczka brought from Nuremberg to Warsaw a magnificent late Gothic crucifix, known as the Baryczka Crucifix (after "Warszawa za książąt mazowieckich i Jagiellonów" by Maksymilian Baruch, p. 15). Splendid Gothic-Renaissance reliquary of Saints Fidelis and Favronius with engraved Veraicon, founded by Hans Boner for the Church of St. Mary in Kraków, was probably made around 1520 in Kraków or Nuremberg after the design of Hans von Kulmbach. Fortunately, these magnificent works and many others created in Nuremberg are preserved in Poland. The portrait of a young blond man by Kulmbach (interlaced monogram HK) at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (panel, 41.8 x 30.2 cm, inv. 1834), was acquired before 1918 from the Richard von Kaufmann collection in Berlin. According to the inscription, the man was 29 years old in 1520 (· ETAS · Z9 · / · ANNO · 15Z0). The inscription in Latin instead of German, as in other portraits of Kulmbach - ETAS (ÆTAS) instead of I. A. (Ihres Alters), indicate that the man depicted probably did not know German and was foreign to Nuremberg, where the painter was active at that time. Considering the mentioned connections, a possible model for this portrait is Stanisław Łaski, also known as Stanislaus a Lasco or Stanislaus von Strickenhoff, Polish publicist, orator, military theorist, traveler and diplomat, born according to some sources in 1491, and others around 1500. Stanisław was a nephew of Archbishop of Gniezno Jan Łaski (1456-1531) and brother of famous figure of the Polish Reformation and royal secretary, Jan Łaski (1499-1560). From 1516 to 1518 he studied at the Sorbonne University in Paris with his brothers. He most probably returned to Poland in 1518. The same year Queen Bona arrived to Poland and Hans Suess von Kulmbach returned to Nuremberg after four years spent in Kraków, where he painted a large series of important panels for the church of St. Mary, other religious paintings and portraits of the royal family, of which only the effigy of king Sigismund I the Old preserved in Poland (Gołuchów Castle, inv. Mo 2185), possibly a later copy of Kulmbach's lost original. The portrait of the king, which was at the beginning of the 20th century in the antique shop of Franciszek Studziński in Paris, was probably also painted by Kulmbach. Interestingly, the Parisian effigy of the king can be dated to around 1520, as a similar, made by the Monogrammist HR, was published in Kraków in 1524 in the Statuta Serenissimi Domini Sigismundi Primi (Kórnik Library, Cim.F .4233). Around 1520 Łaski made a pilgrimage to Palestine, where he received the title of Knight of Jerusalem. On the way he visited the Balkans, North Africa and Sicily. In 1524 he visited Erasmus of Rotterdam. In the same year he entered the service of Francis I, King of France and in 1525 he took part in the battle of Pavia. Another possible model is Jobst von Dewitz (1491-1542), born in 1491 in Dobra (Daber in German) near Nowogard, now in Poland and then part of the Duchy of Pomerania. Between 1518 and 1520 Jobst studied in Bologna. After his return, he was a courtier at the court of the Dukes of Pomerania, where his father had already been advisor to Duke Boguslaus X of Pomerania (1454-1523), husband of Anna Jagiellon (1476-1503), sister of Sigismund I. His beautiful portrait painted in 1540 (ANNO M. D. XL.), most likely a copy of lost original by Cranach, shows a very similar man with blond hair. 
Portrait of a man aged 29, possibly Stanisław Łaski (d. 1550) or Jobst von Dewitz (1491-1542), by Hans von Kulmbach, 1520, Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.
Tomb monument of Barbara of Rożnów by circle of Diogo Pires the Younger
In Tarnów Cathedral, hidden behind the monumental tomb of the Ostrogski family created in the style of Flemish mannerism (Willem van den Blocke and Johann Pfister) and located opposite another monumental tomb of the Tarnowski family in the style of the Venetian renaissance (Giovanni Maria Mosca), there is a smaller tomb of Barbara of Rożnów (1447-1517), the oldest in the cathedral and joining the late gothic and renaissance styles.
This splendid sculpture is exceptional in many respects, notably because its author remains unknown. It seems that the sculptor created only this particular work in Poland, as it is difficult to find anything comparable. The way he carved the banderole held by two angels in the upper part testifies to his mastery, so the tomb of Barbara of Rożnów was certainly not the only work he executed. The portal of the cathedral in the south vestibule with Christ in a well and the coat of arms of the founders, dating from around 1511, was also made by a skilled sculptor, but is different in style. Barbara was the daughter of Jan Zawiszyc and Małgorzata Szafraniec and the granddaughter of the famous knight Zawisza Czarny of Garbowo (Zawissius Niger de Garbow, died in 1428). She married Stanisław Tęczyński (1435-1484) and after his death she was the second wife of Jan Amor Tarnowski (d. 1500). In the upper part, the monument is decorated with two cartouches with the coat of arms Sulima of Barbara's father and Starykoń of her mother. It was carved from fine sandstone, probably brought from Sancygniów or Szydłów, north of Tarnów. The monument was founded by Barbara's son, Jan Amor Tarnowski (1488-1561), future hetman, who ordered an inscription to be placed above the deceased's sarcophagus praising the best and most caring mother (... MATRI INDULGENTISSIME ET / OPTIME FEMINE POSUIT. VIXIT ANNIS LXX. OBIIT A. 1517.). Jan Amor apparently had a special attachment to his mother, since his father died when he was only twelve years old. He also founded a monument to his father, created by the workshop of Bartolommeo Berrecci, but much later around 1536 - the so-called Monument to the Three Johns (his father, his stepbrother and his son). Another exceptional element of Barbara's tomb is the sculpture of the deceased. Lady Tarnowska's pose and clothing are modeled on the Sorrowful Virgin Mary (Mater Dolorosa), such as Our Lady of Sorrows from the church in the Włocławek diocese, created in about 1510 (National Museum in Warsaw, inv. 210488). Tomb effigies were often inspired by portraits, indicating that the effigies of Barbara were portraits in the guise of the Virgin Mary or Mater Dolorosa. "This desecration of sacred things in the Middle Ages resulted, as [Johan] Huizinga claims, from a vulgar familiarity with the sacred. It consisted primarily in the desire to exalt man and deify him. In the case of Barbara of Rożnów, on the contrary, we are dealing with the disavowal of divinity in favor of a secular matron. The person of Mary, especially as the Sorrowful Mother, identified with Barbara the best mother, convinces even more strongly of the conscious choice of this iconographic scheme by the artist", comments Ewa Trajdos in her article about sculpture published in 1964 ("Treści ideowe nagrobka Barbary z Rożnowa ...", p. 4, 8, 13-14). Describing the decoration of the monument with several fantastic characters, mermaids, semi-homines (half men), monkeys, jesters, a winged man and woman with snake tails, the author refers to some sculptures preserved in the Iberian Peninsula, such as the Roman sacophagus used as a tomb of King Ramiro II (1086-1157), king of Aragon, in Huesca or tomb of Pedro González de Valderrábano in Ávila, sculpted by Juan Guas in 1468, which, in general, resembles the tomb in Tarnów. Many elements of the decoration have a symbolic meaning, such as the sirens, a symbol of deceptive temptations, which, according to the texts of Isidore of Seville, emphasize the ideas of vanity. Shortly after the death of his beloved mother, Jan Amor Tarnowski decides to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In order to obtain funds for this expedition, he pledged some of his estates for 1,000 zlotys to his brother-in-law Stanisław Szczęsny Ligęza. He also borrowed money from Florentine and Roman bankers. Before setting off on his journey, Tarnowski participated in the coronation and wedding of Bona Sforza to King Sigismund. In the spring of 1518, equipped with letters of recommendation from the king, he went to Rome, where he was received by Pope Leo X Medici. On July 4, 1518, he sailed from Venice towards Jaffa, arriving there on August 14. He made a pilgrimage to places related to the life of Jesus Christ and also traveled to Egypt to see the monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai. During the pilgrimage, which lasted until September 4, he was named Knight of the Holy Sepulchre. On his return journey he probably visited other famous places in the Mediterranean basin and the following year, through Spain, he reached Portugal, which was flourishing as a rich overseas empire under the rule of King Manuel I. Received at his court along with two other Poles, he was ceremonially knighted by the king in Lisbon. He joined the king of Portugal in an expedition to Africa. "He distinguished himself there in such a manner, that he received from the Portuguese monarch the most brilliant offers if he would remain in his service: but having refused them, he was dismissed with rich presents" (after "Historical Sketch of the Rise, Progress, and Decline of the Reformation in Poland ..." by Count Valerian Krasinski, Volume 1, p. 168). From Portugal, Tarnowski went to France, visiting England, Brabant (where he was received in Brussels by the young Emperor Charles V), Germany and Bohemia. After a year and a half of travel, he returned to Poland with letters from the Pope and other monarchs. Probably shortly after Tarnowski's return (1520), "a tombstone for his mother, Barbara of Rożnów, was erected in the Tarnów collegiate church, which was to become the first of the monuments dedicated to his family" (after "Panowie na Tarnowie. Jan Amor Tarnowski, kasztelan krakowski I hetman wielki koronny ..." by Krzysztof Moskal, part 8/1). The Lord of Tarnów undoubtedly brought many exquisite works of art acquired or received during his journey and perhaps even a few artists with him. He was one of the richest lords in the kingdom, and as the owner of 120 villages and 5 towns, which would be enough to support the entire Polish national defense system for a year (compare "Jan Tarnowski ..." by Wojciech Kalwat), he could compete in patronage even with the king. After 1520 he rebuilt Tarnów Castle in the Renaissance style, and around 1535 or later he built a splendid palace in Kraków (Wielopolski Palace), which Stanisław Tomkowicz compared to Palazzo Venezia in Rome ("Pałac Wielopolskich w Krakowie ...", p. 4). The old photograph of the palace from around 1918, before reconstruction, indicates clear Italian influences and the comparison with Palazzo Venezia is fully justified. Around 1536 or later, Tarnowski honored the memory of his wife Barbara Tarnowska née Tęczyńska (ca. 1490-1521), the eldest daughter of Mikołaj Tęczyński (d. 1497), voivode of Ruthenia (BARBARÆ DE THANCZYN NICOLAI RVS/SIÆ PALLATINI FILIÆ ...), with one of most beautiful female monuments in Poland, whose equal it would be difficult to find even in Italy. The monument, attributed to Giovanni Maria Mosca, is made of sandstone and inlaid with expensive red marble. Her pose is inspired by statues and paintings of Venus, such as the Roman statues of Venus Pudica and the Venetian paintings of sleeping/reclining Venus. It may have been inspired by an effigy of Crown Princess Isabella Jagiellon nude - Venus of Urbino, created around that time, or "disguised" portraits of Jan Amor's wife. In Lisbon, Jan Amor had the opportunity to admire newly accomplished masterpieces of Portuguese architecture and sculpture, the most important examples of the Manueline style, such as the Belem Tower, completed in 1519, the rich south and west portal of the monumental Jeronimos Monastery, completed between 1517-1518, or the luxurious Ribeira Palace (destroyed during the Lisbon earthquake in 1755) with its loggias and gardens, rebuilt before 1510, among others. The distinctive Manueline style, which united elements of late Gothic, Plateresque, Mudejar and Italian Renaissance, with maritime (armillary spheres, ropes, knots) or naturalistic ornamentation (corals, algae, artichokes, pine cones), various animals and fantastic elements (ouroboros, mermaids, gargoyles), is characterized by the great skill of stonemasons, who created intricate decorations for buildings and monuments. It is interesting to note that the tomb of Barbara of Rożnów has a shape and composition typical for Manueline funerary monuments: the arch filled with ornaments, the lying figure of the deceased and the plinth with two figures supporting a scroll of parchment, symbolizing the tabula ansata. These elements are clearly visible in two similar tombs of the first two kings of Portugal - Afonso I (died 1185), also called Afonso Henriques, and his son Sancho I (1154-1211), both located in the monastery church of the Holy Cross (Mosteiro de Santa Cruz) in Coimbra. They were founded by King Manuel I, who ordered extensive renovations, reconstructions and redecorations of the monastery and church, and created between 1507 and 1520 by Portuguese of Castilian origin Diogo de Castilho (design), Frenchman Nicolau Chanterene (main statue) and Master of the Royal Tombs (remaining statuary). The Manueline tombs of the first kings undoubtedly inspired two adjacent tombs of Gonçalo Gomes da Silva, lord of Vagos and his great-grandson Aires Gomes da Silva (d. 1500) in the church of the Monastery of Saint Mark (Mosteiro de São Marcos) in Coimbra (Silva Pantheon), sculpted by Diogo Pires the Younger (Diogo Pires, o Moço) in 1522. The style of the decorations on Lady Tarnowska's tomb is reminiscent of those on the Silva monument, which in turn indicates that they could have been made by the member of the same workshop. In the church of Saint Mark in Coimbra there is also a more renaissance tomb of João Gomes da Silva (1412-1431), lord of Vagos, founder of a hermitage which later gave rise to the Monastery of Saint Mark, also attributed to Diogo Pires the Younger, which follows the same model described. Another striking similarity between the Silva and Tarnowski Pantheon is the tomb of Dona Brites de Menezes (Beatriz de Meneses, d. 1466), second wife of Aires Gomes da Silva, 3rd Lord of Vagos, carved in limestone in the second half from the 15th century. Its decoration is similar to that of the portal of the Tarnów Cathedral. Pires, one of the greatest figures of Manueline sculpture, active in Coimbra, also exported his works, as the statue of Saint Sebastian from the Chapel of Saint Sebastian in Câmara de Lobos, Madeira is attributed to him (Museum of Sacred Art in Funchal, inv. MASF379). At that time, many works of art were imported to the island from mainland Portugal and the Low Countries. The sculpture of Saint Sebastian is believed to be a disguised image of the chapel's patron (Esta escultura deve ser a imagem do orago primitivo da capela de São Sebastião de Câmara de Lobos, no início do século XVI, according to catalog note). Additionally, in the 15th century and 16th century, sculptures were frequently transported from Nuremberg to Poland-Lithuania (bronzes by Vischer workshop in Szamotuły and Kraków) or from Kraków to other places, such as Vilnius (marble tomb of Queen Elizabeth of Austria, first wife of Sigismund II Augustus). In conclusion, three options are possible: a member of the Pires workshop was invited to Tarnów by Jan Amor and after completion of the work, he returned to his country, Tarnowski commissioned from the Portuguese sculptor a design for his mother's grave (drawings, clay or wooden model), which was executed in Tarnów by the author of the cathedral's portal or, less likely, the entire monument was transported from Coimbra by land to Kraków or by sea to Gdańsk (the most expensive option, which would probably leave a trace in the documents). With sculptures in Manueline, Italian and Flemish styles, the great diversity of Poland-Lithuania and its art, as well as its international and European aspect, are perfectly represented in the monuments of Tarnów Cathedral. 
Tomb monument of Barbara of Rożnów (1447-1517) by circle of Diogo Pires the Younger, ca. 1520, Tarnów Cathedral.
Sacra Conversazione with Bona Sforza and her son as Madonna and Child by Francesco Bissolo
On 1 August 1520 the queen Bona Maria Sforza (she was baptized with the names of her grandmother, Bona Maria of Savoy) gave birth to the long-awaited heir of Sigismund I, Sigismund Augustus. On this occasion the king ordered to struck a special medal dedicated to "the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of God for the felicitous birth of his son Sigismund" (according to abbreviated inscription: B[EATAE] V[IRGINI] D[EI] P[ARENTI] P[ROPTER] F[ELICEM] N[ATIVITATEM] S[IGISMVNDI] INFANS SVI) and showing the scene of Annunciation to the Virgin, to emphasize queen's role as the Mother of Kings (after Mieczysław Morka's "The Beginnings of Medallic Art in Poland during the Times of Zygmunt I and Bona Sforza", 2008, p. 65).
The effigy of the blond Virgin Mary in the painting by Francesco Bissolo in the National Museum in Warsaw (oil on canvas, 72 x 96 cm, M.Ob.953, earlier 128830), bears a great resemblance to other effigies of Bona, notably her portrait by Bissolo (National Gallery, London, NG631) or her disguised effigy as Venus by Lucas Cranach the Elder (Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, NM 259). This painting was transferred to the Museum from the Potocki collection in their Italian style palace in Krzeszowice near Kraków, nationalized after the World War II. It's earlier history is unknown, it is highly probable though, that it was acquired by the Potockis in Poland. The American art historian Bernard Berenson (1865-1959) attributed the Warsaw painting to Pietro degli Ingannati, a Venetian painter sometimes confused with Francesco Bissolo (compare "Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Venetian School", Volume I, p. 92). Ingannati was active between 1529 and 1548 (however, several of his works are dated earlier), his last known work, the Holy Family with Saints Catherine and John the Baptist, was signed PETRUS.DE.INGANATIS.FECIT. and dated MDXLVIII (1548) on a cartellino visible at lower left (from the Sellar collection in London, sold on March 17, 1894, after "Saggi e memorie di storia dell'arte", 1978, Volume 11, p. 31). Between 1520 and 1525, he made portraits of ladies in religious disguise: portrait of a woman as Saint Catherine of Alexandria (Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Milan, inv. 3493), portrait of a lady as a virgin martyr (Portland Art Museum, inv. 61.40) and The Virgin and Child with a lady as Saint Agnes in a landscape (Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on deposit at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, inv. 200 (1934.11)). According to Paweł Pencakowski, it was Ingannati who, between 1546 and 1547, painted in Venice the Crucifixion for the main altar of Wawel Cathedral (signed and dated: PETRVS VENETVS 1547), today in the Church of St. Stanislaus in Bodzentyn, and the amount of 159 florins paid to Queen Bona from the royal treasury on August 9, 1546, transferred by her agent in Venice for paintings for the cathedral (quos factor S. M. Reginalis Veneciis exposuit) was an advance payment for this work (compare "Renesansowy ołtarz główny z katedry krakowskiej w Bodzentynie", p. 112, 149). Another comparable painting from the same period can be found today in the Church of Saint Catherine of Alexandria in Rzeczyca. It represents the Holy Family - Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist and his parents Elisabeth and Zechariah and comes from the collection of the architect Stanisław Zawadzki (1743-1806). Although attributed to the circle of Giovanni Bellini, a similar painting in Crema Cathedral titled Sacra Conversazione is attributed to Francesco Bissolo, a student of Bellini. The scene shows the Virgin and Infant Jesus, the King of kings, the mystical spouse of Jesus, Saint Catherine, whose patronage extends to children and their nurses, Saint Peter holding in his hand the silver key of royal power and Saint John the Baptist, who was sent out by God to announce that the King is coming. As the Polish throne was elective and not hereditary, the concept was undoubtedly to strengthen the rights to the crown for the new born child. 
Sacra Conversazione with Bona Sforza and her son as Madonna and Child by Francesco Bissolo, 1520-1525, National Museum in Warsaw.
Sacra Conversazione with portraits of Sigismund I and Bona Sforza by Bonifacio Veronese
Sigismund I, the fifth son of King Casimir IV Jagiellon and Elizabeth of Austria (1436-1505), received the name of his maternal great grandfather, Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg, King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia. Saint Sigismund, his patron saint, was King of the Burgundians and patron of monarchs. When father of Sigismund of Luxembourg, Charles IV, transferred Saint Sigismund's relics to Prague in 1366, he become a patron saint of the Kingdom of Bohemia. In 1166, bishop Werner Roch brought to Płock from Aachen a particle of the skull of Saint Sigismund and king Casimir III the Great commissioned a reliquary in 1370 from Kraków goldsmiths (Diocesan Museum in Płock), later adorned with the 13th century "Piast diadem".
The king was represented as a kneeling donor in several miniatures in his Prayer Book, created by Stanisław Samostrzelnik in 1524 (British Library) and as one of the Magi in the Adoration of the Magi by Joos van Cleve, created between 1520-1534 (Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, oil on panel, central panel 72 x 52 cm, wings 69 x 22 cm, inv. 578). In such form, however this time more like Saint Sigismund, he is depicted in the painting by Bonifacio Veronese (born Bonifacio de' Pitati). His effigy is very similar to the painting by Titian in Vienna and by Joos van Cleve in Berlin, but he is much younger. A rich crown is placed beside him and he is accompanied by his favourite little dog. The landscape behind him is very Netherlandish in style, it is therefore possible that it was commissioned together with the painting by Joos van Cleve, as a part of international propaganda of the Jagiellonian state. The king is receiving or giving the globe to the Infant Jesus. He was elected, but was anointed and crowned before the Lord in the Wawel Cathedral, therefore his power comes from the God. The Infant might also represent his newly born son Sigismund Augustus. Queen Bona is shown as Saint Elizabeth, a cousin of Mary and mother of Saint John the Baptist. As a patron Saint of pregnant women, of her mother Isabella of Aragon, Duchess of Milan, and of her distant relative, powerful Queen Isabella I of Castile (Isabel, from medieval Spanish form of Elisabeth), she was of particular importance for the young queen of Poland. Saint Elizabeth conceived and gave birth to John in her advanced age, therefore the painter depicted her older, the effigy, however, is still very similar to the portrait of "Duchess Sforza" by Titian and her portrait as Virigin Mary by Francesco Bissolo in Warsaw. The scene of Visitation of Elizabeth by Mary is one of the most important in her Prayer Book created by Stanisław Samostrzelnik between 1527-1528, adorned with her coat of arms and showing her as the Virgin (Bodleian Library). The Church has added Saint Elizabeth's words to the Virgin "Blessed is the fruit of thy womb" to the Angelical Salutation. Such depictions became standard for many religious scenes in the 16th century and for example in Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo's beautiful painting from around 1527, two donors, most likely a husband and wife, are equal participants in the adoration of the Child to the Virgin Mary (Royal Collection, inv. RCIN 405755). The painting is in the Medici collection in Florence since the early 18th century (Palatine Gallery) and it was previously attributed to Palma il Vecchio (oil on panel, 106 x 145 cm, inv. Palatina 84 / 1912). In private collection in Rome there is a copy of this painting, painted in the style of Bernardino Licinio (compare Fototeca Zeri, Numero scheda 39906). Another copy, probably by Pitati's workshop, is in a church in the diocese of Venice (oil on canvas, 91 x 143 cm). In the 1520s or before 1537, Bonifacio created one of his most famous works: the Adoration of the Magi, now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice (oil on canvas, 194 x 339 cm, inv. 287). This "singular painting", as Marco Boschini described it in 1664, comes from the second room of the Revenue Governors' Office (Magistrato dei Governatori alle Entrate) in the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi. It was originally placed in a splendid carved frame in the shape of an arch and adorned with the coats of arms of Antonio Venier, Vicenzo Gritti, Alvise Contarini, and Girolamo Zen, who left office between 1542 and 1544 and were probably the commissioners of the work. It has also been suggested that the donor of the painting was Natalino Contarini, Revenue Magistrate (Magistrato alle Entrate) between June and November 1534. If this painting was indeed founded by Natalino, it should be noted that his relative Ambrogio Contarini (1429-1499), visited Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia in 1474 and 1477. The Palazzo dei Camerlenghi, adjacent to the Rialto Bridge, was the seat of the senior fiscal officials of the Republic of Venice. Their role was that of treasurers and cashiers of the Republic, and they managed all public expenditures and revenues. From 1525 to 1528, the palace was enlarged according to a design by Guglielmo dei Grigi. Pitati produced several paintings to adorn this important building of the Republic, including the large tripartite painting from another room, now also housed in the Gallerie dell'Accademia (inv. 942-917-943). It depicts the Annunciation with the Eternal Father, while God the Father, at the center of the composition, hovers over St. Mark's Square. The Adoration of the Magi also reflects Venetian reality in religious disguise and the most important role is played by the costumes, which was obvious to the people of the time and especially to the revenue magistrates. Saint Balthazar, traditionally called the King of Arabia, stands on the left, dressed in a splendid Ottoman costume. He represents the states south of the Republic of Venice, an important trading partner - the Ottoman Empire. Saint Gaspar, depicted as a young man wearing a splendid green doublet, very fashionable in northern Italy and generally in Western Europe at that time, stands closer to the Virgin. He represents Venice and Western Europe. The third biblical Magi, Saint Melchior, is dressed in a long golden cloak lined with precious fur. Melchior was the oldest Magi and was traditionally called King of Persia. He represents the East, Sarmatia, another very important trading partner of the Republic of Venice. His costume is typical of Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia, as evidenced by the Adoration of the Magi in the epitaph of Melchior Sobek (d. 1542), now in the Museum of the Missionary Fathers in Kraków. Sobek's epitaph was painted in Kraków in 1542 (dated in the lower center on the base of the column). It depicts the donor in the right corner of the painting with his coat of arms. The epitaph was originally located in the Chapel of the Holy Trinity in the Wawel Royal Cathedral. Unlike Bonifacio's painting, Saint Balthazar, on the left, is dressed in the Western European style, while Saints Caspar and Melchior wear typical long Sarmatian cloaks, lined with fur. Similar cloaks are also visible in another Adoration of the Magi, preserved in the collection of the Archdiocesan Museum of Religious Art in Lublin. It is an early 17th-century altar predella from the Church of the Holy Cross in Rzeczyca Księża (tempera on panel, 53.5 x 168 cm). King Sigismund in Bonifacio's paintings is also wearing such a cloak. It is interesting to note that the predella from Rzeczyca Księża, although undoubtedly painted by a local painter from the Lublin region, also shows strong influences of Venetian painting and its author may have been familiar with the works of Bassano and Tintoretto. Venetian painters created the most famous effigies of the sultans of the Ottoman Empire, as well as portraits of important monarchs of Western Europe (Emperor Charles V, King Philip II of Spain, King Francis I of France among others), they also created the portraits of the "eastern", Sarmatian monarchs. 
Sacra Conversazione with portraits of Sigismund I and Bona Sforza by Bonifacio Veronese, ca. 1520, Pitti Palace in Florence.
Sacra Conversazione with portraits of Sigismund I and Bona Sforza by workshop of Bonifacio Veronese, ca. 1520, Diocese of Venice.
Sacra Conversazione with portraits of Sigismund I and Bona Sforza by workshop of Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1520, Private collection. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Adoration of the Magi with a portrait of king Sigismund I the Old by Joos van Cleve, ca. 1520-1534, Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.
Adoration of the Magi with Ottoman, Western European and Sarmatian costumes by Bonifacio Veronese, before 1537, Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice.
Portrait of Bona Sforza and her son as Venus and Cupid by Lucas Cranach the Elder
Between 1655-1660 the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, created in 1569 with support of the last male Jagiellon and Bona's son, Sigismund Augustus, was invaded by neighbouring countries from north, south, east and west - the Deluge. Royal and magnate residencies in Warsaw, Kraków, Grodno and Vilnius and other locations were ransacted and burned which resulted in the loss of works by Cranach, his son and his workshop and a loss of memory of the royal effigies and their patronage.
The effigies of unknown monarchs were destroyed, but erotic paintings were undeniably interesting to simple soldiers. The portrait in Stockholm (Nationalmuseum, oil on panel, 90 x 49.5 cm, NM 259) bears a great resemblance to other effigies of Bona. It is dated by experts to 1520-1525 and Sweden was one of the invaders between 1655-1660, however we can only assume that it was taken from Poland. The painting is believed to have come from a robbery by Swedish troops in Prague in 1648, but inventory descriptions do not allow this to be fully confirmed (inventory of Prague collection of 1621 - no. 1138 or 1293, inventory of Queen Christina - no. 167 or 217). It's also very similar in form and face features to the Wilanów painting, showing Bona holding a bouquet of forget-me-nots. The eroticism was very important for the queen. In her portrait by Venetian painter from about 1520 she is shown with a rabbit hunt on her bodice, a clear allusion to her fertility. The subject of Nude Venus was frequent in Italian painting of the renaissance (Botticelli, Giorgione) and the Stockholm painting counts among the oldest by Cranach, so was Bona the first to introduce the subject to Cranach, thus creating a new fashion? It is an erotic, private painting, hence we cannot search any reference to her status as the queen, it's the resemblance that counts. "As the genetrix of the Roman people through her son Aeneas, Venus signified motherhood" (after "Roman Commemorative Portraits: Women with the Attributes of Venus" by Linda Maria Gigante). This depiction was most likely inspired by Roman custom which probably preserved in local tradions in Italy throughout the ages, although sculptures from the Flavian period in the guise of Venus and other mythological figures are being rediscovered - such as statue of a Flavian woman in the guise of Venus from Porta San Sebastiano in Rome, created in 75 AD (Capitoline Museums, inventory number 09 001782) or statue of a Roman matron in the guise of Venus, believed to depict Marcia Furnilla, a Roman noblewoman who was the second and last wife of the future Roman Emperor Titus as well as the aunt of the future emperor Trajan, created in 79-81 AD (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, inventory number 711). Beatrice d'Aragona of Naples, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia and granddaughter of her brother Bona Maria Sforza d'Aragona, both raised in southern Italy (further south from Rome), undoubtedly knew perfectly well this tradition. Bona's fascination with ancient Rome and its culture is best exemplified by the name she gave to her first son - Augustus, after the first Roman Emperor Gaius Octavius Augustus. Flavian statuary largely inspired many funerary monuments in Poland-Lithuania during the Renaissance. During the Early Empire the emperor and empress assumed a variety of divine guises, including nudity. Statues of Roman empresses disguised as Venus from later periods include the statue of empress Sabina as Venus Genetrix (Museo Archeologico Ostiense), statue of empress Faustina the Younger as Venus Felix (Vatican Museums) and from the group of Mars and Venus (Capitoline Museums), as well as the statue of her daughter, empress Lucilla, as Venus (Skulpturensammlung in Dresden) and from the group of Mars and Venus (Louvre Museum). Also the queen's famous aunt Caterina Sforza (1463-1509), Countess of Forli and Lady of Imola, was most likely depicted in guise of Venus and Madonna in paintings by Lorenzo di Credi. The same her other famous relative Isabella d'Este (1474-1539), Marchioness of Mantua. In about 1505-1506 Lorenzo Costa, a painter from Ferrara, created the painting Allegory of the coronation of Isabella for her studiolo (private study). In this scene, the Marchioness, in the center, is crowned with laurel by Anteros (god of requited love), who is held by his mother, Venus (goddess of love). The same woman was depicted in two other paintings attributed to Costa - as the Madonna in the scene of the Adoration of the Child (private collection, oil on panel, 68.4 x 95.2 cm) and as Venus with the horn of plenty - cornucopia (private collection, oil on panel, 156 x 65 cm), both painted between 1505 and 1510. After the birth of his son in 1520, Sigismund I was frequently absent, occupied with war with Muscovy (1512-1522) on north-eastern border, leaving his wife in Kraków in southern Poland. A small painting like this one would be a good reminder of his wife's affection. If the painting comes from Prague, it could have been a gift to Sigismund's relatives. 
Portrait of Bona Sforza and her son as Venus and Cupid by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1521, Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.
Portrait of Bona Sforza and her son as Madonna and Child by Lucas Cranach the Elder
In 1623 hetman Marcin Kazanowski (1563-1636) founded a church for the Carmelites in Bołszowce (today Bilshivtsi in Ukraine). He most probably ordered a painter in Warsaw or Kraków to copy some painting from his own or royal collection to the main altar of the new church. The painting, now in Gdańsk, is astonishingly similar to the Madonna and Child under an apple tree by Lucas Cranach the Elder in The State Hermitage Museum (panel, transferred to canvas, 87 x 59 cm, inv. ГЭ-684).
The latter painting was acquired by Nicholas I, Emperor of Russia and King of Poland in 1843, possibly from a collection in Poland. The effigy of Mary (Maria) bears a great resemblance to the effigies of Bona Sforza. Bona Maria Sforza was baptized with the names of her grandmother, Bona Maria of Savoy. In Poland the name Maria was at that time reserved solely to the Virigin Mary, hence she could not use it. She could however allow herself to be depicted as the Virigin, according the Italian custom, in her Prayer Book and private paintings. In antiquity goddesses of victory commonly were depicted standing upon royal apples. Christians adapted the symbol by setting a cross above the ball to signify the world dominated by Christianity. Thereafter the "imperial apple" became an important emblem of the royal power invested in the monarch - orb (after Encyclopaedia Britannica). Finally the topography and the castle in the background are very similar to these visible in a print published in 1544 in Cosmographie Universalis and showing Wawel Royal Castle in Kraków. Several copies of this painting exists, some of which were probably created by Italian or Netherlandish copists of Cranach, as their style is different. One, recorded in French collections before 1833, was later sold in England in 1919 (panel, 100 x 70 cm, Christie's, January 31, 1919, lot 19), the other, owned by the Barons of Stackelberg in Tallinn (Reval, which became a dominion of Sweden in 1561), was auctioned in Düsseldorf in 1933 (panel, 88 x 61 cm, Julius Stern Kunst-Auktionshaus, March 18, 1933, lot 11). Another, very well painted, was with Farsetti, Milan, until 1953 (oil on panel, 85.6 x 58 cm, Christie's London, Auction 20684, July 7, 2023, lot 131). Despite that none of the copies of the queen's portrait made during her lifetime are found in Poland today, the enormous destruction during numerous wars and invasions and the impoverishment of the country which led to the sale of important objects, evacuation of works of art by different means, the collections of Cranachiana in Poland are still one of the most important outside of Germany. As an example, we can cite some lesser-known works by Cranach, his workshop and his followers from the 1520s, such as the Virgin and Child with dancing Cupids from the Franciscan Monastery in Kraków (on permanent loan to Wawel Castle since 2020, panel, 60 x 40 cm) or portrait of Princess Sibylle of Cleves (1512-1554) as a bride from 1526, which was before the Second World War in the Greater Poland Museum in Poznań (panel, 36 x 24 cm, signed with the artist's insignia at the top right: winged serpent and dated 1526). The portrait of the German princess came from the Skórzewski collection (after "Muzeum Wielkopolskie w Poznaniu ..." by Marian Gumowski, p. 14, item 59) and if it originally came from the royal collection, which cannot be excluded, it could be a gift for Sigismund I and Bona Sforza. In the Nieborów Palace there is a splendidly painted Christ crowned with thorns (oil on copper, 31.7 x 24.8 cm, without black frame: 27.2 x 21 cm, NB 792 MNW), which most probably comes from old Radziwill collections. This is most likely a workshop copy of a devotional image, now in a private collection (panel, 27.5 x 20.7 cm), created around 1520-1525, probably painted in a context associated with the collection of relics of Elector Frederick III (1463-1525) in Wittenberg. From the first quarter of the 16th century also come three paintings considered to be the works of Cranach's followers active in Poland, such as the Madonna (very probably a cryptoportrait) by the master I.G., today in the Archdiocesan Museum in Kraków (inv. DZIELO/05929). This painting comes from the Church of St. Margaret in Raciborowice, which was the endowment of the Wawel Cathedral Chapter, and was painted in 1526 (signed and dated center right: I ... Z / IG / 1526). The style of the painting reveals strong influences from Lucas Cranach the Elder and its possible author could be Master Georgius (Irzik de Kromierzisch) or circle. In the Church of St. Adalbert in Książ Wielki, north of Kraków, there is another Madonna and Child, clearly inspired by the works of Cranach, and the Holy Family in the Carmelite Church in Warsaw, also inspired by the works de Cranach, was probably lost during the First World War (published in "Album Wystawy Maryańskiej w Warszawie w roku 1905. Z. 3-4", p. 40-41). 
Portrait of Bona Sforza and her son as Madonna and Child under an apple tree by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1521-1525, The State Hermitage Museum.
Portrait of Bona Sforza and her son as Madonna and Child from the Stackelberg collection in Tallinn by follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1521-1525, Private collection, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Bona Sforza and her son as Madonna and Child under an apple tree by follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1521-1525, Private collection.
Madonna and Child with dancing Cupids from the Franciscan Monastery in Kraków by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1520s, Wawel Royal Castle.
Portrait of Princess Sibylle of Cleves (1512-1554) as a bride by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1526, Greater Poland Museum in Poznań, lost during World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Christ crowned with thorns by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, second quarter of the 16th century, Nieborów Palace.
Portraits of Sigismund Augustus as a child
Around 1520 and after, various European painters copied a mysterious portrait of a child. One of these portraits, at Gorhambury House in England, is traditionally identified as the effigy of Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), however others have never been linked to the English philosopher and the identity of the model has never been determined.
The fact that the portrait exists in many different versions and in different locations indicates that the child depicted was an important person, an heir to the throne of a major European country. One was acquired in Rome in 1839 by Prince Albert (1819-1861), husband of Queen Victoria, as by Paolo Veronese, recorded at Osborne House in 1876 (The Royal Collection Trust, oil on canvas, 40.6 x 30.8 cm, inv. RCIN 406402). The Gorhambury House version was there since at least the 18th century, the other two are in the United States - at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts (oil on panel, 42 x 31.2 cm, inv. 955.945), sometimes attributed to the German school, which resemble works by Hans Holbein the Younger, such as Portrait of the artist's wife with the two eldest children (Kunstmuseum Basel, inv. 325), and at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore (oil on panel, 55.8 x 45.7 cm, inv. 37.2004), probably by the Italian painter, acquired in various European collections. Another copy, in a splendid frame, was sold in New York under the attribution "Manner of Agnolo Bronzino", thus created by the workshop or follower of an Italian Mannerist painter from Florence Agnolo di Cosimo (1503-1572), known as Il Bronzino (oil on panel, 39.7 x 31.1 cm, Christie's, Auction 1756, October 3, 2006, lot 6). At the end of the 17th century, Antonio Amorosi (1660-1738), active in Ascoli Piceno and Rome, copied another version which was then in Italy, because the painting sold in Paris was attributed to him (oil on canvas, 48.2 x 37.5 cm, Ader, Hôtel Drouot, December 20, 2022, lot 39). "Portraits of children of noble houses were often commissioned to be sent to distant relatives who might otherwise never see the child, especially as many died before becoming adults" (after the catalog note for the Baltimore painting). Additionally, portraits of children of various rulers of Europe, especially heirs to the throne, were sent to other countries as diplomatic gifts. The costume is similar to the clothing seen in portraits of the sons of Francis I of France from the early 1520s - portrait of Francis (1518-1536) at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp (inv. 33) and portrait of Henry (1519-1559) at the Condé Museum (PE 259), attributed to Jean Clouet, however, the hand gesture and facial features are strikingly similar to those seen in a print published in Kraków in 1521 showing a one year old Sigismund Augustus (De Iagellonvm familia liber II, Impressum Craccouiae [...] XII 1521, National Library of Poland, SD XVI.F.643 adl.). The boy's appearance (blond hair, dark eyes, a bit retracted jaw) are also similar to these known from the effigies of Sigismund Augustus' mother - Bona Sforza. Despite the fact that the throne of Poland-Lithuania was elective, the ambitious queen undoubtedly made sure that all important monarchs of Europe and the Pope had no doubt that her son would rule Poland-Lithuania after his father. "No detail of good Renaissance painting was without an intended symbolic meaning", also the gesture. The child is pictured holding an apple (an age old symbol of the fruit of knowledge and emblem of royal power - an orb) in his right hand (field of action), whilst holding his left hand over his heart (charitable and useful) (compare "Dedication to the Light" by Peter Dawkins). Sigismund Augustus has dark hair in his portraits. Hair color in children tends to darken with advancing age so was the famous light blond of Bona and her daughters another trick of poisonous Sforzas? The Experimenti compiled by Bona's aunt Caterina Sforza, Countess of Forli is a compilation of recipes for "curing headache, fever, syphilis, and epilepsy; lightening the hair or improving the skin; treating infertility, making poisons and panaceas; and producing alchemical gems and gold" (after "Becoming a Blond in Renaissance Italy" by Janet Stephens). The hypothesis that Holbein's workshop in Basel, Flemish, Venetian and Florentine painters received a drawing of a royal child from Kraków to copy is very probable. The fact that the portraits were created by different workshops is another indicator that they were commissioned by the multicultural Jagiellonian court. 
Portrait of Sigismund Augustus (1520-1572) as a child holding an apple by circle of Hans Holbein the Younger, ca. 1521, The Clark Art Institute.
Portrait of Sigismund Augustus (1520-1572) as a child holding an apple by Venetian painter, ca. 1521, The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.
Portrait of Sigismund Augustus (1520-1572) as a child holding an apple by Flemish or Venetian painter, ca. 1521, Gorhambury House.
Portrait of Sigismund Augustus (1520-1572) as a child holding an apple by Venetian painter, ca. 1521, The Royal Collection.
Portrait of Sigismund Augustus (1520-1572) as a child holding an apple by circle of Agnolo Bronzino, after 1521, Private collection.
Portrait of Sigismund Augustus (1520-1572) as a child holding an apple by Antonio Amorosi, end of the 17th century, Private collection.
Portrait of Queen Bona Sforza as Madonna by Jan Gossaert
"Polish lords, under what lucky star You brought Queen Bona here! For all the charm of the Italian land Came with Bona to the country of the frosty Ursa. O happy people and happy kingdom, So greater than others thanks to their rulers! Happy chambers and wedding bed, What shelter you give to the two lights of the world!" (after Polish translation by Edwin Je̜drkiewicz, Reginam proceres Bonam Poloni, Quam fausto dominam tulistis astro! Nam quidquid Latii fuit decoris Translatum est gelidam Bona sub Arcton. Felices populi, beata regna, Quam gentes dominis praeitis omnes ! Felices thalami, tori beati, Qui mundi geminum iubar fovetis), wrote in his Latin epigram entitled "On Queen Bona" (De Regina Bona), secretary of the queen Andrzej Krzycki (1482-1537), later Archbishop of Gniezno.
Witold Wojtowicz calls this poetry "a game with the sacred dimension of the world, reminiscent of the opening verses of the Gospel of John [...], associating it with the sexual act" and "sacralization of eroticism" (after "Szkice o poezji obscenicznej i satyrycznej Andrzeja Krzyckiego", p. 47). Gerolamo Borgia (1475-1550), Bishop of Massa Lubrense, called Bona in his "To Bona Sforza" (Ad Bonam Sfortiadem), written after 1518 and published in Venice in 1666, "the divine offspring of Jupiter's Muses, banished by the savage manners of men, freeing all the lands to give way to Heaven" (divo Musae Iovis alma proles Ob feras mores hominum fugata, Omnibus terris liberat parumper Cedere Coelo). In about 1520 Jan Gossaert (or Gossart), who was at that time a court painter to Philip of Burgundy (1464-1524), bishop of Utrecht, created a small painting depicting Madonna and Child playing with the veil (oil on panel, 25.4 x 19.3 cm). The Virgin wears a blue tunic and mantle, as signifying heavenly love and heavenly truth. To achive the divine celestial blue color Gossaert used ultramarine and azurite, precious pigments made from ground semi-precious stones, and considerably cheaper organic indigo from India. Ultramarine (ultramarinus), literally "beyond the sea", imported from Asia by sea, was made by grinding lapis lazuli into a powder, while azurite, used for the underpainting, hailed from the inaccessible mountains. All were threfore tremendously costly. "In 1515, the Florentine artist Andrea del Sarto paid five florins for an ounce of high-quality ultramarine to use on a painting of the Madonna, equivalent to a month's salary for a minor civil servant, or five years' rent for a labourer living just outside the city" (after "The World According to Colour: A Cultural History" by James Fox). By the 14th century, the principal center for supply of the ultramarine in Europe was Venice. Azurite was mined in Europe, mainly in Hungary and Germany, but also in Poland since the Middle Ages and exported to the Netherlands. In 1485, a Pole Mikołaj Polak (Claeys Polains), was sued by the Bruges Guild of Saint Luke at the Council for using inferior Polish lazurite. The mineral was mined near Chęciny and was mentioned in the manuscript Chorographia Regni Poloniae by Polish historian Jan Długosz, written around 1455-1480: "Chęciny, a mountain […] abounding both in its slopes and in the vicinity of azure stone and copper" and in Sarmatiae Europeae descriptio (Description of Sarmatian Europe) by Venetian-born Polish writer Alessandro Guagnini dei Rizzoni (Aleksander Gwagnin), printed in Kraków in 1578: "Chęciny […] famous for azure mines, where silver is also found" (after "Handel pigmentami miedziowymi ze złóż świętokrzyskich w świetle źródeł archiwalnych" by Michał Witkowski and Sylwia Svorová Pawełkowicz). The subsequent development of the Chęciny mines in the 16th century is due to Queen Bona, who brought in the first Italian masters and expanded the mines in the vicinity of Zelejowa (after "Prace" by Instytut Geologiczny, Volume 21, p. 94). The pigment was highly valued by the Polish-Lithuanian royal court. In 1509 Chęciny azurite, purchased from Leonard of Chęciny, was used to paint the rooms of the Wawel Castle. King Sigismund I recommended this azure to his chamberlain Stanisław Szafraniec in a letter of 1512 and it was mentioned in the entry of the "Świętokrzyski Yearbook": "In 1517 the most serene king of Poland, Sigismund, restoring the Kraków castle adorned it in an unprecedented way with columns, paintings, gilded flowers and azure". In 1544, the painter Piotr (most probably Pietro Veneziano) painted a wooden cross with azure for the princesses. Also painters appreciated its properties - in 1520, the painter Jan Goraj and Jan the illuminator purchased Chęciny azurite, as well as Nuremberg painter Sebald Singer in 1525, the same who drew up several designs for bell-founder from Brussels Servatius Aerts (Serwacy Arcz). Costyly blue pigments were used in abundance in Prayer Books of King Sigismund I the Old (1524, British Library) and his wife Bona Sforza (1527-1528, Bodleian Library), both created by Stanisław Samostrzelnik. The painting by Gossaert was in 1917 in the collection Carl von Hollitscher (1845-1925), an Austrian entrepreneur and art collector in Berlin. It was purchased in 1939 by the Mauritshuis in The Hague (inventory number 830). The inspiration of Venetian painting, especially Madonnas by Giovanni Bellini, is evident. Signed Madonna and playful Child by Bellini, created in about 1476 (signature IOHANNES BELLINVS, Accademia Carrara) being particularly close to described painting. Gossaert travelled to Rome in 1509, however, such direct inspiration by Venetian painting and use of mentioned blue pigments over ten years after his return from Italy, indicate that the person who commissioned the work could have been Italian or Gossaert had received a study drawing by an Italian artist to create a painting for a very rich client. Queen Bona Sforza, whose friend Jan Dantyszek travelled frequently to Venice and the Netherlands and who commissioned 16 tapestries in Antwerp in 1526, match all these terms. Similar to Anna van Bergen (1492-1541), Marquise de Veere, the Queen ordered her effigy as Madonna and Child and the face of the Virgin bear a strong resemblance to her portraits by Francesco Bissolo (ca. 1520, National Gallery in London), by Cranach (1526, The Hermitage, 1530s, Arp Museum, 1535-1540, National Gallery in Prague) and by Bernardino Licinio (1530s, Government Art Collection, UK), all identified by me. Probably the success of this composition prompted the artist to make copies, in which, however, the resemblance to Bona is not so evident. Madonna and Child playing with the veil by workshop of Jan Gossaert, most probably purchased by Stanisław Kostka Potocki in France in 1808, is in the royal Wilanów Palace in Warsaw (Wil.1008) another in the National Museum in Warsaw (M.Ob.63). A good quality version from the Miączyński-Dzieduszycki gallery in Lviv was in the Wawel Royal Castle, lost during World War II (oil on panel, 67 cm x 87.5 cm, inventory of the State Art Collections - PZS from 1932: 2158). Also, the star-shaped pattern on the cloth covering the table could have had a symbolic meaning. It can be compared to the Far Eastern yantra, a diagram, mainly from the Tantric traditions of the Indian religions, used for the worship of deities in temples or at home or the star of Bethlehem in Adoration of the Magi from the Prayer Book of Bona Sforza (Bodleian Library). The star led the Magi on their journey, and the child they visited came to be called "the light of the world". Eight-pointed star that has since come to symbolize the star of Bethlehem was also an ancient symbol for the planet Venus. The "lucky star" brought Queen Bona to Poland. 
Portrait of Bona Sforza d'Aragona (1494-1557), Queen of Poland as Madonna and Child playing with the veil by Jan Gossaert, 1520-1525, Mauritshuis.
Madonna and Child playing with the veil by workshop of Jan Gossaert, ca. 1533, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
Madonna and Child playing with the veil by workshop of Jan Gossaert, after 1531, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portraits of Anna of Masovia by Bernardino Licinio and Lucas Cranach the Elder
"Stanislaus and Janusz, sons of Konrad, Duke of Masovia, from the ancient Polish kings, the last male offspring of Masovian princes, ruling happily for 600 years. The young men both excelled with good honesty and innocence, with the power of a premature and unfortunate destiny in short intervals, with great sorrow of their subjects, died: Stanislaus, in the year of salvation, 1524, at the age of 24, and Janusz in 1526, at the age of 24; after the death of which the inheritance and reign over the entire Masovia passed to the king of Poland, Anna, the princess, adorned with virginity and unparalleled honesty, made her brothers with bitter tears [this monument]", reads the incription in Latin on the tombstone plaque of the last Dukes of Masovia (destroyed during World War II, compare "Nagrobek ostatnich książąt mazowieckich ..." by Daria Milewska, p. 9, 10, 13).
Venetian painting workshops during Renaissance had a great advantage over German or Netherlandish. Painters gradually modified the technique, which allowed them to create paintings much faster and they used canvas, so they could create in a much larger format. The canvas was also far less heavy than wood and one man could transport several paintings to different locations. Many of these paintings remained in artists' ateliers in Venice as a modello or a ricordo. The women in two portraits by Bernardino Licinio resemble greatly the "Masovian brothers". Anna of Masovia was born in about 1498 as the second daughter of Duke Konrad III the Red and Anna Radziwill. She had an elder sister Sophia. In 1518 Casimir, Margrave of Brandenburg-Kulmbach shattered a lance in her honor during the great jousting tournament organized to celebrate the wedding of Sigismund and Bona Sforza. Two years later, on 17 September 1520 in Warsaw, her sister Sophia was married by proxy to Stephen VII Bathory, Palatine of Hungary, and on 17 January 1521 she left for Hungary with her entourage. On the night of March 14-15, 1522, Duchess Anna Radziwill died in Liw. She was buried in St. Anne's Church in Warsaw. Her daughter Anna was from now on, at the age of about 24, the eldest member of the family in Masovia. The portrait by Licinio in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest (oil on panel, 83.5 x 71.5 cm, inv. 51.802), depict a young woman in a simple white shirt, black coat of Venetian satin lined with fur and a cap of black brocaded damask. She holds an open book on a marble block with a date 1522 (MDXXII) and a solitary oak leaf. Oak was a symbol of power, authority and victory in the Roman times. "In moralizations the oak represented patience, strength of faith, and the virtue of Christian endurance in the face of adversity. As such, it was depicted as the attribute of Job and martyred saints in Renaissance art" (after "Animals as Disguised Symbols in Renaissance Art" by Simona Cohen, p. 86). The painting was acquired by the museum in 1951 from the collection of Leopold M. Herzog. Its early provenance in Hungary is not known, so it is quite possible that Anna of Masovia sent her portrait to her sister Sophia as a sign of mourning for the death of their mother. In 1525, Albert of Prussia asked for Anna's hand in marriage. His dynastic endeavors as well as plans to marry Anna to his brother William of Brandenburg, were stopped by the firm policy of Bona Sforza. Soon after, Queen Bona, not wanting to exacerbate internal conflicts, resigned from marring her, despite the insistence of the Masovian nobles, to her son Sigismund Augustus. The facial features of two women in paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder entitled "Portrait of a courtly lady", in private collection (panel, 40 x 27 cm), and "Venus and Cupid", in Compton Verney (panel, 39 x 26 cm, inv. CVCSC:0339.N), are very much alike. It is also the same woman as in the portraits by Licinio, her facial features, protruding lower lip and expression are identical. The painting in Compton Verney bears a date 1525 (indistinct), a date when it was proposed to marry Anna with a nephew of King of Poland, newly created Duke of Prussia (after secularisation of the Monastic state of the Teutonic Knights), who was painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder several times (e.g. portrait in the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, dated 1528). The woman in the effigy of a courtly lady in wide red hat decorated with plumes from about 1530 was most probably hoding a flower in her left hand, just as Queen Bona in her portrait by Cranach in the Wilanów Palace. The painter possibly forgot to add it or changed the concept, which might indicate that the painting was one of a series dedicated to possible suitors. In 1536 Anna finally married Stanisław Odrowąż, voivode of Podole, who already in 1530 was planning to marry her. The earliest confirmed provenance of the Compton Verney painting is the collection of Paul Cassirer (1871-1926), a German art dealer from a family of Jewish origin, originally from Silesia. The "Portrait of a courtly lady" was auctioned in Munich in 2008. In March 1526, almost two years after Stanislaus, died Janusz III, the last male member of the Masovian Piasts. In his last will from 4 March 1526 he left majority of his belongings in money, jewels, precious stones, pearls, gold, silver and movable goods to his sister Anna, and some garments to his courtiers, like a robe and a bonnet lined with sables to Piotr Kopytowski, castellan of Warsaw or a silk robe to Wawrzyniec Prażmowski, castellan of Czersk. The organisation of funeral was postponed, to await the arrival of King Sigismund. Sudden death of both young dukes, in a short time, sparked the suspicion that their deaths were not natural. The main suspect was Katarzyna Radziejowska, who after being seduced and abandoned by both princes, was believed to have poisoned the dukes and their mother Anna Radziwill. The woman and her supposed accomplice Kliczewska confessed to the gradual poisoning of the duke and both were sentenced to endure the horrible death. The rush to execute the sentence raised even more suspicion that, in fact, the real instigator of the crime was Queen Bona. The logical explanation was related to the queen's ambitious plans for Masovia, which she wanted for her son Sigismund Augustus. The contemporary chronicler, however, Bernard Wapowski, citing a scene he witnessed himself denies these allegations: "When the young duke, warmed by the example of a few similar revellers, ordered to pour wine in his throat, as a result of which in two weeks he bid farewell to the world". Despite this, rumors spread and more and more people began to accuse the Polish queen. A group of nobles associated with the Masovian court, opposing the incorporation of the Duchy into the Crown, proclaimed Anna as a duchess. Soon after, however, the Ducal Council concluded a compromise with the Polish king as the incorporation was beneficial for them. Anna had to accept the salary from Sigismund I, lands near Goszczyn and Liw and the "Small Manor" (Curia Minor) at the Royal Castle in Warsaw as her residence, until she got married. The king set up a special commission to deal with the matter of the death of the dukes. On February 9, 1528, he issued an edict in which he stated that the princes "weren't victims of a human hand, but was the will of the Almighty Lord that caused their deaths". The portrait by Bernardino Licinio in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan (oil on canvas, 77.5 x 91.5, inv. 28), shows the same woman as in the portrait in Budapest holding a portrait of a man, very similar to the portrait by Licinio depicting a man holding a cane (Janusz III). She is dressed in black and the bodice of her rich dress is embroidered with a motif of dogs, a symbol of loyalty and fidelity. The landscape in the background with a castle is very similar to the castle in Płock, the ancient capital of Masovia (till 1262), the de facto capital of Poland between 1079 to 1138 and a seat of one of the oldest dioceses in Poland, established in 1075. Between 1504-1522, the Bishop of Płock was Erazm Ciołek (1474-1522) a diplomat, writer and patron of the artists, who travelled to Rome, studied in Bologna with Filippo Beroaldo and negotiatied the marriage of Sigismund I with Bona Sforza. He was followed in 1522 by Rafał Leszczyński (1480-1527), educated in Padua and the secretary of Prince Sigismund during his reign in the Duchy of Głogów and after his death by Andrzej Krzycki (1482-1537), secretary of Queen Bona, patron of arts and a poet writing in Latin, who was studying in Bologna under prominent humanists. In this painting Anna wanted to express that she would not renounce Masovia. The painting in Milan was bequeathed to the museum in 1876 along with thirty-eight others by the nobleman Malachia De Cristoforis (1832-1915), whose collection had mostly been formed in Venice, although information is scarce. A portrait somewhat similar to that in the Castello Sforzesco, depicting the same woman in a black dress, is now in Buscot Park near Oxford in England. The work is largely retouched and was originally attributed to Francesco Bissolo and now to Pietro degli Ingannati (oil on panel, transferred to canvas, 41.3 x 35.6 cm, inv. 44, sold by J. H. Ward at Christie's, June 14, 1907, lot 54, as Bissolo). Paweł Pencakowski attributed to Ingannati the authorship of the Crucifixion for the main altar of Wawel Cathedral, painted in 1547 (signed and dated: PETRVS VENETVS 1547), now in the Church of Saint Stanislaus in Bodzentyn. Although he is considered active from around 1529, many of his important works are now dated to the early 1520s, such as the painting in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection (inv. 200 (1934.11)). A painting close to Ingannati's style is now in the National Art Gallery in Lviv, Ukraine (oil on panel, 26.3 x 29.5 cm, inv. Ж-1928). It comes from the collection of the Lviv City Gallery and depicts a lady in the guise of a saint, probably Mary Magdalene, kneeling before the Virgin and Child. The style of this painting is very reminiscent of the Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist (Sacra famiglia con San Giovannino), attributed to Ingannati, from a private collection in Italy. What is interesting about the Lviv painting is that a similar painting, attributed to Giovanni Bellini, is in the National Museum of Art in Kaunas, Lithuania (panel, 45.5 x 52 cm, inv. ČDM MŽ 1549). Both painters used the same set of study drawings for the right hand of the Virgin. They were also reused by several other painters, for example in compositions attributed to the school of Lorenzo Lotto (Fischer Gallery in Lucerne, June 16, 2010, lot 1008) or to Francesco Rizzo da Santacroce (Museo di San Domenico in Forlì, inv. 121). Another interesting element of the Lviv and Kaunas paintings is the castle in the background, which is very similar. Unfortunately, due to wartime destruction, we do not know today the appearance of many historical castles in the territories of the former Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia, several of which were probably built or rebuilt by Italian architects. It is therefore possible that this castle really existed in the Realm of Venus. 
Portrait of Anna of Masovia (ca. 1498-1557) holding a book by Bernardino Licinio, 1522, Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.
Portrait of Anna of Masovia (ca. 1498-1557) as Venus and Cupid by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1525, Compton Verney.
Portrait of Anna of Masovia (ca. 1498-1557) holding a portrait of her brother Janusz III by Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1526-1528, Castello Sforzesco in Milan.
Portrait of Anna of Masovia (ca. 1498-1557) in a black dress by Pietro degli Ingannati, ca. 1526-1528, Buscot Park.
Portrait of Anna of Masovia (ca. 1498-1557) in a hat decorated with plumes by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, Private collection.
Madonna and Child with a female donor in the guise of a saint by workshop of Pietro degli Ingannati, 1520s, Lviv National Art Gallery.
Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist by circle of Giovanni Bellini, early 16th century, National Museum of Art in Kaunas.
Portrait of Constantine, Prince of Ostroh and Tatyana Olshanskaya by Giovanni Cariani
"The hetman was a faithful regalist, and the monarch reciprocated by entrusting him with the highest positions in the state. He did so in violation of the law because the Prince of Ostroh professed Orthodoxy, and positions in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were reserved exclusively for Catholics. This brought him the envy of many Lithuanian nobles. Albertas Gostautas, who had enormous influence, accused him of being a "homo novus of low condition, deriving his family from the poorest Ruthenian princes". The dispute that broke out between them was based not only on personal animosity, it was also an ideological conflict. Gostautas was a Lithuanian separatist, the Prince of Ostroh, however, seeing Lithuania's military weakness, advocated close cooperation with the Crown. Using the support of the royal court, including Queen Bona, he was the most important protector of Orthodoxy in Lithuania" (after "Konstanty Ostrogski (ok. 1460-1530) – Scypion ruski i litewski" by Wojciech Kalwat).
It was Constantine, who, along with several Polish magnates, welcomed Bona in Poland on behalf of the king in the village of Morawica on April 13, 1518. Few days later, during parade in Kraków, the private troops of the Prince of Ostroh stood out among the Lithuanian magnate troops parading in front of the royal couple and he occupied one the leading places next to the king during a huge feast organized after the wedding and coronation. Being so close to the Italianate court of Queen Bona, Constantine undoubtedly followed the fashion introduced or enforced by her, including ordering his effigies in the same style and from the same artists as the queen. Many effigies of Sigismund I by Stanisław Samostrzelnik in king's Prayer Book (1524, British Library) depict him as a donor kneeling before the Virgin or Christ. The same in the Prayer Book of Albertas Gostautas (1528, University Library in Munich) with the king represented as one of the Magi in the scene of the Adoration and the owner kneeling in prayer before his patron Saint Adalbert of Prague. Catholic magnate from Lithuania, George Radziwill (1480-1541), nicknamed "Hercules", a companion and participant in all his victories, joined the opposition led by Constantine. In 1523, the two friends bound themselves by the marriage of their children, Prince Ilia, who was then twelve years old and Anna, the elder daughter of George Radziwill, only five years old. Radziwill did not want to enter into marriage arrangements for his daughter, with a young man baptized and raised in the Greek rite, without the permission of the Holy See (quod cum illustris vir Constantinus Dux Ostrouiensis et Magni Ducatus Lithuaniae Campiductor generalis, Ruthenus juxta ritum Graecorum vivens, quendam filium suum Iliam nuncupatum, duodecim annorum existentem et Ruthenum, et ut Graeci faciunt baptisatum). So he asked for a dispensation from Pope Clement VII (Giulio de' Medici), who had only just been chosen as the successor of St. Peter. The Pope's relative, Catherine de' Medici, future Queen of France, was depicted in several portraits by Giovanni Cariani, identified by me. For the sake of the great merits of Prince Constantine, Grand Hetman of Lithuania, and therefore also all the Christian people, the "Dispensation from the Supreme Pontiff given to a certain Ilia the Ruthenian, so that she could contract marriage" (Dispensatio Summi Pontificis data cuidam Iliae Rutheno, ut possit contrahere matrimonium) was issued on March 5, 1523. Ilia was Constantine's first son and the only child from his first marriage to Tatyana Semenovna Olshanskaya. She was younger of two daughters of Prince Semyon Yurievich Olshansky and Princess Anastasia Semyonovna Zbarazhskaya and the only heir of the great fortune of his father and mother after death of her sister Anastasia in 1511. Tatyana and Constantine married in 1509 and she died in 1522 at the age of about 42. In the same year Constantine married for the second time young Princess Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska, who gave birth to his son Constantine Vasily and a daughter Sophia. The Prince of Ostroh was a founder of many new Orthodox churches, including in the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania - Vilnius. Like Queen Bona he surrounded by a special veneration and devotion the Virgin Mary. To the Mezhyrich Monastery near Kiev that he founded on March 12, 1523, he offered a 15th century icon of Madonna and Child (Hodegetria), which was probably brought from the Mount Athos as a gift from the Patriarch of Constantinople. He was buried, according to his wish, in the Dormition Cathedral of the Kiev Monastery of the Caves (Pechersk Lavra), where in 1579 his son Constantine Vasily erected him a tombstone in Italian style. In the Palazzo Barberini (Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica) in Rome there is portrait of a bearded man from the 1520s in the pose of a donor, painted by Giovanni Cariani (oil on canvas, 69 x 51.5 cm, inventory number 1641). It was bequeathed by Henriette Hertz in 1915 and before 1896 it was in the Bonomi-Cereda collection in Milan. The man wears a coat in eastern style lined with a thick fur, similar to that visible in many portraits of Constantine, Prince of Ostroh (e.g. in Lviv Historical Museum, Ж-1533, Ж-1707). His facial features, beard and distinctive hat are almost identical as in effigies of Constantine in the Bila Tserkva Regional Museum and in the Belarusian National Arts Museum. This painting was most probably a part of a larger composition, like in some of Cariani's Sacra Conversazione representing Madonna and Child venerated by donors, e.g. paintings in Accademia Carrara in Bergamo (inventory number 205 (52) and 1064 (92)) and in Ca' Rezzonico in Venice, which was left unfinished by the artist or it was damaged and divided into pieces. Portrait of a woman in prayer in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan (oil on canvas, 68 × 46 cm, inventory number 26), having a similar composition and dimensions, is considered as another part of this lost painting. The paining comes from the collection of Carlo Dell'Acqua in Milan and reached the Museum through the donation of Camillo Tanzi in 1881. The woman should be identified as the man's wife, hence in this case Tatyana Semenovna Olshanskaya. The artist's activity can be divided into three precise periodsː the first period in Venice at a young age, the second period from 1517 to 1523 in Bergamo near Milan, where he began his personal and free artistic form, the third period again in Venice, where he maintained active collaboration with Bergamo and where he perhaps returned in later years. If the painting was left unfinished in artist's atelier it was most likely because of the death of Tatyana and Constantine's subsequent marriage in 1522. Comparison of Seven Albani Portraits (Sette Ritratti Albani or courtesans and their male admirers, private collection) and Recumbent woman (Venus in a landscape) by Giovanni Cariani (The Royal Collection Trust, mirror view) with the same woman in the same pose depicted dressed and naked, confirms the frequent use of template drawings by the painter. It is possible that the portrait of Constantine in Bila Tserkva from the late 18th century is a copy of unpreserved original by Cariani. The same woman as in Cariani's painting in Milan was also depicted in another portrait from the same period. The painting, now in the Civic Museum of Bassano del Grappa (Museo Civico di Bassano del Grappa), comes from the collection of the Paduan Count Giuseppe Riva and was bequeathed in 1876 (oil on canvas, 84 x 67 cm). It was originally attributed to Giorgione, Titian and Il Pordenone and now to Bernardino Licinio (after "Il Museo civico di Bassano del Grappa ..." by Licisco Magagnato, Bruno Passamani, p. 71). The painting has a beautiful period frame and the woman is holding a strange animal, which was thought to be a dog or a lion cub, but it is most likely a monkey. The painter probably received some general study drawings to prepare this effigy, and did not see the model and her animal, which is why the monkey looks more like a sea-cat (Cattus Marinus) from the Ruthenian-Polish-Lithuanian noble coat of arms of Kot Morski or other fantastic animal. Due to all these factors, this "exotic" wealthy woman was first believed to be Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, as in many other effigies of unknown noble ladies from Central and Eastern Europe. It should be noted that the portrait of Tatyana's son, Illia (1510-1539), Prince of Ostroh from the Coburg Palace in Vienna, identified by me, can be attributed either to Giovanni Cariani or to Bernardino Licinio, or even to both, which indicates that the painters could have cooperated closely. Chained monkeys also have a certain symbolism during the Renaissance and "at the feet of the Virgin Mary seems to symbolise the suppression of sins - sensuality, greed, and excess the vices of Eve defeated by the virtue of the Virgin Mary" (after "111 Masterpieces of the National Museum in Warsaw" by Dorota Folga-Januszewska, p. 81). In this portrait it can therefore be considered as the embodiment of erotic passion, a symbol of lust and control over passions. 
Portrait of Constantine (ca. 1460-1530), Prince of Ostroh by Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1522, Palazzo Barberini in Rome.
Portrait of Tatyana Olshanskaya (ca. 1480-1522), Princess of Ostroh by Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1522, Castello Sforzesco in Milan.
Constantine (ca. 1460-1530), Prince of Ostroh and his wife Tatyana Olshanskaya (ca. 1480-1522) as donors before Madonna and Child by Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1522. Possible layout of original painting. © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Tatyana Olshanskaya (ca. 1480-1522), Princess of Ostroh holding a monkey by Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1522, Civic Museum of Bassano del Grappa.
Portraits of Constantine, Prince of Ostroh and his wife Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop
When on July 12, 1522 died Princess Tatyana Olshanskaya, first wife of Constantine, Prince of Ostroh (Konstanty Ostrogski), just few days later, on July 26 in Vilnius, the Prince concluded a pre-wedding contract with Anastasia Mstislavska, Princess of Slutsk and her son Yuri regarding the marriage of her daughter - Alexandra. "And if God gives me, with her Majesty Princess Alexandra, children, sons or girls, I should love them also, and look after them as much as for our first son, Prince Ilia, whom we have with my first wife", added the Prince in the contract. They married soon after. The bride, born in about 1503, was 19 years old and the groom, born in about 1460, was 62 at the time of their marriage contract.
Constantine, considered as an eminent military commander and called the Ruthenian Scipio, was the wealthiest man in Red Ruthenia (western Ukraine), the largest landowner in Volhynia and one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. He owned 91 cities and towns and had about 41 thousand subjects. The Princes of Ostroh, a branch of the Rurikid dynasty claiming to be descendants of Daniel of Galicia (1201-1264), King of Ruthenia and Vladimir the Great (c. 958-1015), Prince of Novgorod and Grand Prince of Kiev, were one of the oldest princely families in Poland-Lithuania and initially used Saint George piercing a dragon as their coat of arms. His new wife, Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska, a descendant of Vladimir Olgerdovich, Grand Prince of Kiev (between 1362-1394), son of Algirdas, Grand Duke of Lithuania, was related to the Jagiellonian dynasty from the maternal and paternal side. It is possible that between 1494-1496 Constantine served Emperor Maximilian I and took part in his campaign in northern Italy. For his victory near Ochakiv over the troops of Mehmed I Giray, khan of Crimea on August 10, 1497 he received the the title of Grand Hetman of Lithuania as the first person to receive this title and in 1522 he become the voivode of Trakai, considered the second most important official after the voivode and castellan of Vilnius, and received from the king the privilege of affixing seals of red wax (August 27, 1522). To commemorate his glorious victory over the forces of Vasily III, Grand Prince of Moscow in the Battle of Orsha on September 8, 1514, he most probably commissioned a painting depicting the battle in the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, attributed to Hans Krell (National Museum in Warsaw), possibly one of a series. He is depicted three times in this work in different stages of the battle: instructing his officers - Poles, Lithuanians and Tatars (1st), giving orders for hiding artillery in the wood (2nd) and wielding a buzdygan mace, he exhorts the group of Lithuanian Tartars to pursue the enemy (3rd, after "The Battle of Orsha: An Explication of the Arms ..." by Zdzisław Żygulski, p. 116, 124, 128). In 1514 the Hetman received permission from King Sigismund I to build two Orthodox churches in Vilnius. Instead of building a new one, he decided to repair and rebuilt in the Gothic style two old, dilapidated churches, Church of the Holy Trinity and the Church of Saint Nicholas. Just as his friend, the king of Poland Sigismund I and his young wife Bona Sforza, he and his wife also undoubtedly commemorated important events in their life and sought to strengthen their position and alliances locally and abroad through paintings. If the king and his wife were depicted in guise of different biblical figures, why Constantine could not? Despite his loyalty to the Catholic kings of Poland and his feud with the Orthodox Grand Duchy of Moscow, Constantine remained Orthodox and he promoted the construction of Orthodox churches and schools. In 1521 in the ancestral home of the Ostroh princes and his main seat, the Ostroh Castle, he began the construction of a new brick church on the site of an older Orthodox church built between 1446 and 1450. This architectural dominant of the castle, combining Gothic and Byzantine elements, was created by an architect presumably from Kraków and dedicated to the Epiphany, honoring the visit of the three Magi to the newborn baby Jesus. A painting of the Adoration of the Magi in the Historical Museum in Bamberg, donated by the cathedral canon Georg Betz (1768-1832), is dated "1522" and bears Cranach's mark, the crowned snake (panel, 85.8 x 58.5 cm, inv. 5). It is known from many versions, but only in this one is the artist's sign closest to the original, although probably added by a member of the workshop. There is a noticeable divergence from Cranach's style, the work was therefore created by a pupil in his workshop working on some large scale commission and just signed by the master's mark. Other versions are in the State Art Gallery in Karlsruhe, from the collection of the Margraves and Grand Dukes of Baden (panel, 86 x 57 cm, inv. 812), in the Burg Eltz, old family property of the Counts of Eltz-Kempenich (panel, 86 x 59 cm) and in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow from the Ducal picture gallery in Gotha (panel, 85 x 56 cm, object number 101048). One was sold in 1933 by Galerie Helbing in Munich (panel, 81 x 58.5 cm, October 18/19, 1933, lot 424) and another in London (panel, 83 x 63.5 cm, Sotheby's, October 27, 1993, lot 155). The mirror version of the whole composition from the collection of Edward Solly (1776-1848) is in the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg (oil on panel, inv. GK I 2032, exhibited at the Grunewald hunting lodge, R.11). All are considered to be workshop copies. As with the artist's marks, the dates indicated on these copies are clearly not authentic - L. / C. / 1 5.Z.[0]. (Eltz Castle, upper left), [1]5[3]2 (Karlsruhe, upper center), 1500 (from the Solly collection, lower right). The mirror version from the Solly collection is the most interesting, as it was clearly made by a Flemish painter. The copyist was inspired by Cranach's style, but the closest works are those attributed to the circle of the Flemish painter Maerten de Vos (1532-1603), active in Antwerp, such as Penitent Mary Magdalene (Dorotheum in Vienna, December 16, 2021, lot 21), a copy of a painting by Quentin Matsys (Gemäldegalerie in Belin, inv. 574C). The painter copied Cranach's mark (lower right), but it is not known why he added the date 1500. The most plausible explanation is that the copy of Cranach's work he received for copying was in poor condition, and instead of 1522, he read the date 1500. The original was undoubtedly a larger composition - the altar. Closed wings in the altar design by Lucas Cranach the Elder in the State Art Collections in Weimar (Schlossmuseum) depict identical scene of the Adoration of the Magi (ink on paper, 25.4 x 25 cm, inv. KK 97). One of the three "wise man from the East" and the Virgin and Child holding a bowl of gold coins are in the center on separate panels to further accentuate their importance. Melchior, the old man of the three Magi, venerated in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church, was traditionally called the King of Persia and brought the gift of gold to Jesus, signifying the regal status, a symbol of wealth and kingship on earth. When opened the altar design in Weimar shows the scene of the Christ nailed to the Cross in central panel and Saint Sebaldus (left wing) and Saint Louis (right wing) according to inscription in Latin. The original crossed out inscription over the head the holy king on the right was most probably "Saint Sigismund". Both effigies do not match the most common iconography of both saints. Saint Sebaldus was usually represented as a pilgrim with the staff and the cap and Saint Louis, King of France with fleur-de-lis, mantle, and the other parts of the French regalia. The inscriptions are therefore later additions and are not correct. The effigy of the king in armour holding a sword, match perfectly the depictions of Constantine the Great, Saint Emperor and Equal to the Apostles, in both Eastern Orthodox (icon in the Nizhny Tagil Museum, 1861-1881) and Roman Church (painting by Cornelis Engebrechtsz in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, ca. 1517). The effigy of a holy bishop opposite is Saint Nicholas, who was represented vested as a bishop and holding a Gospel Book in both Christian traditions (e.g. icon of Saint Nicholas painted in 1294 for the Lipno Church in Novgorod and a triptych by Giovanni Bellini, created in 1488 for the Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice). Saint Nicholas was particularly important for Queen Bona, Constantine of Ostroh's friend, as most of the relics of this Saint are in her city of Bari. The altar was thus commissioned to the Church of Epiphany at the Ostroh Castle and destroyed during subsequent wars. Around that time king Sigismund I commissioned a triptych of the Adoration of the Magi in the workshop of Joos van Cleve in the Netherlands, where he was depicted as one of the Magi (Berlin), and his wife Bona was depicted as the Virgin under an apple tree by Cranach (Saint Petersburg). The effigy of a bearded old man as Melchior is very similar to other known portraits of Constantine, Prince of Ostroh. The same woman who lend her features to Virgin Mary in described paintings was also depicted in a moralistic painting of the ill-matched lovers by Lucas Cranach the Elder. This painting, today in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, is signed with artist's insignia and dated "1522" in upper left corner (panel, 84.5 x 63.6 cm, inv. 130). The painting was initially in the Imperial collection in Vienna, hence it was most probably commissioned by the Habsburgs, although it cannot be excluded that it was ordered by some of Constantine's opponents in Poland-Lithuania. The hetman, like the king and his wife Bona, supported the elected King of Hungary, John Zapolya against the Habsburgs and in May 1528 he met with his envoy Farkas Frangepán (1499-1546). The person who commissioned the work could not ridicule a high military official, it would be offensive and diplomatically inappropriate. He or she could however mock his young trophy wife, taking advantage of his embrace to steal the money from his purse. All mentioned paintings have also one other thing in common - coins. The hat of toothless old man in Budapest painting is adorned with a large coin with ambiguous inscription, possibly a humorous anagram or a reference to Ruthenian/Slavonic language used by Constantine. Coins are also visible in majority of preserved portraits of Constantine's and Alexandra's son, Constantine Vasily and the woman bears a strong resemblance to the effigies of Constantine Vasily, including that visible in a gold medal with his portrait (treasury of the Pechersk Lavra and the Hermitage). She was also represented as Judith with the head of Holofernes in a painting, today in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (panel, 79.9 x 55.6 cm, inv. 1954.74). It is attributed to Hans Cranach, the oldest son of Lucas Cranach the Elder who was active from 1527 and who died in Bologna in 1537. This work, almost like a pendant to a portrait of Queen Bona Sforza as Judith in Vienna, was in the late 18th century in the collection of king Charles IV of Spain. It cannot be excluded that like the portrait of the Queen, it was sent to the Habsburgs in Spain. Perhaps two preparatory drawings for this portrait were in the Dessau State Gallery before World War II, lost (silverpoint on paper, 14.9 x 14.1 cm, inv. B II/2). Both were signed with monogram IVM, an unknown painter from the workshop of Lucas Cranach who was sent to create some drawings or a court painter of Constantine, Prince of Ostroh and his wife. The verso of the larger drawing, also signed with monogram IVM, depict Saint George fighting a dragon, a symbol of the Princes of Ostroh, being thence a study to another painting commissioned by the family and most probably bearing the features of Constantine's eldest son Illia. Constantine's young wife bore him two children Constantine Vasily born on February 2, 1526 and Sophia, born before 1528. Her husband died in Turov, in today's Belarus, on August 10, 1530 and was buried in the Kiev Monastery of the Caves (Pechersk Lavra), where in 1579 his son Constantine Vasily erected him a magnificent tombstone in Italian style. 
Design for altar of Constantine (ca. 1460-1530), Prince of Ostroh, closed, with Adoration of the Magi and effigies of the founder and his wife as Melchior and the Virgin by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1522, State Art Collections in Weimar.
Design for altar of Constantine (ca. 1460-1530), Prince of Ostroh, opened, with Christ nailed to the Cross and Saints Nicholas and Constantine the Great by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1522, State Art Collections in Weimar.
Adoration of the Magi with portraits of Constantine, Prince of Ostroh and his wife Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska as Saint Melchior and the Virgin by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1522, State Art Gallery in Karlsruhe.
Adoration of the Magi with portraits of Constantine, Prince of Ostroh and his wife Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska as Saint Melchior and the Virgin by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1522, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.
Adoration of the Magi with portraits of Constantine, Prince of Ostroh and his wife Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska as Saint Melchior and the Virgin by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1522 or after, Historical Museum in Bamberg.
Adoration of the Magi with portraits of Constantine, Prince of Ostroh and his wife Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska as Saint Melchior and the Virgin by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1522 or after, Private collection (sold in Munich).
Adoration of the Magi with portraits of Constantine, Prince of Ostroh and his wife Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska as Saint Melchior and the Virgin by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, after 1522, Eltz Castle.
Adoration of the Magi with portraits of Constantine, Prince of Ostroh and his wife Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska as Saint Melchior and the Virgin by circle of Maerten de Vos, mid-16th century, Grunewald hunting lodge.
Ill-Matched Lovers, caricature of Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska, Princess of Ostroh by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1522, Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.
Portrait of Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska, Princess of Ostroh as Judith with the head of Holofernes by Lucas Cranach the Elder or Hans Cranach, ca. 1530, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Preparatory drawing for a portrait of Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska, Princess of Ostroh as Judith with the head of Holofernes by Monogrammist IVM or workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, State Gallery in Dessau, lost.
Preparatory drawing for a portrait of Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska, Princess of Ostroh as Judith with the head of Holofernes (recto) by Monogrammist IVM or workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, State Gallery in Dessau, lost.
Preparatory drawing for Saint George fighting the dragon (verso), a crypto-portrait of Illia (1510-1539), Prince of Ostroh by Monogrammist IVM or workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, State Gallery in Dessau, lost.
Hetman Ostrogski instructing his officers, fragment of the Battle of Orsha (1514) by workshop or follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder (Hans Krell?), ca. 1525-1535, National Museum in Warsaw.
Hetman Ostrogski laying an ambush for the enemy, fragment of the Battle of Orsha (1514) by workshop or follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder (Hans Krell?), ca. 1525-1535, National Museum in Warsaw.
Hetman Ostrogski giving the order of pursuit, fragment of the Battle of Orsha (1514) by workshop or follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder (Hans Krell?), ca. 1525-1535, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portraits of Anna and Katarzyna Górka by Lucas Cranach the Elder and Venetian painters
On May 23, 1511 died Andrzej Szamotulski of Nałęcz coat of arms, voivode of Poznań, one of the wealthiest men in the country, appointed commissioner for minting coins in Poland at the coronation sejm of 1502. According to inscription in Latin on his epitaph in the Collegiate in Szamotuły, he was "the best senator of the entire Kingdom, most distinguished among foreign nations with helpfulness, eloquence and prudence". The epitaph in the form of a metal plaque of high artistic value, some art historians speculate that Albrecht Dürer was responsible for the design, was commissioned in Nuremberg in the Vischer workshop and created by Hermann Vischer the Younger in 1505. The Vischer workshop also created epitaphs and other works for the Jagiellons and members of the royal court, like bronze epitaph of Filippo Buonaccorsi, called Callimachus, tutor to the sons of King Casimir IV Jagiellon by workshop of Hermann Vischer the Younger in the Holy Trinity Church in Kraków, created after 1496, bronze epitaph of Piotr Kmita of Wiśnicz, voivode of Kraków in the Wawel Cathedral by Peter Vischer the Elder, created in about 1505, bronze plaque of Cardinal Frederick Jagiellon (1468-1503), also in the Wawel Cathedral, by Peter Vischer, commissioned by King Sigismund I and created in 1510, bronze grille of the Sigismund's Chapel at the Wawel Cathedral by Hans Vischer's workshop, cast between 1530-1532, or bronze tomb sculpture of banker of King Sigismund I, Seweryn Boner and his wife Zofia Bonerowa née Bethman by Hans Vischer in Kraków's Saint Mary's Church, created between 1532-1538.
In 1941, the Szamotulski epitaph was looted by German army, along with other valuable items. After almost fifty years, it was found in a museum warehouse in what was then Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) in Russia, and in December 1990 it was returned to Szamotuły. Szamotulski's heir was his only daughter Katarzyna Górkowa née Szamotulska. She was married to Łukasz II Górka (1482-1542) of Łodzia coat of arms, who from 1503, together with his father-in-law, supervised the Greater Poland mint and who later become Starost General of Greater Poland (1508-1535) and castellan of Poznań (1511-1535). In 1518 Górka was in the retinue welcoming Bona Sforza and in 1526 he accompanied Sigismund I on his way to Prussia and Gdańsk, during which he established close contacts with Albert of Prussia. He was a supporter of Emperor Charles V and in 1530 he participated in a meeting of Polish, Hungarian, Czech and Saxon envoys. A painting from 1529 founded by Łukasz to the Górka Chapel at Poznań Cathedral, today in the Kórnik Castle (inv. MK 03356), and attributed to so-called Master of Szamotuły, shows him as a donor before the scene of the Annunciation to the Virgin, possibly bearing features of his wife Katarzyna. Łukasz Górka and Katarzyna Szamotulska had a son Andrzej (1500-1551), who in 1525 married Barbara Kurozwęcka (d. 1545), and two daughters Anna and Katarzyna (Catherine). Anna married in 1523 Piotr Kmita Sobieński, nephew of the voivode of Kraków mentioned above, and one of the most trusted followers of Queen Bona Sforza. In 1523 he secured her a dowry of 1,000 ducats on Wiśnicz and Lipnica and in 1531 life tenancy. He was the Court Marshal of the Crown from 1518 and Grand Marshal of the Crown from 1529 and a celebrated patron of the arts, his court in Wiśnicz was one of the finest centers of Polish Renaissance. Katarzyna married in 1528 Stanisław Odrowąż (1509-1545), Bona's protege, who after her death married in February 1536 Duchess Anna of Masovia. In 1528 Stanisław secured Katarzyna a dowry of 30,000 zlotys on his estates Jarosław and others, and on the royal estate Sambir (Sambor) in Ukraine. According to other sources they were married in 1530. In 1537 king Sigismund I buys the Sambir estate from Odrowąż and obliges him to return 15,000 zlotys of his deceased wife's dowry to her father Łukasz Górka. Stanisław was castellan of Lviv from 1533, starost of Lviv from 1534, with the support of Queen Bona, and voivode of Podolia from 1535. A painting of Madonna and Child which was in the Saint Erasmus Church in Sulmierzyce (panel, 57 x 38 cm), stolen in 1995, was probably offered to the church by Jan Sulimierski (Sulimirski) around 1550. In the 16th century, the nearby Wieluń was incorporated into the private estates of Queen Bona Sforza. Since then, the castle in Wieluń often hosted royal wives or sisters. From 1558 the voivode of Łęczyca, more to the north, was Łukasz III Górka (1533-1573), grandson of Łukasz II. He was initially a member of the Unity of Brethren and later joined Lutherans, who opposed the worship of saints, especially the Virgin Mary. So maybe Sulimierski family received the painting from someone from the royal family or Łukasz III, after his conversion. Stylistically the painting is dated to about 1525, while the castle on a fantastic hill behind the Virgin is very similar to the main seat of the Górka family, Kórnik Castle near Poznań, built in the late 14th century and rebuilt after 1426. Consequently the effigy should be identified as portrait of Anna Górka, the eldest daughter of Łukasz II, married in 1523 to Piotr Kmita. The same woman was also depicted in a portrait painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder from Walters collection (mode of acquisition unknown) in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, known as the effigy of Mary Magdalene (panel, 36.3 x 25.7 cm, inv. 37.269). "Her hair hangs loosely, so she is a not a married woman, whose hair would be discretely controlled", according to museum's description, thence it could be created before the marriage. A small round miniature signed with the artist's insignia at centre right and dated above "152[7]" (repainted), shows her with a large red hat. This miniature is now in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (panel, 14.5 cm, inv. L 796) and was acquired between 1834 and 1836 by Christoph Friedrich Karl von Kölle in Paris. Its earlier provenance is unknown and its acquisition in Paris, where many aristocratic collections from the former Poland-Lithuania were transferred after the November Uprising (1830-1831), suggests that it may have come from such a collection. "Such round images based on ancient coins and Renaissance medals were probably intended as gifts and, as the large number of surviving examples shows, enjoyed great popularity," the museum's description says, which also indicates that the woman was a member of a very wealthy family. She was also depicted in Italian dress of shiny satin in a portrait from the collection of David Goldmann (1887-1967) in Vienna (oil on canvas, 60.3 x 50.1 cm, Sotheby's New York, May 20, 2021, lot 10). This painting is attributed to Paris Bordone, connected to the Jagiellons and Queen Bona (therefore also to Piotr Kmita Sobieński). Andrea Donati dates this elegant portrait to circa 1525-1530. A similar woman was represented in a painting which before World War II was in a Parish Church in Radoszyn (Rentschen) near Poznań. The church in Radoszyn was founded at the end of the 15th century by the nuns of the Cistercian monastery in Trzebnica, who owned the village till 1810. After the war the work was transferred to the National Museum in Warsaw from the Nazi German Art Repository in Szczytna (Rückers) (tempera and oil on panel, 69 x 55 cm, inv. M.Ob.2154 MNW). The painting bears the date "1530" and a mark of the Cranach workshop (below the window). The castle on fantastic rock in the background is very similar to the remains of the Szamotuły Castle, visibe on lithography by Napoleon Orda from 1880. Medieval castle in Szamotuły was built most likely in the first half of the 15th century. In 1496 Andrzej Szamotulski guaranteed a dowry to his only daughter Katarzyna worth 2,000 grzywnas of silver "on the half of the city of Szamotuły". Katarzyna married Łukasz II in 1499, bringing in the part of the city inherited from her father, including the castle, as a dowry. Around 1518, Łukasz rebuilt the seat. The Warsaw painting is a workshop copy of a work by Cranach, which is known from number of copies. The best is now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington (oil on panel, 71.2 x 52.1 cm, inv. 1953.3.1), which by 1929 was probably in H. Michels Gallery in Berlin. Many authors underline clear inspiration of Venetian painting (direct or indirect through works of Albrecht Dürer) in the composition, found in the Madonnas of Giovanni Bellini. Two other replicas, containing a landscape, are known. One was sold by Galerie Fischer in Lucerne on November 21, 1972 (panel, 84 x 61 cm, lot 2355), the other, from private collection in Austria, was sold in 1990 in London (panel, 80 x 56.5 cm, Sotheby's, October 22, 1990). She was also depicted in a portrait painting, similar to that of Anna Górka in the Walters Art Museum, wearing a wide rimmed hat with a plume. This work was sold at an auction in Cologne in 1920 (panel, 84 x 55 cm, February 11, No. 631). She is holding a plant, possibly quince sacred to Venus and a symbol of fertility. "Plutarch advised Greek brides to eat a quince in preparation for their wedding night" (after "Illustrated Dictionary Of Symbols In Eastern And Western Art" by James Hall, p. 156). The painting bears Cranach's insignia at the bottom left. The woman's big hat from the 1520s was repainted in the 1530s, when this type of hat went out of fashion. The original hat was probably uncovered during the restoration work. A copy of this portrait from the collection of Miklós Jankovich (1772-1846), art collector and historian, is in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest (oil on canvas, 48.1 x 38.1 cm, inv. 3127). This painting was thought to represent Philippine Welser (1527-1580), the morganatic wife of Archduke Ferdinand II, son of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547). It is painted on canvas, so it is thought to have been moved from a panel or created in the 17th century or later. Although it is certainly a copy of Cranach's original, the style, particularly the way the white parts of her dress and feathers on her hat are painted, indicate Italian influences. The overall style of this painting is close to that of Bernardino Licinio, whose workshop most likely received a painting by Cranach to copy. Comparable is for example the style of the Madonna and Child with Helena Capella and her husband as donors by Licinio (Sotheby's New York, October 22, 2021, lot 102). The use of canvas is also more typical for Italian and especially Venetian painting. She was finally depicted in guise of Saint Catherine of Alexandria in a paining of Sacra Conversazione by Bernardino Licinio, another painter connected to Queen Bona. Katarzyna's husband, Queen's protege, in shining armour, stand beside her. He is most probably representing Saint George, a military saint venerated in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church, who was a patron Saint of Lithuania. Stanisław cound not be depicted as his namesake patron Saint Stanislaus of Szczepanów, as he was a bishop. This painting was sold in 2002 in New York (oil on panel, 91.6 x 118.1 cm, Christie's, January 25, 2002, lot 23). "Saint George" and "Saint Catherine" look at the viewer in a meaningful way, which indicate an additional meaning of this religious scene and in the Lot Essay it was noted that: "It is possible that the two saints in the composition may be portraits of the donors". While in paintings by Cranach both sisters have a high forehead, according to Northern fashion women shaved their hair at the front to achieve this effect, in Venetian paintings their hairlines are more natural. 
Portrait of Anna Górka as Madonna and Child before a hanging held by an angel (Sulmierzyce Madonna) by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1523, Saint Erasmus Church in Sulmierzyce, stolen. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Anna Górka by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1523, Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.
Portrait of Anna Kmicina née Górka by Lucas Cranach the Elder or workshop, ca. 1525-1527, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.
Portrait of Anna Kmicina née Górka by Paris Bordone, ca. 1525-1530, Private collection.
Portrait of Katarzyna Górka by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1523-1530, Private collection.
Portrait of Katarzyna Górka by workshop of Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1530-1536, Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.
Portrait of Katarzyna Górka as Madonna and Child nibbling grapes by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1528-1530, National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Portrait of Katarzyna Górka as Madonna and Child nibbling grapes by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1528-1530, Private collection (sold in London).
Portrait of Katarzyna Górka as Madonna and Child nibbling grapes by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1528-1530, Private collection (sold in Lucerne). Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Katarzyna Górka as Madonna and Child nibbling grapes by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1530 or early 17th century copy, National Museum in Warsaw.
Sacra Conversazione with portraits of Stanisław Odrowąż and Katarzyna Górka by Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1530, Private collection.
Portrait of Jakub Uchański by circle of Hans Asper
The portrait of an unknown man from the 1520s can also be assigned to the circle of renaissance court of the Jagiellons. It is an effigy of man aged 22 transferred to the National Museum in Warsaw from the Krasiński collection in Warsaw. According to the inscription in Latin it was created in 1524 (ANNO • DOMINI • MD • XXIIII / • ANNOS • NATVS • XXII • IAR / • RB • / • IW •), the man was therefore born in 1502, just as Jakub Uchański (1502-1581).
Uchański was educated at the collegiate school in Krasnystaw. Then he was employed at the court of the Lublin voivode and starosta of Krasnystaw, Andrzej Tęczyński, becoming one of the administrators of the voivode's vast estates. Tęczyński recommened him to the Crown referendary and the future bishop of Poznań, Sebastian Branicki. He was later a secretary and administrator of Queen Bona's estate and Interrex (regent) during royal elections. Despite the fact that in 1534, he was ordained a priest, he secretly favored the Reformation, loosening the dependence of the Catholic Church in Poland on Rome and even supporting the concept of a national church. As a canon he secretly attended, together with Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski to theological disputes in the dissenting spirit of Queen Bona's confessor Francesco Lismanini (Franciszek Lismanin), a Greek born in Corfu. The Warsaw portrait is very similar in style to effigies created by Swiss painter Hans Asper, a pupil of Hans Leu the Younger in Zurich, especially to the portrait of a leader of the Reformation in Switzerland, Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531) from 1531 in the Kunstmuseum Winterthur. Even the artist's signature is painted in similar style, however the letters does not match. According to convention the portrait in Warsaw is signed with monogram IW or VIV. This Monogrammist IW, could be other pupil of Leu, who left the country for Poland during the episodes of iconoclasm in Zurich between September and November 1523, instigated by the inflammatory preaching of Zwingli, which led, among others, to the destruction of a large part of works by his master. Another possible explanation is that the painting was created by Asper, the monogram is a part of undetermined titulature of Uchański (Iacobus de Vchanie ...) and the artist intentionally used crimson background to designate a foreigner, a Pole (Polish cochineal). 
Portrait of Jakub Uchański (1502-1581) aged 22 by circle of Hans Asper, 1524, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portraits of Stanisław Oleśnicki, Bernard Wapowski and Nicolaus Copernicus by Venetian painters
In 1516, together with Bernard Wapowski, Jan Dantyszek, Andrzej Krzycki and Stanisław Tarło, who all studied at the Kraków Academy, Stanisław Oleśnicki (1469-1539) of Dębno coat of arms, become a secretary of king Sigismund I.
He was the son of Feliks Jan Oleśnicki and Katarzyna Gruszczyńska and the nephew of the Zbigniew Oleśnicki (1430-1493), bishop of Gniezno and primate of Poland. From 1492 he was a canon of Gniezno, a canon of Sandomierz from 1517, a canon of Kraków from 1519, a cantor of Gniezno from 1520 and a deputy of the king to the sejmik of the Kraków voivodeship in Proszowice in 1518 and in 1523. He also acted as secretary to Queen Bona Sforza. It is interesting to note that in 1525 Oleśnicki was simultaneously secretary to the king and queen (regio et reginali secretario), as mentioned in a royal document. The queen's secretaries were mostly foreigners. Her personal secretary and first superior of her chancellery was Ludovico Masati de Aliphia (Aliphius), a member of an old Neapolitan noble family, who came to Kraków with Bona in 1518. In the years 1520-1545, it was also Marco de la Torre, provincial of the Franciscans in Poland and reformer of this order, also Bona's confessor, who enjoyed the reputation of a trusted secretary. One of Bona's favourites was Carlo Antonio Marchesini da Monte Cinere from Bologna, canon of Płock, previously secretary to the Bishop of Płock, Erazm Ciołek. He often travelled with her and Andrzej Krzycki sought the queen's favour by rendering services to Marchesini. Later, between 1530 and 1550, Bona's secretary was Scipio Scolare (Scholaris) from Bari. Foreign queens, for obvious reasons, favoured their compatriots or speakers of their native language, as in the case of Jan Liberanth or Lieberhandt, most likely a German speaker from Gdańsk or Toruń (although also considered Greek), the long-time physician of Queen Elizabeth of Austria (1436-1505), who on August 28, 1495 was appointed chancellor of her court, while Queen Helena of Moscow (1476-1513), who although uncrowned, is commonly considered in the sources as reginam Poloniae, had at her disposal a Ruthenian secretary (or scribe), Miklasz or Nyklasz (Nicolas), who had previously been secretary to Queen Elizabeth. By strengthening the position of their courtiers, the queens also strengthened their power at court, and they worked to obtain for them the best offices, important prebends and ecclesiastical benefices. For her favourites, already in 1522, Bona tried to obtain from the king the canonry of Sandomierz for her Italian doctor and the altar of St. Dorothy for her court musician. Sigismund I did not agree, arguing in a letter from Vilnius dated May 3, 1522 that "by what right, to the detriment of deserving natives, could we entrust this office to a young foreigner, already well paid, not even a clergyman, who could perhaps do what so many other Italians have done, who, having taken an abundance of ecclesiastical bread, have left us" (after "Zbiór pamiętników historycznych o dawnej Polszcze ..." by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Volume 4, p. 20). Later, however, the queen managed to secure for Doctor Valentinis the canonry of Kraków in 1531 and for her organist and bandmaster Alessandro Pesenti (de Pesentis, d. 1576), a nobleman from Verona, the canonry of Vilnius in the same year. Such favouritism towards foreigners naturally aroused opposition, and in the movements of 1536 and 1537 against the queen her opponents bestowed upon her favourites a whole series of expressive epithets, such as sodomites, epicureans, simonians, and atheists (after "Z dworu Zygmunta Starego. (Dokończenie)" by Kazimierz Morawski, p. 544). Among the Poles at Bona's court there was also the Latin secretary, Father Jan Lewicki, who, before entering her service, had been in Rome, where he dealt with the affairs of Primate Jan Łaski. Although later rewarded with the title of abbot of the monastery of canons regular in Czerwińsk, which received the protectorate of the queen, Lewicki is an example of Bona's difficult character in her relations with her subordinates. In April 1532, Jan Dantyszek, complaining about the queen's dissatisfaction with his work, which he found incomprehensible, wrote to Piotr Tomicki that "she is about to tear my hair out, as she used to do with Lewicki" (Nihil reliquum est, quam quod me crinibus, ut Levicio facere solebat, non protrahat), and a few days later he added: "I would not like to be Lewicki, nor to meet her in disgrace, as changeable and unstable as ever" (Nollem enim esse Levicius vel sub indignatione quovis modo illam convenire, varium et mutabile semper etc.). Unlike Lewicki, another Pole in the queen's service, Stanisław Górski (1497/99-1572), who was her secretary between 1535-1548, was apparently less docile since his correspondence is considered to contain criticism of the queen and her favourite Marco de la Torre (after "Sekretarze na dworach polskich królowych ..." by Agnieszka Januszek-Sieradzka, p. 120, 121, 123-126). A signed portrait by Bernardino Licinio (P · LYCINII·) in the York Art Gallery shows a clergyman holding a half open missal with both hands (oil on canvas, 92 x 76.8 cm, inv. YORAG : 738). According to inscription in Latin (M·D·XXIIII·ANNO · AETATIS · LV·) the man was 55 in 1524, exactly as Stanisław Oleśnicki, born in 1469. In 1524 Jacopo Filippo Pellenegra published in Venice his Operetta volgare, a collection of poems addressed to Queen Bona and her mother Isabella of Aragon, Duchess of Milan. The same man was also depicted in the painting by Licinio in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (oil on canvas, 74.5 x 67 cm, inv. 179), most probably acquired in 1815 from the Giustiniani collection in Rome. In the private collection there is a portrait of an astronomer from the same period, attributed to Giovanni Cariani (oil on canvas, 70 x 50 cm, Christie's New York, Auction 8584, January 31, 1997, lot 201). He is holding astronomical rings consisting of three brass rings that swiveled inside each other and engraved with hours of the day, compass directions, and other measurments. It was an instrument used by astronomers, navigators, and surveyors (after "Gerardus Mercator: Father of Modern Mapmaking" by Ann Heinrichs, p. 44). Licinio and Cariani, who probably collaborated in the execution of important orders of the Polish-Lithuanian royal court, created the portraits of Queen Bona that I have identified. With great probability, we can consider that this portrait represents Bernard Wapowski (ca. 1475-1535), called Vapovius, a nobleman of the Nieczuja coat of arms, canon of Kraków, historian, orator, astronomer and cartographer. Wapowski, considered to be the "Father of Polish Cartography", studied with Copernicus in Kraków, before leaving for Italy, where he studied in Bologna beteen 1503-1505 and then left for Rome. He returned to Poland in 1515, when he was about 40. He become cantor and canon of Kraków in 1523. Three years later in 1526 he assisted his life-long friend Copernicus, "with whom he wrote about the motion of eight sphere" (motu octavae sphaerae), in mapping the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The same year he created and published in Kraków his most notable map, the first large-scale (1:1,260,000) map of Poland. The red marble tombstone in Wawel Cathedral, traditionally identified as the image of Bernard Wapowski, iconographically joins the portrait by Cariani and by Licinio in York. The appearance and the beret resemble those of Cariani's painting, while the large book on which the man holds his head is similar to that of Licinio's painting. In the Lviv National Art Gallery there is a portrait of an astronomer by Venetian painter Marco Basaiti, created in 1512 (oil on canvas, 101.5 x 80 cm, inv. Ж-763), which traditionally is identified as effigy of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543). The painting is signed and dated on the table: M. BASAITI FACIEBAT MDXII. In the years 1510-1512, Copernicus drew up a map of Warmia and the western borders of Royal Prussia, intended for the congress of the royal council in Poznań. In 1512 together with the Chapter of Warmia, he swore an oath of allegiance to the king of Poland. In 1909 the painting was in the collection of Prince Andrzej Lubomirski in Przeworsk (after "Katalog wystawy obrazów malarzy dawnych i współczesnych urządzonej staraniem Andrzejowej Księżny Lubomirskiej" by Mieczysław Treter, item 33, p. 11). Most probably 19th century copy of this paining is in the Royal Wilanów Palace in Warsaw (oil on canvas, 103 x 81.5 cm, inventory number Wil.1850). 
Portrait of Stanisław Oleśnicki (1469-1539), cantor of Gniezno by Bernardino Licinio, 1524, York Art Gallery.
Portrait of Stanisław Oleśnicki (1469-1539), cantor of Gniezno by Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1524, Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.
Portrait of an astronomer, most probably Bernard Wapowski (ca. 1475-1535), called Vapovius by Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1520, Private collection.
Portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) by Marco Basaiti, 1512, Lviv National Art Gallery.
Portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) by follower of Marco Basaiti, after 1512 (19th century?), Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
Portrait of Jan Dantyszek by Dosso Dossi
Queen Bona maintained very close and cordial relations with the Ducal court in Ferrara, and especially with her cousin, Cardinal Ippolito d'Este (1479-1520), and his brother, Alfonso d'Este (1476-1534), Duke of Ferrara, sons of Eleanor of Naples (1450-1493). So when in the spring of 1524 Sigismund I sends his envoy Jan Dantyszek (1485-1548) on a new mission to Italy regarding the inheritance of Queen Bona, he also visits Ferrara. The legation with Ludovico Alifio, Bona's court chancellor, and a retinue of 27 horsemen left Kraków on March 15, 1524 and headed for Vienna. They went to Venice to congratulate the new Doge and then to Ferrara, where they spent 6 days enjoying the hospitality of Duke Alfonso. The return to Venice took place on May 3 and from there they boarded a ship for Bari.
Dantyszek's embassy received a rich and costly setting. The legation's viaticum, i.e. money for the equipment, journeys, stays and gifts, amounted to 500 Hungarian florins (after "Jan Dantyszek: portret renesansowego humanisty" by Zbigniew Nowak, p. 126). There was a constant exchange of products of both countries between Ferrara and Kraków. "We inform Your Majesty, that we have received all the things she sent us and that she does not need to explain herself to us because the gift was the most beautiful" - the queen reports to Duke Alfonso on January 24, 1522. On June 12, 1524 Bona's envoy Giovanni Valentino (de Valentinis) wrote to Duke Alfonso: "Those things which Your Majesty sends in a carriage coming from Bari, Her Royal Majesty awaits with great devotion, as women are accustomed to do". It seems that from Poland the most valuable furs, horses, sables, falcons and hunting dogs were delivered to the court in Ferrara. When Valentino left at the end of January 1527 to Ferrara, Bona reported to the Duke that she was sending "animals of our countries" through him (after "Królowa Bona, 1494-1557: czasy i ludzie odrodzenia" by Władysław Pociecha, Volume 2, p. 292-293). In his last will and testament, dated August 28, 1533 Duke Alfonso included his closest family and Queen Bona of Poland, to whom he left one of his best carpets (after "The King of Court Poets A Study of the Work Life and Times of Lodovico Ariosto" by Edmund Garratt Gardner, p. 355). Dantyszek commissioned works of art from many eminent artists he met during his travels. When in May 1530 he was nominated for the bishopric of Chełmno, he ordered a medal from Christoph Weiditz, active in Augsburg, who made it the following year. Between 1528 and 1529 Weiditz was in Spain, presumably working at the imperial court of Charles V. Dantyszek sent copies of this medal to his friends in Poland and abroad, including Queen Bona, who received this work very critically. Fabian Wojanowski reported this to Dantyszek in a letter from Kraków, November 22, 1531: "We also discussed a lot about the image of Your Reverence. Her Majesty showed it to everyone several times and everyone, both Her Majesty and the Bishop of Kraków [Tomicki], as well as Mr. Nipszyc, Gołcz and I claimed that if it had not been for the inscription around the bust, they would not have recognized who it represented". Dantyszek's response to this negative opinion of his friends was to order another medal in 1532, this time from the Dutch poet and medalist, Jan Nicolaesz Everearts, known as Johannes Secundus (after "Caraglio w Polsce" by Jerzy Wojciechowski, p. 31). Weiditz created several medals bearing his likeness (the first dated 1516, another of 1522, two of 1529, and one of 1531). Wooden model for 1529 medal is today in the Coin Gallery of the Bode-Museum in Berlin (inventory number 18200344). The main artist active at the Ferrara court during Dantyszek's visit was Dosso Dossi, who around 1524 painted Jupiter, Mercury and Virtue from the Lanckoroński collection (Wawel Royal Castle in Kraków). Dosso, who also travelled to Florence, Rome and above all Venice, eventually became the leader of the Ferrara school and one of the most important artists of his time. In the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, there is a portrait of a man wearing a black beret by Dosso Dossi, offered by Hjalmar Linder in 1919 (inventory number NM 2163). The painting or a copy was most probaly documented in the inventory of the collection of Queen Christina of Sweden in Rome in 1662 as a portrait of Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentinois (Valentino, Valentin) by Correggio. Later this painting or another version was in Paris in the collection of the dukes of Orléans in Palais-Royal and was captured in a print by François Jacques Dequevauviller (1783-1848), created in 1808 (National Library of Portugal, inventory number E. 477 V.). Some differences between the print and Stockholm version are visible in the background - a window in the painting and a small wall in the print. There is no painted frame in the engraving. The tower is different and in the print the tower is a part of another structure, most probably a church. In the Revolution of 1848, a Paris mob attacked and looted the royal residence Palais-Royal, particularly the art collection of King Louis-Philippe. It is possible that Paris version was destroyed. According to the authors of "Dosso Dossi: Court Painter in Renaissance Ferrara" (p. 231) the Stockholm painting was from 1798 in the collection of Thomas Hope (1769-1831) in England. It should be noted that Dequevauviller's engraving after portrait of Nikolaus Kratzer by Hans Holbein the Younger is very accurate. The man's attire is clearly northern European and very similar to that visible in a portrait of Hans Dürr, dated 1521 and in a portrait of Wolff Fürleger, dated 1527, both by Hans Brosamer, a German painter active in Nuremberg between 1519-1529, where Sigismund I commissioned many valuable works of art. The tower in the background with steep roof is also more northern European and similar to towers visible in a print published in 1694 and depicting the siege of Grudziądz by the Swedes in 1655 (Obsidio civitatis et arcis Graudensis, National Library of Poland). Jan Dantyszek finished his elementary studies at a parish school in Grudziądz (Graudenz in German), a city in Polish Prussia. The tower (turris) is also some sort of refrain or leitmotif of the drama about Jan Dantyszek staged in 1731 at the Jesuit College in Vilnius. The main character is an envoy in 1525 from Sigismund I to the emperor and the king of Spain Charles V, endowed by the emperor with the title of Spanish grandee. He has a dream in which he sees a high tower falling on his shoulders and resting on him: Incumbet humeris hic brevi Turris tuis. It means both prison and the highest honor falling on the shoulders - in the scenes of the poet's crowning (after "Dantiscana. Osiemnastowieczny dramat o Janie Dantyszku" by Jerzy Starnawski). Like in the case of portraits of Anna van Bergen (1492-1541), Marquise de Veere by Jan Gossaert and his workshop, Emperor Charles V by Netherlandish and Italian painters and portraits of Queen Bona by Bernardino Licinio, there are some differences, such as eye color, in the paintings of different artists, however, the man from Dossi's painting bear a strong resemblance to effigies of Jan Dantyszek, especially his portraits by workshops of Jan Gossaert and Marco Basaiti (attributed by me), or an anonymous print from Ioannis de Curiis Dantisci episcopi olim Varmiensis poemata et hymni e Bibliotheca Zalusciana, published in Wrocław in 1764, after a lost portrait painting most probably by Crispin Herrant. As in the portrait by the Gossaert workshop, the sitter is framed in a black painted frame, but unlike northern tradition and the aforementioned portraits by Brosamer, there was no need to put the inscription. Everyone already knew the famous ambassador of His Highness King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. In addition, a painting very similar in style to the Stockholm portrait is now kept in the National Museum in Warsaw (oil on canvas, 202 x 130 cm, M.Ob.1856 MNW). This large painting, acquired from a private collection, depicts the martyrdom of a Dominican friar and a celebrated preacher, St. Peter of Verona, patron saint of Lombardy and the Duchy of Modena and Reggio. Due to some similarities in style, it is attributed to a 17th-century follower of Titian. "Dosso Dossi was greatly influenced by Venetian art, especially the use of color and treatment of landscape as seen in works by Titian and Giorgione," says the catalogue note of a painting of the Trojans repairing their ships in Sicily in the National Gallery of Art in Washington (inv. 1939.1.250), which shows a landscape painted in a similar manner. The Warsaw painting can also be compared to Dossi's St. George (Getty Center, Los Angeles, inv. 99.PB.4). The early provenance of this painting is not known, so it may have been commissioned in Italy for one of the Dominican monasteries in Poland-Lithuania, such as the monastery in Kraków where the brothers came from Bologna in 1222. In 1649 Antoni Nuceni (Antonio Nozeni), a member of the Italian community in Kraków (mentioned in 1636), created a painting of the Martyrdom of St. Adalbert (and the Martyrdom of St. Andrew, repainted), in which the inhabitants of the royal city in their traditional costumes were depicted in a religious scene. 
Portrait of Jan Dantyszek (1485-1548), ambassador of the King of Poland by Dosso Dossi, ca. 1524, Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.
Portrait of Jan Dantyszek (1485-1548), ambassador of the King of Poland, from the collection of the dukes of Orléans, by François Jacques Dequevauviller after Dosso Dossi, 1808 after original from about 1524, National Library of Portugal.
Martyrdom of Saint Peter of Verona by Dosso Dossi, before 1542, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of Queen Bona Sforza as Mary Magdalene and as Saint Helena by Lucas Cranach the Elder
On 11 February 1524 died in Bari Isabella of Aragon, Duchess of Milan, mother of Bona Sforza d'Aragona, who after the collapse of the Sforzas in Milan and her family in Naples, was granted the title of suo jure Duchess of Bari and Princess of Rossano. The duchies that Bona inherited from her mother were involved in the struggle between French and Spanish forces of the Habsburgs for control of Italy. When Emperor Charles V re-conquered Milan from the French in 1521, Francesco II Sforza, member of a rival branch of the family, was appointed its duke.
Fearing the growing influence of the Habsburgs, Bona strove to tighten cooperation with France. In July 1524 Hieronim Łaski signed a treaty with France in Paris on behalf of Sigismund I, which reversed the Polish alliance with the Habsburgs agreed at the Vienna Congress of 1515. It was agreed that Henry, the younger son of the French king Francis I or the Scottish king James, will marry one of the daughters of Sigismund I, Hedwig or Isabella, and that Sigismund Augustus will marry a daughter of Francis I. Determined to regain Lombardy, Francis I, unsuccessful competitor of Charles V for the imperial dignity, invaded the region in mid-October 1524. He was, however, defeated and taken prisoner at Pavia on 25 February 1525, guaranteeing Spanish control of Italy. This battle changed dramatically the situation for Bona. The marriage plans with the French court had been cancelled and Bona had to accept the engagement of her only son with Elizabeth of Austria, daughter of younger brother of Charles V, Ferdinand and his wife Anna Jagellonica. The triumphant Emperor was reluctant to acknowledge Bona's rights to her mother's succession. Diplomatic efforts of the Polish court were finally successful and on 24 June 1525 Ludovico Alifio, Bona's court chancellor, finally took on her behalf the inherited Italian possessions. The painting by Cranach from 1525 in Cologne, an imperial city, whose Archbishop was one of the electors of the Holy Roman Empire and the chief officiant during the coronation ceremony of the Emperor, shows Bona as a sinful woman, Mary Magdalene, from whom Jesus had cast out demons and who then became an important follower and interlocutor of Jesus (Luke 8:2). She is depicted with a vessel of ointment, in reference to the Anointing of Jesus, and her hair covered with translucent penitential veil. The forest is symbolic for the religious suffering of the penitent, while deer is a symbol of Christ. Saints Eustace and Hubert converted to Christianity by seeing a stag with a cross. Finally the landscape to right is very similar to the view of Mola (now Mola di Bari), a Venetian city close to Bari, with Castel Novo, an Aragonese castle, which remained loyal to Naples, published by Georg Braun & Frans Hogenberg in 1582. The view to the left can be compared with the topography of Rossano, a town built on a large rock. At the beginning of the 19th century, the painting was in the collection of the German banker Johann Abraham Anton Schaaffhausen (1756-1824) in Cologne and was donated in 1867 by Therese Schaaffhausen to the Wallraf-Richartz Museum (panel, 47.8 x 30 cm, inv. WRM 0390). The work bears Cranach's mark and the date "1525" in the lower left corner. It was probably at the same time that the painter or his studio created a small tondo miniature, which is a reduced version of this "disguised portrait" of the queen, now in private collection (panel, 10.7 cm). Similar is the context of Bona's portrait in guise of Saint Helena holding the Cross by Lucas Cranach the Elder in the Cincinnati Art Museum (oil on panel, 41 x 27 cm, inv. 1927.387). The coronation cross of the Polish monarchs was a reliquary of the True Cross (Vera Crux) of the Byzantine emperor Manuel Komnenos, created in the 12th century, today in the Notre-Dame de Paris. Like the legendary finder of the True Cross, Helena, Empress of the Roman Empire and mother of Emperor Constantine the Great, Bona found the truth and the right way and in the guise of Saint Empress is addressing Emperor Charles V. The painting is dated 1525 and was acquired from the collection of the Princes of Liechtenstein in Vienna. Its earlier history is unknown. It is highly possible that it was initially in the Imperial collection and was sent by Bona to the Habsburgs. Emperor Charles V must have owned portraits of Queen Bona and her husband, and many effigies of the emperor were undoubtedly in the collections of the Jagiellons and the magnates. In order to gain supporters, the emperor readily granted imperial titles to the magnates of Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia. The inventory of the Radziwill collection of 1671 lists among the paintings that survived the Deluge many by Cranach or probably made by him or his workshop (also included in the earlier inventory of 1657). Among the portraits of the family members, the inventory mentions a scene Caroli V Imperatoris Romano translatio Principatus de Metele et Goniodz in Olikam et Nieśwież Nicolao Radziwił Palatino Vilnensis (91/10), thus depicting the granting of the title of imperial prince by the emperor to Nicolaus "the Black" Radziwill in 1547 (after "Inwentarz galerii obrazów Radziwiłłów z XVII w." by Teresa Sulerzyska). It is confirmed by sources that in 1553 Nicolaus "the Black" had a tapestry with the Baptism of Christ based on a drawing or painting by Lucas Cranach (it is also possible that he made a cartoon for a tapestry). The inventory of 1671 also mentions two small portraits: "John, Elector of Saxony, on a small board" (Joanes kurfirsz[t] saski, na desce małej, 486/6) and "Frederick, Elector of Saxony, on a small board" (Fridericus kurfirszt saski, na desce małej, 487/7), which were undoubtedly copies of the portraits of the Electors John the Steadfast (1468-1532) and his brother Frederick III (1463-1525). It is highly likely that the portrait of the emperor, now kept in the Gołuchów Castle near Poznań, was acquired as early as the 16th century. It comes from the collection of Count Zygmunt Włodzimierz Skórzewski (1894-1974), son of Princess Maria Radziwiłł, in Czerniejewo near Poznań. Since 1949, the painting has belonged to the National Museum in Poznań and is exhibited in the Gołuchów Castle (oil on panel, 32 x 35.5 cm, inv. Mo 473). It was signed with Cranach's mark and dated in the upper right corner "15[3]0", which is no longer visible today. The date has also been given as 1550, but taking into consideration that a similar portrait by Cranach in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid is dated "1533" (oil on panel, 51.2 x 36 cm, inv. 112 (1933.7)), the date 1530 seems more likely. It is also confirmed by sources that the Poznań City Council purchased the portrait of Emperor Charles V in Leginca in Silesia in 1550. Interestingly, the later version in Madrid also comes from Silesia, because the oldest confirmed provenance of this painting is the Wallenberg-Pachaly collection in Ilnica (Ramułtowice), then known as Illnisch-Romolkwitz, between Wrocław and Legnica. The unusual composition of the Gołuchów portrait with the important Habsburg insignia - Order of the Golden Fleece, cut off and only the chain is visible, indicates that the portrait could be a fragment of a larger painting, which was probably damaged during one of the many invasions of Poland-Lithuania and the preserved fragment was cut to this format. The similarity in width with the Madrid painting (35.5 cm and 36 cm) also indicates this. 
Portrait of Queen Bona Sforza (1494-1557) as Mary Magdalene by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1525, Wallraf-Richartz Museum.
Miniature portrait of Queen Bona Sforza (1494-1557) by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1525, Private collection.
Portrait of Queen Bona Sforza (1494-1557) as Saint Helena by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1525, Cincinnati Art Museum.
Portrait of Emperor Charles V (1500-1558) from the Skórzewski collection by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1530, Gołuchów Castle.
Portrait of Emperor Charles V (1500-1558) from Ilnica by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1533, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.
Portraits of Bona Sforza and her stepdaughter Hedwig Jagiellon against the idealized view of Kraków by Lucas Cranach the Elder
1526 was a very important year for the Jagiellons. In January, the main port of the kingdom, Gdańsk, and other cities of Royal Prussia revolted against the Crown. In March, the Duchy of Mazovia fell into the hands of the Jagiellons after the death without an heir of the last male member of the Piasts of Mazovia, Janusz III (Bona was accused of poisoning the duke) and on May 22, 1526, Bernardino de Muro and Andrea Melogesio, on behalf of the inhabitants of Rossano, swore an oath of loyalty to Bona Sforza and Sigismund the Old in Wawel Cathedral, the so-called "Italian homage". Finally in August, the Ottoman Empire invaded Hungary and Sigismund I's nephew, Louis II, King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia was killed in the Battle of Mohács, ending independent Jagiellonian rule in that part of Europe (except for the reign of Bona's daughter Isabella in Transylvania, which was a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire).
The frequent absence of King Sigismund in Kraków at that time allowed the ambitious Queen Bona to considerably strengthen her position at court and in the administration of the vast country. Although her official position in Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia could be considered in today's terms as that of a queen consort, "Bona soon realized that she could only rule indirectly, on the one hand by shaping her husband's opinions and decisions, and on the other by influencing high-ranking dignitaries and officials of the kingdom" (after "Bona Sforza" by Maria Bogucka, p. 108). Her position as de facto ruler of the kingdom reached its peak in the 1540s, when the old and sick Sigismund sometimes found himself unable to govern. The letter of the Habsburg ambassador to the Polish-Lithuanian court Giovanni Marsupino (Jan Marsupin), dated July 6, 1543, although sometimes considered exaggerated, also confirms her great influence on her son Sigismund Augustus. "Good God, talking to the old king is like talking to nobody. The king His Majesty has no will of his own, he is so curbed. Queen Bona has everything in her hands. Bona alone governs the whole state, gives orders to everyone [...] The young king says nothing, does not want to listen to anything and does not dare to intervene in any matter, he is so afraid of Queen Bona, his mother. And I almost believe that this young king is under the influence of his mother's spell; for every day (from what I have heard) he goes to see her, from the first night until today. She does not allow her son to act or speak, only as she commands", Marsupino reports to Ferdinand I of Austria (after "Jagiellonki polskie w XVI wieku ..." by Alexander Przezdziecki, Volume 1, p. 121). Due to his conflict with the queen, Marsupino was soon dismissed from court, although it should be noted that in addition to his arrogant manners, he was actually carrying out espionage activities for the Habsburgs (after "Sekretarze na dworach polskich królowych ..." by Agnieszka Januszek-Sieradzka, p. 129). Interestingly, in 1532, another Italian Ercole Daissoli, confirmed the great power of "the Queen of Poland, Grand Duchess of Lithuania, Duchess of Bari and Rossano, Lady of Ruthenia, Prussia, Mazovia, etc." (regina Poloniae, Magna Dux Lithuaniae, Barique princeps Rossani, Russiae, Prussiae, Masoviae, etc. domina), as was Bona's official titulary in Latin in many letters, and compared her to "the queen regent in France" (compare "Królowa Bona ..." by Władysław Pociecha, p. 132). On October 10, 1526, the two most important women of the kingdom, Queen Bona and Crown Princess Hedwig Jagiellon, took part in the exequies held for the soul of King Louis (after "Królewna Jadwiga i jej książeczka do spowiedzi" by Urszula Borkowska, p. 87). Portraits of ladies by Cranach, one preserved in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, dated "1526", on the windowsill (oil on panel, 88.5 x 58.5 cm, inv. ГЭ-683), and the other in the Coburg Fortress in Bavaria, dated around 1526 (panel, 86 x 58.5 cm, inv. M.163), are similar to the miniatures of Bona and her stepdaughter from the same period (Wilanów Palace, inv. Wil.1518; Prague Castle Picture Gallery, inv. HS242). The facial features and costumes were depicted similarly. The St. Petersburg portrait comes from the collection of Empress Catherine II of Russia (1729-1796) and entered the Hermitage between 1763 and 1796, perhaps acquired in 1769 from the Dresden collection of Count Heinrich von Brühl (1700-1763), a favourite of the monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Augustus III. It was once thought to be a portrait of Princess Sibylle of Cleves (1512-1554), the wife of Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, but this identification is now rejected by scholars and the woman bears no resemblance to confirmed effigies of Sibylle. The Coburg painting comes from the former collections of the Dukes of Saxe-Coburg. At the beginning of the 16th century, the castle in Coburg belonged to the Electors of Saxony, including the widower John the Steadfast (1468-1532), who could receive the portrait of the Polish-Lithuanian princess. John was an Elector from 1525, and his wife died in 1521. The fortress is also not far from the estates of Hedwig's cousins, the Margraves of Brandenburg-Kulmbach, sons of her aunt Sophia Jagiellon (1464-1512). The topography of the landscapes in both portraits, although idealized and seen through the artistic prism of Cranach, perfectly corresponds to the capital of the Kingdom of Poland - Kraków (Cracow). In Bona's portrait, one can distinguish Wawel Hill with the Sandomierz Tower towards the Zwierzyniec Monastery to the north, and in Hedwig's portrait, one can see the Wawel Royal Castle and the Vistula River towards the Tyniec Abbey to the south, as in an engraving published in 1550 in Basel in Cosmographiae uniuersalis Lib. VI ... by Sebastian Münster (National Library of Poland, ZZK 0.354, p. 889). The costumes of the Polish voivodes included in this publication (De Palatinis Poloniæ, p. 888) are similar to costumes popular in Germany and Central Europe at that time, while the profile portrait of King Sigismund I (p. 904) is possibly based on an original by Hans von Kulmabach or an Italian painter. Both portraits by Cranach have good quality contemporary copies. The copy of the portrait of Bona from the Hermitage was in the Fasanerie Palace in Eichenzell (oil on canvas, 76.1 x 60.9 cm, possibly lost during World War II), a late Baroque palace built for Adalbert von Schleifras (1650-1714), Prince Abbot of Fulda. According to the German inscription at the top left, probably added in the 17th or 18th century, the painting depicts "the Electress Amalie of the Palatinate" (Amelia Churfürstin v. Hauß Pfalltz). The author of the inscription probably thought that the person depicted was Amalia of Neuenahr-Alpen (1539-1602), Electress of the Palatinate by marriage, but since she was born more than a decade after the Hermitage original was painted, this is very unlikely. Another Amalie of the Palatinate, wife of George I of Pomerania (1493-1531), son of Anna Jagiellon (1476-1503), was the Duchess of Pomerania-Wolgast and was probably painted by Cranach. However, since she died in Szczecin in 1524 or 1525 and a study drawing with her portrait from the "Book of effigies" (Visierungsbuch), probably made by a student of Albrecht Dürer sent to Pomerania, does not resemble the woman in the Hermitage painting, she could not have been a model for a painting painted in 1526. Another important thing about this painting is its author. Although the portrait is most likely a copy of a painting (or paintings) painted in 1526 by Cranach, it is rather in the Italian style. Unlike the version in St. Petersburg, it was painted on canvas and not on panel, which is also more typical for Italian painting. The general style of this portrait recalls works attributed to Bernardino Licinio, such as Salome (Pushkin Museum in Moscow, inv. 170), in which the costume of the knight on the right is painted in a similar manner. Equally interesting is the copy of the portrait of Hedwig from the Coburg Fortress, now in a private collection (oil on panel, 30 x 23.5 cm, Dorotheum in Vienna, April 9, 2014, lot 705). It comes from a private collection in Spain. Apart from its general appearance, it has little in common with Cranach's style and reveals both Venetian (blurred brushstrokes) and Netherlandish influences (colours). The most likely author seems to be Lambert Sustris (ca. 1515 - ca. 1584), a Dutch painter active mainly in Venice, whose Venus and Cupid in the Louvre (INV 1978 ; MR 1129) is painted in a similar style. The cycle of four small paintings depicting women in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (inv. SK-A-3424; SK-A-3425; SK-A-3426; SK-A-3427), attributed to the circle of Sustris, is also very similar. These copies are further evidence that the paintings were commissioned by the multicultural court of the Jagiellons. It is interesting to note that in the Fasanerie Palace in Eichenzell there was a "Portrait of an Unknown Prince" (Bildnis eines unbekannten Fürsten, Bildarchiv Foto Marburg, Bilddatei-Nr. fm1547546), which strongly resembled the effigies of the son of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547) - Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria (1529-1595), Imperial Count of Tyrol, and its style was also close to that of Lambert Sustris. The woman from the Hermitage painting was also depicted at that time, that is around 1526, in a miniature by Cranach or his studio, sold in Paris in 1942 (panel, 37 x 24 cm, Hôtel Drouot, October 30, 1942, Tableaux anciens des Écoles Allemande, Flamande, Française et Hollandaise, item 5), in the middle of World War II, when many paintings were again evacuated and confiscated in Poland. Although the Polish provenance of this work is not confirmed, it is highly possible in this case. It is considered lost during the war. The portrait was reduced to an oval format, probably in the 17th or 18th century, with the artist's mark and the date (15 ...) cut off at the top right. This portrait is very similar to Bona's miniature in the Wilanów Palace. 
Portrait of Queen Bona Sforza (1494-1557) against the idealized view of Kraków by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1526, The State Hermitage Museum.
Portrait of Queen Bona Sforza (1494-1557) by Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1526, Fasanerie Palace in Eichenzell, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Queen Bona Sforza (1494-1557) by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1526, Private collection, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Crown Princess Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) against the idealized view of Kraków by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1526, Veste Coburg.
Portrait of Crown Princess Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) against the idealized view of Kraków by Lambert Sustris, 1540s, Private collection.
Portrait of Crown Princess Hedwig Jagiellon as Madonna by Jan Gossaert
In 2021, the Royal Castle in Warsaw purchased a portrait depicting Jan Dantyszek (Johannes Dantiscus), known as the "Father of Polish Diplomacy" (sold at Lempertz, Auction 1185, Cologne, Lot 1513, oil on wood, 42 x 30 cm). This work, described as a portrait of a scholar by German master around 1530, comes from a private collection in Northern Germany and it is a copy or rather a version of a painting in the Jagiellonian University Museum in Kraków (inventory number 1987). The painting was then attributed to a copyist of "a Netherlandish painter after Jan Gossaert?, c. 1654" (after "A Polish Envoy in England - Ioannes Dantiscus’s Visit to 'a Very Dear Island'" by Katarzyna Jasińska-Zdun, p. 3). Composition of the effigy resemble greatly portrait of a scholar by Jan Gossaert in the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, while the sitter's costume and hands were painted in the same style as in the portrait of Anna van Bergen (1492-1541), Marquise de Veere as Madonna and Child by workshop of Jan Gossaert (sold at Lempertz, Auction 1118, Cologne, Lot 1513). Other version of this portrait, attributed to Jacob van Utrecht, a Flemish painter who worked in Antwerp and Lübeck, was sold in New York in 1945 (Parke-Bernet Galleries, collection of John Bass, January 25, 1945, lot 12).
Dantyszek became associated with the royal court of King John I Albert and later Sigismund I the Old as a diplomat and the royal secretary. He was born Johann(es) von Höfen-Flachsbinder in 1485 in Gdańsk (Latin Gedanum or Dantiscum), where Dutch and Flemish influences become predominant in the 16th century. As a diplomat, he often traveled around Europe, including to Venice, Flanders and the Netherlands. In 1522, he went to Vienna, and then via Nuremberg, Ulm, Mainz, Cologne and Aachen to Antwerp. There he waited for further instructions from the king, who ordered him to go to Spain. From Calais he went by ship first to England, to Canterbury and London, and then in October 1522 to Spain. From there, he travels by ship from La Coruña to Middelburg, capital of the province of Zeeland in today's Netherlands. Through Bergen in Brabant (May 12) and Antwerp, he goes to Mechelen, where he stayed at the court of Archduchess Margaret of Austria, Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands. Then, via Cologne and Leipzig, he arrives at Wittenberg, where he meets Luther and Melanchthon. In the summer of 1523 he returns to Poland. In the spring of 1524, the king sends him on a new mission to Italy concerning the inheritance of Queen Bona in southern Italy. Via Vienna, he goes to Venice, then to Ferrara, and then by ship from Venice to Bari. From Italy he sets out again - through Switzerland and France - to Spain, to Valladolid. In 1524, he is in Madrid, at the imperial court and in 1526 in Genoa (after "Królowa Bona, 1494-1557: czasy i ludzie odrodzenia", Volume 2, by Władysław Pociecha, p. 228). After a few years, in 1528, Dantyszek wanted to return to Poland and was summoned by Sigismund I, but this time the emperor, who was going to Italy, Netherlands and Germany, kept him at his court and the envoy accompanied him (after "Polska slużba dyplomatyczna XVI-XVIII wieku" by Zbigniew Wójcik, p. 56). Around that time, in 1524, South Netherlandish painter Jan Gossaert (ca. 1478-1532), also known as Jan Mabuse, returned from Duurstede to Middelburg, where he was registered as a resident between 1509-1517, shortly after his return from Italy. He become a court painter of Adolf of Burgundy (1489-1540), marquis of Veere and admiral of the Netherlands. According to Karel van Mander's Het Schilder-boeck, first published in 1604 in Haarlem, in about 1525 or earlier when he worked at the court of Adolf's granduncle, Philip of Burgundy, he and his workshop created a series of paintings representing "an image of Mary in which the face was painted after the Marquis' wife and the little child after her child". The disguised portrait of Anna van Bergen and her son or daughter is known from several versions with minor differences, including eye color - blue for some, brown for others (e.g. sold at Christie's, 7 December 2018, lot 113). Gossaert also created several other effigies of the Marquise de Veere. Dantyszek also commissioned works of art from many eminent artists he met during his travels. When in May 1530 he was nominated for the bishopric of Chełmno, he ordered a medal from Christoph Weiditz, active in Augsburg, who made it the following year. Between 1528 and 1529 Weiditz was in Spain, presumably working at the imperial court of Charles V. Dantyszek sent copies of this medal to his friends in Poland and abroad, including Queen Bona (after "Caraglio w Polsce" by Jerzy Wojciechowski, p. 31). Weiditz created several medals bearing his likeness (the first dated 1516, another of 1522, two of 1529, and one of 1531). Similar to Marquise de Veere and members of the Danish royal family, also Dantyszek could commission a series of his portraits in the Gossaert's workshop. It is known that in 1494 a Netherlandish painter named Johannes of Zeerug stayed at the court of king John I Albert, whom Sokołowski identified with Jan Gossaert (after "Malarstwo polskie: Gotyk, renesans, wczesny manieryzm" by Michał Walicki, p. 33). His portrait in the Jagiellonian University Museum was also painted on wood - tempera and oil on oakwood, and has similar dimensions (40.5 x 29.3 cm, inventory number 1985). This version is strikingly similar, both in style and composition, to signed works by Venetian painter Marco Basaiti (ca. 1470-1530) - notably portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus, created in 1512 (oil on canvas, Lviv National Art Gallery) and portrait of a gentleman in black, created in 1521 (oil on panel, Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, signed M. BAXITI. F. MDXXI). It is highly possible that Dantyszek commissioned a copy of his portrait by Gossaert's workshop in Venice or vice versa, a copy of portrait by Basaiti's workshop in the Netherlands. The painting in the Jagiellonian University Museum was repainted in the 19th century and these interventions were removed during restoration in 1992. Based on examination of the painting's support, some scholars date the painting to the end of the 16th century, but according to the 19th century note in French on the back on the frame there was initially an inscription in Latin: Johannes Dantiscus serenissimi Poloniae regis orator Aetatis 48 anno 1531 (after "Portret w Gdańsku ..." by Aleksandra Jaśniewicz, p. 381), according to which it shows Dantyszek in 1531 at the age of 48. The frames were generally added later and the date is not very precise because according to the inscription Dantyszek would have been born in 1483 and not in 1485 as the majority of sources claim. Dantyszek, who in 1529 became a canon of the Warmian chapter, and then - the bishop of Chełmno, also acted as intermediary in commissions for portraits, like the effigy of Mauritius Ferber (1471-1537), Prince-Bishop of Warmia, created in 1535 by Crispin Herrant, a pupil of Dürer and between 1529-1549 a court painter of Duke Albert of Prussia in Königsberg (after "Malarstwo polskie: Gotyk, renesans, wczesny manieryzm" by Michał Walicki, p. 339) or the portrait of Crown Princess Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559), commissioned in 1537 by Queen Bona. At the Colonna Gallery in Rome, in the Tapestry Room, there is a portrait of a lady as Madonna and Child by Jan Gossaert (inventory number 2029, oil on wood, 42.8 x 32 cm). Her face resemble greatly other effigies of Crown Princess Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) by Cranach (as Venus in Berlin and as Madonna in Madrid) and her likeness in a black dress by Titian (Vienna), all identified by me. Similar to portrait of Hedwig's cousin Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), Queen of Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary as Venus by Cranach (Borghese Gallery in Rome, dated 1531), the pope or the cardinals should receive the image of this important catholic princess. In Poland there are several paintings by Gossaert and his workshop. Madonna and Child in architectural setting is in the royal Wilanów Palace in Warsaw (Wil.1591), as well as a version of Madonna and Child playing with the veil (Wil.1008), both considered to be from the collection of Stanisław Kostka Potocki (1755-1821). Another Madonna and Child playing with the veil from Izabela Piwarska's collection is in the National Museum in Warsaw (M.Ob.63), while Peleus and Thetis with the young Achilles is in the Wawel Royal Castle (ZKWawel 4213). Portrait of Isabella of Austria, Queen of Denmark by Jan Gossaert from the Tarnowski Castle in Dzików, created in about 1514, was lost during World War II. The latter painting was acquired before 1795 by king Stanislaus Augustus. It cannot be excluded that it was sent to Poland-Lithuania as a gift already in 1514. Another two-dimensional work of art from the Netherlands, which, like Gossaert's painting in Rome, combines Polish and Italian influences in its history, is the so-called Grompo Tapestry (Arazzo Grompo), now in the Civic Museums of Padua (wool and silk, 440 x 783 cm, inv. 606). This tapestry is said to depict a biblical episode related to the story of David and Bathsheba, the gathering of the knights of David's army. It was executed by Brussels workshops in the 1510s or 1520s, and another, slightly larger version of the same composition is in France at the National Museum of the Renaissance in the Château d'Écouen (inv. E.Cl. 1616). The Écouen tapestry is one of a series believed to have been made after a design by Jan van Roome for Margaret of Austria (1480-1530), governor of the Habsburg Netherlands. In 1528, King Henry VIII of England purchased a ten-piece series of similar dimensions depicting the story of King David from a Flemish merchant. The Grompo Tapestry was acquired on December 27, 1618 by the Venerable Arca of St. Anthony of Padua from Giacomo Grompo (suo bel Razzo d'oro, d'argento et di lana finissima). Later, until 1862, the tapestry hung inside the Basilica of St. Anthony of Padua, above the main door. The 1852 book on the Basilica of St. Anthony states that "its provenance, in reality, would rather indicate that it was made in Poland; from where it seems that one of the ancestors of the donor Grompo brought it to Padua, who, in the 16th century, according to family tradition, would have lived for some time in these countries, perhaps to serve in times of war. Certainly, in that period Polish magnates and the Court held tapestries in high esteem and paid highly skilled artisans to create them" (La provenienza, per verità, ci accennerebbe piuttosto che fosse lavorato in Polonia; donde sembra che lo portasse a Padova uno degli antenati del Grompo donatore, che nel secolo XVI, come dicono le tradizioni di famiglia, dimorava qualche tempo in quei paesi, forse per servigi di guerra. Certo, in quella stagione i magnati polacchi e la Corte teneano in gran conto gli arazzi e stipendiavano a lavorarne abilissimi artefici, after "La Basilica di S. Antonio di Padova" by Bernardo Gonzati, Volume 1, p. 299, CXLV-CXLVI). "It probably represents a Polish fact, since a member of the Grompo family brought it from there" (probabilmente rappresenta qualche fatto de' Polachi, poichè uno di Casa Grompo lo portò di colà), adds Giovanni Battista Rossetti in his book published in Padua in 1780 ("Descrizione delle pitture, sculture, ed architetture di Padova ...", p. 80). The splendid tapestries of Wawel Castle in Kraków are confirmed in the panegyric for the marriage of Sigismund I to Bona Sforza by Andrzej Krzycki, written in Latin verse in 1518 (Attalicos superant aulaea tapetas) as well as in the description by Antonio Niccolo Carmignano (Colantonio Carmignano, Parthenopeus Suavius), which mentions belli razzi and razzi in seta. In 1526, the treasurer Boner, commissioned in Antwerp sixteen tapestries for the king (16 pannos de lana cum figuris et imaginibus alias opponi secundum probam) and in 1533 six tapestries with figures, sixty with the coats of arms of Poland, Lithuania and Milan as well as twenty-six tapestries without coats of arms, through Maurits Hernyck of Antwerp, who supervised the execution (after "Arrasy Zygmunta Augusta" by Mieczysław Gębarowicz, Tadeusz Mańkowski, p. 5-6). 
Portrait of Isabella of Austria (1501-1526), Queen of Denmark by Jan Gossaert, ca. 1514, Tarnowski Castle in Dzików, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Jan Dantyszek (1485-1548) by workshop of Marco Basaiti, 1520s, Jagiellonian University Museum.
Portrait of Jan Dantyszek (1485-1548) by workshop of Jan Gossaert, 1520s, Royal Castle in Warsaw.
Portrait of Jan Dantyszek (1485-1548) by Jacob van Utrecht, 1520s, Private collection.
Portrait of Crown Princess Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) as Madonna and Child by Jan Gossaert, ca. 1526-1532, Colonna Gallery in Rome.
Gathering of the knights of David's army (Grompo Tapestry) by Brussels workshops, 1510s or 1520s, Civic Museums of Padua.
Portrait of Jan Janusz Kościelecki by Giovanni Cariani
If a workshop abroad was providing high quality service at reasonable price and was easily accessible, why to create the structures locally, which would be far more expensive and time consuming? This would explain why Jagiellonian monarchs did not employed any eminent master at their court directly and permanently, like Raphael at the papal court in Italy, Jean Clouet and his son François in France, Alonso Sánchez Coello in Spain, Cristóvão de Morais in Portugal, Hans Holbein in England, Lucas Cranach in Saxony, or Jakob Seisenegger in Austria. Today, we call similar practices outsourcing, however, for some art historians in the late 19th and early 20th century the lack of any prominent and permanent painting workshop in Poland-Lithuania in the 16th century, was a proof of inferiority of the Jagiellonian elective monarchies.
The court painter of Sigismund and Bona Sforza would not only need to satisfy the local demand for paintings in Poland-Lithuania, but also in Italian possessions of Bona and their extensive Italian, German and international relations. The choice of Venice, lying on the way to Bari and Cranach workshop, which was supplying all of Sigismund's relatives in Germany, was obvious. Before 1523 Jan Janusz Kościelecki, a cousin of Beata Kościelecka, daughter of Andrzej Kościelecki and Katarzyna Telniczanka, was appointed the castellan of the castle in the royal city of Inowrocław. In 1526 he also recived the title of castellan of Łęczyca. The Royal Castle there, where Sejms were held and where Ladislaus Jagiello received a Hussite envoy who offered him the Czech crown, was one of the most important in the Crown. As the castellan of Łęczyca he was present in Gdańsk as a witness of a document issued on May 3, 1526 by Sigismund I, when Pomeranian dukes paid homage from Lębork and Bytów. Jan Janusz Kościelecki from Kościelec (Joannes a Cosczielecz) of Ogończyk coat of arms was born in 1490 as the only son of Stanisław, voivode of Poznań from 1525 and his wife nee Oporowska. In 1529 he was a deputy of the Warsaw general assembly to the king in Lithuania. A portrait attributed to Giovanni Cariani or Bernardino Licinio in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice shows a blond man wearing a large black coat, with large sleeves lined with very expensive ermine fur (oil on canvas, 82 x 76 cm, inv. 0300/ E15). Under the coat he wears a long black robe and on his hands he wears a pair of leather gloves, typical of men of high social status. According to inscription in Latin on the plinth beside him, the man was 36 in 1526 (MDXXVI/ANN. TRIGINTASEX), exactly as Jan Janusz Kościelecki when he became the castellan of Łęczyca. In the museum files, this portrait is considered to be probably a counterpart to the portrait of a lady in a black dress in the same museum (inv. 0304/ E16, compare Codice di catalogo nazionale: 0500440177), which according to my identification represents Princess Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573). The painting comes from the Contarini collection in Venice (transferred in 1838) and was considered to be a portrait of the Venetian nobleman Gabriele Vendramin (1484-1552), however, the dates of his life does not match the inscription. It is also considered to be a pendant to a portrait of lady in black dress in the same museum (inventory cat. 304), due to similar dimensions and composition, but the proportions are not similar and the lady's costume is more from the 1530s and not 1520s. Members of the Contarini family were frequent envoys of the Venetian Serenissima to Poland-Lithuania, like Ambrogio Contarini, who traveled to Poland twice between 1474-1477, or Giovanni Contarini, who during an audience in Lublin in 1649 informed the Polish monarch about the victory of the Venetian fleet over the Ottoman fleet. It is also possible that the painting was left as a modello in the painter's studio and was later acquired by the Contarinis. Jan Janusz died in 1545 and his eldest son Andrzej (1522-1565), a royal courtier and voivode of Kalisz from 1558, built in 1559 a mausoleum at the Romanesque church in Kościelec to design by Giovanni Battista di Quadro, for himself and his father. Their tomb monument, one of the best of its kind, was created by workshop of Giovanni Maria Padovano in Kraków and transported to Kościelec. 
Portrait of Jan Janusz Kościelecki (1490-1545), castellan of Łęczyca aged 36 by Giovanni Cariani, 1526, Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice.
Sigismund I and Katarzyna Telniczanka as David and Bathsheba by Lucas Cranach the Elder
According to the Bible, king David, whilst walking on the palace roof, accidentally espies the beautiful Bathsheba, the wife of a loyal soldier in his army, bathing. He desired her and made her pregnant.
Most probably in about 1498, when Crown Prince Sigismund (1467-1548) was made Duke of Głogów by his brother Vladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary, he met a Moravian or Silesian lady Katarzyna Telniczanka (ca. 1480-1528). She become his mistress and bore him three children: Jan (1499-1538), Regina (ca. 1500-1526) and Katarzyna (ca. 1503-1548). In 1509, when already King of Poland, Sigismund decided to marry. That same year Katarzyna was married to Sigismund's friend, Andrzej Kościelecki, who was made Grand Crown Treasurer in reward. The only child born of this union, Beata (1515-1576), later a court lady of queen Bona, was reputed to be the child of the king as well. Kościelecki died on September 6, 1515 in Kraków, Sigismund's first wife Barbara Zapolya passed that same year on 2 October 1515 and almost three years later, on April 15, 1518, he married Bona. During this period Katarzyna was undoubtedly close to Sigismund and her daughters were raised with his only legitimate daughter at that time, Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573), who in 1535 moved to Berlin as the new Electress of Brandenburg, taking a large dowry and many family souvenirs with her. According to historian Kazimierz Morawski (1852-1925) "the aging Katarzyna Telniczanka followed the current of the age, venturing into the slippery field of bewitching and intoxicating her contemporaries. We know of many letters written by Krzycki in 1520 to the sick vice-chancellor Piotr Tomicki, in which there are repeated admonitions that he should consult real doctors, and push away sirens, not listen to women's madness, and avoid the whispers and medicines of some woman, here given the unflattering name of "Circe". The mysterious expression would have remained a mystery to us if other notes had not given us the valuable information that this "Circe" was Katarzyna Telniczanka, who did not even act as an intermediary, but simply wanted to entangle [Bishop] Tomicki in the web of love for herself. From the same source we learn that Chancellor Szydłowiecki was also the target of similar machinations on her part" (after "Z dworu Zygmunta Starego" by Kazimierz Morawski, Przegląd polski, Volume 21, p. 205-206). Telniczanka "died in the late summer of 1528 in Vilnius, her remains were transported to Kraków and buried there on December 11 of the same year with great pomp. The funeral of the former royal mistress therefore took place under the watchful eye of legal wife and the queen, which proves Bona's great generosity" (after "Bona Sforza" by Maria Bogucka, p. 136). The small painting by Cranach from 1526, acquired in 1890 by Gemäldegalerie from Frau Medizinalrat Klaatsch in Berlin (panel, 38.8 x 25.6 cm, 567B), shows a courtly scene with Bathsheba bathing her feet in the river. The main character however is not Bathsheba, nor the King David standing on a high terrace to the left. It's a lady standing in the right foreground, who most probably commissioned the painting. Her effigy and costume is astonishingly similar to the portrait of queen Bona holding a bouquet of forget-me-nots created the same year (Wilanów Palace, Wil.1518). She is holding Bathsheba's shoes, a clrear sign of approval for the royal mistress Telniczanka, a life-long companion of her husband, who was depicted as Bathsheba. We could also distinguish two of Telniczanka's daughters to the left, most probably Katarzyna, who according to some sources was married the same year to George III, count of Montfort, and Regina, who died in Kraków on 20 May 1526. There's also king Sigismund as biblical king David - the king was depicted as king Solomon, David's son, in the marble tondo in his funerary chapel at the Wawel Cathedral and possibly also as king David (or king's banker Jan Boner). Beside him there's his son Jan, who was his secretary from 1518 and in 1526 it was planned to make him a Duke of Masovia and marry him to the Princess Anna of Masovia. This miniature could be considered as a proof ordered by Bona to be sent to the king, busy with state affairs in the north of Poland, that two of his women live in peace and harmony in Kraków in southern Poland. The same woman, Bathsheba - Telniczanka, was also depicted in the small painting which was before World War II in the Branicki Palace in Warsaw, converted into the British Embassy in 1919. It is considered to be lost, however according to Friedländer, Rosenberg 1979, No. 247 it is in a private collection in New York (panel, 37.5 x 23.5 cm). The work shows Venus with Cupid stealing honey, which has been interpreted as an allegory of the pleasure and pains of love. Fragment of Latin inscription reads: "And so do we seek transitory and dangerous pleasures / That are mixed with sadness and bring us pain" (SIC ETIAM NOBIS BREVIS ET PERITVRA VOLVPTAS / QUAM PETIMVS TRISTI MIXTA DOLORE NOCET). The effigy of unknown lady from the National Gallery in London (panel, 35.9 x 25.1 cm, NG291), created around 1525, matches perfectly the portrait of the eldest daughter of Telniczanka, Regina Szafraniec, in the Berlin painting. On October 20, 1518 in the Wawel Cathedral, she married the starost of Chęciny and a royal secretary, Hieronim Szafraniec. The letter M on her bodice is a reference to her patron saint, Maria Regina Caeli, Latin 'Mary, Queen of Heaven', as the name Mary (Maria) was at that time in Poland reserved solely to the Virgin. The painting of Venus in the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Brunswick (panel, 41 x 26.5 cm, GG26), painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder, is stylistically close to portrait of Anna of Masovia as Venus in Compton Verney, therefore it should be dated to about 1525. Originally, Venus in Brunswick was accompanied by a Cupid on the left side, however it was overpainted in 1873 due to its damaged state. The face and pose of Venus are almost identical to Regina Szafraniec's portrait by Cranach in London. It was recorded in the inventory of the Palace of the Dukes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel in Salzdahlum from 1789-1803, it is hence possible that that it comes from the collection of Regina's step-sister Sophia Jagiellon, Duchess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Portrait of a young woman with an apple, a symbol of the bride in ancient Greek thought, from about 1525, also lost during World War II (panel, 59.5 x 25.5 cm), is very similar to the effigy of one of the daughters of Telniczanka in the Berlin painting. It is undoubtedly Katarzyna, countess of Montfort. Before the war, this painting was kept in the palace of the Pomeranian Puttkamer family in Trzebielino near Słupsk, which was then part of the German Reich. Other version of this effigy is in the Fondation Bemberg in Toulouse (panel, 31 x 26 cm, INV1016). 
Sigismund I and Katarzyna Telniczanka as David and Bathsheba by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1526, Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.
Katarzyna Telniczanka as Venus with Cupid stealing honey by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1526-1528, Branicki Palace in Warsaw, lost during World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Regina Szafraniec (ca. 1500-1526), natural daughter of king Sigismund I by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1525-1526, National Gallery in London.
Portrait of Regina Szafraniec (ca. 1500-1526) as Venus by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1525, Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Brunswick.
Portrait of Katarzyna, countess of Montfort (ca. 1503-1548), natural daughter of king Sigismund I by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1525-1526, Puttkamer Palace in Trzebielino, lost during World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Bust-length portrait of Katarzyna, countess of Montfort (ca. 1503-1548), natural daughter of king Sigismund I by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1525-1526, Fondation Bemberg in Toulouse.
Portrait of Bona Sforza holding a bouquet of forget-me-nots by Lucas Cranach the Elder
In February 1526, King Sigismund I left Kraków in southern Poland for Pomerania in the north, to take an active stand against the revolt in Gdańsk and other cities of Royal Prussia. He then travelled to Mazovia, which had fallen into the hands of the Crown after the last duke of the House of Piast died without an heir. He returned to the capital on September 23, 1526. He remained absent for almost a year, leaving his second wife, Bona Sforza, who was pregnant (on November 1, 1526 she gave birth to her daughter Catherine Jagiellon), in Kraków.
In the early autumn of 1525, when the plague began to spread in the city, Bona, with her children and part of her court, left for Niepołomice, near Kraków, the favourite summer residence of the king and queen, while Princess Hedwig Jagiellon and her court were taken to the royal manor in Proszowice. They remained separated until Easter 1526, and the court's return to Wawel was solemn. Thus, most likely in Niepołomice, Bona received from Pope Clement VII the breve allowing her to appoint Jan Dantyszek to the canonry and prebend of Warmia, issued in Rome on March 9, 1526 (Clemens VII papa ad Bonam reginam Poloniae, Kórnik Library, sygn.BK00230). There she also learned that on January 31, 1526, the Pope excommunicated Sigismund I's nephew, Duke Albert of Prussia (1490-1568), declaring him an apostate and ordering the Emperor to take action against him. Although Bona often objected to Albert's growing influence, it must be remembered that they could be considered family members and that, as in the case of the Habsburgs of Madrid and Vienna, who were sometimes painted by the same painters, there were similarities in the artistic patronage of Albert and the ruling house of Poland-Lithuania. Furthermore, the Duchy of Prussia was a fief of Poland and Albert paid solemn homage in Kraków in 1525. Earlier, around 1512 and in 1528, the Wittenberg court painter Lucas Cranach the Elder had made portraits of the Duke of Prussia (private collection and Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum). The busts of a woman and a man in costumes from the 1520s, from an old building at 2 Muitinės Street in Kaunas, Lithuania, are believed to be effigies of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), Queen of Hungary, Bohemia and Croatia, and her husband Ferdinand I of Austria (1503-1564), but the effigy of a man lacks two important elements - the Habsburg jaw and the Order of the Golden Fleece, almost obligatory elements of a Habsburg effigy. The busts are more likely to represent the owner of the house, a wealthy merchant, and his wife. If they were in fact effigies of monarchs, it is more likely that they were Albert of Prussia and his wife Dorothea of Denmark (1504-1547), or Albert's uncle Sigismund I the Old and his second wife Bona Sforza. Two glazed stove tiles with the monogram of Sigismund Augustus dating from the mid-16th century and two other tiles depicting duels from the first quarter of the 17th century, found in houses in the old town of Kaunas, give an idea of the prosperity of this Lithuanian city before the Deluge. They also confirm that fashion in Poland-Lithuania during the Renaissance was comparable to that in Wittenberg or Venice. Miniatures by Stanisław Samostrzelnik from the 1520s confirm that not only German graphics were popular at the royal and grand-ducal courts in Kraków and Vilnius, but also German fashion. In the Visitation scene, a leaf from the Prayer Book of Bona Sforza by Samostrzelnik, made between 1527 and 1528 (Bodleian Library, MS. Douce 40, fol. 048a verso), the queen in a golden dress lined with ermine fur is depicted as the Virgin Mary, while one of her ladies standing at the door of the house wears a green dress typical of German fashion of that time. A small pet dog at the bottom of the scene, similar to the one visible in the portrait of Catherine of Mecklenburg (1487-1561), painted by Cranach in 1514 (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, inv. 1906 H), as well as the queen's coat of arms confirm that this is a court scene in religious disguise. The Neapolitan chronicler Giuliano Passero (or Passaro), a manufacturer or merchant of silk fabrics (setaiuolo), describing the trousseau of Queen Bona presented at the Castel Capuano in Naples on December 6, 1517, says that she had sixty-one richly decorated berets, some in crimson (ten) and turquoise (fifteen) satin, the rest in black (twelve) and fawn velvet, with elements of white and crimson satin (after "Bona Sforza d'Aragona i rola mody w kształtowaniu jej wizerunku" by Agnieszka Bender, p. 41), undoubtedly in reference to the Polish national colours. Several Cranachiana from the 1520s that were or are still present in Polish collections, such as the miniature portrait of Katharina von Bora (1499-1552) from around 1526, which was in the collection of Leandro Marconi in Warsaw in 1912 (compare "Pamiętnik wystawy miniatur, oraz tkanin i haftów, urządzonej w domu własnym w Warszawie przez Towarzystwo Opieki nad Zabytkami Przeszłości w czerwcu i lipcu 1912 roku", p. 31 / XIV, item 186), old inventories, such as the register of paintings of Boguslaus Radziwill (1620-1669) from 1657 (AGAD 1/354/0/26/84), or the Virgin and Child by Master I.G., dated "1526" and inspired by the style of Cranach (Archdiocesan Museum in Kraków, inv. DZIELO/05929), confirm not only the popularity of such imports, but very probably also the presence of Cranach's pupils or members of his workshop in Poland-Lithuania. There is a certain dissonance in the public image of Queen Bona. Some historians want to see her as an ultra-Catholic and intolerant shrew, while others cite her as a protector of free thinkers and reformists. Perhaps inspired by the diversity of the country, she intentionally or unintentionally represented both aspects. Her strong support for the Lithuanian jurist and church reformer Abraomas Kulvietis (ca. 1510-1545), educated in Wittenberg, speaks further in favour of the tolerant aspect of her religious beliefs (compare "Abraomas Kulvietis and the First Protestant Confessio fidei in Lithuania" by Dainora Pociūtė, p. 43-44, 47-50). Lucas Cranach the Elder's portrait of a woman from 1526, from the old collection of the Wilanów Palace (tempera and oil on panel, 34.9 x 23.8 cm, inv. Wil.1518, the mark of Cranach the Elder and date "1526", upper right), bears a strong resemblance to effigies of Bona Sforza, especially her effigy as the biblical Judith by Cranach (Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, inv. GG 858) or a portrait by the Venetian school, probably by Francesco Bissolo (National Gallery, London, inv. NG631), both identified by me. According to a historical account, the painting was part of the Czartoryski collection in the former royal residence in Wilanów as early as 1743. It is small in size, a good object to take on a journey or to send to someone with a love letter. The woman holds a bouquet of forget-me-nots, a symbol of true love and fidelity, and holds her left hand over her protruding belly, indicating pregnancy. 
Portrait of Queen Bona Sforza (1494-1557) holding a bouquet of forget-me-nots by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1526, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
Portrait of Hedwig Jagiellon hodling an apple by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop
In 1527, Crown Princess Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573), aged just 14, daughter of King Sigismund I the Old and his first wife Barbara Zapolya, was one of the most eagerly sought-after brides in Europe.
Among the many suitors for her hand were the sons of the Elector of Brandenburg and Stanislaus, Duke of Mazovia in 1523, Frederick Gonzaga (proposed by Pope Clement VII) and James V, King of Scotland (proposed by Francis I, King of France) in 1524, Janusz III, Duke of Mazovia, Frederick Gonzaga (again) and Francis II Sforza, Duke of Milan in 1525, Gustav I Vasa, King of Sweden and Francis I, King of France (proposed by her uncle John Zapolya, King of Hungary) in 1526, Louis X, Duke of Bavaria in 1527 and 1528 and Louis of Portugal, Duke of Beja in 1529, etc. Hedwig was baptized shortly after her birth in Poznań, and her godparents were Mikołaj Gardzina-Lubrański (ca. 1460-1524), voivode of Poznań, and his wife Jadwiga Żychlińska. The princess was thus named after her grandmother Hedwig of Cieszyn (1469-1521) and her godmother. Treated kindly by Bona from her arrival in 1518, Hedwig, together with the queen and her father, took part in a pilgrimage to Jasna Góra on April 20-27, 1523. She was then given a certain sum of money "for the journey to Częstochowa", to the sanctuary of the Black Madonna, so that she could give alms herself, following her father's example. As a child, as the eldest legitimate daughter of the king, she had her own court and her own house, no longer existing, on Wawel Hill, opposite the southern entrance to the cathedral, in front of the gate leading to the castle courtyard. According to the royal accounts of 1518, Mikołaj Piotrowski was the princess's court chamberlain, the nobleman Jan Guth (or Grot) of the Radwan coat of arms of Pliszczyn, was the cook. The position of steward was held by Orlik, while Żegota Morski, Hincza Borowski, Andrzejek and Szczęsny were servants. Among the many ladies and girls who made up Hedwig's court were the ladies Szydłowiecka, Zborowska, Ożarowska and Ossolińska, Anna Zopska, Morawianka, who came to Poland with Hedwig's mother, Elżbieta Długojowska, Stadnicka and Lasocka, the dwarf Dorota and the washerwoman, also Dorota. The princess's court also included the priest Aleksy, who appears in the sources as lector missarum reginule, with a salary of 6 florins and 12 groszy. The maintenance of the princess's small court, including expenses for her clothing and kitchen, cost between 3,000 and 5,000 florins annually (after "Królewna Jadwiga i jej książeczka do spowiedzi" by Urszula Borkowska, p. 84-86). The portrait of a lady holding an apple from the Picture Gallery at Prague Castle, painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his workshop in 1527 (panel, 37.8 x 25.3 cm, inv. HS242, winged serpent and dated "1527", lower right), bears a strong resemblance to the portrait of Hedwig depicted in her wedding dress with her father's monogram S by Hans Krell around 1537 (Grunewald hunting lodge in Berlin, inv. GK I 2152), and a portrait of her mother with necklace and belt with the monogram B&S, painted by Cranach (private collection). The painting probably comes from the collection of a distant relative of the princess, Emperor Rudolf II, and its provenance in the collection of the imperial residence in Prague can be traced back to the inventory of 1685, so it was most likely sent to the princess's cousin and Rudolf's grandmother, Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547) or to her husband, King Ferdinand I (1503-1564), who was undoubtedly very interested in finding a pro-Habsburg match for Hedwig. It is also very similar in composition and format to the portrait of Hedwig's stepmother Bona Sforza holding forget-me-nots, dated 1526 (Wilanów Palace, inv. Wil.1518). Both portraits could therefore have been commissioned simultaneously in Cranach's workshop. She holds an apple, a long-standing symbol of royalty and kingship - the royal orb, and a strong symbol of the bride in ancient Greek thought (Sappho, Plutarch). 
Portrait of Crown Princess Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) hodling an apple by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, 1527, Prague Castle Picture Gallery.
Portraits of Sigismund Augustus and Isabella Jagiellon by Lucas Cranach the Elder
"In 1525, when the envoys of Charles V came to Kraków, bringing the Order of the Golden Fleece to King Sigismund, the Queen gave them as a gift portraits of herself, her husband and ... Isabella, and not of her son - the heir to the throne - which would seem more appropriate. She probably wanted to remind at the Habsburg court that she had a daughter - a pretty daughter - who would soon be of marriageable age. It seems that Bona would accept - notwithstanding her hostile attitude towards Austria - to marry one of the Habsburgs. After all, the Archduke of Austria was the best party in Europe" (after "Izabela Jagiellonka, królowa Węgier" by Małgorzata Duczmal, p. 73).
That year Bona also had to accept the engagement of her only son Sigismund Augustus with Elizabeth of Austria (1526-1545), the eldest daughter of Ferdinand I of Austria and Anna Jagellonica. Elizabeth's parents undeniably also received portraits of children of Sigismund and Bona, as well as other important royal and princely courts nearby. One of the first mentions of the costumes of Bona and Sigismund's children dates from November 20, 1522, when 15 ells of damask with large flowers were purchased for Isabella and her younger sister Sophia (Accepti pro sua Mtate per Petrum pro Illmis duabus filiabus Elisabeth et Sophia 15 ulnis Adamasci leonati cum magnis floribus per gr. 48 fl. 24), while Sigismund Augustus was dressed in a costume of crimson satin and gray velvet (velutum griseum, after "Izabella királyné, 1519-1559" by Endre Veress, p. 20). Portraits of a young boy and an older girl by Lucas Cranach the Elder, comes from Julius Böhler's collection in Munich, owned jointly with August Salomon, Dresden, through Paul Cassirer, Berlin. They were acquired by the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1947 (panel, 43.7 x 34.4 cm, inv. 1947.6.1 and panel, 43.4 x 34.3 cm, inv. 1947.6.2). The boy wears a jewelled wreath on his head which suggest his betrothal. The girl, however, has no garland on her head, she must be therefore his sister, exacly as Sigismund Augustus (1520-1572), betrothed to Elizabeth of Austria in 1526 or 1527, and his elder sister Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559). The boy's effigy is similar to portrait of Sigismund Augustus as a child in a red tunic from Wallraf-Richartz Museum (inv. WRM 0874), created by Lucas Cranach the Elder in 1529. He and his sister wears garments of crimson Venetian damask, typical for Polish nobilty, possibly acquired in Venice by Jewish merchant Lazarus of Brandenburg, probably expelled from this country in 1510, sent to Venice as a trade expert by Sigismund I. Lazarus also acquired pearls for the Queen. The doublet of a boy is embroidered with gold and silk and shows the scene of a rabbit hunt, an allusion to fertility, exaclty as in the portrait of Sigismund Augustus' mother Bona Sforza d'Aragona by Venetian painter, possibly Francesco Bissolo, in the National Gallery in London. The boy's hand gesture, as if holding the royal orb, is clear information, who will be elected the next king of Poland after Sigismund I. 
Portrait of Prince Sigismund Augustus (1520-1572) as a child by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1527, National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Portrait of Princess Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559) as a child by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1527, National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Adoration of the Magi with portraits of Jan Leszczyński, his wife Marie de Marcellanges and Emperor Frederick III by Joos van Cleve and workshop
Around 1526 Rafał Leszczyński (d. 1592), later voivode of Brześć Kujawski, the only son of Jan Leszczyński (d. 1535), was born. His father, son of Kasper, chamberlain of Kalisz, and Zofia of Oporów, was a royal courtier. Before 1512, after his father's death, Jan become chamberlain of Kalisz and starost of Radziejów. In 1518 he was the starost of Koło, on July 4, 1519, he acted as the Collector General of Greater Poland and in 1520 he was named Kalisz customs officer. As early as February 21, 1525 Jan Leszczyński become castellan of Brześć Kujawski and on June 9, 1533, he acted as the king's deputy chamberlain of Kalisz and Konin. After death of his brother Rafał, secretary of Sigismund I and Bishop of Płock, in 1527, Jan remained the sole owner of the Leszczyński estates, the core of which was Gołuchów and Przygodzice. Soon after, he expanded the family abode - Gołuchów Castle near Kalisz (built before 1443 and 1507).
Jan's wife was Marie de Marcellanges (Maryna de Makrelangch), widow of Jarosław of Wrząca Sokołowski (d. 1517/18), bailiff of the king of Bohemia and Hungary Vladislaus II Jagiellon, castellan of Ląd and starost of Koło. They were married before January 1520 (on 25 January 1520 Jan set a dowry of 2,000 zlotys to his wife). Marie, who came from a wealthy family from Bourbonnais in the centre of France (Lords of Arson near Ebreuil, Vaudot, La Grange, Ferrières and other places), was a lady-in-waiting to Anne of Foix-Candale, third wife of King Vladislaus II. In 1520, together with his wife, Jan concluded an agreement with Primate Jan Łaski and Wojciech Sokołowski, starost of Brześć Kujawski, guardians of her children from her first marriage (two daughters and five sons), for the provision of this care and for the welfare of minors. In 1522, Marie funded an altar in the collegiate church in Radziejów and four years later, in 1526, Wojciech Lubieniecki obtained a consent to buy the vogt's office in the village of Dąbie from her. In 1531 Jan Leszczyński appointed guardians for his son Rafał - count Andrzej Górka, his cousin Rafał, and his nephew Roch Koźmiński. He also had a daughter, Dorota. He died in 1535, shortly before June 30 (after "Teki Dworzaczka - Leszczyńscy h. Wieniawa"). Jan's grandfather - Rafał Leszczyński (d. 1501), was a courtier of Emperor Frederick III, son of Cymburgis of Masovia, in 1473 he received from him the title of count (according to Paprocki) and in 1476, as an addition to the coat of arms, a golden crown with a lion. In 1489 Rafał was also an envoy from the king to Frederick III. The painting of Adoration of the Magi in the National Museum in Poznań (oil on panel, 156 x 89.5, inventory number Mo 133) was painted around the same time as a similar painting depicting King Sigismund I as one of the Magi (Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, 578) and as in the painting with king's effigy the artist placed the scene against the backdrop of magnificent, almost palatial architecture, with Italian Renaissance arches supported by rich columns. The man in a black hat and gray jacket on the right is identified as a self-portrait of the artist. This painter is Joos van Cleve as the painting is evidently in his style and it is similar to other effigies of the Antwerp painter, in particular his self-portrait as Saint Reinhold from the outer wings of the Saint Reinhold Altar, commissioned by Brotherhood of Saint Reinhold in Gdańsk (National Museum in Warsaw, M.Ob.2190). "This method - giving the holy figure one's own face - developed in connection with the iconographic type of St. Luke painting the Madonna: Van der Weyden, Dirk Bouts and Gossart portrayed themselves as a saint painter. But around 1515, when the Gdańsk self-portrait was created, not only the principle of the "allegorical portrait" was popularized - presenting the donor in the form of a saint (classic examples include Bishop Albert of Brandenburg as Saint Erasmus by Grünewald or Lukas Paumgartner as Saint Eustace by Dürer) but also a self-portrait allegorized under the figures of saints gained such an important precedent as Dürer's image of one's own face, unambiguously referring to the images of Christ (1500)" (after "Nieznane autoportrety Joosa van Cleve ... " by Jan Białostocki, p. 468). The quality of the Poznań painting is slightly lower than that of the mentioned paintings in Berlin and Warsaw which indicate greater involvement of the painter's studio, and perhaps it is one of a series of similar compositions commissioned by the same patron. Almost in the center of the composition is Saint Caspar, identified as having brought the frankincense (an incense as a symbol of deity) to Jesus (after "Explanation of the Epistles and Gospels ..." by Leonard Goffiné, Georg Ott, p. 83), in a rich coat lined with lynx fur and crinale cap. Behind him stands a man in oriental costume, holding a bow, probably a Tatar warrior. Saint Caspar looks either at the viewer or the Virgin Mary, and this arrangement clearly indicates that this is a portrait of the man who commissioned this painting. The old man depicted as Saint Melchior kneeling beside him has the chain of the Order of the Golden Fleece around his neck, indicating that this is another portrait-like effigy of a real person. He bear a striking resemblence to Emperor Frederick III from a print by A. Ehrenreich s.c. in the Austrian National Library (19th century, wrongly signed as Friedrich IV), his portrait at the old age presented during the Lower Austria exhibition in 2019, as well as effigy from the tapestry with the Legend of Our Lady of the Sablon/Zavel series from about 1518, designed by Bernard van Orley (Brussels City Museum) and especially disguised portraits as Melchior in the Adoration of the Magi scenes, all created after his death, in the 16th century, most likely as part of the glorification efforts by his son Maximilian I. The Emperor was notably represented in the scene of the Epiphany by the Master of Frankfurt (Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp and Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna) and together with his son Maximilian as Caspar and Maximilian's wife Mary of Burgundy as Madonna in a triptych by Master of Frankfurt (The Phoebus Foundation). Such propaganda works of art intended to legitimize the reign of a new monarch were probably intended to strengthen the reign of the Habsburgs in the Netherlands, hence the identification of the face of the Virgin with the effigy of the only child of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, seems the natural conclusion. It was most likely Maximilian's sucessor Emperor Charles V (1500-1558) or his partisans, who in 1519 ordered the painting of Adoration of the Magi from Marco Cardisco, a painter active mainly in Naples, today in the Civic Museum of Castel Nuovo in Naples. It includes disguised portraits of Ferdinand I of Naples (1424-1494) and his son Alfonso II of Naples (1448-1495), great grandfather and grandfather of Bona Maria Sforza d'Aragona (1494-1557), Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania, and Charles V, the King of Naples from 1516, as the third of the Magi. Very similar portrait of the Emperor Frederick III as the kneeling Melchior was included in another painting by Joos van Cleve, today in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden (oil on panel, 110 x 70.5 cm, inventory number Gal.-Nr. 809). It was mentioned for the first time in Dresden in 1812 and it is generlly dated to about 1517-1518 or 1512-1523. Several copies of this painting preserved and in one of them, from the Heiligenkreuz Abbey near Vienna, today in private collection, the Virgin Mary has the features of Archduchess Margaret of Austria (1480-1530), Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands, daughter of Maximilian I and Mary of Burgundy. The Adoration of the Magi in Poznań comes from the Mielżyński collection, like the painting representing King Sigismund I and his family by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder (National Museum in Poznań). Seweryn Mielżyński donated his collection to the Poznań Society of Friends of Learning in 1870. Due to monogram visible at the bottom left of the painting, read as "L", the painting was considered to be the work of Lucas van Leyden. It was later considered as a forgery, however it could also be the mark of the owner - Leszczyński. In conclusion, the founder of the painting represented in the center of the composition should be identified as Jan Leszczyński, castellan of Brześć Kujawski, whose grandfather received the title from Frederick III. The woman depicted as Mary, whose features are also unique and not similar to Dresden version, is therefore Jan's wife Marie de Marcellanges, who gave birth to his only son at the time the painting was created. Such depictions were popular in Marie's home country of France since the Middle Ages, one of the oldest and best known is the portrait of a favourite and chief mistress of King Charles VII of France, Agnès Sorel (1422-1450) as Madonna Lactans, painted around 1452 by Jean Fouquet (Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp). The effigy of Agnès was commissioned as part of a diptych, the so-called Melun Diptych, by Étienne Chevalier (d. 1474), who was a treasurer of France under the reign of King Charles VII (from 1452) and who ordered his portrait as donor with his patron saint Saint Stephen kneeling before the Madonna-Agnès (Gemäldegalerie in Berlin). According to Vasari, Giulia Farnese (1474-1524), mistress to Pope Alexander VI, and the sister of Pope Paul III, called concubina papae or sponsa Christi, was also depicted as Madonna in a destroyed fresco "Divine Investiture" by Pinturicchio in the Borgia Apartments. This controversial fresco was divided into fragments - the Madonna and the Child will become part of the Chigi collection, during papacy of an anti-nepotist Pope Alexander VII (1599-1667), between 1655 and 1667. In 1612 Aurelio Recordati, linked to the Duke of Mantua, ordered Giovanni Magni to make a copy of the painting by the painter Pietro Fachetti, today in private collection (after "Sulle tracce di Giulia Farnese ..." by Cristian Pandolfino). Such representations in the guise of deities, most likely revived during renaissance from the Roman times, were unquestionably popular also in Poland-Lithuania where Latin and Italian culture was so strong. Shortly after his death, Antinous, a Greek youth from Bithynia and a favourite and lover of the Roman emperor Hadrian was deified (in October 130, Hadrian proclaimed Antinous to be a deity). Many marble sculptures and reliefs of this handsome man preserved in different museums around the world, some of which depict him as Silvanus, deity of woods and uncultivated lands (Palazzo Massimo alle Terme in Rome), as the god Mercury (bust from the collection of Catherine II, now at the Hermitage Museum), as Bacchus, god of the grape-harvest and fertility (National Archaeological Museum in Naples), as Osiris, Egyptian god of fertility, agriculture and the afterlife (Vatican Museums), as Agathos Daimon, a prominent serpentine civic god, who served as the special protector of Alexandria (Antikensammlung in Berlin), as a divine hero Ganymede (Lady Lever Art Gallery) and many others. At that time painting commissions and imports to Poland-Lithuania from Flanders increased, one of the few surviving examples is mentioned Saint Reinhold Altar in Warsaw and Triptych of King Sigismund I in Berlin, but also Adoration of the Magi with a donor of Odrowąż coat of arms by Master of 1518, a Flemish painter belonging to the stylistic school of Antwerp Mannerism, today in the National Museum in Warsaw (oil on panel, 71.5 x 54.5 cm, 185976 MNW). It comes from the Church in Jasieniec, south of Warsaw. The donor's effigy and the Odrowąż coat of arms were added later in Poland by a less skilled local painter. The painting is dated to about 1525, so this donor could be Jan Chlewicki from Chlewiska of Odrowąż coat of arms, provost of Sandomierz in 1525, educated at the Kraków Academy. In the 1450s the Leszczyński family ordered a votive painting of Enthroned Madonna with their portraits as donors, today in the Parish Church in Drzeczkowo, in the workshop of Wilhelm Kalteysen, a painter educated probably in Aachen, Cologne and the Netherlands and active in Wrocław, which was then part of the Kingdom of Bohemia. The Habsburgs put a lot of effort and money into spreading the image of Frederick III across renaissance Europe, and just like today many people want to have a photo with a famous politician or a celebrity, the Leszczyńskis also sought to increase their influence by presenting themselves with the emperor who granted them the title. The choice of Saint Caspar as his image by Jan Leszczyński was probably dictated by the desire to pay homage to his father - Kasper (Caspar), chamberlain of Kalisz. 
Adoration of the Magi with portraits of Jan Leszczyński (d. 1535), his wife Marie de Marcellanges and Emperor Frederick III by Joos van Cleve and workshop, ca. 1527, National Museum in Poznań.
Adoration of the Magi with portrait of Emperor Frederick III (1415-1493) by Joos van Cleve, 1512-1523, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.
Adoration of the Magi with portrait of Emperor Frederick III (1415-1493) and his granddaughter Archduchess Margaret of Austria (1480-1530) by follower of Joos van Cleve, 1512-1530, Private collection.
Adoration of the Magi with a donor of Odrowąż coat of arms, most probably Jan Chlewicki, provost of Sandomierz by Master of 1518, ca. 1525, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portraits of Barbara Kolanka by Lucas Cranach the Elder
When following the catastrophic Deluge (1655-1660) and subsequent foreign invasions, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was stepping into great political chaos, instability and poverty, one of the invaders and former fief, Ducal Prussia raised to great power and prosperity as an absolute monarchy ruled from Berlin. Between 1772 and 1795 the Habsburg monarchy, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Russian Empire, divided up the Commonwealth lands among themselves resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland and Lithuania for 123 years.
In 1796 Prince Antoni Henryk Radziwill married Princess Louise of Prussia, a niece of the late Prussian king Frederick the Great, whom he met when Prussian royal family visited his parents in 1795 at their Nieborów Palace near Łowicz. Antoni Henryk attended Göttingen University and he was a courtier of King Frederick William II of Prussia. As an owner of large estates he frequently travelled between Berlin, Poznań, Warsaw, Nieborów and Saint Petersburg. Shortly after the wedding, he bought the rococo Schulenburg Palace in Berlin at Wilhelm-Strasse 77, which became his main abode, thence denoted the Radziwill Palace. The Radziwills were among the richest and most powerful magnates in Poland-Lithuania and one of the nine families that had been imperial princes since 1515 (princeps imperii, Reichsfürst), allowed to hold the title of prince since 1569 in the otherwise untitled noble republic. Antoni Henryk's parents Helena Przeździecka and Michał Hieronim Radziwill, were renowned art collectors, owning works by Hans Memling (Annunciation in the Metropolitan Museum of Art), Rembrandt (Lucretia in the Minneapolis Institute of Art) or Willem Claesz. Heda (Still-life in the National Museum in Warsaw). Their portraits were painted by eminent artists like Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun and they undeniably also had many other paintings stemming from different Radziwill estates, especially when the main property of the Radziwills, the estates of Nesvizh, Olyka and Mir in Belarus and Ukraine were confiscated by tsar Alexander I in 1813. Also many Radziwill connected items were transferred to Germany with the dowry of Princess Louise Charlotte Radziwill (1667-1695), who was a wife of Margrave Louis of Brandenburg and later married Charles Philip of Palatinate-Neuburg, like the gold Radziwill cup by Hans Karl in Munich. The Radziwill family lived in their Berlin palace until it became too small. In 1869, Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck, notorious for his bitter hostility to the Poles, bought the palace for the Prussian state government. It was later expanded for Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellery and demolished in 1949. In 1874 German state also acquired the Raczyński Palace in Berlin, which was demolished to built the Reichstag building. The acquitions of both buildings, famous for its art collections and as centers of Polish culture in German capital, was highly symbolic and sometimes considered an attempt to obliterate Polish heritage and culture. In about 1512 George Radziwill (1480-1541), nicknamed "Hercules" married Barbara Kolanka or Kołówna (d. 1550) of Junosza coat of arms, famous for her beauty direct descendant to Elizabeth Granowska of Pilcza, the Queen consort to Ladislaus II of Poland (Jogaila of Lithuania). They had three children Nicolaus nicknamed "the Red" (1512-1584), Anna Elizabeth (1518-1558) and Barbara (1520/23-1551). From their early age, George Hercules arranged the most advantageous marriages for his daughters to form beneficial alliances. In 1523 Anna Elizabeth was engaged to the son of Konstanty Ostrogski, Grand Hetman of Lithuania, Illia (Eliasz Aleksander). This alliance was formed to oppose Grand Chancellor of Lithuania and Voivode of Vilnius Albertas Gostautas, a successor of his staunch opponent Nicolaus II Radziwill (1470-1521), brother of George Hercules. Soon, however, when the position of castellan of Vilnius was vacant after death of Stanislovas Kesgaila (d. 1527), George Hercules sided with Albertas and betrothed Anna to his son Stanislovas, paying King Sigismund I the Old a pledge of 10,000 Lithuanian money for his future marriage. The castellan of Vilnius was second highest official in Vilnius Voivodeship, subordinate to the Voivode, Albertas Gostautas. In this way, Anna had two grooms at the same time. In 1536 George Hercules demanded that Illia fulfill the marriage contract, but not with Anna Elizabeth, but with her sister Barbara. He refused, because he fell in love with Beata Kościelecka. Controversial lifestyle of Barbara Kolanka and her daughters was the source of stigmatization, rumors and libel. Anna Elizabeth, before her marriage, was accused of sexual misconduct and having illegitimate children and her sister Barbara, after her marriage, that she had as many as 38 lovers, according to canon Stanisław Górski, and "that she either equaled or surpassed her mother in disgrace, and was marked by many blemishes of lust and immodesty" (Itaque cum adolevisset et priori marito collocata esset, ita se gessit, ut matrem turpitudine aut aequarit aut superarit et multis libidinis et impudicitiae maculis notata fuerit), according to Stanisław Orzechowski. It was younger of two sisters Barbara, who on 17 May 1537 married Stanislovas Gostautas. When he died just five years later on 18 December 1542, as the last male descendant of the Gostautas family, Barbara and later her family inherited a large portion of his enormous fortune, thus becoming the most influential nobles of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Shortly after Barbara Radziwill become a mistress to king Sigismund Augustus. The portrait of a woman as Saint Barbara by Lucas Cranach the Elder from about 1530 was in the late 19th century in the collection of Geheimrat (the title of the highest advising officials at the Imperial, royal or princely courts of the Holy Roman Empire) Lucas in Berlin, now in the Sammlung Würth in Schwäbisch Hall, Germany (wood, 73 x 56.5 cm, inv. 9325). Her rich outfit and jewels indicate her noble origins. She is being pursued by her father, who kept her locked up in a tower in order to preserve her from the outside world. The topography and general shape of the city with a church and a castle on a hill to the right is very similar to the view of Vilnius by Tomasz Makowski from 1600. The same woman was also depicted as the princess raped by Saint John Chrysostom (Penance of Saint John Chrysostom), holding her daughter, now in the Wartburg-Stiftung in Eisenach (wood, transferred to canvas and plywood, 60.5 x 37.5 cm, WSE M 0002). The long-bearded saint, particularly revered in the Orthodox world and barely visible above the child's head, is expiating his guilt in seducing and slaying the princess by crawling about on all-fours like a beast. John imposed upon himself the penance and his baby miraculously pronounced his sins forgiven. The castle in the background can be also compared with the Vilnius Castle. The painting is therefore a message to Voivode Albertas Gostautas and his supporters, that George Hercules regrets his actions against him, he is worthy to become the castellan of the Vilnius Castle and its surrounding territory and his daughter to be engaged with Voivode's son. The painting was before 1901 in the colletion of Graf Einsiedel in Berlin. The same woman can also be identified in a painting considered to be an effigy of Saint Barbara seated in front of a green velvet drape, which was in the private collection in Brunswick before 1932 (wood, 55 x 38 cm). She was also depicted as Lucretia, the beautiful and virtuous wife of a commander Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, whose suicide precipitated a rebellion that overthrew the Roman monarchy. The painting was probably in the collection of Franz Reichardt (1825-1887) in Munich and was cut to oval shape in the 17th or 18th century (wood, 33.5 x 24.5 cm, Sotheby's London, December 6, 2017, lot 6). In a similar, full length effigy as Lucretia from the late 1520s in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (wood, 194 x 75 cm, inv. 691), her face features are identical with the portrait in Sammlung Würth. The painting is listed in the 1641 inventory of the art cabinet of Maximilian I (1573-1651), Duke of Bavaria (oldest confirmed provenance), who exchanged paintings with the Polish-Lithuanian Vasas. She was eventually depicted in the repertoire of the three other popular variants of portraits historiés. One is Venus and Cupid by Cranach the Elder from the collection of William Schomberg Robert Kerr (1832-1870), 8th Marquess of Lothian, now in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh (wood, 38.1 x 27 cm, NG 1942). Inventory of the Kunstkammer of the Radziwill Castle in Lubcha from 1647 lists a painting of Venus and Amor, an old painting of Adam and Eve and Saint John in the wilderness, signed L. C. and also a tondo with Madonna and Madonna and Child offered by Antoni Tyszkiewicz (after "Galerie obrazów i "Gabinety Sztuki" Radziwiłłów w XVII w." by Teresa Sulerzyska, p. 93). "Venus and Hercules by Lucas Cranach", mentioned in the register of paintings of Boguslaus Radziwill (1620-1669) from 1657 (AGAD 1/354/0/26/84), could be another disguised portrait of Kolanka, this time accompanied by her husband George "Hercules". The "Old art by Lucas Cranach" and "Similar painting of a Centaur" in this register suggest that an entire series depicting the acts of Hercules could have been created by Cranach and his workshop for the Radziwills, similar to the series depicting "The Labors of Hercules" (Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum). The effigy of the Virgin in the painting by Cranach in the Pushkin Museum (wood, 58 x 46 cm, Ж-2630) resemble greatly the portrait of Barbara in Sammlung Würth. The landscape behind Mary is entirely fantastic in upper part, however in lower part is very similar to view of Trakai in Lithuania by Tomasz Makowski, created in about 1600. Central keep, dilapidated in Makowski's print, surrounded by walls with towers, the bridge leading to the Island Castle, fishermen on the lake, are almost identical. The painting was since 1825 in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg and in 1930 it was transferred to the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Its earlier history is unknown, therefore provenance from Radziwill estates cannot be excluded. It is dated by various sources to around 1520 to 1525. In 1522, thanks to the support of Queen Bona, George Hercules, husband of Barbara, received the castellany of the Trakai castle, an important defensive structure protecting Trakai and Vilnius, capital of the Grand Duchy, one of the most important offices in Lithuania. This nomination was related to Queen's efforts to gain support for the project of elevation of her son Sigismund Augustus to the grand-ducal throne. In 1528 George Hercules was also made Marshal of the Court of Lithuania and Grand Hetman of Lithuania in 1531. When in 1529 Sigismund I the Old agreed to approve the First Statute of Lithuania, which further expanded the rights of the nobility, his son Sigismund Augustus was proclaimed the Grand Duke of Lithuania. As the wife of the Marshal of the Court, who was taking care for the court and the safety of the dames, Barbara was the most important woman at the ducal court in Vilnius after the Queen and Grand Duchess Bona Sforza. She undeniably supported the Queen's policy and her portrait as Judith with the head of Holofernes from about 1530 in the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico (wood, 87 x 82.6 cm, 60.0143) is the expression of her support. A painting of "Judith" is among the paintings belonging to Boguslaus Radziwill, who owned several paintings by Cranach. Interestingly, the earliest known effigy of Barbara's husband was also painted by a painter from Cranach's circle. George, then Voivode of Kyiv, took part in the Battle of Orsha on September 8, 1514 at the head of the Lithuanian cavalry. The painting in the National Museum in Warsaw (inv. MP 2475), depicting the battle, includes his coat of arms, visible on a banner held by one of the knights of his private army crossing the river. According to Zdzisław Żygulski (1921-2015), the man in the group of leaders on the right, "black hair and beard, wearing a hussar top hat of black felt with gilded metal rim and plume holder, a purple Hungarian dolman coat with gold braid and a sleeved Hungarian mente cloak lined with ermine", is probably the effigy of George (after "The Battle of Orsha: An Explication of the Arms ...", p. 117). Although it also appears that this man is advising the man in the green hat, who arguably held a more prominent position during the battle. This same group probably includes the effigies of Prince Yuri Olelkovich-Slutsky (ca. 1492-1542), brother of Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska, and Ivan Bogdanovich Sapieha (1486-1546), who also participated in the battle alongside Radziwill. The painting is attributed to Hans Krell, but it shows a strong influence of Cranach's style and can also be considered a work created by his studio. It was created several years after the battle, so the painter(s) must have based their work on earlier depictions of the participants. It is also highly likely that George owned this painting or a copy of it, as a large, "subtly painted" depiction of the battle "of the Shusha" on wood belonged to his descendant, Princess Louise Charlotte Radziwill (1667-1695), mentioned in the inventory of her possessions from 1671 (after "Śląskie losy kolekcji dzieł sztuki księżnej Ludwiki Karoliny Radziwiłłówny ..." by Piotr Oszczanowski, p. 204-215). 
Portrait of Barbara Kolanka (d. 1550) as the Virgin in a grape arbor by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1522, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.
Portrait of Barbara Kolanka (d. 1550) as the Princess from the Legend of Saint John Chrysostom by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1527-1530, Wartburg-Stiftung in Eisenach.
Portrait of Barbara Kolanka (d. 1550) as Saint Barbara by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1527, Private collection, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Barbara Kolanka (d. 1550) as Venus and Cupid by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1527-1537, National Gallery of Scotland.
Portrait of Barbara Kolanka (d. 1550) as Lucretia by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1527, Private collection.
Portrait of Barbara Kolanka (d. 1550) as Lucretia by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1527-1530, Alte Pinakothek in Munich.
Portrait of Barbara Kolanka (d. 1550) as Saint Barbara by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, Sammlung Würth.
Portrait of Barbara Kolanka (d. 1550) as Judith with the head of Holofernes by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, Museo de Arte de Ponce.
Detachment of fourteen hussars approaching the ford with portraits of George I "Hercules" Radziwill (1480-1541), Prince Yuri Olelkovich-Slutsky (ca. 1492-1542) and Ivan Bogdanovich Sapieha (1486-1546), fragment of the Battle of Orsha (1514), by workshop or follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder (Hans Krell?), ca. 1525-1535, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portraits of royal courtier Stanisław Bojanowski by Bernardino Licinio
A Renaissance painter, Bernardino Licinio, was most probably born in Poscante north of Bergamo and close to Milan in about 1489. His family was well established at Murano and at Venice by the end of the fifteenth century and he was first recorded as a painter there in 1511.
The portrait by Licinio in the Pushkin Museum (oil on canvas, 94 x 80 cm, inv. 3916), shows a young, twenty-one year old Stanisław Bojanowski (1507-1555), a nobleman and influencial courtier who become a secretary of king Sigismund Augustus in 1543. He is depicted in red żupan (from Arabic dіubbah or giubbone, giuppone, giubba in Italian) of Venetian silk and wearing a fur coat, holding one hand on his belt and the other on a volume of Petrarch's poetry (F PETRARCHA). The painting was purchased by the Museum in 1964 from the collection of Anatol Zhukov in Moscow, who acquired it in 1938. It's earlier history is unknown, therefore it cannot be excluded that it was acquired in Poland. Bojanowski was an educated man, lover of Italian poetry, he possibly, as many Poles, studied in Padua and/or Bologna, when he could order his portrait in nearby Venice, or like his royal patrons he sent a drawing with his effigy to Licinio. He reportedly was the author of the lost book of "bad novels", as it was expressed in the Acts of the Babin Republic. "Boianowski Stanisław, a courtier. / They could have called him Boianowski [Fearful], / But by his own title, I could call him Śmiałowski [Brave]. / For boldly to everyone, without all flattery, / He spoke the honest truth to the point of resentment" (Boianowski Stanisław, dworzanin. / Moglić go tak s przezwiska, nazwać Boianowskim, / Ale własnym tytułem, mogł go zwać Smiałowskim. / Bowiem smiele każdemu, bez pochlebstwa wszego, / Namowił szczyrey prawdy, aż szło do żywego), wrote about Bojanowski in his Bestiary (Zwierziniec/Zwierzyniec), published in 1562, the Polish poet and prose writer Mikołaj Rej. Apart from the age (ANNO AETATIS SVE. XXI) also the date of the portrait is mentioned, 1528 (MD. XXVIII), a date when Baldassare Castiglione's "Book of the Courtier" (Il Cortegiano) was first published in Venice. Shrewd and witty Bojanowski, a model of a typical Renaissance nobleman, become a leading figure of Łukasz Górnicki's "Polish Courtier" (Dworzanin polski), a paraphrase of the Castiglione's Il Cortegiano, published in Kraków in 1566. It is very probable that Bojanowski purchased a volume of the first edition of Castiglione's oeuvre. From 1543 after the creation of a separate court of Sigismund Augustus in Vilnius, he was the deputy of Jan Przerębski, the head of the chancellery. He performed diplomatic missions for the king. In 1551 Hetman Jan Tarnowski proposed him or Jan Krzysztoporski (whose portrait by Licinio is in the Kensington Palace), "both secular and well-known supporters of religious innovations" (after "Papiestwo-Polska 1548-1563: dyplomacja" by Henryk Damian Wojtyska, p. 336), as envoys to Rome. It is possible that it was him that brought to Florence in 1537 the portrait of Queen Bona Sforza by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder and her daughter Princess Isabella Jagiellon nude (Venus of Urbino) by Titian, both created around that time and installed in Villa del Poggio Imperiale, fulfilling a secret mission for the Queen. The same man as in the Moscow painting was also depicted in another canvas by Licinio, today in Palazzo Pitti in Florence (oil on canvas, 86 x 68.5 cm, inv. Palatina 69 / 1912). According to Latin inscription on a stone pedestal in lower left corner of the painting it was created in 1537 and the man was 30 (AETA. ANNOR / XXX / MDXXXVII), exactly as Bojanowski at that time. He is wearing a coat lined with expensive fur and holding a letter, most likely the envoy's credentials. His effigy with a long beard resemble more closely Bojanowski's bust from his epitaph. He is buried in the Holy Trinity Church in Kraków, where his epitaph of sandtone and red marble, most probably created by workshop of Venetian trained sculptor, Giovanni Maria Mosca called Padovano (who created tomb monuments of two wives of Sigismund Augustus), bears the following inscription in Latin: STANISLAVS BOIANOWSKI / EX MAIORI POLONIA PA / TRIIS BONIS CONTENTVS / ESSE NOLENS AVLAM ET / EIVS PROISSA SECVTVS AN. / DNI. M.D.L.V. XVII IVNII. CRA / COVIAE MORITVR ANTE / QVAM VIVERE DIDICISSET / AETATIS SVAE XXXXVIII (Stanislaus Bojanowski of Greater Poland, unwilling to be content with his country's court, and following his promises, he died in Kraków in the year of our Lord 1555 on June 17, before he had learned how to live, at the age of 48). 
Portrait of royal courtier Stanisław Bojanowski (1507-1555), aged 21 by Bernardino Licinio, 1528, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.
Portrait of royal courtier Stanisław Bojanowski (1507-1555), aged 30 by Bernardino Licinio, 1537, Palazzo Pitti in Florence.
Portraits of the Jagiellons by Bernhard Strigel
"Thus, the king of Poland led over one and a half thousand horsemen, dressed in Hungarian clothes - these are called hussars, and also dressed in German, but there were also Poles, Ruthenians, Muscovites, Turkish captives and Tatars with their cavalry and a host of trumpeters with great trumpets with a loud sound", described the entry into Vienna in 1515 of Sigismund I, elected monarch of Poland-Lithuania, Johannes Cuspinian or Cuspinianus (1473-1529), a German-Austrian humanist and diplomat (after "O muzykach, muzyce i jej funkcji ..." by Renata Król-Mazur, p. 40).
In 1502 Cuspinian married 17-year-old Anna Putsch, daughter of the Imperial valet. On the occasion of the wedding, he had Lucas Cranach the Elder paint a portrait of himself and his wife. They had eight children. A year after his wife's death, in 1514, he remarried to Agnes Stainer. He undertook numerous diplomatic missions to Hungary, Bohemia and Poland. Cuspinian was ambassador of Emperor Maximilian I to Hungary in 1510-1515 and 1519. He was instrumental in preparing the Congress of Princes and the Habsburg-Jagellonian double wedding in Vienna in 1515, between the grandchildren of the Emperor and the children of King Vladislaus II Jagiellon. Details of the negotiations are known because Cuspinian kept meticulous records of them and published in his Congressus Ac Celeberrimi Conventus Caesaris Max. et trium regum Hungariae, Bohemiae Et Poloniae In Vienna Panoniae, mense Iulio, Anno M.D.XV. facti, brevis ac verissima descriptio. The emperor rewarded his services by appointing him his councillor and prefect of the city of Vienna. In January 1518 he accompanied the Milanese Princess Bona Sforza to Kraków for her wedding to King Sigismund, in November 1518 he presented King Louis II Jagiellon with the insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece, and in April and May 1519 he successfully completed the difficult task to secure the vote of Louis as King of Bohemia for Charles V in the forthcoming election of the Emperor. In 1520 he ordered a portrait of himself with his second wife Agnes, and his sons from his first marriage Sebastian Felix and Nicolaus Christostomus. Cuspinian wears a fur hat, similar to that depicted in a portrait created between 1432-1434 in Venice by Michele Giambono, today in Palazzo Rosso in Genoa, and said to represent one of the Bohemian or Hungarian princes who came to Italy in 1433 for the coronation of the Emperor Sigismund. The effigy of Cuspinian and his family was painted in October 1520 in Vienna by Bernhard Strigel (d. 1528), court painter of the emperor (oil on panel, 71 x 62 cm, sold at Sotheby's London, 04 July 2018, lot 13, today in the Strigel-Museum in Memmingen). The identity of the sitters is mainly known thanks to the inscription in Latin on the reverse, which also gives a great deal of information about the painter. According to inscription on the painting it depict biblical figures, members of the Holy Kinship, the family of Our Lord - Cuspinian inscribed as Zebedee (ZEBEDEVS), the father of James and John, two disciples of Jesus, above his head, his wife Agnes as Mary Salome (SALOME VXOR .I. PACIFICA / QVIA FILIOS PAC S GENVIT), one of the Three Marys who were daughters of Saint Anne, his eldest son is Saint James the Great (JACOBVS MAIOR / CHRISTO.COEVVS) and the younger is Saint John the Apostle (IOANNES [...] E / CHRIS [...]). Similar depictions were popular at that time, one of the best being the Altarpiece of the Holy Kinship by Lucas Cranach the Elder (Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main), painted in 1509, in which Emperor Maximilian I, Imperial Councillor Sixtus Oelhafens, Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony and his brother John the Steadfast and their families were depicted as members of the family of Jesus. Another with putative self-portrait by Cranach, painted in about 1510-1512, is in the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. The inscription behind Cuspinian's portrait also mentions "the first panel" (PRIMA TABVLA) with "likenesses of Maximilian Caesar Augustus, of Mary the duchess of Burgundy, daughter of Duke Charles, of their son Philip of the kingdom of Castille, Charles V Emperor Augustus, Ferdinand the Infante of Spain, of archdukes and nephews of the Emperor and Louis king of Hungary and Bohemia", today in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (oil on panel, 72.8 x 60.4 cm, inventory number GG 832). It was probably painted after the double wedding in 1515 and the panel was recorded in the imperial portrait collection in Vienna in the 1590s. Some members of the imperial family represented in the painting were already dead when it was created between 1515 and 1520, like the first wife of the Emperor Mary of Burgundy, who died in 1482, and their son Philip the Handsome, who died in 1506. Like in the portrait of the family of Cuspinian inscriptions painted above the heads of the sitters evoke the names of members of another branch of the Holy Family, the family of Mary of Cleophas - Maximilian was labelled Cleophas, brother of Saint Joseph married to Mary, the mother of Jesus (CLEOPHAS . FRATER . CARNALIS . IO= / SEPHI: MARITI DIVAE VIRG . MARIÆ), his son Philip as Saint James the Less (I / JACOBVS: MINOR EPVS: / HIEROSOLIMITANVS .), his mother Mary of Burgundy as Mary of Cleophas (or Clopas), said to be the sister-in-law of the Virgin Mary (MARIA CLEOPHÆ SOROR / VIRG . MAR PVTATIVA MA= / TER TERA . D . N .), Emperor's grandsons as disciples of Jesus - Charles, future emperor, as Saint Simon the Zealot (II / SIMON ZELOTES CONSO= / BRINVS . DNI . NRI .) and his brother Ferdinand, also future emperor, as Saint Joseph Barsabbas, also known as Justus (III / IOSEPH IVSTVS). The likeness of Louis of Hungary, whom Maximilian had adopted in 1515, was not inscribed in biblical terms, which has led some scholars to suggest that his effigy was not part of the initial composition. Until 1919 on the reverse of the family portrait of Emperor Maximilian I there was a depiction of the family of Mary, mother of Jesus, the most important of the Three Marys, subsequently separated from it by splitting the panel (oil on panel, 72.5 x 60 cm, inventory number GG 6411). This composition is not mentioned in the inscription on the back of Cuspinian's portrait, as well as all the biblical references. The family of the Virgin was threfore added later, after 1520 and before the artist's death in 1528 in his hometown of Memmingen, as well as all the inscriptions referring to the bible. These likenesses (IMAGINES) were therefore initially only portraits of the emperor and his councillor. When this additonal image was added the cycle was transformed into a sort of triptych, a three-part house altar with the families of the three daughters of Saint Anne - Mary, mother of Jesus, Mary of Cleophas and Salome, called Mary Salome. The legend of three daughters of Saint Anne, propounded by Haymo of Auxerre in the mid-9th century, but rejected by the Council of Trent, was included in the Golden Legend (Legenda aurea) of Jacobus de Voragine, written in about 1260. A beautiful miniature from Legenda aurea sive Flores sanctorum, illuminated by two miniaturists active in Padua and Venice, the so-called Master of the Barozzi Breviary and Antonio Maria da Villafora (or Giovanni Pietro Birago and Antonio Mario Sforza), owned by Krzysztof Szydłowiecki, Chancellor of the Crown from 1525 (National Library of Poland, Rps BOZ 11), showns Saint Anne and her daughters in the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (NATIVITAS BEATE VIRGINIS MARIE). This manuscript was created in the 1480s for Francesco Vendramini, a member of an influential Venetian family. The family of Mary shows the Virgin, Queen of Heaven (MARIA . ILLABIS . REGINA / VIRGINITATIS' IDEA) with her son Jesus Christ, Our Saviour (HIESVS CHRISTVS / SERVATOR NOSTER) and Elizabeth, wife of Zechariah, and maternal aunt of Mary (ELIZABETH / COGNATA / MARIÆ / VIRG) with her son John the Baptist, Sanctified in the womb (IOANNES BAPTISTA SANCTIFICATVS / IN VTERO) who is holding a band with inscription in Latin "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the World" (ECCE AGNUS DEI QUI TOLLIT PECCATA MUNDI) and pointing to the son of Mary. The two main male figures, behind Mary and Elizabeth are Joseph, married to the Virgin Mary (IOSEPH MARI/TVS VIRG) and, most likely, Ephaim, husband of Esmeria and father of Zechariah/Zachariah, Elizabeth's husband, because these two are standing behind him - Esmeria, younger sister of Anne, mother of Mary (ESMERIA . SOROR . AN/NAE MINOR NATV) and her son Zachariah, father of John the Baptist (ZACHARIAS). There is no inscription explaining his role, so he could be also Aaron, the father of Saint Elizabeth. These two men were depicted in another painting attributed to Strigel or his workshop, today in the National Museum in Warsaw (oil on panel, 34.5 x 36 cm, M.Ob.1771 MNW). It represents Saints Anthony the Great and Paul of Thebes, the Desert Fathers, venerated among the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic churches. The painting was purchased by the museum from Zbigniew Kamiński's collection in Warsaw in 1974. Saint Joseph/Anthony the Great resemble greatly the effigies of King Sigismund I, especially a woodcut from Marcin Bielski's "Chronicle of the Entire World" (Kronika wszytkiego świata), published in Kraków in 1551, and a miniature by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger, painted in Wittenberg (Czartoryski Museum). His protruding lower lip of the Habsburgs/Dukes of Masovia is perfectly visible, like in the portrait attributed to Hans von Kulmbach (Gołuchów Castle). The other man, Ephaim-Aaron/Paul of Thebes, with a long beard resemble the effigies of Sigismund's elder brother Vladislaus II (1456-1516), who was elected King of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, especially his face from the Congress of Princes at Vienna by Albrecht Dürer and from medal known from the 19th century engraving in the Austrian National Library. In 1515 or before Strigel created a portrait of Vladislaus, his son and daughter, in a devotional painting with his coat of arms, showing Saint Ladislaus of Hungary interceding with the Virgin for the king and his children (Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, inventory number 7502). He and his wife, which should be identified as the third wife of Vladislaus II, Anne of Foix-Candale (1484-1506), were depicted in another painting by Strigel in very similar costumes, today in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, sold in London in 1900. It shows Saint Mary Salome (inscription SANCTA MARIA SALOME on halo of female figure) and her family, it is one of two wings, which were part of an altarpiece that probably depicted the Holy Kinship (oil on panel, 125 x 65.7 cm, 1961.9.89). If the painting was created in about 1526-1528, two sons of Mary Salome, Saint James (SANCTVS IACOBVS MA) and Saint John (SANCTV IOHANES EWAN), visible in the painting, should be identifed as Louis II, the only son of Vladislaus II and Anne of Foix-Candale, who died on 29 August 1526 in the Battle of Mohács and John Zapolya (d. 1540), brother of first wife of Sigismund I Barbara (1495-1515), who claimed the throne of Hungary. The man in a green coat to the right of Mary Salome could be therefore the father of John Zapolya - Stephen (d. 1499), Palatine of the Kingdom of Hungary or Anne's father Gaston de Foix (1448-1500), Count of Candale. The counterpart wing represents Saint Mary of Cleophas (SANCTA MARIA CLEOP[H?]E) and her four holy sons - Jude, Simon, Joseph and James (SANCTVS IVDAS XPI APOSTOLV, SCTVS SIMON, ST[ ]SANCTVS IOSEPHI, SANCTVS IACOBVS MINOR AIPHE) (oil on panel, 125.5 x 65.8 cm, 1961.9.88). Beside her stands her husband Saint Cleophas and the effigies of the couple correspond perfectly with the parents of the Vigin Mary from the painting in Vienna - Saint Anne (ANNA VNICUVM VIDVI/MATIS SPECIMEN) and her husband Joachim (IOACHIM VNICVS / MARITVS ANNÆ), patron saint of fathers and grandfathers. The protruding lower lip of Mary of Cleophas/Saint Anne indicates that she is unmistakably a Habsburg, it is therefore the portrait of Elizabeth of Austria (1436-1505), called the "mother of kings" (or the "mother of the Jagiellons"), similar to that by Antoni Boys in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (GG 4648). All of her sons who become kings were depicted in this painting, including the youngest living in in about 1526-1528, Sigismund I, sitting on her knees, as well as Alexander Jagiellon, John I Albert and Vladislaus II. Elizabeth's husband Casimir IV Jagiellon (1427-1492) was consequenly depicted as Saint Cleophas/Saint Joachim in the paintings in Washington and Vienna and his facial features match the counterpart of Elizabeth's portrait by Antoni Boys in Vienna (GG 4649). The old man standing next to the couple in Washington painting is identified to represent Emperor Frederick III (1415-1493), son of Cymburgis of Masovia, however his effigy also resemble posthumous portraits of Elizabeth's father Albert the Magnanimous (1397-1439), Duke of Austria, through his wife (jure uxoris) King of Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, elected King of the Romans as Albert II by Boys and from the Bohemian chronicle (Charles University in Prague). Another man from the Vienna painting with the family of the Virgin has also clearly Habsburg features - Zachariah, the husband of Saint Elizabeth. His face resemble the effigies of Ferdinand (1503-1564), Archduke of Austria - a portrait by circle of Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen and a miniature, most likely by Hans Bocksberger the Elder, both in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The woman depicted as Saint Elizabeth is therefore his wife Anna Jagiellonica (1503-1547), the oldest child and only daughter of King Vladislaus II and Anne of Foix-Candale. It was thanks to this marriage that Ferdinand was able to claim the Bohemian and Hungarian crown. Soon, thanks to the success of their dynastic marriage policy the Habsburgs could genuinely claim "Let others wage war: you, happy Austria, marry" (Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube - epigram attributed to Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary) and "All the world is subject to Austria", as in their motto A.E.I.O.U. (Austriae est imperare orbi universo). Ferdinand immediately applied to the parliaments of Hungary and Bohemia to participate as a candidate in the elections. The union with the Jagiellons as well the child born to Anna - Maximilian, born on 31 July 1527 in Vienna, gave the Archduke certain rights also to the elective throne of Poland-Lithuania, which Maximilian and his sons claimed during elections in 1573, 1575 and 1587. Many people understood what Habsburg rule meant for Central Europe - predominance of German culture and language, religious intolerance and absolutism, therefore they were not successfully elected. The Habsburgs were masters of propaganda and employed the best artists, such as Albrecht Dürer, for this purpose. Copies of portait of Emperor Maximilian and his family by Strigel were sent to different royal and ducal court in Europe - an old copy, most probably originally from the Spanish royal collection, is in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid (collection of Manuel Godoy, First Secretary of State of Spain, inventory number 0856). It was probably Maximilian who ordered a portrait of young Louis Jagiellon. The wreath of carnations that the boy wears in his loose hair alludes directly to the politically desired union with the House of Austria (Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, GG 827). As historian Hugh Trevor Roper put it, to Emperor Maximilian "all the arts were propaganda" (after "Easily Led: A History of Propaganda" by Oliver Thomson, p. 169). "Certainly the art itself was supposed to make the ruler look good; effusive symbolism linking him and his family with divinity as well as with virtues such as wisdom, clemency, piety and valor were blatant propaganda. This was not mass propaganda aimed at the general population, however. Few people ever actually saw the art that such rulers commissioned. Rather, patronage was targeted marketing, configuring the dynasty's status to other elites" ("The Habsburgs: The History of a Dynasty" by Benjamin Curtis, p. 50). One woman understood this strategy perfectly and responded with similar means - Bona (Maria) Sforza, the Milanese princess whom Cuspinian escorted to Kraków. She and her son Sigismund Augustus are depicted as the Virgin and Child in the Vienna painting. Bona's likeness is similar to her portraits as Judith and Madonna by Cranach from the same period. Ferdinand's son as John the Baptist confirms the divine right of her son to be elected as successor of her husband. 
The Jagiellons (family of Bona Sforza and King Sigismund I) as the family of the Virgin Mary by Bernhard Strigel, 1527-1528, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Family of Elizabeth of Austria (1436-1505) and Casimir IV Jagiellon (1427-1492) as the family of Mary of Cleophas by Bernhard Strigel, 1526-1528, National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Family of Anne of Foix-Candale (1484-1506) and Vladislaus II Jagiellon (1456-1516) as the family of Mary Salome by Bernhard Strigel, 1526-1528, National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Portrait of Sigismund I (1467-1548) and Vladislaus II Jagiellon (1456-1516) as Saints Anthony and Paul by Bernhard Strigel or follower, 1515-1528, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of Bona Sforza as Judith with the Head of Holofernes by Lucas Cranach the Elder
In 1530 Bona Maria Sforza has won an important battle. In 1527, as a result of a fall from a horse, the queen prematurely gave birth to her second son, Albert, who died at birth. After this event, the she could not have any more children. That same year she was depicted as the Virigin Mary, according the Italian custom, in her Prayer Book, created by Stanisław Samostrzelnik, exposing her beautiful hair before ladies dressed in German style and loosely based on German graphics.
Polish throne was elective and German Hohenzollerns (who took over Prussia) and Habsburgs (who took from Jagiellons Bohemian and Hungarian crown) were relatives of her son with rights to the crown. To secure the throne to him she came up with an idea of unprecedented election vivente rege (the election of a successor during the lifetime of the king). Despite huge opposition from Polish-Lithuanian lords the ten-year-old Sigismund Augustus was first made Grand Duke of Lithuania and then crowned King of Poland on 20 February 1530. At that time it become fashionable at the court of her sister-in-law Barbara Jagiellon in nearby Saxony to be depicted in the guise of Judith. The biblical heroine, clever and cunning, who having seduced and then beheaded Assyrian general who besieged her city with his own sword, was a perfect prefiguration of a typical Sforza. The subject, well known to Italian art, was not so explored in the Northern art before Cranach, so was Bona the first to introduce it to the German painter? The painting is in Imperial collection since at least 1610, so does she personally sent it to the Habsburgs as a sign of her victory? Cranach and his studio painted several copies of this Judith. One, very accurate copy, is in the Forchtenstein Castle in Austria (inventory number B481), which was owned the House of Habsburg in the 16th century and in 1622 Nikolaus Esterházy, founder of the western Hungarian Esterházy line, received the castle from Emperor Ferdinand II. In the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart there is a different version of the painting (inventory number 643), acquired in 1847 from the collection of Friedrich Freiherr von Salmuth in Heidelberg. It is possible that it comes from the collection of Louis V (1478-1544), Count Palatine of the Rhine (Heidelberg Castle), who in 1519 voted for Charles V in the imperial election, after receiving large bribes from the Habsburgs. Two other copies of the painting in Vienna are in private collection, one was sold in Berlin (Rudolph Lepke, May 5, 1925, lot 130), the other in Munich (Neumeister, December 3, 2008, lot 576). Another artist, most probably Joseph Heinz the Elder (1564-1609), court painter to Emperor Rudolf II, to whom the painting is attributed, painted around 1600-1605 a reinterpretation of Judith as Salome with the head of Saint John the Baptist, most probably a copy of a lost version by Cranach (Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, inventory number 862). Around that time Heinz created portraits of Bona's grandson King Sigismund III Vasa (ca. 1604, Alte Pinakothek in Munich) and of his future wife Constance of Austria, granddaughter of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), whom he married in 1605 in Kraków (1604, Clark Art Institute and Kunsthistorisches Museum). It is possible that aroung 1604 Heinz or one of his pupils went to Warsaw or Kraków to create the portrait of the King of Poland, taking with him the portrait of a bride (most probably the painting in the Clark Art Institute), and he created a copy of the likeness of the famous grandmother of the King, Queen Bona. Salome by Heinz is identifiable in the inventories of the imperial collection in Vienna between 1610-1619. 
Portrait of Bona Sforza d'Aragona (1494-1557), Queen of Poland as Judith with the Head of Holofernes by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Bona Sforza (1494-1557) as Judith with the Head of Holofernes by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, Forchtenstein Castle.
Portrait of Bona Sforza (1494-1557) as Judith with the Head of Holofernes by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.
Portrait of Bona Sforza (1494-1557) as Salome with the head of Saint John the Baptist by Joseph Heinz the Elder after Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1604, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Bona Sforza as Madonna and Child caressing the divine face of the Virgin by Lucas Cranach the Elder
"King Sigismund's newly married Wife Bona with a heavenly face, Shining like a deity With rare gifts of the soul. Venus's gift is a beauty of her face, Minerva's reason" (partially after Polish translation by Antonina Jelicz, "Antologia poezji polsko-łacińskiej: 1470-1543", p. 166, Alma Sismundi nova nupta regis Bona caelesti decorata vultu Dotibus raris animi refulgens Numinis instar. Cui dedit pulchrum Venus alma vultum Et caput Pallas), praises the divine beauty of Queen Bona Sforza in about 1518 in his Latin epigram entitled "In praise of Queen Bona" (In laudem reginae Bonae), secretary of the queen Andrzej Krzycki (1482-1537), later Archbishop of Gniezno.
The same effigy as in the Judith by Cranach in Vienna, almost like a template, was used in a painting of Madonna and Child in front of a curtain held up by angels, today in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt (inventory number 847). The painting is signed by Lucas Cranach the Elder with artist's insignia on the left (winged serpent) and dated to about 1527-1530. It was acquired in 1833 from the art dealer Metzler in Mainz. In the 16th century the Elector-Archbishop of Mainz had the right to elect the emperor. From 1514 to 1545, this position was held by Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg (1490-1545), the same whom the king Sigismund I asked in a letter of July 9, 1536 to intervene at the Berlin court with his daughter's marital problems. Cardinal Albert was a renowned patron of the arts and he was frequenly painted by Cranach and depicted in guise of different saints. In 1525 Cranach painted a portrait of the cardinal as Saint Jerome in his study (Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, GK 71) and a year later (1526), he created a similar effigy (John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, SN 308) in which, however, an hourglass on the wall near window was replaced with a picture of Madonna. The cardinal undeniably owned many paintings of the Virgin by Cranach. In the Frankfurt painting the Child caresses the divine face of the Virgin. The bacground was painted with a costly azurite which in the 16th century was also mined in Chęciny in Poland. The effigy and composition can be compared with other portraits of Queen Bona as Madonna by Cranach and his workshop in Prague and in Gdańsk, created between 1535-1540. On July 19, 1525, the archbishop of Mainz took part in the founding of the anti-Lutheran Dessau League. While Jan Benedykt Solfa (1483-1564), the royal physician of Sigismund I and Bona, wrote to Erasmus of Rotterdam about the need to defend the Catholic faith and by means of meticulous analysis, he tried to show the falsity of the arguments used by the supporters of the Reformation, Piotr Tomicki (1464-1535), Archbishop of Kraków and Vice-Chancellor of the Crown, wrote in a letter to the dean of Gniezno, Marcin Rambiewski (May 1527), that "in a free kingdom, both opinions and voices should always be free" (in libero regno et sententias et voces liberos esse semper decet). In a letter to the queen's secretary, Ludovico Alifio, he presented a similar attitude to faith, speaking of the free choice of religion (after "Podkanclerzy Piotr Tomicki (1515-1535): polityk i humanista" by Anna Odrzywolska-Kidawa, p. 236). 
Portrait of Bona Sforza (1494-1557) as Madonna and Child caressing the divine face of the Virgin by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1527-1530, Städel Museum.
Portrait of Sigismund Augustus as a child by Lucas Cranach the Elder
In the years 1530-1531, the royal court purchased larger quantities of fabrics, on the occasion of the coronation of Sigismund Augustus and the sending of gifts to Christian and Muslim rulers on this occasion. The expenses related to the coronation of the "young" king and the purchase of fabrics later presented to the khans of the Crimean, Trans-Volga (Thartaris Zauolhensibus) and Astrakhan hordes, as well as to imperial envoys and other dignitaries, amounted to slightly more than 3,400 zlotys over the course of a year and a half (from February 7, 1530 to June 10, 1531). The fabrics purchased by the royal treasury included English (luńskie), Flemish (pannus purpurianus), Zwickau (ćwikawskie, from the city of Zwickau in Saxony) and Kościan cloth from Greater Poland, as well as damask, fustian and flannel. The main suppliers of these fabrics were the Kraków merchants Walter, Lady Wondzonowa, Piotr Andrasz, Jan Zatorski, Hanus Eichler, Ludwik Priner and the Poznań merchants Klauzjusz and Stanisław Helt (after "Dostawcy dworów królewskich w Polsce i na Litwie ..." by Maurycy Horn, Part II, p. 8-9).
The 19th-century Polish painter Jan Matejko (1838-1893), studying the surviving sources and iconography, including undoubtedly a woodcut with the portrait of Prince Sigismund Augustus with a parrot from De vetustatibus Polonorum ..., published in Kraków in 1521, depicted the young prince in two important historical paintings - The Hanging of the Sigismund Bell at the Cathedral Tower in 1521 in Kraków, painted in 1874 (National Museum in Warsaw, inv. MP 441) and the monumental The Prussian Homage, painted between 1879 and 1882 (National Museum in Kraków, inv. Il-a 561). In the first painting, the young prince with blond hair falling to his ears and in a red tunic stands next to his father Sigismund and holds his hand on the knee of his mother Bona. In the second painting, Sigismund Augustus has his hair covered with a golden cap and wears a crimson tunic. Such a Renaissance tunic can be found in a splendid portrait by an Italian artist representing the prince's cousin, King Louis II Jagiellon (1506-1526), from the imperial collection in Vienna, now in Budapest (Museum of Fine Arts, inv. 6783). In the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne there is a half-length portrait of a boy in a costume of red damask with a wreath in his hair (panel, 36.9 x 28.6 cm, inv. WRM 0874), which recalls the imaginative effigies of the young Sigismund Augustus by Matejko. The same boy in a similar costume was depicted in a painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder in the National Gallery of Art in Washington (inv. 1947.6.1), which according to my identification is another effigy of the young Jagiellon. In the Cologne painting he wears a pendant with the Christogram IHS on a chain, which has been interpreted as: Jesus Hominum Salvator - Jesus the Savior of Mankind. The earliest confirmed provenance of this painting is the collection of the American violinist Leonora Speyer (1872-1956), who came from the Silesian noble family von Stosch. Her family owned a palace in Mańczyce (Schloss Manze). The painting is inscribed lower left with a snake facing right with upright wings and dated "1529". Sigismund Augustus was elevated to the throne of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania on October 18, 1529 and on December 18, 1529 the Diet in Piotrków proclaimed him the king of Poland. He was crowned the next year in the similar garments to these visible in the portrait. The inventory of the State Treasury from 1555 mentions: "tibalia (stockings), dalmatics, gloves and a small sword" and the inventory of 1599 mentions: "a velvet dress with gold stripes, in which the late King Augustus was crowned" (after "Od narodzin do wieku dojrzałego ..." by Maria Dąbrowska, Andrzej Klonder, p. 71). Only his shoes on a platform covered with red velvet preserved, today at the Wawel Castle (deposit of the National Museum in Kraków, inv. MNK XIII-2487). The difference in style and quality with other paintings by the German painter leads to the conclusion that the possible author of the 1529 painting in Cologne was Cranach's young son - Hans, born around 1513, he was therefore about 16 years old at that time (catalogue of an exhibition held at the Kunstmuseum Basel in 1974). The boy wears a jewelled wreath with a feather, which traditionally marks betrothal. In 1527, Sigismund I agreed to marry his son to his eight-month-old cousin, Elizabeth of Austria (1526-1545), and proposed betrothal after the archduchess turned seven. The marriage treaty of the four-year-old princess with her ten-year-old relative Sigismund II Augustus was signed on November 10-11, 1530 in Poznań. In the same year, Jacob Seisenegger created portraits of the children of Anna Jagellonica and her husband Ferdinand I, now preserved in the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague. All three were in the collection of Victor de Rainer in Brussels before 1821 and represent Elizabeth at the age of four (inv. 269), her brother Maximilian, the future emperor, at the age of three (inv. 271) and her sister Anna, future Duchess of Bavaria, at the age of two (inv. 270). With great probability, it can be assumed that they are copies of portraits made for the Jagellons on the occasion of the engagement of 1530 in Poznań. The young Maximilian wears a costume similar to that of his relative Sigismund Augustus in his portrait by Cranach in Cologne. 
Portrait of Sigismund Augustus (1520-1572) as a child in a red tunic by Lucas Cranach the Elder or workshop, 1529, Wallraf-Richartz Museum.
Battle of Orsha by workshop or follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder
The large painting depicting the Battle of Orsha in the National Museum in Warsaw (tempera and oil on panel, 165 x 262 cm, inv. MP 2475) is one of the oldest and best-painted group scenes containing portraits of prominent figures from the former Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia.
The painting is generally considered to have been painted between 1525 and 1535. However, it depicts an event that took place on September 8, 1514: a battle near the medieval Orsha Castle between the allied forces of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, under the command of Constantine (ca. 1460-1530), Prince of Ostroh, Grand Hetman of Lithuania, and the army of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, commanded by Equerry Ivan Chelyadnin (died after 1521) and Prince Mikhail Ivanovich Bulgakov (ca. 1466 - ca. 1558), nicknamed Golitsa. Due to the great attention to detail and faithful depiction of the weapons, costumes, and participants in the battle, as well as the course of the battle itself, it is assumed that the painter himself took part in it. The man sitting under a tree trunk on the banks of the Dnieper, watching the troops' maneuvers, is considered to be his self-portrait. The scene was originally even bigger, as evidenced by the numerous cropped figures in the upper part, and the lost part represented either a landscape or a religious scene and in this respect it is compared to the painting The Battle of Alexander at Issus by Albrecht Altdorfer, painted in 1529 (Alte Pinakothek in Munich, inv. 688). Its original height could therefore even approach 350 cm. The painting was transferred to the National Museum in Warsaw after World War II from Silesia and was previously part of the collection of the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts in Wrocław. According to the German historian Jacob Caro (1835-1904), "it was acquired in a monastery in Poland and came into the possession of Councillor Oelsner [Johann Wilhelm Oelsner (1766-1848)], from whose estate the Antiquarian Society received it" (after "Die Schlacht bei Orsza 1514. (Nach dem großen Bilde im Museum schles. Alterthümer, Nr. 6451.1)" in Schlesiens Vorzeit in Bild und Schrift, Volume 3, p. 345). It may also have come to Silesia through the collection of Princess Louise Charlotte Radziwill (1667-1695), who died in Brzeg near Wrocław in 1695 (after "Śląskie losy kolekcji dzieł sztuki księżnej Ludwiki Karoliny Radziwiłłówny ..." by Piotr Oszczanowski, p. 204-215). The 1671 inventory of the princess's paintings lists in drawer No. 20 "a very large painting, on wood, subtly painted. A need [battle] with Moscow of the Shusha [Sozh River]" (obraz barzo wielki, na drzewie robotą subtelną. Potrzeba z Moskwą nad Szuszą) and perhaps the same painting was mentioned in the inventory of the Radziwill collection from 1657 as: "The Great Moscow War, blackened [or tarred] and nailed in a drawer [to protect the painting from moisture]" (Wielki woyny Moskiewskiey w szufladzie zabity i zasmolony, item 79). In December 1620, the painting, probably depicting the Battle of Orsha (obraz nad służbą bitwy na Kropiwnej), was mentioned in the dining room of the Radziwill Palace in Vilnius, along with portraits of Janusz Radziwill (1579-1620) and his wife Elizabeth Sophia of Brandenburg (1589-1629), as well as 18 other battle paintings (after "Obraz Bitwa pod Orszą ..." by Marek A. Janicki, p. 175, 183-186, 188-189, 200-201, 206-207). The preserved documents of the Radziwill collection mention numerous military paintings, such as the seven paintings of "The War of Alexander the Macedonian King" (woyny Alexandra króla Macedońskiego), which were in the Starawieś Palace near Węgrów in 1620. The register of paintings of Boguslaus Radziwill (1620-1669) from 1657 (AGAD 1/354/0/26/84) confirm that the Radziwills owned numerous paintings by Cranach, his workshop or followers. The fact that Louise Charlotte's ancestor, George I "Hercules" Radziwill (1480-1541), took part in the battle and is depicted in the painting with his coat of arms on the banner is another indication that the painting listed in 1671 depicted most probably the Battle of Orsha. However, it is difficult to determine today whether this is indeed the same painting, supposedly acquired from a monastery in Poland. Louise Charlotte could have owned a later version or a copy of this painting or even representing another battle such as the capture of Gomel on the Sozh River by George Radziwill in 1535. The inclusion of Sigismund I's coat of arms, the white eagle with monogram S on the chest, suggests that the Battle of Orsha may have been a royal commission. However, the depiction of the main leader of this campaign, Prince Constantine, shown three times with his coat of arms on two banners, suggests that he was the initiator of this painting. If Prince Ostroh had indeed commissioned this work, he could have ordered other copies, one for himself, and others for the king and the Radziwills. It is worth noting that foreigners also participated in the Battle of Orsha on the Sarmatian side. The artillery, for example, was commanded by Hans Wejs (Weiss) and probably by Hans Behem (d. 1533), both from Nuremberg. Both are likely depicted in German costumes in the painting, like the man in the yellow tunic commanding the position of a large cannon. The Battle of Orsha shows strong stylistic influences from Lucas Cranach the Elder. However, since the 19th century, it has been attributed to various German painters. Initially, it was considered the work of Jörg Breu the Elder (1475-1537), who created a somewhat similar composition depicting the Battle of Zama around 1530 (Alte Pinakothek in Munich, inv. 8). Michael Lancz von Kitzingen, active in Kraków between 1507 and 1523, has also been proposed as the author, as well as Hans Heffener (Hefener), brother-in-law of Crispin Herrant, employed by Jan Dantyszek, and Hans Dürer, brother of Albrecht, who worked for King Sigismund I. The painting has also been considered the work of an anonymous Polish artist influenced by Lucas Cranach the Elder, and is currently attributed to Hans Krell, active mainly in Leipzig. No similar depictions of a battle or group scene, signed or certainly painted by Krell, are known. The closest painting in style is The Passion Triptych, now in the State Gallery in Johannisburg Palace (inv. 13254), attributed to a follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder. Also comparable, especially when it comes to the way the armors were painted, is the painting The Massacre of the Innocents, attributed to the workshop of Cranach the Elder, now in the National Museum in Warsaw (tempera and oil on panel, 123 x 85 cm, inv. M.Ob.587 MNW). The Massacre of the Innocents is dated around 1515 and comes from the collection of Tomasz Zieliński (1802-1858) in Kielce. It is interesting to note that a painting of the Battle of Orsha was possibly in the cloisters of the Franciscan Monastery in Kraków as early as 1515. So was this Cranach's lost original? Sources, such as Bartosz Paprocki's "Heraldic Arms of the Polish Knighthood", published in Kraków in 1584, confirm that in the cloisters of the Franciscan Monastery there was a painting depicting the victory over the Tatars at Vyshnivets in 1512, founded by Krzysztof Szydłowiecki (1466-1532). Stanisław Sarnicki, in his "Hetman Books" (Xiegi hetmanskie z dzieiow ryczerskich wsitkich wiekow zebrane ...), reports that the Kraków arsenal, built by Sigismund I - as the foundation inscription indicates - to house the cannons captured at Obertyn and cast on the king's orders, included depictions of this battle, and that another painting of the Obertyn triumph hung at the tomb of St. Stanislaus in Kraków Cathedral. The latter work was founded by Jan Amor Tarnowski (1488-1561), probably as a votive offering to the patron saint of the Kingdom of Poland, and it was still in the cathedral in the first half of the 17th century. According to the inspection of the cathedral in 1602, in the Chapel of St. Mary, in addition to the portraits of Stephen Bathory and Anna Jagiellon, the king's tombstone was accompanied by representations of his victories hanging on the walls. All of these paintings were most likely looted or destroyed during the Deluge (1655-1660). The painting of the Battle of Vyshnivets, founded by Szydłowiecki, must have been a masterpiece because even Paolo Giovio (Paulus Jovius, 1483-1552), a famous art collector and historian, had heard about it. However, Sarnicki had to correct his erroneous information about the subject of this painting in the "Hetman Books": "Jovius writes that this battle [i.e., the one at Obertyn] was painted at St. Francis's in Kraków, but he received erroneous information, because the battle against the Tatars at Vyshnivets is depicted there". According to my findings regarding Szydłowiecki's portraits, it is possible that this painting was commissioned in Venice, perhaps even created by Titian. One of the most important battles of the following century, the Battle of Kircholm in 1605, probably commissioned by King Sigismund III Vasa, was painted by the prominent Flemish painter Peter Snayers (Sassenage Castle), probably in Antwerp or Brussels, where he was active. Many battle scenes commissioned by the Sarmatians before the Deluge were masterpieces, but very few have survived to the present day. Like Snayers's painting and the one founded by Szydłowiecki, it is possible that the Battle of Orsha was painted abroad, in Wittenberg or Leipzig, as part of a larger commission, although the stay of its author in Sarmatia cannot be ruled out. In the second half of the 19th century, Silesia and Saxony were part of the German Empire. The known and assumed provenance of the painting depicting the Battle of Orsha perfectly illustrates how many paintings commissioned by the Sarmatians returned to their "place of origin" after the Deluge. 
Massacre of the Innocents by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1515, National Museum in Warsaw.
Battle of Orsha (1514) by workshop or follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder (Hans Krell?), ca. 1525-1535, National Museum in Warsaw.
Polish hussar troop with banner bearing the emblem of King Sigismund I, fragment of the Battle of Orsha (1514), by workshop or follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder (Hans Krell?), ca. 1525-1535, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portraits of Hedwig Jagiellon and Anna Jagellonica by Lucas Cranach the Elder
Despite numerous suitors for her hand, the Crown Princess Hedwig Jagiellon remained unmarried at the age of 17. In 1529, Krzysztof Szydłowiecki and Jan Tarnowski proposed to Damião de Góis, envoy of John III, king of Portugal, to marry Hedwig to king's brother Infante Louis of Portugal, Duke of Beja. At the same time negotiations were carried to marry her to Louis X, Duke of Bavaria and Habsburgs, on April 18, 1531 proposed Frederick, brother of Louis V, Count Palatine of the Rhine.
To attract suitable marriage proposal, Hedwig's father continued to amass a considerable dowry for her. He commissioned the most luxurious items in Poland and abroad, like the casket, created by Jacob Baur and Peter Flötner in Nuremberg in 1533, adorned with jewels from Jagiellon collection (Hermitage Museum). He also charged his banker Seweryn Boner with the acquisition in Venice of some lengths of silk, several hundred ells of satin, five cloth of gold bales, thirty bales of fine Swabian and Flemish linen as well as pearls for 1,000 florins. In her letter of 19 April 1535 the Princess asked her father for a larger amount of cloth of gold. The marriage was a political contract, and Princess' role was to seal the alliance between countries by producing offspring. Thanks to this she could also have some power in her new country and Hedwig's stepmother, Bona Sforza, knew perfectly about it. It was she who probably took care of providing some erotic items in Hedwig's dowry. In 1534 it was finally decided, in secret from Bona, who was unfavorable to the Hohenzollerns, that Hedwig will marry Joachim II Hector, Elector of Brandenburg and the marriage contract was signed on 21 March 1535. Sigismund commissioned some portraits of Hedwig from court painter Antonius (most probably Antoni of Wrocław), which were sent to Joachim. The groom arrived to Kraków with a retinue of 1000 courtiers and 856 horses and Sigismund's nephew Albert, Duke of Prussia with his wife Dorothea of Denmark and 400 people. Apart from 32,000 red zlotys in cash Hedwig also received from her father robes, silverware, "other indispensable utensils", money for personal use, as well as a rich bed with canopy (canopia alias namiothy), which she took with her to Berlin (compare "Dzieje wnętrz wawelskich" by Tadeusz Mańkowski, p. 23). The manuscript of Seweryn Boner's expenses from 1535, containing the list of Princess Hedwig's trousseau, was unfortunately burned during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 (after "Królewna Jadwiga i jej książeczka do spowiedzi" by Urszula Borkowska, p. 88). A large painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder from about 1530 in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (oil on panel, 166.9 x 61.4 cm, inv. 594), which was transferred from the Royal Prussian Castles in 1829/1830, shows Hedwig as Venus and Cupid. The sitter's resemblance to the princess from her earlier portraits by Cranach, which I have identified, is undeniable - paintings in Veste Coburg (M.163) and Prague Castle (HS 242). This erotic painting was undeniably part of her dowry. A portrait from the same collection, which depicts Hedwig as Judith with the Head of Holofernes and dated 1531, was acquired from Suermondt collection in Aachen (oil on panel, 72 x 56 cm, inv. 636A). As the portraits of her stepmother, it most probably also has a political meaning, or the Princess just wanted to be depicted as her beautiful stepmother. Aachen was an Imperial City, where coronations of emperors were held till 1562 and in 1815, control of the town was passed to the Kingdom of Prussia. Already in 1523 Joachim I Nestor, Elector of Brandenburg wanted Hedwig's hand for one of his sons. It is possible that her portrait as Judith was sent to the Hohenzollerns or to the Habsburgs already in 1531 to underline that the Jagiellons would not permit them to take their crown. A similar painting to that of Hedwig's, depicting Venus with Cupid stealing honey by Lucas Cranach the Elder and dated 1531, is in the Borghese Gallery in Rome (oil on panel, 169 x 67 cm, inv. 326). It was aquired in 1611 and bears the same inscription as effigy of Katarzyna Telniczanka as Venus. The woman has features of Hedwig's cousin Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), Queen of Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary. Anna was a daughter of Vladislaus II, King of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, elder brother of Sigismund I, and his third wife, Anne of Foix-Candale. On 26 May 1521 she married Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, grandson of Emperor Maximilan I, who was elevated to the title King of the Romans by his brother Emperor Charles V in 1531. On her golden hairnet embroidered with pearls there is a monogram W.A.F.I. or W.A.F. which can be interpreted as Wladislaus et Anna (parents), Ferdinandus I (husband), Wladislaus et Anna Filia (daughter of Vladislaus and Anne) or Wladislaus et Anna de Fuxio (Vladislaus and Anne of Foix). Similar monogram of her parents WA is visible on a golden pendant at her hat in her portrait at the age of 16 by Hans Maler, created in 1520 (private collection). A portrait of Anna's husband, painted by Cranach in 1548, so after her death, is in Güstrow Palace (G 2486). The register of paintings of Boguslaus Radziwill (1620-1669) from 1657 (AGAD 1/354/0/26/84), which included several paintings by Cranach, lists: "Image of the Three Cupids", "Image of the Three Goddesses", "A picture of the Emperor's face on one side and Adam and Eve on the other by Lucas Cranach", "Judith" and "Lucas Cranach's art with Venus and Cupid". In his "Thoughts on painting" (Considerazioni sulla pittura), written between 1617 and 1621 in Rome, Italian physician and art collector Giulio Mancini (1559-1630), claimed that "lascivious paintings in similar places where a man stays with his wife are appropriate, because such a view is very beneficial for excitement and for making beautiful, healthy and vigorous sons" (pitture lascive in simil luoghi dove si trattenga con sua consorte sono a proposito, perché simil veduta giova assai all’eccitamento et al far figli belli, sani e gagliardi) (partially after "Ksiądz Stanisław Orzechowski i swawolne dziewczęta" by Marcin Fabiański, p. 60). 
Portrait of Crown Princess Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) as Venus and Cupid by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.
Portrait of Crown Princess Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) as Judith with the Head of Holofernes by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1531, Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.
Portrait of Queen Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547) as Venus with Cupid stealing honey by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1531, Borghese Gallery in Rome.
Portraits of Zofia Szydłowiecka by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop
On April 4, 1528, John Zapolya, elected King of Hungary, came to Tarnów in the company of Grand Crown Hetman and voivode of Ruthenia, Jan Amor Tarnowski (1488-1561). As a result of the double election and the lost battle with Archduke Ferdinand I near Tokaj, Zapolya sought a safe haven - first in Transylvania and then in Poland.
For the duration of his stay, Hetman Tarnowski made the entire castle and the city of Tarnów at his disposal, for which, he was severely reprimanded by Ferdinand I. To this, in a letter dated in Sandomierz on 25 July 1528, he was to reply that the holy laws of friendship did not allow him to refuse hospitality. From April to September 1528, the city became, under the patronage of Queen Bona, the seat of the Hungarian king and the center of activities aimed at restoring his throne. The Queen did it secretly so as not to reveal her role to the Habsburg agents. Zapolya sent ambassadors to Bavaria, King Francis I of France, the Pope and a number of other states. Finally he approached the Ottoman Porte and returned to Hungary on October 2, 1528. He expressed his gratitude for the hospitality of the people of Tarnów by granting a trade privilege and founding a beautiful altar for the collegiate church, not preserved. To the Hetman he offered a mace and a golden shield, estimated at 40,000 Hungarian red zlotys (after Andrzej Niedojadło's "Goście zamku tarnowskiego" and Przemysław Mazur's "Król Jan Zápolya w Tarnowie - Tarnów 'stolicą' Węgier"). On May 8, 1530 in the royal Wawel Cathedral, in the presence of the king and queen, the bishop of Kraków, Piotr Tomicki, celebrated the wedding of sixteen-year-old Zofia Szydłowiecka and forty-two-year-old (which was then considered an advanced age) Hetman Jan Amor Tarnowski. Zofia, born in about 1514, was the eldest daughter of Krzysztof Szydłowiecki (1467-1532), Great Chancellor of the Crown and Zofia Targowicka (ca. 1490-1556) of Tarnawa coat of arms. They had 9 children, but only three daughters reached adulthood. Szydłowiecki was a political opponent of Queen Bona and supporter of the Habsburgs - in 1527 he reported to his friend Albert of Prussia, that the Queen extended her influence to almost all spheres of political life. In addition to a luxurious lifestyle, for which he earned the name of the Polish Lucullus among his contemporaries, he was a patron of art and science and collected illuminated codices. Erasmus of Rotterdam dedicated his work "Lingua" to him, published in Basel in 1525. In 1530 the Crown Chancellor thanked to Jan Dantyszek for the portrait of Hernán Cortés that he sent to him, adding that the man's deeds are known to him ex libro notationum received as a gift from Ferdinand of Austria. After his death in 1532, Jan Amor Tarnowski, become the guardian of his younger daughters. In 1519, when his second daughter Krystyna Katarzyna, future duchess of Ziębice-Oleśnica was born, Krzysztof Szydłowiecki commissioned a votive painting, most likely, for the Collegiate Church of St. Martin in Opatów, where he also offered a portrait of Beatrice of Naples as Madonna and Child by Timoteo Viti or Lucas Cranach the Elder. This painting, attributed to Master Georgius, a painter apparently of Bohemian origin, was later in the collection of count Zdzisław Tarnowski in Kraków, now in the National Museum in Kraków (tempera and gold on wood, 60.5 x 50 cm, MNK I-986). It shows the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and the founder kneeling and looking at the Virgin. His effigy, armour and attire are very similar to these visible in the miniature from the Liber geneseos illustris familiae Schidloviciae (The genealogical book of the Szydłowieckis) in the Kórnik Library, created by Stanisław Samostrzelnik in 1532. The effigy of Saint Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary, the protector of pregnant women and patron saint of families and children, on the right is very similar to the portrait of Zofia Szydłowiecka née Goździkowska of Łabędź (Swan) coat of arms, mother of Krzysztof in the same Liber geneseos illustris familiae Schidloviciae. Also face features of Saint Anne are very similar to effigies of sons of Zofia Goździkowska - from the bronze tomb monument of Krzysztof Szydłowiecki in the Collegiate Church in Opatów, attributed to Bernardino Zanobi de Gianotis and marble tombstone of Mikołaj Stanisław Szydłowiecki (1480-1532) in Szydłowiec, created by Bartolommeo Berrecci or workshop, both from about 1532. Consequently the woman depicted as the Virgin must be Zofia Targowicka, wife of Krzysztof Szydłowiecki. A similar woman to the effigy of the Virgin from Szydłowiecki's votive painting was depicted as Madonna and as Venus in two small paintings, both by Lucas Cranach, his son or workshop. The image of Venus, today in private collection (wood, 42 x 27 cm), had been in the collection of Munich art dealer A.S. Drey, before being acquired by the Mogmar Art Foundation in New York in 1936. It is similar to effigies of Beata Kościelecka and Margaret of Brandenburg (1511-1577), Duchess of Pomerania as Venus, therefore should be dated to around 1530, when Zofia Szydłowiecka, the eldest daughter of Krzysztof was about to get married. The Madonna with similar face was purchased from Monsignor J. Shine on April 1954 by the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin (transferred to linen, attached to plywood, 72.3 x 49.5 cm, NGI.1278). A miniature tondo from the collection of Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon de Fabregoules (1746-1836), offered to the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence by his sons in 1860 (wood, 14 cm, inv. 343), shows her in a dress and pose similar to that of Queen Bona in a miniature sold at Hôtel Drouot in Paris on October 30, 1942. This miniature was stolen in 1963, while according to the 1900 guide her hat and dress were red ("Musée d'Aix, Bouches-du-Rhône: le musée Granet" by Henri Pontier, p. 109), a typical colour of the Polish nobility. The same woman was also depicted as Judith with the head of Holofernes in a painting by workshop Lucas Cranach the Elder, similar to the portrait of Queen Bona in Vienna and in Stuttgart. This painting was acquired by William Delafield in 1857 and was sold in London in 1870 (wood, 39.7 x 26.7 cm). Her face is very similar to the portrait of Krzysztof Szydłowiecki in the Liber geneseos illustris familiae Schidloviciae. If the portrait as Judith was a political statement of support of the Queen's policies and not a whim of a young girl willing to emulate the Queen, this will add a further explanation to a series of caricature portraits of this girl in the arms of an ugly, old man. One of the best of these caricature portraits is in the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf (wood, 38.8 x 25.7, M 2248). Before 1860 it was in the collection of Count August von Spee (1813-1882) from an old Rhenish noble family from the Archdiocese of Cologne, while the Archbishop of Cologne was one of the Electors of the Holy Roman Empire. On 5 January 1531 Ferdinand of Austria had been elected the King of the Romans and so the legitimate successor of the reigning Emperor, Charles V, who was crowned as Holy Roman Emperor in 1530. A workshop copy of this painting from the collection of Baron Samuel von Brukenthal (1721-1803), a personal advisor of Empress Maria Theresa, is in the Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu, Transylvania (wood, 37.4 x 27.6 cm, inv. 218). Brukenthal came from Transylvanian Saxon lesser nobility, while the Saxons were partisans of Ferdinand of Austria and supported the House of Habsburg against John Zapolya. Several other copies of this composition exist. The girl was also depicted in another version of the scene, kissing the old man, in the National Gallery in Prague (wood, 38.1 x 25.1 cm, O 455). It was bequeathed by Dr. Jan Kanka in 1866 and its earlier history is unknown. This work of fairly high standard, may have been produced by the master himself. On 24 October 1526 the Bohemian Diet elected Ferdinand King of Bohemia under conditions of confirming traditional privileges of the estates and also moving the Habsburg court to Prague. We can assume with high probability that the paintings were commissioned by partisans of Ferdinand I or even by himself, dissatisfied that the eldest daughter of Szydłowiecki joined the camp of his opponent, "a great enemy of the king of Rome" Queen Bona (as later reported an anonymous Habsburg agent at the Polish court in an encrypted message). It is possible that the painting "A woman courted by the old man", mentioned in the register of paintings of Boguslaus Radziwill (1620-1669) from 1657 (AGAD 1/354/0/26/84), where there were several paintings by Cranach, was another version or a copy of one of these two compositions. She was also depicted in another painting by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder from the early 1530s, in guise of Lucretia, legendary heroine of ancient Rome, just before she commits suicide, now in the Historical Museum in Regensburg (wood, 62 x 41 cm, LG 14). The painting was purchased from the Swiss art market by Hermann Göring in 1942. Seized by the Allies after the World War II, it was acquired by the Federal Republic of Germany. Her splendid gown, open at the front and revealing her naked chest, is similar to those visible in the miniatures of Barbara Tarnowska née Szydłowiecka and Anna Szydłowiecka née Tęczyńska from the mentioned Liber geneseos. The castle behind on a fantastic rock is undoubtedly one of the Tarnowski mansions in mythical disguise, possibly the favorite residence of Jan Amor Tarnowski in Wiewiórka near Dębica, who died there in 1561. This cannot be confirmed with certainty because the opulent residence in Wiewiórka was almost completely destroyed and no confirmed view of the castle preserved. This defensive manor on a hill surrounded by a moat, had at least one tower and a drawbridge, as well as barrel vaulted cellars, which preserved. Many important political and cultural figures of 16th-century Poland visited the court in Wiewiórka, and in 1556 a meeting of the hetman's supporters was held there, during which postulates of religious reforms for the next Sejm were drafted, including, among others, the marriage of priests. Very little is known about Tarnowski's artistic patronage in the field of painting, as well as his painted effigies created during his lifetime. He was undoubtedly represented in the painting depicting the Battle of Orsha (1514), now in the National Museum in Warsaw (inv. MP 2475), in which he participated. According to Zdzisław Żygulski (1921-2015), he was probably depicted among the officers of the heavy armoured cavalry reaching dry land - the knight on the left, wearing a purple toque over a red bonnet (after "The Battle of Orsha: An Explication of the Arms ...", p. 120). This painting is currently attributed to Hans Krell and shows strong influences from Cranach's style. It is considered to have been painted at least ten years after the event, so the painter must have based the effigy of Tarnowski on his earlier portraits, probably also created by Cranach, his workshop or a follower. 
Virgin and Child with Saint Anne with portraits of Krzysztof Szydłowiecki, his wife Zofia Targowicka and mother Zofia Goździkowska by Master Georgius, 1519, National Museum in Kraków.
Portrait of Zofia Szydłowiecka (1514-1551) as Venus and Cupid by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger or workshop, ca. 1530, Private collection.
Portrait of Zofia Szydłowiecka (1514-1551) as Madonna and Child with Infant John the Baptist and angels by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger or workshop, ca. 1530 or after, National Gallery of Ireland.
Miniature portrait of Zofia Szydłowiecka (1514-1551) by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence, stolen. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Zofia Szydłowiecka (1514-1551) as Judith with the head of Holofernes by workshop Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, Private collection.
Ill-Matched Couple, caricature of Zofia Szydłowiecka (1514-1551) and her husband by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, ca. 1530, Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf.
Ill-Matched Couple, caricature of Zofia Szydłowiecka (1514-1551) and her husband by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu.
Ill-Matched Couple, caricature of Zofia Szydłowiecka (1514-1551) and her husband by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, ca. 1530, National Gallery in Prague.
Portrait of Zofia Szydłowiecka (1514-1551) as Lucretia by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1532, Historical Museum in Regensburg.
Jan Amor Tarnowski (1488-1561) among the officers of the heavy armoured cavalry reaching dry land, fragment of the Battle of Orsha (1514), by workshop or follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder (Hans Krell?), ca. 1525-1535, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of Krzysztof Szydłowiecki, Great Chancellor of the Crown by Titian
"I am a great admirer of beautiful and artistic paintings" (Ego multum delector in pulcra et artificiosa pictura), wrote Krzysztof Szydłowiecki (1467-1532), Vice-Chancellor of the Crown, in a letter of May 17, 1512 from Toruń to Fabian Luzjański, Bishop of Warmia. He asked for help in obtaining from Flanders via Gdańsk the painting of the Madonna Monstra te esse Matrem ("Show thyself a mother").
From 1496 Szydłowiecki was a courtier of Prince Sigismund and from 1505 he was a marshal of the prince's court. From the moment of the coronation of Sigismund I, Krzysztof occupied various important positions and he become the Great Chancellor of the Crown in 1515. He managed Polish foreign policy during the reign of Sigismund I. In 1515, together with Bishop Piotr Tomicki, he developed an agreement with the Habsburgs, which was signed during the Congress of Vienna and Emperor Maximilian I, as a sign of respect and gratitude, granted Krzysztof the title of baron of the Holy Roman Empire (he rejected the princely title offered to him by the emperor). Thanks to numerous grants, as well as bribes (from Emperor Maximilian alone, he accepted 80,000 ducats for supporting Austria at the congress of monarchs in Vienna, and also took money from the monarch of Hungary, John Zapolya, and Francis I of France; the city of Gdańsk also paid for the protection), he made a huge fortune. The chancellor died on December 30 , 1532 in Kraków, and was buried in the collegiate church in Opatów. His tombstone, decorated with a bronze bas-relief, was made in the workshop of Bartolommeo Berrecci and Giovanni Cini in Kraków. He ordered the tombstone for himself during his lifetime and after his death, in about 1536, on the initiative of his son-in-law Jan Amor Tarnowski (1488-1561), it was enlarged by adding a bas-relief depicting relatives and friends moved by the news of the chancellor's death, on the pedestal of the monument (so-called Opatów Lamentation). Szydłowiecki imitated the luxurious lifestyle of Prince Sigismund, who in 1501 ordered several illuminated prayer books (or one book adorned by several illuminators), and the following year bought paintings with views of different buildings from Italian merchant (Ilalo qui picturas edificiorum dno principi dedit 1/2 fl.). Despite being a political opponent of Queen Bona, he followed the example of the queen, who at her court employed Italian painters and imported paintings from Italy for her vast collection (after "Bona Sforza" by Maria Bogucka, p. 105). His splendid castle on the island in Ćmielów, rebuilt in renaissance style between 1519-1531, was destroyed in 1657 by Swedish and Transylvanian forces, which also massacred many noble families who had taken refuge there (after "Encyklopedia powszechna", Volume 5, p. 755). This veritable Apocalypse, known as the Deluge (1655-1660), as well as other invasions and wars, left very little trace of the chancellor's patronage. Before 1509, Krzysztof's brother Jakub Szydłowiecki, Grand Treasurer of the Crown, brought from Flanders a "masterly made" painting of the Madonna (after "Złoty widnokrąg" by Michał Walicki, p. 108). In 1515 the chancellor offered to the Collegiate Church in Opatów a painting of Madonna and Child (disguised portrait of Beatrice of Naples, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia) by Timoteo Viti or Lucas Cranach the Elder, and in 1519 Master Georgius created a portrait of Krzysztof as a donor (National Museum in Kraków, MNK I-986). More than a decade later, in 1530, the chancellor received from Jan Dantyszek the portrait of Hernán Cortés, most likely by Titian, and a portrait of the chancellor was mentioned in the vault of the Nesvizh Castle in the 17th century. Most likely in Venice, in 1515 or after, Krzysztof acquired Legenda aurea sive Flores sanctorum by Jacobus de Voragine for his library (a printed bookplate with his coat of arms is on the back of the front cover), today in the National Library of Poland (Rps BOZ 11). It was created in the 1480s for Francesco Vendramini from Venice and illuminated by miniaturists active in Padua and Venice. In 1511, one of Poland's finest Renaissance painters and miniaturists, Stanisław Samostrzelnik, who also worked for the royal court, became his court painter (pictori nostro) and chaplain, and in this capacity he accompanied Szydłowiecki on his travels. Stanisław probably stayed with his patron in 1514 in Buda, where he became familiar with the Italian Renaissance. He decorated documents issued by the chancellor, such as the privilege of Opatów of August 26, 1519, with the portrait of the chancellor as a kneeling donor, wearing a fine gold-engraved armor and a crimson tunic. Shortly before the chancellor's death, he began working on a series of miniature portraits of members of the Szydłowiecki family, known as Liber geneseos illustris familiae Schidloviciae (1531-1532, Kórnik Library), including the effigy of the chancellor in another beautiful armour decorated with gold and crimson tunic. Earlier, in 1524, Samostrzelnik illuminated the Prayer Book of Szydłowiecki, adorned with chancellor's coat of arms in many miniatures. It is dated (Anno Do. MDXXIIII) and has a painted bookplate. The manuscript was disassembled at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Probably a Milanese antiquarian cut out miniatures from it, some of which, in the number of ten, were acquired by Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan (F 277 inf. no 1-10), while the manuscript, divided into two parts and acquired by the City of Milan from the library of the princes of Trivulzio, is kept in the Archivio Storico Civico (Cod. no 459, Cod. no 460). One miniature, the Flight into Egypt, is largely inspired by a painting by Hans Suess von Kulmbach, created in 1511 for the Skałka Monastery in Kraków. The others could derive from paintings in the Szydłowiecki collection or the royal collection - the Massacre of the Innocents, reminiscent of Flemish paintings and the Madonna and Child, in a manner that brings to mind the Italian paintings. The prayer book is one of the two important polonica of the Jagiellonian period in Milan. The other is also in Ambrosiana, in a part dedicated to art collection - Pinacoteca. It is a sapphire intaglio with bust of Queen Bona Sforza, attributed to Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio (inventory number 284). If not for the Latin inscription on her dress (BONA SPHOR • REG • POLO •), it would be considered to represent an Italian princess, which is generally correct. The exact provenance of these two works of art is unknown, so we cannot rule out the possibility that they were diplomatic gifts to Francesco II Sforza (1495-1535), the last member of the Sforza family to rule Milan, and Bona's relative. The ruling houses of Europe exchanged such gifts and effigies at that time, including the portraits of important notables. In the same Ambrosiana in Milan there is also a portrait of an old man in armour by Titian (oil on canvas, 65 x 58 cm, inventory number 284). It is dated around 1530, the time when Chancellor Szydłowiecki received a portrait of the Spanish conquistador, most likely by Titian. The work arrives in Ambrosiana together with the nucleus donated in 1618 by Cardinal Federico Borromeo who in the Musaeum reports that "Titian would have liked to paint his father like this, in armour, to jokingly celebrate the nobility he said he had achieved with such an offspring" (Tiziano avrebbe voluto dipingere suo padre così corazzato, per celebrare scherzosamente la nobiltà che egli diceva di aver conseguito con una tale prole). "Jokingly", because the old man's truly lordly attire and pose do not suit the simple clerk that was Titian's father, Gregorio Vecellio. He held various minor posts in Cadore from 1495 to 1527, including that of an officer in the local militia and, from 1525, superintendent of mines. We should doubt that anyone really wanted to joke around with their father like that, especially a respected painter such as Titian, thus this suggestion has not convinced art historians of the identity of the model. The man in the portrait wears costly armour etched with gold and a crimson velvet tunic, known as a brigandine, a garment usually made of thick fabric, lined inside with small oblong steel plates riveted to the fabric. Very similar velvet brigandine in the Royal Armoury (Livrustkammaren) in Stockholm (LRK 22285/LRK 22286), is considered as a war booty from Warsaw (1655), just like another, larger (23167 LRK). Szydłowiecki's son-in-law, Jan Amor Tarnowski, was depicted in armour with crimson brigandine and holding a baton in a painting by circle of Jacopo Tintoretto (Private collection). The sitter in Ambrosiana painting is also holding a miltary baton, that is traditionally the sign of a field marshal or a similar high-ranking military officer. Chancellor Szydłowiecki is generally not considered an important military commander, like Tarnowski, but he held several military positions, such as the castellan of Kraków (1527-1532), who commanded the nobility of his county during a military campaign (after "Ksie̜ga rzeczy polskich" by Zygmunt Gloger, p. 153-154), and in all mentioned effigies by Samostrzelnik, as well as in his tombstone, he was portrayed like an important military officer. The age of the sitter also matches the age of the chancellor, who was 64 in 1530. Finally, the man in the portrait bears a strong resemblance to Szydłowiecki as represented in a medal by Hans Schwarz from 1526 (The State Hermitage Museum, ИМ-13497). The Chancellor's characteristic facial features, a pointed nose and protruding lower lip, are similar to those of his tombstone effigy, his portraits by Master Georgius and Samostrzelnik (Liber geneseos ...), as well as in the marble tombstone of his brother Mikołaj Stanisław (1480-1532) by Bartolommeo Berrecci or workshop, founded by Krzysztof (Saint Sigismund's church in Szydłowiec). It is not without reason that Szydłowiecki was known as the Polish Lucullus, in memory of a Roman general and statesman famous for his lavish lifestyle. One of the few paintings by Titian and his workshop that have survived in the former territories of Renaissance Sarmatia is today in Wawel Castle in Kraków, the former royal residence (oil on canvas, 74 x 115 cm, inv. ZKnW-PZS 7). It comes from the collection of Count Leon Jan Piniński (1857-1938) in Lviv, donated in 1931 and represents the Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Cecilia. Its earlier history is unknown, but Piniński, who, in addition to paintings of the Italian and especially Venetian school, also collected polonica, such as portraits of the Jagiellons now in Wawel, probably acquired them in Lviv, where many paintings from the historical collections of former Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia have survived the turbulent history. This painting is considered to be a workshop copy of a lost original, another version of which is in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan (inv. 200). Like the portrait of the "Titian's father", the Milanese copy comes from the collection of Cardinal Federico Borromeo and was acquired before 1607. The Milanese painting is dated between 1540 and 1560 and Titian (and eventually his workshop) borrowed elements from an earlier composition preserved in the Louvre (INV 742; MR 514), namely the Madonna and the pose of Saint John the Baptist. The Louvre painting is dated between around 1510 and 1525 and belonged before 1598 to the Dukes d'Este in Ferrara, relatives of Queen Bona Sforza. "In the very year of the liberation of Wawel, in 1905, Professor L. Count Piniński came up with the idea of creating a 'treasury of works of art and a reliquary of historical memorabilia, in an ancient castle, which was, in the most glorious times of our culture, the heart of all Poland'", wrote Stanisław Świerz (1886-1951), curator of Wawel, in a 1935 publication on the collections of Wawel Castle. The author adds that Piniński donated to Wawel the collection that was "the result of the lifelong efforts and sacrifices of the great donor, a collection gathered since his youth with the intention of decorating the renovated interiors of Wawel" (after "Zbiory zamku królewskiego na Wawelu w Krakowie", p. 5-6, 8). 
Portrait of Krzysztof Szydłowiecki (1467-1532), Great Chancellor of the Crown in armour with crimson brigandine and holding a baton by Titian, ca. 1530, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan.
Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Cecilia by workshop of Titian, after 1525, Wawel Royal Castle.
Portraits of Princes of Ostroh by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop
Soon after death of Constantine, Prince of Ostroh king Sigismund had to deal with the quarrel between his son and his stepmother over the fabulous inheritance. Prince Ilia took the body of his father to Kiev, where he was buried in the Chapel of Saint Stephen of the Pechersk Lavra with great splendor. Already in 1522 his father assured him the succession to the starost of Bratslav and Vinnytsia, confirmed by the privilege of the king Sigismund issued at Grodno Sejm, "on Friday before Laetare Sunday 1522".
Then Prince Ilia sent from Kiev one hundred horsemen to the Turov Castle, on which a dower of his stepmother was secured. They took the castle by force, they sealed all things in the treasury, as well as privileges and even the testament of the deceased prince, handing them over to Turov governor. Alexandra's brother, Prince Yuri Olelkovich-Slutsky (ca. 1492-1542), intervened with the king, who sent his courtier to Prince Ilia, ordering him to return the castle and to pay a dowry of his sister Sophia: "As for Princess Alexandra's daughter, she [mother] is not to give her the third part of the dowry or the trousseau; but her brothers, Prince Ilia and the son of Princess Alexandra, Prince Vasily, her daughter, and their sister to equip and pay her dowry" (royal decree issued on August 5, 1531 in Kraków). In 1523, when he was twelve years of age, Ilia's father enaged him to a five-year-old daughter of his friend George Hercules Radziwill, Anna Elizabeth (1518-1558). George Hercules obtained a dispensation from Pope Clement VII as the groom was baptized and brought up in the "Greek rite". After death of his father the young prince lived in Kraków at the royal court, where he studied Latin and Polish. In 1530, 1531 and 1533 he fought with the Tatars and between 1534-1536 he took part in the Muscovite-Lithuanian war where he commanded his own armed forces. In 1536 Radziwill demanded that Ilia fulfill the contract, he however refused to marry Anna Elizabeth or her sister Barbara, citing the lack of his own consent and because he fell in love with Beata Kościelecka, a daughter of king's mistress. In a document issued on December 20, 1537 in Kraków king Sigismund released him from this obligation. "Prince Ilia falls from one mud to another", wrote to Albert of Prussia, royal courtier Mikołaj Nipszyc (Nikolaus Nibschitz), who also very negatively characterized liberated daughters of George Hercules Radziwill, about the planned marriage of Ilia with Kościelecka. The engagement with Beata was sealed with the royal blessing on January 1, 1539, and the wedding, on February 3 of the same year, was held at the Wawel Castle, one day after the wedding of Isabella Jagiellon and John Zapolya, King of Hungary. After the wedding ceremony, a jousting tournament was organized, in which Ilia took part. The prince wore silver armor lined with black velvet, a Tatar belt and leather shoes with spurs and silver sheets. During a duel with young king Sigismund Augustus, Ilia fell from his horse and suffered severe injuries. On August 16, 1539 in Ostroh, he signed his last will in which he left his possessions to the unborn child of Beata, a daughter born three months later. By virtue of the judgment of August 1531 Princess Alexandra was granted the towns of Turov and Tarasovo in today's Belarus and Slovensko, near Vilnius. As a wealthy widow in her late 20s, she most probably lived with her stepson in Kraków and in Turov. A painting by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder dated '1531' below inscription in Latin, most probably the first approach to this subject by Cranach, shows a courtly scene of Hercules and Omphale. A young man in guise of mythical hero is flanked by two noblewomen as Omphale's ladies. Partridges, a symbol of sexual desire hangs over the heads of the women. In the myths Omphale and Hercules became lovers and they had a son. The painting is known from several versions, all by Cranach's workshop as original, likely to be by the master's hand, is considered lost. One copy was reported before 1891 in the Wiederau Castle, built between 1697 and 1705 in a village south of Leipzig by David von Fletscher, a merchant of Scotish origin, royal Polish and electoral-Saxon privy and commercial councilor. The other was owned by the Minnesota Museum of Art until 1976 (panel, 78 x 118 cm, Sotheby's New York, June 16, 1976, lot 99), and another was sold in Cologne in 1966 (panel, 80 x 119 cm, Lempertz, November, 1966, lot 27). There is also a version which was sold in June 1917 in Berlin together with a large collection of Wojciech Kolasiński (1852-1916), a minor Polish painter better known as an art restorer, collector, and antiquarian of Warsaw (Sammlung des verstorbenen herrn A. von Kolasinski - Warschau, Volume 2, item 25, pic. 31, panel, 81.3 x 118.1 cm, Sotheby's New York, January 24, 2008, lot 29). The audacious woman on the left has just put a woman's cap on the head of a god of strength dressed in a lion's skin. Her bold pose is very similar to that visible in a portrait of Beata Kościelecka, created by Bernardino Licinio just a year later. Also her face features resemble greatly other effigies of Beata. The woman on the right bears the features of Princess Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska, the young man is therefore Prince Ilia, who just returned from a glorious expedition against Tatars. Princess Alexandra, a beautiful young woman, like Queen Bona and Beata Kościelecka, also deserved to be represented in "guise" of the goddess of love - Venus. A small painting of a nude woman by Lucas Cranach the Elder, acquired by Liechtenstein collection in 2013, and sometimes considered a fake, is dated "1531" (oil on panel, 38.7 x 24.5 cm, inv. GE 2497) and the woman resemble greatly Princess Alexandra. This work predates by one year a very similar Venus in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt (panel, 37.7 x 24.5 m, inv. 1125), which was donated in 1878 by the businessman and art collector Moritz von Gontard (1826-1886) and was previously probably in the Schleinitz collection in Dresden. 
Hercules at the court of Omphale with portrait of Beata Kościelecka, Ilia, Prince of Ostroh and Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska, from the Kolasiński collection, by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1531, Private collection.
Hercules at the court of Omphale with portrait of Beata Kościelecka, Ilia, Prince of Ostroh and Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska, from Cologne, by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1531, Private collection. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Hercules at the court of Omphale with portrait of Beata Kościelecka, Ilia, Prince of Ostroh and Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska, from Minnesota Museum of Art, by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1531, Private collection.
Portrait of Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska, Princess of Ostroh nude (Venus) by Lucas Cranach the Elder or workshop, 1531, Liechtenstein Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska, Princess of Ostroh nude (Venus) by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1532, Städel Museum in Frankfurt.
Portrait of Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska by Bernardino Licinio
The number of portraits by Licinio that can be associated with Poland and Lithuania allows us to conclude that he became the favorite painter of the Polish-Lithuanian royal court in Venice in the 1530s, especially of Queen Bona, Duchess of Bari and Rossano by her own right. It seems also that portraits were commissioned in Licinio's and Cranach's workshops at the same time as some of them bear the same date (like the effigies of Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski). Fashion in the 16th century was an instrument of politics, so in portraits for German "allies" the model was depicted dressed more in German style and for Italian "allies" in Italian style, with exceptions like the portrait of Queen Bona by Cranach in Florence (Villa di Poggio Imperiale) or her portrait by Giovanni Cariani in Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum).
After death of his father in 1530 Prince of Ostroh, Constantine Vasily (1526-1608), the younger son of Grand Hetman of Lithuania, was brought up in Turov by his mother Princess Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska, who administered the lands on behalf of her minor son. On January 15, 1532, the king ordered Fyodor Sangushko (d. 1547), starost of Volodymyr and Ivan Mykhailovych Khorevitch, starost of Queen Bona in Pinsk, to be commissioners for the implementation of the agreements reached between Ilia, Constantine Vasily's elder brother, and Alexandra. In 1537 a royal privilege to trade in Tarasov was issued in her name. Unlike other children of wealthy magnates Constantine Vasily did not travel to Europe and did not study in European universities. It is believed that his education was entirely at home. In particular, Constantine Vasily was taught by a tutor well versed in Latin and his home education was quite thorough, as evidenced by his subsequent great cultural and educational activity and knowledge of other languages (apart from Ruthenian, he knew Polish and Latin). At that time, it was much more important for the sons of magnates to acquire military knowledge and skills than to master languages and arts of discourse, especially this concerned the families of border officials, whose possessions constantly suffered from Tatar attacks. As important landowners Alexandra and her son were undoubtedly frequent guests at the multicultural, itinerant royal court in Lviv, Kraków, Grodno or Vilnius, where they could also meet many Italians, like the royal architect and sculptor Bernardo Zanobi de Gianottis, called Romanus. In a letter written in Belarusian on August 25, 1539, to a trusted servant in Vilnius, Szymek Mackiewicz (Mackevičius), Queen Bona commented on the alterations in the palace's loggia to be made by master Bernardo (after "Spółka architektoniczno-rzeźbiarska Bernardina de Gianotis i Jana Cini" by Helena Kozakiewiczowa, p. 161). This would explain later contacts of Constantine Vasily with Venice. Also the ancestral nest of the family - Ostroh was a multicultural city, where, apart from orthodox Ruthenians, many Jews, Catholics and Muslim Tatars also lived (after "Konstanty Wasyl Ostrogski wobec katolicyzmu i wyznań protestanckich" by Tomasz Kempa, p. 18). In 1539, the struggle for the inheritance gained a new intensity after the death of Ilia and his wife Beata Kościelecka's entry into management of all estates. The protegee of Sigismund and Bona once accused Alexandra and her son of intending to seize all estates by force and she obtained from Sigismund a relevant decree to prevent it. In 1548 Princess Alexandra was mentioned in a letter regarding the appointment of the Kobryn archimandrite. Seven year later, in 1555, "Duchess Constantinova Ivanovitch Ostrozka, Voivodess of Trakai, Hetmaness Supreme of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Princess Alexandra Semenovna" had a case with Prince Semyon Yurievich Olshanski about mutual wrongs in the neighboring estates of Turov and Ryczowice and in 1556 she was granted the privilege to found a town on her estate of Sliedy. From February to June 1562, she conducted her own property and court affairs. She was still living in 1563 as on August 30, Duke Albert of Prussia addressed a letter to her, but on June 3, 1564, she was mentioned in the royal letter as deceased. Some researchers tend to think that it was Alexandra that was buried in Pechersk Lavra in Kiev next to her husband (after "Prince Vasyl-Kostyantyn Ostrozki ..." by Vasiliy Ulianovsky). The proud and fabulously rich Ruthenian princess, a descendant of Grand Princes of Kiev and Grand Dukes of Lithuania, could afford the splendor worthy of the Italian queen Bona and to be painted by the same painter as the queen. The young woman from a portrait by Bernardino Licinio in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (oil on panel, 69.5 x 55.9 cm, inv. Cat. 203) bear a striking resemblance to effigies of Alexandra by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, indentified by me, especially her portrait as Venus (Liechtenstein Museum in Vienna) and in the scene of Hercules and Omphale from the Kolasiński collection, both dated "1531". This portrait is dated to about 1530 and comes from the collection of an American corporate lawyer and art collector John Graver Johnson (1841-1917). The lady in a brown dress and an expensive necklace with a cross in Italian style around her neck, holds gloves in her right hand, accessories of a rich noblewoman. 
Portrait of Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska, Princess of Ostroh holding gloves by Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1531, Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Portraits of Beata Kościelecka by Lucas Cranach the Elder and Bernardino Licinio
"O Beata, adorned so rich in rare charms, You have a virtuous and honest speech, The worthy and unworthy of you still adore you, The gray-haired, though prudent, they go crazy for you" (O Beata decorata rara forma, moribus / O honesta ac modesta vultu, verbis, gestibus! / Digni simul et indigni te semper suspiciunt / Et grandaevi ac prudentes propter te desipiunt), wrote in his panegyric modeled on the hymn in honor of the Virgin Mary, entitled Prosa de Beata Kościelecka virgine in gynaeceo Bonae reginae Poloniae (On Beata Kościelecka a maiden in the household of Bona, Queen of Poland, II, XLVII), Andrzej Krzycki (1482-1537), Bishop of Płock and secretary of Queen Bona.
In 1509 when king Sigismund I was obliged to marry by the Piotrków Diet, his mistress Katarzyna Telniczanka was married to his associate Andrzej Kościelecki. The king secured her in the form of an annual salary and made Kościelecki Grand Treasurer of the Crown and starost of Oświęcim. Kościelecki, who was Polish-Lithuanian envoy in Buda between 1501-1503, was a talented and dedicated manager of royal treasury. When in 1510 a huge fire broke out in royal salt mines in Wieliczka, he and Seweryn Bethman descent into the shaft to put out the fire. Marriage with king's mistress caused a great indignation of Kościelecki's relatives, who were leaving the Senate when the treasurer appeared there. Kościelecki died in Kraków on September 6, 1515 and on October 2, 1515, after a long illness, died Queen Barbara Zapolya, first wife of Sigismund. When just few weeks after Kościelecki's death Telniczanka gave birth to her daughter Beata, meaning "blessed" (between September 6 and October 20), everybody at the court gossiped that her real father was Sigismund. Beata was raised in the royal court together with other children of the king. In 1528 when Beata was 13, Anna, Zuzanna and Katarzyna three daughters of Regina Szafraniec, eldest daughter of Telniczanka, brought a claim against Beata before the royal court concerning a house in Kraków bought by Telniczanka after 1509, a carriage, four horses and a toque embroidered with large pearls valued at 600 zlotys. Two years later Kościelecki's testament was brought before the royal court by Andrzej Tęczyński, voivode of Kraków in a dispute with Kościelecka. The painting of Venus with Cupid stealing honey by Lucas Cranach the Elder from the National Gallery of Denmark (panel, 58 x 38 cm, inv. KMSsp719, transferred in 1759 to the Danish royal collection from the Gottorp Castle) is very similar in composition to the portrait of Katarzyna Telniczanka as Venus from the Branicki Palace in Warsaw, lost during World War II. Also the woman depicted is very much alike. It bears the date 1530 on a stone in lower right corner of the painting. As Telniczanka died in 1528, it cannot be her. The same woman is also in the two other paintings by Cranach. One similar to other portraits of Telniczanka's daughters from the 1520s is in the Finnish National Gallery in Helsinki (panel, 41 x 27 cm, inv. A I 316, acquired in 1851 from the collection of future Tsar Alexander II). According to sources it is dated 1525, however the date is today almost invisible and could be also 1527 when Beata reached her legal age of 12 and could be married. The other, in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (oil on canvas, 176 x 80 cm, inv. 4759, donated in 1928 by Leon Cassel), also as Venus and Cupid, is dated 1531 on the tree trunk. It is very similar to portrait of Princess Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) and Queen Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547) as Venus from the same period. Multiple copies of this painting exist, several of which were created by Cranach's workshop, such as the painting from the Bayreuth Castle, transferred in 1812 to the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (oil on panel, 174 x 74 cm, inv. 5466). George Frederick of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1539-1603), grandson of Sophia Jagiellon (1464-1512), who resided in Kulmbach, built the first castle in Bayreuth. The other comes from the Granitz hunting lodge on Rügen, built between 1837 and 1846 for Wilhelm Malte von Putbus, Governor-general of Swedish Pomerania (transferred from wood to canvas, 170.5 x 68 cm). Another copy in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich was painted on canvas, possibly by Polish or Italian copist in the first quarter of the 17th century (176.9 x 70.5 cm, inv. 13261). The picture was secured after the World War II in Hermann Göring's collection and transferred to the Bavarian State Painting Collections in 1961. Version in the Museum of Art and History in Geneva (oil on panel, 68 x 57 cm, inv. 1874-0012), acquired in 1874 from unknown collection was cut from larger painting, which was probably damaged, as well as the painting from private collection in Vienna, sold in Prague in 2022 (oil on panel, 45 x 47.5 cm, Fine Antiques Prague, October 8, 2022, lot 4). Fragments with Cupid are in the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe (dated "1531", oil on panel, 76.5 x 27.6 cm, inv. 811), from the collection of the Margraves of Baden in Rastatt Castle, and in private collection (oil on panel, 80 x 33 cm), confiscated by the Nazis from Jacques Goudstikker in Amsterdam in 1940. Different version of this Venus with Beata's face, dated "1533", is in private collection (oil on panel, 170.8 x 69.9 cm, Christie's New York, April 19, 2007, lot 21). It also comes from Goudstikker's collection, earlier in Charles Albert de Burlet's collection in Basel. In this respect, Beata was like a 16th-century celebrity spreading her effigy throughout Renaissance Europe. Today, Photoshop and Instagram, then "mythological disguise" and Cranach's workshop, times change, but people are quite similar. The same woman is also depiced in the portrait by Bernardino Licinio from 1532 in private collection (oil on canvas, 98.1 x 82.5 cm, Christie's London, Auction 5823, July 4, 1997, lot 86), signed and dated by the artist on a postument (M·DXXXII B·LVCINII· OPVS). She is holding gloves and keeping her hand on a postument. This portrait is very similar to the effigy of royal mistress Diana di Cordona by Licinio in Dresden (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, inv. Gal.-Nr. 200). It is almost like a pendant, their poses and costumes are identical. The woman's headdress or a toque, called balzo, embroidered with gold is adorned with flowers very similar to clematis Beata. The painting comes from the Brandegee Collection in Boston (by 1918). From the 1530s noble ladies throughout Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine wanted to be depicted in the pose of a Roman lady or a courtesan from the Flavian period in their tomb monuments (e.g. monument to Barbara Tarnowska née Tęczyńska by Giovanni Maria Padovano from about 1536 in the Tarnów Cathedral), a pose similar to that known from the Venus of Urbino (portrait of Princess Isabella Jagiellon). In their portrait paintings, all wanted to be a goddess of love. 
Portrait of Beata Kościelecka (1515-1576) by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1527, Finnish National Gallery in Helsinki.
Portrait of Beata Kościelecka (1515-1576) as Venus with Cupid stealing honey by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1530, National Gallery of Denmark.
Portrait of Beata Kościelecka (1515-1576) as Venus with Cupid stealing honey by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1531, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.
Portrait of Beata Kościelecka (1515-1576), fragment of Venus with Cupid stealing honey by follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1531, Museum of Art and History in Geneva.
Portrait of Beata Kościelecka (1515-1576), fragment of Venus with Cupid stealing honey by follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1531, Private collection.
Cupid, fragment of portrait of Beata Kościelecka (1515-1576) as Venus with Cupid stealing honey by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1531, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe.
Portrait of Beata Kościelecka (1515-1576) as Venus with Cupid stealing honey by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1533, Private collection.
Portrait of Beata Kościelecka (1515-1576) by Bernardino Licinio, 1532, Private collection.
Portraits of Bona Sforza by Bernardino Licinio
"From you Poles learned elegant clothes, noble courtesy and respect for politeness, and above all, your example of sobriety freed them from drunkenness", wrote in a letter of 1539 to Queen Bona Sforza an Italian poet Pietro Aretino (1492-1556), who in 1527 settled permanently in Venice, "the seat of all vices", as he noted. His correspondence with Bona dates back at least to April 9, 1537, when the poet sent his book to the queen, commending himself to the monarch's gracious favor (after "Caraglio w Polsce" by Jerzy Wojciechowski, p. 26). The portrait of Aretino, considered to be the original by Giorgione, was purchased in December 1793 by King Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski from Stanisław Kostka Potocki for his collection in the Palace on the Isle (inventory number 402, lost). It cannot be excluded that it was sent to Poland already in the 16th century. This portrait, or another, later became part of the Potocki collection, evacuated from Poland at the beginning of World War II and exhibited in 1940 by the European Art Galleries, Inc. in New York ("For Peace and Freedom. Old masters: a collection of Polish-owned works of art ...", item 19, National Library of Poland, DŻS XIXA 3a). The painting evacuated to New York was considered a work by Titian and was a copy of Aretino's best-known portrait, now in the Pitti Palace in Florence (inv. 1912, Palatina 54). It was Aretino himself who sent the painting from Venice as a gift to Duke Cosimo I in Florence. He described it in detail in a letter addressed to Paolo Giovio (the original of the letter was sold at Sotheby's on March 16, 1971, lot 549) and in others addressed to the same duke. Was the painting from the Potocki collection a gift to Bona or to a Sarmatian educated in Venice? We will probably never know.
In 2016, a portrait of a lady holding a book attributed to Bernardino Licinio was put up for sale in Munich, where many objects from the historical royal collections of Poland-Lithuania are kept in the Ducal Residence (oil on canvas, 107 x 90 cm, Hampel Fine Art Auctions, December 7, 2016, lot 1242). According to the catalog note, the "painting is similar to many other female portraits by Licinio that he painted between 1530 and 1540". The lady holds her book in a way indicating that she is a well-educated woman and the book is clearly not a prayer book but rather a volume of poetry. Her rich costume and jewelry indicate that she is a very wealthy woman, undoubtedly a member of the ruling class. A copy, or rather another version of this painting, because the woman has positioned her head differently, is in the British Government Art Collection (oil on canvas, 108 x 91 cm, inv. 2280). The portrait was offered in 1953 by Helen Vincent (1866-1954), Viscountess d'Abernon, who probably bought it in Venice during an extended visit in 1904. The Polish provenance of the painting is also possible since the husband of the viscountess was part of the Interallied Mission to Poland in July 1920, during the Polish-Soviet War. The different color of the eyes of the model than in the Munich painting (brown in the d'Abernon painting) also indicates that it is a copy, because cheaper dyes were used to create them, as in the case of the portraits of the Emperor Charles V or portraits of Bona's daughter, Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) by the workshop of Cranach and Martin Kober. Bona's tutor Crisostomo Colonna (1460-1528), a member of the Pontano Academy, a poet from the Petrarch school, taught her Latin, history, theology, law, geography, botany, philosophy and mathematics. She in turn, who was considered a lover of Virgil and Petrarch, was the first teacher of her son Sigismund Augustus, born in 1520, hence the book. Two leopards on her bodice, denoted as symbols of strength, intelligence, bravery, justice, and valor, holding stylized S, are clearly an allusion to her family name: Sforza (from sforzare, to force), a nickname given to Muzio Attendolo in the 1380s for his strength and determination and his abilities to suddenly reverse the fortunes of battles. The whole pattern can be compared with that visible on a fountain in the Dukes' Courtyard of Castello Sforzesco in Milan, dating from the end of the 15th century. Although this costume appears to be more typical of the 1520s in Italian fashion and somewhat similar, we can see in the central female figure of the family portrait by Licinio in the British Royal Collection (inv. RCIN 402586), dated "1524" in the upper left corner (M.D.XXIII), two bands of gold fabric on her bodice and the embroidered central part are clearly inspired by German fashion of the period and recall the costume of Queen Bona in two paintings from Cranach's workshop (Villa del Poggio Imperiale and Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck), identified by me. Salome's green dress in the centre of Cranach's painting "The Banquet of Herod", dated "1533" in the upper right corner (Städel Museum, inv. 1193), as well as the portrait of a lady in a green dress and a large balzo by Bartolomeo Veneto, dated "1530" in the upper left corner (Timken Museum of Art, inv. 1979:003), prove that such a fashion was still very much in vogue in the early 1530s. Queen Bona's ties to the Republic of Venice are so manifold on many levels, from art, music, architecture, commerce to finance, that it would be difficult to list them in a single paragraph. Notables of the Republic must have received several portraits of such an important ruler, who also visited Venice in 1556. However, today no portrait of Bona Sforza can be found in Venice. All have probably been long forgotten, sold or perhaps even destroyed. Besides the great resemblance to the well-known effigies of the queen from her later life, in particular the famous miniature from the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger made in Wittenberg (Czartoryski Museum, XII-537), also the family resemblance with the effigies of notable duchesses of Milan, ancestors of the queen, like Bianca Maria Visconti (1425-1468) from her marble profile by circle of Gian Cristoforo Romano and Bona Maria of Savoy (1449-1503) from her portrait of the Lombard painter (both at the Sforzesco Castle in Milan), should be noted. Portrait of a seated old woman, which was before 1917 in the collection of Wojciech Kolasiński in Warsaw, was attributed to Lorenzo Lotto (oil on canvas, 107 x 82 cm, sold in June 1917 in Berlin, "Sammlung des verstorbenen herrn A. von Kolasinski - Warschau", Volume 2, item 185). The style of this painting is nevertheless very similar to the effigy of Stanisław Oleśnicki (York Art Gallery, YORAG : 738), identified by me, and portrait of a woman in a black dress (Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, inv. 303), both by Bernardino Licinio. Prior history of this painting is unfortunately unknown. If Kolasiński acquired the painting in Poland, which is very likely, the old woman holding a book was most probably a member of the court of Queen Bona. It is also worth mentioning that two splendid portraits of two Italian poets, considered the founders of Italian literature: Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) and Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), are now in Kraków. The oldest confirmed provenance of these two paintings is the Temple of the Sibyl in Puławy, also known as the Temple of Memory, opened in 1801, a museum created by Izabela Czartoryska (1746-1835). They are mentioned in the 1828 catalogue of the Czartoryski collection (Poczet pamiątek zachowanych w Domu Gotyckim w Puławach), under the numbers 424 and 426. The portrait of Dante is close to the style of Andrea del Sarto, a Florentine painter, as is the portrait of a lady in French costume, perhaps Madeleine de La Tour d'Auvergne (1498-1519), Duchess of Urbino, painted around 1518 (Cleveland Museum of Art, inv. 1944.92) or the Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist in the Wilanów Palace in Warsaw (Wil.1537). It also resembles the portrait of a halberdier (Francesco Guardi?) by Pontormo, Andrea's pupil, who initially followed his style (Getty Center, 89.PA.49). The National Art Gallery in Lviv houses a portrait of a lady with a book of verses by Petrarch (petrarchino), which probably comes from the Potocki collection (oil on canvas, 52.5 x 39.3, inv. Ж-118). It is perhaps a studio copy of a painting currently in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (inv. 1890 / 783), painted around 1528 by Andrea del Sarto. The original of the portrait of Petrarch was probably also created in Florence and a similar portrait was sold with attribution to the 16th-century Florentine school (Sotheby's New York, June 11, 2020, lot 21), however the style more closely resembles that of Bernardino Licinio, in particular the portrait of Elisabeth (1539-1582), Princess of Ostroh (Halszka Ostrogska) and her suitor, identified by me (Belgravia Auction Gallery in Mosta, December 9, 2023, lot 512), also thought to be the work of a 17th-century copyist. Both paintings of Italian poets do not have original frames and were framed in the late 18th or early 19th century, indicating that the original frames were removed at some point, for example to facilitate transportation. This indicates that the paintings were probably evacuated from their original location to preserve them from destruction and looting during the Deluge or the Great Northern War, or that more valuable frames (concerning the material, usually gilded wood) were looted or sold, while the paintings were preserved. They testify to the admiration for Italian poetry, even when Sarmatia ceased to exist. Since Czartoryskis acquired many valuable souvenirs from destroyed Poland-Lithuania, it is quite possible that the portraits originally belonged to a magnate or even to the royal collection and were commissioned in Italy and transported to Poland-Lithuania already in the 16th century. 
Portrait of Bona Sforza d'Aragona (1494-1557), Queen of Poland holding a book by Bernardino Licinio, 1530s, Private collection.
Portrait of Bona Sforza d'Aragona (1494-1557), Queen of Poland holding a book by Bernardino Licinio, 1530s, Government Art Collection, UK.
Portrait of a seated old woman from the Kolasiński collection by Bernardino Licinio, second quarter of the 16th century, Private collection, lost.
Portrait of Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) by Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo or circle, 1520s, Czartoryski Museum.
Portrait of Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) by workshop or follower of Bernardino Licinio, second quarter of the 16th century, Czartoryski Museum.
Portrait of a lady with a book of Petrarch's rhyme by circle or follower of Andrea del Sarto, ca. 1528, Lviv National Art Gallery.
Portrait of Pietro Aretino (1492-1556) from the Potocki collection by Titian or workshop, ca. 1545, Private collection. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portraits of Bona Sforza by Giovanni Cariani
"The Queen had a special affinity for music, jewelry and textiles. To satisfy her tastes, she brought artists from Italy. The possibilities of Bona's patronage are well illustrated by the example of her boys' choir, which was regularly renewed with boys from Italy not affected by the mutation" (after "Caraglio w Polsce" by Jerzy Wojciechowski, p. 26). She also sent boys from Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia to train in Italy. In February 1541, the Polish ambassador Jan Ocieski (1501-1563), visiting the castle in Bari, noted the progress made by some "Polish boys" who had been sent by Queen Bona to her duchy to learn to sing and play the lute (Pueri Poloni videntur musicae operam dare, nam et cantu et cithararum pulsatione bene profecisse indicantur, after "A Companion to the Renaissance in Southern Italy (1350-1600)", edited by Bianca de Divitiis, p. 631).
From 1524, after death of her mother, Bona was also Duchess of Bari and Rossano by her own right. Throughout her life she dressed in Italian style and purchased in Italy pearl embroidered velvets, thin Florentine cloths, intricate Venetian chains and ornaments. She also received garments from Italian Princes, like in 1523, when Isabella d'Este (1474-1539), Marchioness of Mantua and a leader of fashion at that time, sent to Bona silk and golden caps in return for sable skins. Two years later, the Marchioness also sent six caps and four pairs of fashionable stockings. In a letter from Kraków of July 20, 1527 Bona expressed her gratitude to Isabella's daughter Eleonora Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino for beautiful caps she has sent her. Jewish merchant from Kraków, Aleksander Levi sold sable skins to Federico II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, in return for which he collected gold cloth, fabrics woven with silver and silk from Venice. The queen received some of these expensive materials as a gift from the duke. Valuable beaver skins, horses, falcons and hunting dogs, sought after abroad, were delivered to Italy from Poland, and once even two camels from the royal zoo were sent as a gift to Cardinal Ippolito I d'Este (after "Królowa Bona ..." by Władysław Pociecha, p. 294). In the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna there is a portrait of a woman in a striped dress holding a fan, dated around 1530-1535 and attributed to Giovanni Cariani (oil on canvas, 96 x 77 cm, GG 355). The painting was added to the gallery in 1864 from the storage in the Upper Belvedere, where it was considered a work by Palma Vecchio (E. 322). The Imperial Picture Gallery was transferred from the Imperial Stables to the Belvedere in 1776, so the painting most likely comes from the old collections of the Habsburgs, relatives of Sigismund I, who received and collected the effigies of notable contemporary and former rulers of Europe. Another version of this painting, also attributed to Cariani, is in the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris (oil on canvas, 73 x 57 cm, inv. 670). The damaged lower part of this painting was repaired by adding a piece from another painting depicting a cushion on a carpet. Around that time (i.e. early 1530s) Cariani also created a series of portraits of another important Italian, but not Venetian, Renaissance woman - Catherine de' Medici (1519-1589), the so-called Violante portraits with letter V, including two at the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest (inv. 84 and 109), all identified by me. The Queen of France undoubtedly received effigies of her Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian counterpart of Italian origin. Probably a 19th century copy of the Vienna painting was offered for sale in New York (oil on canvas, 114.3 x 96.5 cm, Newel, SKU 013551). Although the style of the costume is generally Italian, the lower part of her dress reveals Spanish inspiration - late 15th century verdugado, a hoop skirt depicted in Herod's Banquet by Pedro García de Benabarre and his workshop (National Museum of Art of Catalonia, 064060-000). Queen Bona was proud of her Aragonese origins, which were highlighted on many objects linked to the queen bearing her name, such as woodcuts, medals or an antependium (veste d'altare) of green and gold silk, which was in the St. Nicholas Basilica in Bari, on the front of which was written in large silver letters: Bona Sfortia Aragonia Regina Poloniae (after "Della storia di Bari dagli antichi tempi sino all'anno 1856" by Giulio Petroni, Volume I, p. 621). In May 1543 during entry to Kraków for coronation of Elizabeth of Austria (1526-1545), the lords and knights of the Kingdom were dressed in all sorts of costumes: Polish, German, Italian, French, Hungarian, Turkish, Tatar, Spanish, Muscovy, Cossack and Venetian. The young king Sigismund Augustus was dressed in German style, probably as a courtesy for Elizabeth. Bona started to wear her distinctive outfit of a widowed elder lady most probably around 1548, after death of Sigismund I, a medal from 1546 shows her with a large décolletage. Before 1862 in the Sibyl's Temple at Puławy, which memorialized Polish history and culture, there was a "fan of Queen Bona" and inventory of Bona's belongings in Bari includes a wonderful chronometer hidden inside a fan made of bird feathers and set with jewels. The resemblance of the woman in the portraits to the Queen of Poland from her portrait by Francesco Bissolo (National Gallery in London, NG631), identified by me, from the cameo with her bust by Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 17.190.869), as well as a miniature with a portrait of the queen at an older age, perhaps from the series of Anton Boys in Vienna (Czartoryski Museum in Kraków, XII-141), is undeniable. Although in the 19th century no reliable painted effigy of Queen Bona made before her widowhood (1548) was known, painters of historical scenes studied texts and other effigies, as well as preserved objects from the period. In 1874, Jan Matejko created his large composition showing the Hanging of the Sigismund bell at the Cathedral Tower in 1521 in Kraków (National Museum in Warsaw, MP 441). For the queen's costume he took inspiration from a 1524 woodcut with her portrait, the blond hair and dark eyebrows were based on the description of Bona's features. The queen holds her hand on the arm of her eldest daughter Isabella, who is holding her fan, most likely the Puławy fan, which resembles the one in the portrait by Cariani. 
Portrait of Bona Sforza d'Aragona (1494-1557), Queen of Poland holding a fan by Giovanni Cariani, 1530s, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Bona Sforza d'Aragona (1494-1557), Queen of Poland in a striped dress by Giovanni Cariani, 1530s, Musée Jacquemart-André. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portraits of Stanisław Lubomirski and Laura Effrem by Venetian painters
"For Peace and Freedom. Old masters: a collection of Polish-owned works of art, arranged by the European Art Galleries, Inc., to help to maintain the exhibit of Poland at the World's Fair, New York, 1940" (National Library of Poland, DŻS XIXA 3a). This is the title of official catalogue of 77 paintings, mostly from the Łańcut Castle, displayed in the Polish Pavilion during the New York World's Fair opened on April 30, 1939. On September 1 and September 17, 1939, the Second Polish Republic was again invaded and partitioned by its neighbours. World War II begun and paintings never returned to Łańcut.
Among them were a portrait of a green-eyed nobleman attributed to Lorenzo Lotto and a portrait of a lady attributed to Paris Bordone, both holding gloves (items 20 and 23). The portraits, now in private collections, have similar dimensions and compostion, they are almost like pendants. The woman is now holding a little dog (not visible on older reproductions of the painting and probably discovered during conservation). The effigy of a man bears inscription DOMINICHO / RADISE, which was not visible before. It was most probably added after 1940 to make him close to the Radise family living in New York since about 1920, as no Dominicho or Domenico Radise is reported in sources. At the 2019 auction in New York, the portrait of the nobleman was sold with an attribution to Giovanni Cariani, also known as Giovanni Busi or Il Cariani (oil on canvas, 99.4 x 74.9 cm, Sotheby's, May 29, 2019, lot 224), while at the 2017 auction in Vienna, the painting was offered for sale with an attribution to the School of Verona (Dorotheum, December 17, 2017, lot 31). The portrait of a lady was also attributed to the School of Palma Vecchio (oil on canvas, 88 x 74.5 cm, Christie's New York, Auction 8215, June 16, 1999, lot 51) and now again to Bordone. The woman was also depicted in two other paintings from the same period, one attributed to Palma Vecchio in Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden and the other, most probably a modello or a ricordo to previous, attributed to circle of Bernardino Licinio in private collection (oil on canvas, 32.3 x 25.4 cm, Christie's London, Auction 9441, October 1, 2013, lot 516). The painting in Dresden, entitled Resting Venus, was most probably acquired for the collection of Augustus II, King of Poland (oil on canvas, 112 x 186 cm, inv. Gal.-Nr. 190). According to a bill of the picture, it was bought through the dealers Lorenzo Rossi and Andreas Philipp Kindermann in 1728 in Venice for 2000 Taleri, however since the painting is also described in inventory from 1722 it could be that it was confused with another painting of Venus attributed to Sassoferrato. The frame is adorned with king's monogram AR (Augustus Rex) and the Eagle of Poland. It cannot be excluded that it was offered to the king during his visit to the Łańcut castle in 1704 or later by members of the Lubomirski family. The version attributed to Licinio comes from the Heinemann Gallery in Munich. Renaissance-baroque Łańcut Castle was built between 1629-1641 as palazzo in fortezza (fortress palace) for Stanisław Lubomirski (1583-1649), voivode of Kraków by Italian architect Matteo Trapola on the site of previous, most probably wooden castle of the Pilecki family. Stanisław's grandfather was another Stanisław (d. 1585), son of Feliks Lubomirski, owner of the Sławkowice and Zabłocie estates. In May 1537 he married a Queen's lady-in-waiting Laura Effrem (Laura de Effremis), coming from an old family noble from Bari, related to the Carducci, Dottula, Alifio, Piscicelli and Arcamone families, belonging to the immediate circle of Isabella of Aragon, Duchess of Milan and her daughter Bona. Laura received from the queen a dowry of 1,200 zlotys and jewels worth 350 zlotys, as well as twenty cubits of damask. According to letter of Queen's secretary Stanisław Górski to a poet Klemens Janicki dated 10 June 1538 in Kraków "Italian Laura, who had married [Stanisław] Lubomirski a year ago, having come here at the Queen's request after Easter, in the house where the maids and matrons are staying, gave birth to a son" (after "Królowa Bona ..." by Władysław Pociecha, p. 89). The son died in infancy, Laura most probably died four years later in 1542 and Stanisław married Barbara Hruszowska with whom he had three children. 
Portrait of Laura Effrem with pearls in her hair by Bernardino Licinio, 1530s, Private collection.
Portrait of Laura Effrem as Resting Venus by Bernardino Licinio, 1530s, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.
Portrait of Laura Effrem from the Potocki collection by Paris Bordone, 1530s, The Schorr Collection.
Portrait of Stanisław Lubomirski (d. 1585) from the Potocki collection by Giovanni Cariani, 1530s, Private collection.
Portraits of Sigismund Augustus as a boy by circle of Titian
Hereditary and absolute monarchs of Europe had no interest whatever in preserving the memory of elective rulers of Poland-Lithuania, especially after decline of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a leading European power following the destructive Deluge (1655-1660) and its dissolution following the partitions in the late 18th century. That is why the identity of the Jagiellons, Vasas and even of king Wiśniowiecki or members of the Sobieski family in their portraits sent to European courts was lost in oblivion.
In 1529, through the intercession of queen Bona, a courtier with a stormy and dissolute life, Giovanni Silvio de Mathio (Joannes Silvius Amatus) from Palermo, called Siculus was appointed the tutor of nine years old Sigismund Augustus. He also obtained the Vitebsk parish and the Vilnius canon with Bona's support. Siculus was a doctor of both laws and lecturer of Greek at the Kraków Academy. He died at 90 years of age in about 1537. Siculus left Padua, under the rule of the Republic of Venice, for Vienna in 1497 and Kraków in about 1500. When in Poland, he frequently ordered copies of Greek texts from Aldo Manuzio (Aldus Manutius) in Venice. The first edition of the controversial work by Philostratus "Life of Apollonius of Tyana", printed in Venice between 1501 and 1504 by Manuzio, was in a private library of king Sigismund Augustus, now in Saint Petersburg (after Alodia Kawecka-Gryczowa, Biblioteka ostatniego Jagiellona, 1988, pp. 291-292). It tells the story of the first century philosopher and magician and concerns pagan magic and secret sciences. As an ardent follower of Neoplatonic ideas at the Sigismund's court and opponent of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Siculus spread rumors in Kraków that Erasmus had been put under a church curse. Platonism affirms the existence of abstract objects that the physical world is not as real or true as timeless, absolute, unchangeable ideas, as in a quote from Plato's Timaeus, which reads "this world is indeed a living being endowed with soul and intelligence." For Plato, the term ''Anima Mundi'' meant ''the animating principle of matter.'' The painting from the collection of Cardinal Mazarin, possibly originally from the French royal collection, recorded in the inventory of 1661 as a work of Titian (no. 912), shows a little boy and his tutor holding hands on a globe with figures which looks like floating souls and similar to the print Integra naturae speculum artisque imago, published in Robert Fludd's Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet ... from 1617-1618. The painting, now in the Louvre (oil on canvas, 115 x 83.3 cm, INV 127; MR 75), was seized during the Revolution from the collection of Duke Louis Hercule Timoléon de Cossé-Brissac (1734-1792). The portrait of a boy in costume and, more northern, hairstyle, typical for 1530s is mentioned for the first time in 1646 by Balthasar de Monconys as placed in the Tribuna of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (oil on panel, 58 x 44 cm, Inv. 1890, 896), where the most important antiquities and paintings from the Medici collection were displayed, and with attribution to Titian. the boy's features are very similar to those on a series of portraits from about 1521 showing Sigismund Augustus as a child, while the costume to the medal by Giovanni Padovano from 1532. Both paintings were undoubtedly commissioned by queen Bona to be sent to major European courts. The young king received a humanist education, influenced by his mother, many aspects of which were sharply criticized by the queen's opponents and the conservatives at court. They complained about the softness in directing his youth and, in addition to Amatus, attacked the young king's court chamberlain Piotr Opaliński (ca. 1480-1551), a diplomat educated in Bologna, who taught German to Sigismund Augustus and his sister Isabella. Opaliński, who, according to Giovanni Marsupino's letter to Ferdinand I dated July 29, 1543 from Kraków, was "the worst of all", restrained the young king from hunting, because it could awaken in him a tendency to cruelty, so widespread in many European countries at that time, and harden his heart. Another Habsburg supporter, priest Stanisław Górski, added in a letter to Dantyszek in 1544: "Our young king, raised by women and Italians more fearful than women themselves, does not like camps" (after "Z dworu Zygmunta Starego. (Dokończenie)" by Kazimierz Morawski, p. 547). 
Portrait of Sigismund Augustus as a boy with his tutor Giovanni Silvio de Mathio by circle of Titian, ca. 1529, Louvre Museum.
Portrait of Sigismund Augustus as a boy by circle of Titian, ca. 1532, Uffizi Gallery.
Portraits of Sigismund I the Old and Bona Sforza by Titian
In 1808 Lucien Bonaparte (1775-1840), younger brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, acquired the "Portrait of the Duchess Sforza" along with 26 other paintings from the Riccardi collection in Florence (oil on canvas, 88.9 x 75.5 cm, Sotheby's New York, January 25, 2017, lot 34). This painting was sold in London on May 1816. Also the inventory of the collection in Palazzo Medici-Riccardi in Florence from the end of the 17th century lists the painting as Titian in the quarta stanza (fourth room) and as Ritratto d'una Duchessa Sforza (Portrait of a Duchess Sforza, Carte Riccardi, Archivio di Stato, Florence, fil. 267, c. 256 r.). The 15th century Palazzo Medici-Riccardi remained the principal residence of the Medici family until 1540 when Cosimo I moved his principal residence to the Palazzo Vecchio.
The woman is dressed in a fashionable, damask, fur-lined gown and green cap, called a balzo embroidered with gold, typical for the 1530s fashion in Italy. She wears the heavy gold paternoster girdle and a long string of pearls, which were very costly. This cannot be Christina of Denmark, who in 1534 at the age of 12 became Duchess of Milan as a wife Francesco II Sforza, as her face features do not match the painting by Titian, the sitter is older and Christina was not a Sforza. The sitter's face is very similar to other known effigies of Bona Sforza, Queen of Poland, Grand Duchess of Lithuania and also Duchess of Bari and Rossano by her own right, Duchess Sforza. She particularly resembles Queen Bona from her portrait in a pink dress, probably by Francesco Bissolo (National Gallery, London, inv. NG631), identified by me. A portrait of an old man in a dark tunic by Titian in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna has identical dimensions as portrait of Duchess Sforza (oil on canvas, 88 x 75 cm, inv. GG 94) and similar composition, just as later portraits of Sigismund II Augustus and his third wife Catherine of Austria. Both are painted on canvas. The man holds his left hand on a band of the coat, showing two rings that certify the high social status. The portrait was in the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria in Brussels and was included in the Theatrum pictorium (Theatre of Painting), a catalog of 243 Italian paintings in the Archduke's collection, under number 57, one number after portrait of Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski by Bernardino Licinio (56). Both portraits entered therefore the Archduke's collection at the same time. In reference to the description of a portrait painted by Titian, published in 1648 by Carlo Ridolfi, the likeness is identified as representing the physician Gian Giacomo Bartolotti da Parma (ca. 1465-1530). Ridolfi recalls that Titian "made another [portrait] of his physician, called 'the Parma', clean-shaven in the face, with gray hair reaching half an ear" (Altrone fece del Medico suo detto il Parma, di faccia rasa, con chioma canuta à mezza orecchia, "Le maraviglie dell'arte ...", p. 152), but in the Viennese portrait the man has longer hair covering his ears. Probably in the 18th century, the painting was enlarged by adding strips of canvas on the sides and bottom, which are visible in old photographs of the painting. These changes were removed after 1888. Titian's Portrait of an Old Man in the Lviv National Art Gallery, Ukraine (oil on canvas, 94.4 x 79.8, inv. Ж-756), is stylistically very similar to the Vienna portrait, so both were probably made at the same time. This portrait fits Ridolfi's description even better because the man in the portrait has shorter hair. The Lviv portrait was donated by Professor Florian Singer in 1858 and was signed in the upper right corner: Titianus P[inxit] (after Edward Chwalewik's "Zbiory polskie ...", p. 403), which is no longer visible today. The painting is identified as an effigy of Antonio Grimani (1434-1523), Doge of Venice from 1521 to 1523, who previously served as commander of the Venetian navy. The man in the portrait does indeed resemble Grimani from his posthumous portraits by Venetian painters (compare the portrait in Attingham Park, Shropshire, inv. NT 608980 or the tondo in Palazzo Grimani di Santa Maria Formosa in Venice), however, as in the Vienna portrait, the costume does not indicate the status of the sitter - leader of the Venetian Republic, in this case. If the elected ruler of Venice could be represented in such a modest costume, the same could apply to the elected monarch of Poland-Lithuania, which in many ways resembled the Venetian Serenissima. The earliest provenance of the Lviv painting is not known, so it cannot be excluded that it came from the royal collection of Sigismund I and was a gift to the king or that he commissioned this portrait of the Venetian doge (this painting has similar dimensions and composition to the portrait of the "Duchess Sforza" and the Vienna painting). David Teniers the Younger copied the portrait in the 1650s. This miniature, painted on panel, is in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (oil on panel, 17.1 x 12.1 cm, inv. 66.266). The painting is one of a group of oil copies made by Teniers after paintings in the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm. John Churchill (1650-1722), 1st Duke of Marlborough, who began collecting for Blenheim Palace in the first decade of the 18th century, purchased 120 of these copies, which remained together at Blenheim until 1886. The sitter's face is very similar to other known effigies of King Sigismund I the Old from the 1530s, such as his funerary statue by Bartolomeo Berrecci, made between 1529-1531, or his portrait on the silver altarpiece, made in Nuremberg between 1531-1538 (Sigismund's Chapel of Wawel Cathedral). Although no originals by Titian are preserved in Poland, several old inventories mention his works. The catalogue of the Wilanów Gallery from 1834 mentions two paintings by the Venetian master: "Roman Emperor in armor, a painting of very beautiful colors. Titian" (Cesarz Rzymski w zbroi, obraz bardzo pięknego kolorytu. Tycyan) and "Portrait of the Duke of Florence in black attire and Spanish beret, small round picture. Titian" (Portret Xięcia Florenckiego w czarnym stroiu i berecie Hiszpańskim, mały okrągły obrazek. Tycyan, compare "Spis obrazów znaidujących się w galeryi i pokojach Pałacu Willanowskiego ...", p. 7, 31, items 60, 344). In 1835, Michał Hieronim Radziwiłł (1744-1831) owned in Nieborów a copy of Titian's Venus of Urbino (Portrait of Princess Isabella Jagiellon nude), two landscapes with figures and a portrait of a lady in a dark green dress (compare "Katalog galerii obrazów sławnych mistrzów z różnych szkół zebranych ..." by Antoni Blank, p. 13, 64, 83, 123, items 33, 213, 273, 439). Many of these paintings were lost in the wars and evacuations, so it is difficult to determine whether they were actually painted by Titian, but the descriptions and attributions were generally more or less accurate, as in the case of Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi mentioned in the 1834 catalogue of the Wilanów Gallery (item 91, p. 11), which is today considered to be a copy by Cesare da Sesto (1477-1523), a painter from Leonardo's circle in Milan (inv. Wil.1016). Very interesting is the mention of the portrait of the "Duke of Florence" in Spanish costume, which indicates that Titian probably painted in Venice the effigy of Cosimo I de' Medici (1519-1574), the second and last Duke of Florence from 1537 to 1569. Bishop Paolo Giovio (1483-1552), an art collector and historian who owned several portraits painted by Titian and who had lived at the court of Cosimo since 1549, praised the monarch of Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia in the following words: "we will have great help not only from all the cavalry and infantry of France, but also from King Sigismund of Poland, because of his religion and virtue, for he is accustomed to fighting successfully against the infidels, and he will lead his very strong armies into the field without any delay; so that there is no reason to doubt that victory is now almost certain" (... hauremo grandissimi aiuti non pure di tutta la caualleria & fanteria di Francia, ma anchora Gismondo re di Polonia per conto di religione & di virtu, essendo egli auezzo a combattere felicemente cótra glinfedeli, senza alcuna dimora menerà in campo i suoi fortifsimi esserciti; talche non s'ha da dubitar punto della vittoria gia quasi che certa, after "La seconda parte dell'historie del suo tempo ...", published in Florence in 1553, p. 756). "[The King of Poland] considers himself very old, but every night he sleeps with his wife. He is too robust for his age", a Venetian diplomat wrote to his superiors in 1532 (after "Sypialnia królowej Bony na Wawelu ..." by Kamil Janicki). 
Portrait of King Sigismund I the Old (1467-1548) by Titian, 1532-1538, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Queen Bona Sforza (1494-1557) by Titian, 1532-1538, Private collection.
Portrait of King Sigismund I the Old (1467-1548) by David Teniers the Younger after Titian, 1650s, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Portrait of King Sigismund I the Old (1467-1548) from the Theatrum Pictorium (57) by Jan van Troyen after Titian, 1660, Princely Court Library in Waldeck.
Portrait of Antonio Grimani (1434-1523), Doge of Venice by Titian, after 1521, Lviv National Art Gallery.
Portraits of Hedwig Jagiellon by Titian and Giovanni Cariani
"In Poland there are mountains in which the salt goes down very deep, particularly at Wieliczka and Bochnia. Here on the fifth of January, 1528, I climbed down fifty ladders in order to see for myself and there in the depths observed workers, naked because of the heat, using iron tools to dig out a most valuable hoard of salt from these inexhaustible mines, as if it had been gold and silver. I also saw, and talked with, the very beautiful, wise maiden, Hedwig, daughter of the good King Sigismund the First. She was finer than all the riches I have just mentioned, and worthy of a glorious realm", wrote in his work Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (A Description of the Northern Peoples), printed in Rome 1555, the Swedish scholar and prelate, Olaus Magnus (1490-1557), last Catholic archbishop of Uppsala, who lived the latter half of his life in exile.
On the Wawel Hill, Princess Hedwig and her court, which was almost unchanged until her departure in 1535, lived in a house, which does not exist today, built opposite the southern entrance to the cathedral, in front of the gate leading to the castle courtyard. The chamberlian of her court was Mikołaj Piotrowski, brother of Jan, the Abbot of Tyniec, the superintendent of the kitchen (praefectus culinae) was Jan Guth, called Grot, of Radwan coat of arms from Pliszczyn, the stewards were Orlik, Żegota Morski, Hincza Borowski, Andrzejek and Szczęsny and the Princess' ladies-in-waiting were: Ożarowska and Ossolińska, Anna Zopska, Morawianka, who came to Poland with Hedwig's mother, Elżbieta Długojowska, Stadnicka and Lasocka, female dwarf Dorota and Dorota the laundress and the priest, Father Aleksy. According to Jan Boner's accounts, the Princess' court cost from about 3 to 5 thousand florins annually. Hedwig, "much loved by the king of Hungary" (molto amata dal re d'Ungharia), as wrote Ercole Daissoli in 1535, frequently received gifts from her uncle John Zapolya, like in February 1527, when his envoy Joannes Statilius, brought her a cross set with diamonds, emeralds, rubies and pearls and wonderful cups for the king and the queen. When on November 1526, Zapolya was proclaimed king of Hungary, she took part in the thanksgiving Te Deum laudamus service in the Wawel cathedral. When she passed the news of the victory of her uncle over the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria to the Kraków nuns, "overcome with the frenzy of joy, they laughed and danced", reported the envoy of the Viennese court, Georg Logschau, clearly embittered. Earlier in the year, on October 10, 1526, dressed in mourning clothes, she sat in the choir stalls of Wawel Cathedral, covered with black cloth, during the exequies for the soul of the late King Louis Jagiellon, who had died in Mohacs, and in June 1532, she participated, alongside Bona and her half-sisters, in a votive mass of thanksgiving celebrated at Wawel after Sigismund I had recovered from an illness that had been plaguing him for some time (after "Królewna Jadwiga i jej książeczka do spowiedzi" by Urszula Borkowska, p. 87). At that time, the princess undoubtedly also dressed in the Italian style. Her stepmother's Italian tailor Pietro Patriarcha (Patriarca) from Bari, active at the Polish-Lithuanian court from around 1524, also worked for Hedwig (after "Działalność Włochów w Polsce ..." by Danuta Quirini-Popławska, p. 58-59). In April 1533, when Sigismund and Bona, with the young king Sigismund Augustus and their daughter Isabella Jagiellon left for Lithuania, Hedwig remained in Kraków with younger sisters Sophia, Anna and Catherine under the custody of a bishop Piotr Tomicki. During this time the new marriage projects related to the eldest daughter of the king, in which Queen Bona, the Habsburgs, her uncle king of Hungary and Duke Albert of Prussia participated vividly, grew more intense. Among the candidates were Frederick of the Palatinate (1482-1556) and Louis of Bavaria (1495-1545), supported by the Habsburgs. Both Johannes Dantiscus and Piotr Tomicki, who were engaged in marriage negotiations, thought about the latter with reluctance, believing that it is not right to wed a beautiful and healthy girl to a sick man and Frederick was ready to marry the Polish princess only for her dowry. The princess did not learn German, which may indicate that her stepmother was planning for her more distant, most probably Italian marriage. On June 13, 1533 Hedwig's mother, Queen Barbara Zapolya, the first wife of Sigismund was reburied in the recently completed Sigismund Chapel built by Italian architects and sculptors. The king, who earlier commissioned a silver altarpiece for the chapel from the best artists in Nuremberg, also commissioned a jewelled casket for his daughter (Hermitage Museum). A portrait attributed to Giovanni Cariani or Bernardino Licinio in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice (oil on canvas, 83 x 76 cm, inv. 0304/ E16), shows a young woman in a black, most probably mourning dress, from the 1530s (dated to 1533 by Federico Zeri). The woman's face is astonishingly similar to effigies of Hedwig Jagiellon, especially her portrais by Lucas Cranach the Elder as Madonna (Detroit Institute of Arts) and as Venus (Gemäldegalerie in Berlin). It was therefore a modello for a series of paintings that remained in Venice, a gift for a potential suitor in Italy or a painting that returned to the place of its origin with one of the notable Polish-Lithuanian royal guests in Venice - Queen Bona Sforza in 1556, Queen Marie Casimire in 1699 or her daughter Teresa Kunegunda Sobieska, Electress of Bavaria, who spent ten years in exile in Venice between 1705 and 1715. The painting is considered a probable counterpart to the portrait of a man in a fur from the same museum (inv. 0300/ E15, compare Codice di catalogo nazionale: 0500440177), which according to my identification represents Jan Janusz Kościelecki (1490-1545), castellan of Łęczyca. Both paintings have similar dimensions, however the composition does not match because the woman stands closer and fills almost the entire canvas. Moreover, Kościelecki's portrait is dated "1526", while the woman's black dress and hairstyle indicate the early 1530s. The same woman, in the same, although more disarranged attire, is depicted in the painting which was attributed to Palma Vecchio, then to Giovanni Cariani and now to Titian, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (oil on panel, 59.5 x 44.5 cm, inv. GG 68). It is verifiable in the Imperial gallery Vienna as far as 1720, thus it was a gift for the Habsburgs, so engaged in Princess' marriage projects. In another version, attributed to Titian, she has a pose and dress similar to those in Cariani's painting, but a brighter brown dress. This painting is also attributed to Bernardino Licinio (compare Fototeca Zeri, Numero scheda 39425). A closer look at the style of this painting indicates that the author was not Italian, as the painting closely resemble the works of the Flemish painter Gonzales Coques (1614/18-1684), who probably copied the original by Titian or Cariani. According to my identifications, Coques often worked for the Polish-Lithuanian monarchs. 
Portrait of Crown Princess Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) in a black dress by Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1533, Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice.
Portrait of Crown Princess Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) in a black dress by Titian, ca. 1533, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Crown Princess Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) in a brown dress by Gonzales Coques, second half of the 17th century after the original from about 1533, Private collection. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portraits of Diana di Cordona by Bernardino Licinio and Lucas Cranach the Elder
The portrait of an Italian lady in crimson robe by Bernardino Licinio was first recorded in the inventory of Dresden collection in 1722 (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, oil on canvas, 99 x 83 cm, inv. Gal.-Nr. 200). It is highly probable, that just as other paintings from the royal collection it was taken from Warsaw in 1720 by Augustus II the Strong. It shows a woman in her thirties wearing an elaborate costume of a noble. Her bonnet is embroidered with gold thread and adorned with flowers of gold and enamel or precious stones. The pattern on the bonnet is very much like a gentian, called Diana (Gentiana Diana), which owes its name to Roman goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, childbirth and the Moon. Diana was also one of the goddesses of night, therefore dark blue was her color. The pattern with some violet flowers and three main plants is also very similar to flowering cardoon (cardo in Italian and Spanish), exactly as in the coat of arms of the Sicilian noble family of Spanish-Catalan origin, Cardona. The motif is threfore a reference to sitter's name Diana de Cardona, better known under Italianized version of her name Diana di Cordona.
The portrait is signed and dated (M.DXXXIII / B. LYCINII. P) on the niche behind the figure and in an underlying layer of paint (P [or B]. LICINI. F [or P] / MDXXX [?]), both partly obliterated. In 1533 Sigismund I ordered his banker, Seweryn Boner, to order in Bruges for himself and his wife Bona 60 tapestries with the coats of arms of Poland, Milan and Lithuania, 26 pieces without coats of arms and 6 very expensive "figural" tapestries. It is highly possible that around that time some paintings and portraits were also commissioned. Also in the same year Queen Bona wanted to change her hereditary Rossano principality into the estate of Pietro Antonio Sanseverino, Prince of Bisignano. As a daughter of Gian Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan her Italian inheritance was very important to Bona. After an accident in 1527 she could not have more children, so she put all her faith in her only son, Sigismund Augustus, who rechaed legal age of 14 years old in 1534, for continuation of the dynasty. To facilitate his entry into adulthood, she agreed or possibly even arranged his affair with her lady-in-waiting Diana di Cordona, who was just five years younger than Bona (born in 1494). Raised by Countess Ribaldi in Rome, Diana had an abundant life and allegedly infected Sigismund Augustus with syphilis. When the young king married in 1543, she most probably left for her native Sicily. The same woman as in the Dresden portrait by Licinio was also depicted in the painting from the same pariod by Lucas Cranach the Elder in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid (oil on panel, 75 x 120 cm, inv. 115 (1986.13)). It was acquired in Berlin in 1918 from the collection of the painter Wilhelm Trübner. It's earlier history is unknown. It is possible that it was taken from Poland during the Deluge - "the elector [of Brandenburg] himself took to Prussia as a spoil, the most valuable paintings and silverware of the royal table", wrote Wawrzyniec Jan Rudawski about the looting of royal residencies in Warsaw in 1656. The painting shows Diana the Huntress as the nymph of the Sacred Spring, whose posture recalls Giorgione's and Titian's Venuses, a clear inspiration by Venetian painting. The inscription in Latin, which reads: FONTIS NYMPHA SACRI SOM: / NVM NE RVMPE QVIESCO (I am the Nymph of the Sacred Spring: Do not disturb my sleep. I am resting.), indicate that the client who ordered the painting was not speaking German, therefore could be either Queen Bona or Diana herself. Egeria, the nymph of a sacred spring, celebrated at sacred groves close to Rome, was a form of Diana. In the grove at Nemi, near Rome there was a spring, sacred to Diana. She was believed to bless men and women with offspring and to assist mothers in childbirth. Two partridges in the painting are a symbol of sexual desire as according to Aelian (Claudius Aelianus) partridges have no control over it (after Steven D. Smith's "Man and Animal in Severan Rome: The Literary Imagination of Claudius Aelianus", p. 183). 
Portrait of Diana di Cordona, mistress of king Sigismund Augustus by Bernardino Licinio, 1530s, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.
Diana di Cordona, mistress of king Sigismund Augustus as Diana the Huntress-Egeria by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1530s, Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid.
Portraits of Beatrice Roselli and Ludovico Alifio by Bernardino Licinio
After the ceremonies of the so-called Prussian Homage of Duke Albert of Prussia (1490-1568), nephew of King Sigismund I, in Kraków (April 10, 1525), several couples from the court of the King and Queen Bona got married. In May and June, at Wawel Castle, Beatrice Roselli married Gabriel Morawiec, Porzia Arcamone married Jan Trzciński, and Urszula Maciejowska married Jan Leżeński. A similar ceremony took place in September, when Katarzyna Mokrska married Jan Wrzesiński and Anna Zopska married Żegota Mokrski. During the wedding ceremonies, tournaments and knightly games were held in the courtyard, and the court presented the brides with expensive imported Italian fabrics and sweets (compare "Kim jest nieznana dama herbu Ciołek?" by Helena Kozakiewiczowa, p. 141).
The marriage of Italian women from Bona's entourage with Poles aroused great interest in court circles. Jan Zambocki reported this to his friend Jan Dantyszek, the Polish ambassador to Spain, in a letter from Kraków on September 12, 1525: "The court follows its own course, they get married and are married. Two Apulian maidens were now married: one to the son of the voivode of Rawa, the other to the glutton Morawiec" (Curia cursum suum tenet. Nubunt et nubuntur. Duae puellae Appulae traditae sunt maritis: alteram palatinides Ravensis, alteram vorax ille Morawyecz duxit). Beatrice Roselli (or de Rosellis), a noblewoman from Naples, who married the royal courtier Gabriel Morawiec of Mysłów, a great tournament player, received from the queen as a wedding gift 22 ells of yellow damask and 20 ells of grey Florentine damask, as well as a dowry of 200 zlotys (florins). The gifts for Urszula Maciejowska were similar: on May 17 of that year, Boner noted expenses for 20 ells of white damask and 18 ells of grey damask and 6 ells of black velvet edged with gold, and on June 30 for sweets. Likewise Porzia Arcamone, of the powerful and very branched Arcamone family of Greek origin, who received from the queen 20 ells of golden damask and the same amount of grey Florentine damask. Morawiec assured his wife a dower of 800 zlotys (or 400 florins) on his estates located in the Lublin province. A branch of the Rosellis lived in Bari at the beginning of the 16th century, including Raguzio, canon of Bari Cathedral, and his brother Loysio with his sons Raguzio, Niccolo and Cesare. Niccolo, probably Beatrice's brother, married Isabella de Charis, sister of the court cook of Bona. On the occasion of Beatrice's wedding, a tournament was held at the castle, in which the Tęczyński brothers took part. Beatrice's married life did not last long. In 1531, Morawiec died without an heir, having squandered his wife's dowry, and Beatrice was forced to give part of her property to Mikołaj, her husband's brother, with the consent of the king and queen. However, Bona obtained appropriate compensation (Mikołaj Morawiec promised to pay Beatrice 1,200 florins in two installments) and, adding her own money, she acquired an estate for her (after "Działalność Włochów w Polsce ..." by Danuta Quirini-Popławska, p. 30, 99). Shortly afterwards, for unknown reasons, and without prior notice to the queen, Beatrice left Poland for Ferrara, where she joined the daughters of the last King of Naples, Giulia (1492-1542) and Isabella d'Aragona (1496-1550). After the death of the princesses' mother, the Dowager Queen Isabella del Balzo in 1533, they all went to Spain to the court of Germaine of Foix (d. 1536), Vicereine of Valencia, who was married to Ferdinand of Aragon (1488-1550), Duke of Calabria, son of Isabella del Balzo. Roselli's sudden departure from Poland led to the confiscation of her property in Poland, as well as in Bari. Her estate in Poland was given by Bona, touched by Beatrice's ingratitude, to one of her distinguished courtiers. Taking advantage of her connections at the Spanish court and at the court of Ferrara, Beatrice obtained in 1538 letters of recommendation from the Emperor Charles V and from Duke Ercole II d'Este to Queen Bona, to restore her to grace and return her estates in Poland and Italy. The mediation of Doctor Valentino, who had great influence over the queen, was even resorted to. However, this was to no avail and Beatrice remained in Spain at the mercy of the princesses of Aragon (after "Królowa Bona ..." by Władysław Pociecha, p. 87, 88, 276). Was Roselli spying for the Spanish court or did she reveal secrets of Queen Bona? It is quite possible. At the same time, the situation became difficult for another of Bona's courtiers, Ludovico Masati de Alifio (Aliphia or Aliphius, 1499-1543). On 28 August 1530, Sigismund I and Bona appointed him governor of the principalities of Bari and Rossano. The governor was in conflict with the inhabitants of the principalities and in 1533 he was even prosecuted before the pontifical tribunal because of the imprisonment in Bari of the bishop of Saida in Syria - Cyprian. The open conflict with the treasurer of the Duchy of Bari, Gian Giacomo Affaitati (Giovanni Giacomo de Affatatis), provoked a strong reaction from his subordinates. In addition, Alifio lost the queen's favor and was forced to leave Italy at the end of 1534. In Poland, as he wrote to Jan Dantyszek, the court had moved to Vilnius and the mood towards him was not friendly. He believed that the envy of his enemies and false accusations had caused a change in the court's attitude towards him. He expressed hope that Dantyszek's intercession with the queen would allow him to regain the lost royal favor (after "Działalność Włochów w Polsce ..." by Danuta Quirini-Popławska, p. 98). Bona's letter to Duke Ercole II confirms that he had indeed lost her favour and had already intervened on his behalf in Ferrara, explaining the situation in the opposite way to what Bona had written. He did not exonerate himself before the queen's envoy in Italy, but came to Poland counting on the support of his friends and the lack of witnesses. In the meantime, the treasurer Affaitati, exiled by Alifio, despite his advanced age, personally went to Bona's court at the end of 1534 with his entire retinue. Arriving in Kraków, he learned that the royal couple was staying in Vilnius, where he went escorted by royal courtiers. In Vilnius, he was very kindly received by the queen and she not only approved him in his position, but also gave him generous gifts. Despite this, on his way back, Affaitati was arrested and imprisoned in the queen's castle in Pinsk (Belarus). It is possible that Alifio managed to convince the queen of the truth of his claims and make her change her mind, or perhaps a clique of Alifio's confidants acted independently. The affair of Affaitati's imprisonment was widely discussed in court circles and reflected in the correspondence of the period. The Spanish cardinal Esteban Gabriel Merino (Stefano Gabriele Merino, d. 1535), archbishop of Bari and bishop of Jaén, and five other cardinals also wrote on the subject. Even Pope Paul III Farnese intervened in defense of Affaitati with the Bishop of Kraków and Vice-Chancellor Piotr Tomicki on February 26, 1535. The Pope was informed that Affaitati had been maliciously and deceptively imprisoned by Bona, and the letter was not addressed directly to the queen, but to Tomicki. The death of the old treasurer, shortly afterwards, in mysterious circumstances, in prison in Pinsk Castle, is attributed to the machinations of Alifio, who soon left Poland permanently, first for Vienna, then for Venice, where until his death in 1543, he carried out certain diplomatic and financial tasks for Bona (after "Tryumfy i porażki ..." by Maria Bogucka, p. 103). Since both Beatrice and Ludovico fell out of favor with the queen around the same time and both sought mediation in Ferrara, the two cases were probably connected. In the Prado Museum in Madrid there is a portrait of a woman holding a book, attributed to Bernardino Licinio (oil on canvas, 98 x 70 cm, inv. P000289). The painting comes from the Spanish Royal Collection (Royal Alcázar of Madrid, 1734) and was previously considered to be the work of Paris Bordone (museum inventory of 1857, no. 693). The woman is identified as the painter's sister-in-law, Agnese, because of her resemblance to the central female figure in the portrait of Arrigo Licinio and his family, a work signed by Bernardino (Galleria Borghese in Rome, inv. 115). The resemblance is very general and the woman in the Prado painting has a darker southern complexion and hair, more typical of Naples than of the Veneto. The costume, on the other hand, is very similar and typical for Italian fashion of the 1530s. The family portrait of Arrigo Licinio is dated around 1535 and similar costumes can be seen in Licinio's portrait of Diana di Cordona (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, inv. Gal.-Nr. 200), identified by me, as well as in Parmigianino's so-called "Turkish Slave" (Galleria nazionale di Parma, inv. GN1147) or Bartolomeo Veneto's Portrait of a lady in a green dress (Timken Museum of Art, inv. 1979:003, dated "1530"). The book the woman is holding appears to be a petrarchino, a book of Petrarchan verses, similar to the one seen in the portraits of Queen Bona by Licinio, identified by me. She was therefore most likely a court lady, while her gray dress indicates that she was most likely one of the ladies of Queen Bona's court, who received gray damask as a wedding gift. The ring on the woman's finger is probably the wedding ring, so the portrait would usually be accompanied by a portrait of her husband. No such pendant is known, so the woman was probably a widow for some time before the portrait was executed. All these facts speak strongly in favor of identifying the sitter as Beatrice Roselli, who undoubtedly traveled through Venice from Kraków and then further to Spain. In the British Royal Collection there is another interesting painting by Licinio from the same period (oil on canvas, 94.7 x 79.1 cm, inv. RCIN 402790). This painting is considered a possible disguised portrait and depicts a man as the apostle Saint Paul and was first recorded in the Closet near the Chapel at Hampton Court in 1861. The cartellino in the upper left corner bears the painter's signature and the date "1534" (M.D.XXX-IIII / Bernardinj Lycinij / Opus:-). The man holds a sword in his hand, the instrument of Saint Paul's martyrdom, however this highly decorative weapon looks more like a sword of justice (gladius iustitiae), a ceremonial sword that is used to signify the supreme judicial power of a monarch. It could be compared to the sword of Sigismund the Old decorated with engraved Renaissance ornaments (Wawel Castle), originally used as a sword of justice and later for the ennoblement of knights. The man shows the passage from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians, in an open book placed on a parapet: "Therefore, putting away lying, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, because we are members of one another". Like Alifio, the man demanded truth and justice in 1534. 
Portrait of Beatrice Roselli, lady-in-waiting of Queen Bona Sforza, holding a book by Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1533, Prado Museum in Madrid.
Portrait of Ludovico Masati de Alifio (1499-1543) as Saint Paul the Apostle by Bernardino Licinio, 1534, Royal Collection.
The Fable of the Mouth of Truth with disguised portraits of Queen Bona Sforza d'Aragona and her courtiers by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder
In the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg there is an interesting painting from the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder (oil on panel, 75.5 x 117.4 cm, inv. Gm1108). It is an illustration of the medieval story of the adulterous wife - The Fable of the Mouth of Truth (Wiles of Women). The story most likely has its source in a legend according to which the Bocca della Verità (Mouth of Truth) in the Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin in Rome, an ancient Roman fountain or drain cover in the form of a marble mask, perhaps from the Temple of Hercules Victorious, would bite off the hand of any liar who puts his hand in its mouth. In the 11th century, the mask was attributed the power to pronounce oracles in the Mirabilia urbis Romae (a medieval guide for pilgrims). The German Imperial Chronicle (Kaiserchronik) of the 12th century refers to a fable according to which a statuette of Mercury (found in the waters of the Tiber) bit the hand of the dishonorable emperor Julian, known as Julian the Apostate in Christian tradition. The same statue later convinced him to renounce the Christian faith. The American folklorist Alexander Haggerty Krappe (1894-1947) has indicated possible sources from the East that use the topos of the hand-biting statue (after "La Bocca della Verità" by Christopher S. Wood, p. 69).
According to the legend depicted in the painting, a woman accused of adultery had to undergo the ordeal of the Bocca della Verità in front of her husband and a judge. She convinced her lover to come with her disguised as a jester and, at the crucial moment, he mischievously embraced her. By placing her hand in the lion's mouth, she was then able to swear that no man, except her husband and this jester, had ever touched her. Because she told the truth, the lion did not bite her hand. The fool, her disguised lover, was not taken seriously by the witnesses and remained unrecognized. The painting is considered to be a workshop work, painted by the master and his assistants or his son Hans Cranach, which indicates that there probably existed a painting painted by Cranach himself and that this one was only a copy. The painter also created another version of this composition, which comes from the collection of Countess Hardenberg, Schloss Neuhardenberg and is considered to be an earlier version painted by Cranach himself (Sotheby's London, July 8, 2015, lot 8). Unlike the Neuhardenberg painting, where the three main characters in the scene are clearly identifiable - the wife, her lover and her husband - in the Nuremberg painting, the main characters are the wife, her lover and two other women on the right, accomplices of the wife. The figure of the woman's husband is missing (although it is possible that the husband is the bearded old man on the right, behind the women). The painter changed the scene and all the characters. None of the people depicted in the two paintings are identical. He also changed the poses, costumes, and composition. The women in the Nuremberg painting wear more jewelry, as if to indicate their wealth and superior position. It seems that the person who commissioned the painting wanted to indicate the duplicity and perfidy of these three women. If the scene was a general moralistic painting, why did the painter and his workshop not borrow elements from the previous scene, especially since it was painted with the assistants? Such a practice was common and would have allowed them to complete the work more quickly. All these factors indicate that the Nuremberg painting is full of disguised portraits and that in addition to the meaning referring to the medieval legend, it also has an additional hidden meaning understandable to the people to whom this meaning was addressed. The commissioner of the painting must have been a wealthy person, because Cranach's workshop was one of the most renowned in Germany and, by referring to the Italian legend, he wanted to emphasize the duplicity of an Italian woman who dominates the scene and and looks at the viewer in a meaningful way. This is Queen Bona Sforza d'Aragona and, according to the date inscribed in the lower left corner of the painting, it was made in 1534, the year in which the imprisonment of the treasurer of the duchy of Bari Gian Giacomo Affaitati and his mysterious death in the Bona's castle in Pinsk (Belarus), upset many people in Europe. The effigy of the queen is very reminiscent of other portraits by Cranach, which I have identified, including the portrait from the Medici collection in the Villa del Poggio Imperiale in Florence (inv. 558 / 1860) or the portrait as the roman heroine Lucretia (Weiss Gallery, London in 2014). The queen's expression can be compared to that of another Lucretia by Cranach or workshop in the former royal palace in Wilanów in Warsaw (inv. Wil.1749). The German painter must have painted Bona's effigies frequently, so he had a lot of study drawings that he could draw on to create this political allegory. The use of Cranach's studio is also not accidental. The painting comes from the Picture Gallery of Mannheim Palace, where it was inventoried in 1799 under the number 570. The palace was until 1777 the main residence of the prince-electors of the Electorate of the Palatinate. When the painting was created in 1534, the prince-elector of the Palatinate was the Catholic Louis V (1478-1544), who voted in 1519 for Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and married Sibylla of Bavaria (1489-1519), daughter of Cunegonde of Austria (1465-1520), Duchess of Bavaria by her marriage to Albert IV. The Elector's brother and successor, Frederick II of the Palatinate (1482-1556), served as a general in the service of Ferdinand I of Austria, King of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, maintained friendly relations with Emperor Charles V and performed various diplomatic duties in Rome, Madrid and Paris. Those familiar with the story of Queen Bona and her struggle with the Habsburgs, who longed for the crown of Poland (the crown they would never obtain in the male line) and her duchies in southern Italy, will immediately consider the two main candidates who could inspire such a painting - Charles V or his brother Ferdinand I, both of whom were painted by Cranach (for example the portraits of Charles V in the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid and in the Wartburg-Stiftung in Eisenach or the portrait of Ferdinand I in Güstrow Castle) or their supporters like Frederick II of the Palatinate. The wife of the elected monarch, Queen of Poland, Grand Duchess of Lithuania, Lady of Ruthenia and Duchess of Bari, challenged not only the Habsburg Empire, one of the largest in history, but also male dominance, as evidenced by her effigies in the guise of female heroines such as Judith and Lucretia. She was supported in this task by her court ladies, who represented the queen's interests in the main regions of the country. They are depicted on the right side of the painting. The letter of the Habsburg envoy to the Polish-Lithuanian court Giovanni Marsupino, allows us to identify one of them, the most influential in the Crown (Poland). Although it can be considered exaggerated, it also provides a valuable insight into the court of Queen Bona: "The old king forbids her to do so, but what if this poor old king has no will of his own and cannot be relied upon: for as soon as Bona weeps before His Royal Majesty and begins to scratch her face and eyes and tear her hair, the king immediately says: Do what you want, go and order as you like! She is the king. There is no one at court. Mr. Tarnowski is in his domains; Mr. Boner is in his castles. Only one bishop of Płock [Samuel Maciejowski (1499-1550)] is staying here, as vice-chancellor. The archbishop [Piotr Gamrat (1487-1545)] and his wife are in Mazovia. Mrs. Bona rules everything. One is queen, the other pope; thus secular and spiritual interests are in good hands. Wrantz [the envoy of John Sigismund Zapolya, King of Hungary] had several secret consultations with Mrs. Bona: all of them were working towards the Turk tearing Hungary out of the hands of Your Royal Majesty, giving it to her grandson [John Sigismund Zapolya] and destroy Austria. There are honest people here who, of their own free will and without Your Royal Majesty knowing, insist that the king send to the Turk to persuade him to make peace; but Mrs. Bona prevented everything, to the great horror of the entire Senate and all the honorable people. And yet who does not know that after conquering Hungary, the Turk will also think of neighboring Poland, which he would easily conquer; this is what everyone here fears. And on this subject I could tell Your Royal Majesty strange things, what Mrs. Bona has done and what she still does in favor of the Turks and the French, against Your Royal Majesty: the Bishop of Płock says that she is a demon that cannot be driven out by fasting and prayer. Your Royal Majesty writes, she answers, and everything ends with words", reports Marsupino to Ferdinand I on August 19, 1543. He also advised the Emperor, brother of Ferdinand I, to take the Duchy of Bari and thus force Queen Bona into submission (after "Jagiellonki polskie w XVI wieku" by Alexander Przezdziecki, Volume 1, p. 139-140). The Italian agent of the Habsburgs calls Her Majesty the Queen of Poland in the mentioned letter "Mrs. Bona", as if she were a simple townswoman, which also perfectly illustrates their attitude towards her. The "archbishop's wife" is Dorota Dzierzgowska née Sobocka, wife of Jan Dzierzgowski (d. 1548), voivode of Mazovia, starost of Warsaw and Łowicz, mistress of Piotr Gamrat, archbishop of Gniezno and primate of Poland. The sources confirm that Queen Bona owned a portrait of Dorota and that she "placed this portrait next to a similar woman, the voivodess of Vilnius, and other portraits of the most distinguished persons" (after "Zbiór pamiętników historycznych o dawnej Polszcze ..." by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Volume 4, p. 36). This voivodess of Vilnius should be identified as the widowed princess Sophia Vereyska, wife of Albertas Gostautas (died 1539), the wealthiest woman of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to whom Queen Bona sent a letter addressed on June 4, 1543. So Sophia is the woman standing next to Dorota in the Nuremberg painting. The "archbishop's wife", like Queen Bona, looks at the viewer meaningfully and holds her hand on her protruding belly. The author of the concept of this painting probably wanted to suggest that she had given a child to Archbishop Gamrat. She is depicted in the same way in two other paintings: the portrait from the collection of the last elected king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski (Czartoryski Museum, inv. MNK XII-238) and the court scene Hercules at the court of Omphale by Lucas Cranach the Elder (Fondation Bemberg, inv. 1098). The jester/lover is therefore Dorota's husband, Jan Dzierzgowski, or her brother Tomasz Sobocki (d. 1547), tribune of Łęczyca, educated in Wittenberg, who thanks to her support became the Crown Cupbearer in 1539. The man in the red velvet costume lined with fur who stands behind Queen Bona should be identified as another of her favourites, Mikołaj Dzierzgowski (ca. 1490-1559), canon of Warsaw, Płock and Gniezno, Count of Dzierzgowo, educated in Padua. If the bearded old man on the right is the husband of an adulterous wife, he can be considered as King Sigismund - his age and appearance are generally similar to known effigies of the king, including the protruding lower lip. Since the queen used allegory and disguise in her struggle against male domination, the Nuremberg painting should be seen as a reaction to her actions - the virtuous heroines of biblical and Roman antiquity were confronted with the image of female duplicity. Another weapon of Queen Bona, epigrams and the pasquinade (pasquillo in Italian), was also used against her on several occasions. When Bona inspired the campaign of insults against her son's mistress Barbara Radziwill, some authors from Sigismund Augustus' circle began to attack the queen and the female influences at court. Spanish poet and lawyer Pedro Ruiz de Moros (Petrus Roysius, d. 1571), who initially praised Bona, the highness and nobility of her family and that she introduced social refinement to Poland, as well as that she is humane and charitable (although she has a snake in her coat of arms), in one malicious epigram compares the kingdom to a game of chess: Sigismund I plays the role of a too calm chess king and Bona of a lively queen. There are several other epigrams written by Roysius under fictitious names about powerful and influential women. Roysius maintains that one should not take into account the opinion of a woman, a creature less perfect than a man and that public affairs and politics definitely belong to men, not to women: "For whoever shares my opinion will not approve of your behavior; public affairs do not belong to women". The poet says that he writes about them under a fictitious name because by mentioning the real one, he would risk his life (after "Royzyusz : jego żywot i pisma" by Bronisław Kruczkiewicz, Rozprawy Wydziału Filologicznego, p. 22/62-23/63). The majority of the epigrams undoubtedly concern the queen, In Chlorim probably refers to Dzierzgowska, while another woman, whom the poet calls Maevia, was probably Sophia Vereyska. It is also worth noting that in an epigram on Queen Bona and her predecessor Queen Barbara Zapolya Roysius states that he does not understand the Sarmatian magnates, who were also not happy with Barbara, much less involved in politics than Bona (Ad Sarmatam de reginis Bona et Barbara: Barbara non placuit, placuit minus ante Latina; Nescio quid mirae, Sarmata, mentis habes?). So perhaps this has more to do with Poles complaining about everything and anything than with the dire reality of events. Some of these pasquinades were undoubtedly also financed by the Habsburgs, who eagerly granted the titles of hereditary imperial princes or counts to the Sarmatian magnates. The appointment of Jan Latalski (1463-1540), called "Bacchus" by the people because of his penchant for strong drinks, with the support of Bona as Archbishop of Poznań (1525), as well as the ever-increasing influence of the queen, irritated her secretary Andrzej Krzycki (1482-1537), who in a poem referred to the legend of the Wawel dragon and Bona's coat of arms: "When the dragon sat under Wawel, only Kraków perished, When he sat at Wawel, the homeland perishes". These voices of discontent, which are more often cited than the positive aspects of Bona's reign, should not obscure the fact that this period was one of the most prosperous in the history of Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia and we must "emphasize her great merits for the civilization of Poland, for having increased prosperity, if only on her own domains, which she administered excellently, thus increasing the resources of the Jagiellonian dynasty" (after "Z dworu Zygmunta Starego" by Kazimierz Morawski, Przegląd polski, p. 221, 535). This prosperity was undoubtedly reflected in many magnificent works of art, especially portraits, although due to numerous wars, very few of them remain in the countries once ruled by Queen Bona. Since the 19th century, Cranach has been one of the icons of German culture and for many people it is completely unimaginable that his paintings could depict anyone other than ethnic Germans or representatives of German culture. It is therefore a laugh of history that one of the most despised nations of 19th century Germany, which they wanted to annihilate on several occasions (Deluge, Partitions and Germanization, World War I, World War II), contributed to the development of their culture. Many of Cranach's works were destroyed during these invasions. 
The Fable of the Mouth of Truth (Duplicity of Women) with disguised portraits of Queen Bona Sforza d'Aragona (1494-1557) and her courtiers by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1534, Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.
Portraits of Sigismund Augustus and Sigismund the Old by Christoph Amberger
On 10-11 November 1530 a marriage treaty on behalf of ten-year-old king Sigismund II Augustus and his four-year-old cousin Elizabeth of Austria (1526-1545), eldest daughter of Anna Jagellonica, Queen of Bohemia and Hungary, was signed in Poznań. On this occasion Elizabeth's father Ferdinand I, commissioned a series of portraits of his daughter and her three-year-old brother Maximilian from his court painter Jacob Seisenegger (Mauritshuis, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum). Everybody in Europe should know who will be the future Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania and who will be the future King of Bohemia and Hungary, despite the fact that the crowns of these countries were elective. Around 1533, when Sigismund Augustus was approaching the legal age of marriage (14), and his mother Bona wanted to break off the engagement or postpone the marriage, he most probably ordered an armour for the young king of Poland, created by Jörg Seusenhofer (Wawel Royal Castle). Its breastplate and sleeves proudly display the monogram formed by interweaving capital letters "E" and "S" (Elisabetha et Sigismundus). In 1537 Seisenegger created another portrait of eleven-year-old Archduchess Elizabeth and of her brother Maximilian.
The king of Poland undeniably received a portrait of his fiancée, and she received his portrait. The portrait attributed to Christoph Amberger in the Liechtenstein Museum in Vienna was acquired in the 18th century by Joseph Wenzel I, Prince of Liechtenstein (oil on panel, 68 x 51 cm, GE 1075). It shows a young man in a costume and hairstyle from the 1530s, similar to that visible in portraits of Archduke Maximilian by Seisenegger, bronze medal with a bust of Sigismund Augustus by Giovanni Maria Mosca, created in 1532, and anonymous print from 1569 after original effigy from about 1540. The collar of his shirt is embroidered with gold thread with depiction of the dextrarum iunctio (hand in hand), highly popular in Roman art. In the Roman world marriage was considered a dextrarum iunctio, a joining of hands and "the right hand was sacred to Fides, the deity of fidelity. The clasping of the right hand was a solemn gesture of mutual fidelity and loyalty" (after Stephen D. Ricks "Dexiosis and Dextrarum Iunctio: The Sacred Handclasp in the Classical and Early Christian World", 2006, p. 432). It was a popular motif in engagement rings. Some gold rings with this symbol preserved in Poland (Wawel - third quarter of the 16th century, Konin - 1604). Face features of the young man bears strong resemblance to other portraits of Sigismund Augustus, especially his portrait by Jan van Calcar in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. "He is of medium height, gaunt, with black hair and a stringy beard, dark - complexioned and and does not seem to be very strong, but rather feeble, and therefore he could not stand great hardships and exertion and often suffers from podagra. [...] In his youth he liked to dress richly, he wore Hungarian and Italian robes of various colors, today he always wears a long robe and does not use any other color except black", described the aging king few years before his death the Papal Nuncio Giulio Ruggieri in 1568. Being involved in many affairs and holding a large number of mistresses, historians agree that the king contracted the "Italian disease", as the French called syphilis. Two years earlier, in 1565, another Ruggieri, Flavio from Bologna, reported about Polish women that "adding charms by artificial means or dyeing their hair is a great disgrace to them". Sigismund's mother Bona Sforza was described as a lovely bright blonde with black eyelashes and eyebrows. Her court as Duchess of Bari and Rossano by her own right was on the other hand full of peoples of dark complexion and of Mediterranean descent. The word for a woman in Old Polish is białogłowa, literally meaning "white head", which most probably refers to fair hair of young women (after "Lud polski, jego zwyczaje, zabobony" by Łukasz Gołębiowski, published in 1830, p. 112) or a white cap. It is possible that later in his life Sigismund was darkening his hair to look more masculine and less "feeble", while his mother and sisters were lightening the hair to look more like a "white head", his hair darkened with age, he inherited a hair anomaly from his mother, painters used cheaper dark pigments to create copies, portraits and sitters' appearance was intentionally adapted to recipients - more northern look and costume for northern Princes, more southern look and costume for southern Princes, as a part of diplomacy, or painters received just a general drawing with sitter's appearance and adjusted the details (eye and hair color) to how they imagined the sitter. Christoph Amberger, primarily a portrait painter, was active in Augsburg, a Free Imperial City. A portrait of Emperor Charles V, brother of Ferdinand I, from 1532 in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin is attributed to Amberger. Around 1548, he repaired the damaged equestrian portrait of Emperor Charles V in the presence of Titian, as the Venetian was about to leave, and with the sovereign's consent, he copied Titian's portraits of the emperor. It is believed that the idealized image of the emperor in the National Museum in Wrocław (oil on panel, 31 cm, inv. MNWr VIII-1458) was created from earlier effigies. It depicts Charles at the age of 44 (ÆTATIS. S. XXXXIIII.), so it was painted around 1544, and this portrait was previously attributed to Holbein, as confirmed by the inscription on the back (Holbein / pinxit). The portrait of Otto Henry of the Palatinate (1502-1559), grandson of Hedwig Jagiellon (1457-1502), Duchess of Bavaria, who visited Kraków at the turn of 1536 and 1537, was attributed to Amberger (State Gallery of the New Palace of Schleissheim before World War II). Before World War II in the royal Wilanów Palace in Warsaw, there was a portrait attributed to Amberger (oil on panel, 65 x 51 cm, inv. 15). It was identified as effigy of Charles the Bold (1433-1477), Duke of Burgundy due to some resemblance to his portraits and the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece, that was established in 1430 by his father Philip the Good. The man's costume however does not match the fashion of the second half of the 15th century, it is more similar to that visible in portrait by Amberger in the Liechtenstein Museum in Vienna, described above. On March 7, 1519 in Barcelona, at the chapter of the Order of the Golden Fleece, Emperor Charles V granted the order to Sigismund I and the man resembles certain effigies of the king, however, the model in Wilanów's painting bears a striking resemblance to Sigismund's nephew John of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1493-1525), son of Sophia Jagiellon (1464-1512), based on his portrait by Lucas Cranach the Elder (Wartburg-Stiftung in Eisenach, inv. M0013), also shown wearing the Order of the Golden Fleece, which he received in 1515. Since the mid-19th century, the Wilanów painting has been considered the work of Hans Holbein the Younger or Amberger (after "Straty wojenne w zbiorach malarstwa w Wilanowie" by Irena Voisé, p. 75, item 41). In 1520, John returned to Germany for Charles's coronation. Cranach and Amberger therefore had the opportunity to meet him in person, yet, this is not confirmed in the documents, so both paintings may be based on other effigies. At Wawel Castle in Kraków there is another interesting painting attributed to Christoph Amberger (oil on panel, 38.5 x 27.5 cm, ZKnW-PZS 1117). It comes from the collection of Count Leon Jan Piniński (1857-1938) in Lviv, donated in 1931. The portrait, generally dated between 1541 and 1560, shows an old man in his study, and in this respect it resembles the portrait of the Gdańsk merchant Georg Gisze, painted by Holbein (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, inv. 586). Interestingly, the man's pose was also most likely copied from Holbein's paintings, namely the portrait of a 28-year-old man, painted in 1530 (ANNO DNI / MDXXX / ÆTATIS / SVÆ 28), which was in the collection of Leopold Hirsch in London in 1912, a portrait of another 28-year-old man, painted in 1541 (ANNO · DÑI · 1541 · / · ETATIS · SVÆ · 28 ·), preserved in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (inv. GG 905) and a copy in the Galleria Regionale della Sicilia in Palermo (inv. C004263). It was also used in the portrait of a bearded man, considered to depict Antoine the Good (1489-1544), Duke of Lorraine, which in 1912 was in the John G. Johnson collection in Philadelphia. This use of a ready-made template indicates that Wawel portrait was a pure studio invention, a collage in which the painter had just inserted the face of an old man. The old man closely resembles Seweryn Boner (1486-1549), banker to King Sigismund I, from his bronze funerary sculpture made between 1532-1538 in Nuremberg by Hans Vischer (Saint Mary's Basilica in Kraków). 
Portrait of king Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) by Christoph Amberger, ca. 1534, Liechtenstein Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of John of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1493-1525) by Christoph Amberger (?), ca. 1525 or after, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw, lost during World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of an old man, most probably Seweryn Boner (1486-1549), banker of King Sigismund I, by Christoph Amberger, ca. 1541-1549, Wawel Royal Castle.
Portrait of Emperor Charles V (1500-1558), aged 44 by Christoph Amberger, ca. 1544, National Museum in Wrocław.
Portrait of King Ferdinand II of Aragon by workshop of Giovanni Cariani
In April 1518 Sigismund I married Bona Sforza d'Aragona, daughter of Isabella of Aragon, Duchess of Milan. On maternal side she was related to Ferdinand II of Aragon (1452-1516), king of Aragon and king of Castile, as the husband of Queen Isabella I, considered the de facto first king of unified Spain.
In the National Museum in Warsaw there is a "Portrait of a man with a golden chain", also identified as portrait of Louis XI, King of France from 1461 to 1483, attributed to unknown imitator of the 15th century Franco-Flemish manner (oil on canvas, 61 x 45.5 cm, inventory number M.Ob.1624 MNW). Based on the technique - oil on canvas, possible sitter and style, it is considered to be a work of a 17th century Flemish painter. The resemblance to Louis XI is however very general. This painting comes from the collection of Jakub Ksawery Aleksander Potocki (1863-1934) in Paris, bequeathed to the Museum in 1934 (after "Early Netherlandish, Dutch, Flemish and Belgian Paintings 1494–1983" by Hanna Benesz and Maria Kluk, Vol. 2, item 819). The portrait of Henry VIII, King of England, most probably by Lucas Horenbout, earlier in the collection of Leon Sapieha, was also offered by Potocki (inventory number 128165). The two portraits were therefore most likely part of historical, possibly royal collections transferred to Paris after partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The man bears great resemblence to Ferdinand II of Aragon from his portraits by Spanish painters from the 16th or 17th century (Convento de Nuestra Señora de Gracia de Madrigal de las Altas Torres and Prado Museum in Madrid, P006081) and to his portrait attributed to Michel Sittow or follower from the late 15th or early 16th century (Kunsthistorisches Museum, GG 830). His late gothic costume was "modernized" with a little ruff in nothern style, which indicate that it was created in the 1530s, like in the portrait of Joachim I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1532, Georgium in Dessau), portrait of a bearded man by Hans Cranach the Younger (1534, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum) and portrait of a man, probably of the Strauss family by Bartholomaeus Bruyn the Elder (about 1534, National Gallery in London). The style of this painting, especially the face, is close to the works by Giovanni Cariani and workshop, like the portrait of Stanislaus (1500-1524) and Janusz III (1502-1526), Dukes of Masovia (Museum of Fine Arts in Boston) and A Concert (National Gallery of Art in Washington). Consequently it is highly possible that this portrait of an important Aragonese/Spanish relative was commissioned in Venice by Queen Bona, basing on a lost original by Michel Sittow from the Polish-Lithuanian royal collection. 
Portrait of King Ferdinand II of Aragon (1452-1516) by workshop of Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1534, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portraits of Sigismund I the Old by Jan van Calcar
"And under that king there were so many excellent craftsmen and artists that it seemed that those ancient Phidias, Polykleitos and Apelles were revived in Poland, masters who in the art of painting, sculpture in clay and marble were equal in glory to the ancient artists" (Itaque tanta copia optimorum opificum, atque artificum hoc rege fuit, ut Phidiæ illi ueteres, atque Policleti, et Apelles reuixiffe in Polonia uideretur qui pingendi, fingendi, ac dolandi arte, illorum ueterum artificum gloriam adæquarent), praise the king Sigismund I in his "Ornate and copious oration at the funeral of Sigismund Jagellon, King of Poland" (Stanilai Orichouii Rhuteni Ornata et copiosa oratio habita in funere Sigismundi Iagellonis Poloniae Regis), published in Venice in 1548, the Catholic priest Stanisław Orzechowski (1513-1566) from Ruthenia (partially after "Ksiądz Stanisław Orzechowski i swawolne dziewczęta" by Marcin Fabiański, p. 44).
The portrait of an old man in a fur coat by Jan van Calcar (compare Fototeca Zeri, Numero scheda: 38836) from private collection is very similar to the effigies of king Sigismund I the Old published in Marcin Kromer's De origine et rebus gestis Polonorum from 1555 and Marcin Bielski's "Chronicle of Poland" from 1597. It bears a mysterious and ambiguous inscription in Latin: ANNO SALVTIS 1534 27 / ANNA AETATIS VERO MEAE / 40 (year of salvation 1534 27 / in the actual year of my age / 40) which, however, fit perfectly the events in Sigismund's life around the year of 1534. That year Sigismund was celebrating 27th anniversary of his coronation (24 January 1507) and his wife Bona Sforza her 40th birthday (2 February 1494), so the portrait could be a gift from her to please 67 years old Sigismund. The portrait of a 70 years old man (inscription: ANNO ATAT. SVAE * LXX * on the base of the column) with a dog attributed to Venetian school (oil on canvas, 108.6 x 91.4 cm), stylistically is very similar to the previous one. Also the depicted man is undeniably the same, just much older, or more realistic. The difference in details, like eye color might be beacuse the portraits were not taken from nature or the one with darker eyes is a copy of some other effigy. Hedwig Jagiellon, Sigismund's eldest daughter, has bright eyes in her portrait by Hans Krell from about 1537 and dark in other. The compostion is close to known portraits by Calcar, who entered Titian's Venetian studio in 1536. The painting was sold in 2009 with attribution to the circle of Leandro Bassano (1557-1622) (Christie's New York, Auction 2175, June 4, 2009, lot 83), Venetian painter who, according to my research, worked for Sigismund's daughter, Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596), and the way the dog was painted could indicate that this might be correct, however there is no similar painting of a pet attributed to Calcar, which would confirm or exclude his authorship. The columns are typical for many Calcar portraits and the old man's hat and the shape of the beard indicate the second quarter of the 16th century more than the late 16th century. They also closely resemble those in the Portrait of a gentleman with a letter by Moretto da Brescia kept at the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo in Brescia (inv. 151), generally dated around 1538. It is also possible that Bassano copied an earlier painting by Calcar. Interestingly, this portrait was also previously attributed to Moretto da Brescia (auction November 7, 1990, artnet). The king's particular liking for little doggies is confirmed by sources. When he was over thirty years old and staying at the Hungarian court of his brother in Buda from 3 October 1498 until the end of 1501, together with his courtiers, armed post, servants and his then life companion, Katarzyna Telniczanka, his favorite animal was a lap dog called "Whitey" (Bielik). The dog was the subject of his special care and he liked him so much that Whitey accompanied the prince during his stays in the bathhouse, and was even washed with soaps bought especially for him. 
Portrait of king Sigismund I the Old (1467-1548) in a fur coat by Jan van Calcar, 1534, Private collection.
Portrait of king Sigismund I the Old (1467-1548) aged 70 with his dog by Leandro Bassano after Jan van Calcar, late 16th century after original from 1537, Private collection.
Portraits of Hedwig Jagiellon as Madonna by Lucas Cranach the Elder and Lucas Cranach the Younger
"When this Lady was devoted to such a house and to a country whose language and customs are foreign to her, and therefore must experience great longing when no person is with her, who would share with her the commonness of speech; His Majesty pleads with Your Grace to instruct his nephew so that his spouse could keep people of both sexes from her countrymen who speak her language, until she learns the German language herself, and that her husband will treat her with due honor and marital love", wrote in a letter of July 9, 1536 the king Sigismund I to Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg (1490-1545), Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg asking him to intervene at the Berlin court with his daughter's marital problems.
Relations of Hedwig Jagiellon with her husband were not going well. The marriage with a Catholic did not satisfy Hedwig's mother-in-law, Elizabeth of Denmark, a devout Protestant, who converted in 1527 against the will of her husband. In July 1536, almost a year after the wedding in Kraków, Sigismund was forced to send his envoy Achacy Czema (Achaz Cema von Zehmen), castellan of Gdańsk to the cardinal. Albert of Brandenburg, prince of the Roman Church and renowned patron of the arts, was famous for his lavish lifestyle, which displeased many Protestants. In his portraits by the best German painters he and his concubines Elisabeth "Leys" Schütz from Mainz and Agnes Pless, née Strauss from Frankfurt were frequently depicted in guise of different Christian Saints. Several paintings by Lucas Cranach shows Albert as Saint Jerome. He was depicted as Saint Erasmus in a painting by Matthias Grünewald and as Saint Martin in a painting by Simon Franck. The cardinal collected more than 8,100 relics and 42 holy skeletons and wanted to repress the growing influence of the Reformation by holding far grander masses and services. For this purpose he decided to demolish two old churches and built a new representative church in a central location of his residential city of Halle, dedicated solely to the Blessed Virgin Mary (Marienkirche). The face features of Saint Erasmus from the so-called Pfirtscher Altar, which was until 1541 in the collegiate church in Halle, today in the Staatsgalerie Aschaffenburg (panel, 93.1 x 40.6 cm, inv. 6272), are identical with the portrait of cardinal Albert of Brandenburg as Saint Jerome in his study, created by Cranach in 1525, today in the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt (inv. GK 71). Among the female saints in the Pfirtscher Altar there is a counterpart panel with Saint Ursula (panel, 92.5 x 40.8 cm, inv. 6268), while two similar depictions of this saint are identified as disguised portraits of cardinal's concubine Elisabeth (Leys) Schütz (d. 1527) - one in the Grunewald hunting lodge (inv. GK I 9370), a companion painting to Saint Erasmus, which has the features of Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg in the same collection, and the other in the Stiftsmuseum Aschaffenburg (inv. 170/55), a companion to the portrait of the cardinal as Saint Martin (inv. 169/55). The letters O.M.V.I.A on Elisabeth's necklace in Grunewald painting refer to Omnia vincit amor ("Love vanquishes all)" in Virgil's tenth eclogue (cf. "Die Renaissance in Berlin ..." by Elke Anna Werner, p. 208-209). In another painting from Cranach's studio in the Staatsgalerie in Aschaffenburg, the cardinal and his concubine are depicted as Christ and the adulterous woman (inv. 6246). They can also be identified in the scene of the Lamentation of Christ from Halle Cathedral, also from the circle of Cranach and also in the Staatsgalerie in Aschaffenburg (inv. 5362), depicted as Saint Mary Magdalene and Saint Nicodemus, holding a container with ointments to embalm the body (also a traditional attribute of Saint Mary Magdalene). Cranach also worked for the electoral court in Berlin, although his visit to Berlin is not firmly confirmed in the sources. He created several portraits of electors, including effigies of Hedwig's husband and a portrait of his first wife, Magdalena of Saxony (Art Institute of Chicago, inv. 1938.310). The Lamentation of Christ in the Protestant St. Mary's Church in Berlin from the 1520s, by the workshop or circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder, contains disguised portraits of Joachim II of Brandenburg, his mother, and his sisters, according to my identification. Like earlier her mother Barbara Zapolya (Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, inv. 114 (1936.1)) and her stepmother Bona Sforza (The State Hermitage Museum, inv. ГЭ-684), Hedwig was also depicted as the Virgin in old Medieval custom. In the painting as the Nursing Madonna (Madonna lactans) in the collection of the Museum der bildenden Künste in Leipzig (panel, 49 x 33 cm, inv. 42), her features are very similar to these visible in her portrait as Judith dated 1531 in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (inv. 636A). In the painting from the Friedenstein Palace in Gotha (panel, 105.8 x 78.2 cm, inv. SG 678, recorded since 1721), the main seat of the Dukes of Saxe-Gotha, one of the Saxon duchies held by the Ernestine branch of the Wettin dynasty, her features are very similar to the portrait in Veste Coburg (inv. M.163). It is dated 1534, when the Princess was still unmarried, threfore it was most probably sent to a potential suitor in Saxony. In the paintings from the Georg Schäfer collection in Obbach near Schweinfurt (panel, 82.5 x 56.5 cm, Sotheby's London, December 11, 1996, lot 53), from Eltz Castle (panel, 77.6 x 57.6 cm) and from Zwettl Abbey (panel, 75 x 56 cm, SZ25.416(129)), between Vienna and Prague, the features and pose of the Virgin are very similar to the Gotha painting. In the painting in the Detroit Institute of Arts (panel, 116.8 x 80.3 cm, inv. 23.31), acquired from the collection of Arthur Sulley (1921-1923) in London, Hedwig pose and features are very similar to the painting in Gotha. It was created in 1536, threfore after her marriage to Joachim II Hector, Elector of Brandenburg. Similar to this painting is the effigy in the Prado Museum in Madrid (panel, 121.3 x 83.4 cm, inv. P007440), acquired in 1988 from the collection of Duquesa de Valencia, also created in 1536. Derived from the latter are the Virgins from the Bode Museum in Berlin (panel, 77 x 57 cm, inv. 559 A), acquired in 1890 from Carl Lampe in Leipzig, possibly from the collection of cardinal Albert of Brandenburg and lost during World War II and in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest (panel, 74.3 x 55.8 cm, inv. 140), which was at the beginning of the 19th century in the Court collection (Hofsammlungen) in Vienna. The Madonna and Child by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, also attributed to Lucas Cranach the Younger, from the Swedish royal collection, today in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm (panel, 85 x 57 cm, inv. NM 299), is very similar to the painting in Detroit, while the Child is almost identical as in the portrait of Hedwig's stepmother as the Virgin in the Hermitage. Its provenance in Sweden is unknown, therefore it cannot be excluded that it was taken from Poland during the Deluge (1655-1660) or it was part of dowry of Hedwig's sister Catherine Jagiellon (1526-1583), future Queen of Sweden. Two copies of the Stockholm painting, probably made in the second half of the 16th century, are now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest (inv. 904, originally in the imperial collection in Vienna) and in the Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum in Innsbruck (inv. Gem. 118), both of which may have originally come from the collections of Hedwig's distant relatives - the Habsburgs. Treated kindly by Bona from her arrival in 1518, Hedwig, together with the queen and her father, took part in a pilgrimage to Jasna Góra on April 20-27, 1523. She was then given a certain sum of money "for the journey to Częstochowa", to the sanctuary of the Black Madonna, so that she could give alms herself, following her father's example. The devotion of the Princess to Virgin Mary is evidenced by the fact that a rosary was made for her by the famous goldsmith from Kraków, Andreas Mastella or Marstella (d. 1568), at the request of Sigismund I (ab inauracione legibulorum alias paczyerzi, paid on May 9, 1526). From the inventory of valuables left after Jadwiga’s death, it is known that the Margravine of Brandenburg had several such precious rosaries: gold, amber and coral. Ercole Daissoli, secretary of Hieronim Łaski (1496-1541), writing about the envoys of John Zapolya who arrived in Kraków and the gifts that were given to the princess in 1535, confuses her name and calls her Lodovica, but adds that she is "much loved by the King of Hungary and rightly so, because in addition to being born of his sister, the goodness and valor of the Infanta are such, as you know, that she deserves to be loved not only by her own people but also by foreigners" (questa s - ra Lodovica e molto amata dal re d'Ungharia et meritamente, perchè oltra che nascesse de la sorella, la bontà et valuta de l'infanta e tal come vi e noto, che non solo da li suoi ma ancho da li extranei merita esser' amata, after "Królowa Bona ..." by Władysław Pociecha, p. 565). The use of the Spanish title Infanta indicates that it was probably used already in the 1530s in connection with the daughters of Sigismund I. In his letter of September 17, 1571 to his stepsister (today at the Wawel Royal Castle), Sigismund Augustus also calls Hedwig "Infanta of the Kingdom of Poland" (Dei gratia Infanti Regni Poloniæ), which also indicates some links with Spain. A letter from Stanisław Hozjusz (1504-1579), Prince-Bishop of Warmia, to Charles Borromeo (1538-1584), administrator of the Archdiocese of Milan (part of the Spanish Empire), written in 1560 (July 31), confirms the interest in Rome for the Catholic Electress of Brandenburg. In a letter written on September 2, 1564, by Charles Borromeo to the papal legate Delfino, who was then in Germany, Borromeo expresses the hope that Hedwig's husband would visit Rome to meet the Pope and believes that it will happen "through the merits and prayers of this holy lady" (per li meriti et orationi di questa santa donna), as he calls Hedwig. Nuncio Deifino also calls her in his letter the "Holy Old Woman of Brandenburg" (santa vecchia di Brandenburg, after "Królewna Jadwiga i jej książeczka do spowiedzi" by Urszula Borkowska, p. 86, 89-91). Sigismund was aware of the Lutheran sympathies of his son-in-law, and already in 1535 when the Brandenburg envoys came to Vilnius to sign the pacta matrimonialia (March 21, 1535) the Polish-Lithuanian side was guaranteed that the wedding would take place in the Catholic rite. Joachim II converted to Lutheranism in 1539. Concerned that his daughter will be forced to abandon Catholicism, which he expressed in his letter to Joahim of 26 September 1539 (Illud autem ante omnia Illm vestram rogamus: ne filiam nostram dulcissimam adigat ad eeclesiae unitatem deserendam), the king decided to send another priest from Poland and to pay him a salary from his own treasury so as not to burden his son-in-law reluctant to Catholicism. Łukasz Górka, bishop of Kuyavia, envoy in Berlin helped the king to choose the priest Jerzy, who was paid an annual salary of 100 florins. Good relations between the spouses are evidenced by letters written by Hedwig to her husband in 1542, when Joachim II was in Hungary as the leader of an anti-Ottoman expedition. Despite religious differences Hedwig was an exemplary mother for three of her step-children (two sons and a daughter of her cousin Magdalena of Saxony). Interestingly, in 1534 and 1535 Cranach also created three other very portrait-like effigies of the Madonna depicting another woman in the guise of the Virgin. One of these paintings, dated "1534", on the window, is today in the Staatsgalerie in Aschaffenburg (panel, 120.8 x 82.6 cm, inv. 5566) and before 1811 it was in the collection of the episcopal residence of the Catholic prince-bishops of Bamberg - the New Residence. Another very similar one and dated "1535" is in the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart (canvas, transferred from the wood, 119.5 x 83 cm, inv. 2385). Before 1916, this painting belonged to Nikolai Pavlovich Riabushinskii (1876-1951) in Moscow. The same woman can also be identified in a beautiful painting by Cranach from around 1535, now in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (panel, 120.3 x 72.7 cm, inv. 46.4), which belonged before 1896 to the Orsini collection in Rome, so it was probably originally a gift for a pope or a cardinal or a member of this noble Italian family. The woman depicted as the Virgin bears a striking resemblance to the lady looking at the viewer in the painting from Cranach's studio - Hercules at the court of Omphale in the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen (inv. KMSsp727), which, according to my identification, represent Agnes Pless née Strauss (1502-1547). After Leys' death, she became the concubine of Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg. The Copenhagen painting bears the cardinal's coat of arms and, like the Bamberg and Rome Madonnas, was panted in 1535. Around 1525-1530, the Flemish miniaturist Simon Bening (ca. 1483-1561), who created illuminated manuscripts for Emperor Charles V and Infante Ferdinand, Duke of Guarda, son of King Manuel I of Portugal, also created the Prayer Book for Cardinal Albert with his coat of arms and splendid Scenes from the Creation, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum (Ms. Ludwig IX 19 (83.ML.115)), which testify to the international aspect of his patronage and his following of European trends. However, until the end of his life, like the Jagiellons and the Electors of Brandenburg, the cardinal favoured the style and workshop of Cranach based in Lutheran Wittenberg, as evidenced by his somewhat extravagant portrait with 21 rings, painted in 1543 (Mainz State Museum, inv. 304). 
Portrait of cardinal Albert of Brandenburg (1490-1545) as Saint Erasmus and his concubine Elisabeth (Leys) Schütz (d. 1527) as Saint Ursula from the so-called Pfirtscher Altar by circle or workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1526, Staatsgalerie in Aschaffenburg.
Portrait of Crown Princess Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) as Madonna lactans by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1531, Museum der bildenden Künste in Leipzig.
Portrait of Crown Princess Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) as Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John and angels by Lucas Cranach the Younger, 1534, Friedenstein Palace in Gotha.
Portrait of Crown Princess Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) as Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John by Lucas Cranach the Younger and workshop, ca. 1534 or after, Private collection.
Portrait of Crown Princess Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) as Madonna with Child nibbling grapes by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1534 or after, Eltz Castle.
Portrait of Crown Princess Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) as Madonna and Child with grapes by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1534 or after, Zwettl Abbey.
Portrait of Crown Princess Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) as Madonna and Child by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, ca. 1534-1536, Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Electress Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) as Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John and angels by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1536, Detroit Institute of Arts.
Portrait of Electress Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) as Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John and angels by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1536, Prado Museum in Madrid.
Portrait of Electress Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) as Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1536 or after, Bode Museum in Berlin, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Electress Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) as Madonna and Child with grapes by workshop Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1536 or after, Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.
Portrait of Agnes Pless née Strauss (1502-1547), concubine of Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg (1490-1545), as Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist and angels by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1534, Staatsgalerie in Aschaffenburg.
Portrait of Agnes Pless née Strauss (1502-1547), concubine of Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg (1490-1545), as Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist and angels by workshop Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1535, Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart.
Portrait of Agnes Pless née Strauss (1502-1547), concubine of Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg (1490-1545), as Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist and angels by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1535, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Portraits of Princess Sophia Vereyska by workshop of Bernardino Licinio and Lucas Cranach the Elder
Princess Sophia Vasilievna Vereyska, wife of Albertas Gostautas, together with Barbara Kolanka, wife of George "Hercules" Radziwill, Katarzyna Tomicka, wife Nicolaus "the Red" Radziwill and Elżbieta Szydłowiecka, wife Nicolaus "the Black" Radziwill, was one of the wealthiest and the most influential woman of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, during the reign of Sigismund I and Bona Sforza. As the wife of Grand Chancellor of Lithuania and Voivode of Vilnius, the positions held by her husband from 1522, she was the most important woman in the Grand Duchy after the Queen. Furthermore, in 1529 Pope Clement VII Medici granted Albertas the title of count and in 1530 Emperor Charles V included him among the counts of the empire. Sophia's husband was also the richest man in Lithuania. His estates included hundreds of villages and towns. In 1528 he had 466 cavalrymen and 3,728 servants.
Sophia, known in Polish sources as Zofia Wasilówna z Wierejskich Gasztołdowa, was the daughter of the Russian prince Vasily Mikhailovich Vereysky, a relative of the Grand Prince of Moscow Ivan III, and Maria Palaiologina (d. 1505), who, according to Russian sources, was the daughter of the titular emperor of Constantinople and Despot of the Morea Andreas Palaiologos (1453-1502). Andreas was a courtier of Pope Alexander VI Borgia in Rome and married a Roman prostitute Caterina (after "The Papacy and the Levant, 1204-1571" by Kenneth Meyer Setton, Volume 2, p. 462). He lived on a papal pension and was buried with honor in St. Peter's Basilica at the expense of Pope Alexander VI. In 1483, Vasily and Maria went into exile in Lithuania because of an incident involving the jewels of Maria of Tver (1442-1467). On October 2, 1484, they received the estates of Lubcha, Koydanava, Radashkovichy and Valozhyn (Belarus) from King Casimir IV Jagiellon. Sophia was born around 1490 and married Albertas in 1505 or 1506, for whom this marriage was a significant elevation since his wife was related to Byzantine emperors and the rulers of Moscow. As Vasily's only daughter, she inherited all his property, granted by King Casimir IV. In 1522, King Sigismund I granted Sophia, her husband and her descendants the right to seal letters with red wax, which was reserved for persons of royal blood. The king emphasized in the privilege that "having special respect for the nobility of the Vereysky princely family and the personal virtues of Sophia, the wife of Albertas, grants the above privilege to her, her husband and her offspring forever" (after "Ateneum wileńskie", Volume 14, 1939, p. 120). Around 1507 the only son of Sophia and Albertas, Stanislovas (Stanislaus), was born in Vilnius. He was the first husband of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551). It is possible that as the presumed granddaughter of a Roman prostitute, whose mother was probably raised at the Borgia court in Rome, Sophia knew Italian, making her even closer to Queen Bona. Two letters from the queen to the voivodess of Vilnius are known, both in Polish - dated January 21, 1537 and June 4, 1543. The letter of 1537 is evidence that communication through envoys to whom the oral message was transmitted was valued more highly than a letter (compare "Kobieca korespondencja w Wielkim Księstwie Litewskim ..." by Raimonda Ragauskienė, Biuletyn historii pogranicza, p. 9, 11). This is one of the reasons why we have so little information about portraits of women from Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia, which were undoubtedly numerous. However, one source confirms that Queen Bona owned a portrait of the voivodess of Vilnius, most likely Sophia, which she kept with a portrait of her favourite Dorota Dzierzgowska née Sobocka "and other portraits of the most distinguished persons" (after "Zbiór pamiętników historycznych o dawnej Polszcze ..." by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Volume 4, p. 36). Albertas died in December 1539 and his estates passed to his son. By virtue of a privilege granted by Sigismund on June 13, 1542, Sophia purchased a house in Vilnius. After Stanislovas died without an heir in December 1542, all the Gostautas estates passed, in accordance with the law of the time, into the possession of King Sigismund the Old, who gave them to his son, Sigismund Augustus, on June 15, 1543. The rights to the estates of the Gostautas family were expressed by the widows: Sophia after Albertas and Barbara Radziwill after Stanislovas. The young king returned to Albertas' widow her patrimonial estates, which had been bequeathed to her by her husband and son for life. It is very likely that this action was inspired by Bona, because a woman became the administrator of the Gostautas' fortune. As the richest woman in the Grand Duchy, close to Queen Bona, Sophia is probably also among the women criticized in epigrams by the Spanish poet and lawyer Pedro Ruiz de Moros (Petrus Roysius, died 1571), perhaps written between 1545 and 1549, when Bona inspired a similar campaign against a mistress of his son Barbara Radziwill. When Stanisław Orzechowski (1513-1566), in conflict and polemic with Roysius, attacked Barbara, the Spaniard who on October 1, 1549 had been appointed by Sigismund Augustus as a courtier and royal advisor with a salary of 200 złotys per year, wrote a malicious poem "To Maevia" (Ad Maeviam). This pseudonym means "the one who is great" or "mighty" and this woman, although she refers to the chaste Lucretia of Rome, is more like Helen of Troy, who does not care about her husband's fame (Quod decet, illud ama, plenis fuge, Maevia, velis Dedecus et sanctae damna pudicitiae. Hoc sibi proposuit Lucretia casta sequendum, Hoc Helena prae se non tulit argolica. Illius idcirco laus nullo intercidet aevo, Perpetuum terris dedecus huius erit. Illius haud oberunt saeclorum oblivia famae, Non Helenes sordes abluet oceanus). The selection of Roman and Greek heroines could be a reference to Sophia's origins. The Imperial Countess died in August 1549, although according to some sources she was still alive in 1553, because in that year she concluded an agreement with Barbara Holszańska and acquired Migowo from Czaplica (after "Poczet rodów w Wielkiem Księstwie Litewskiem ..." by Adam Boniecki, p. 60). There are some letters about the funeral and the inventory of Sophia's belongings (letters from Sigismund Augustus to Nicolaus "the Red" Radziwill, from Kraków, August 25 and December 13, 1549), as well as the fact that after her death Bishop Zmorski brought a box to Warsaw to Queen Bona, which was carried by 10 men (after "Język polski w kancelarii królewskiej ..." by Beata Kaczmarczyk, p. 67). Three members of the Council of Lords were sent to Valozhyn to prepare a register. In Vilnius, the king's treasurer Stefan Wełkowicz received sealed chests from the manors in Valozhyn, Koydanava and Vilnius (after "The earliest registers of the private archives of the nobility ..." by Raimonda Ragauskienė, p. 127-128). Of the immense fortune of the Gostautas family, almost nothing remains. In the Munich University Library there is a prayer book created in 1528 in Kraków by the splendid illuminator Stanisław Samostrzelnik for Albertas. This prayer book is partly inspired by German graphics and shows Albertas on one page as a donor kneeling before the Vir Dolorum. On the other page, King Sigismund I is depicted as one of the Magi in the scene of the Adoration of the Child. Beautiful funerary sculpture of Albertas in precious red marble, created around 1540, preserved in the Vilnius Cathedral, although it was seriously damaged during the Deluge (the face was smashed during the Russian and Cossack occupation of the city). The sculpture is attributed to the Florentine sculptor Bernardino Zanobi de Gianotis, also called Romanus (the Roman). There are no known painted portraits of Albertas (apart from mentioned miniature by Samostrzelnik), but he had good relations with Sigismund I's nephew, Duke Albert of Prussia (1490-1568), who was painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder and Hans Krell. He corresponded with the duke about the Ruthenian printer and pedagogue Francis Skaryna, active in Vilnius in Prague, who published several books in Ruthenian decorated with magnificent engravings by an engraver from the circle of Hans Springinklee. As a count of the Holy Roman Empire, to increase his prestige, Gostautas probably used the painters working for the emperor, including Titian, but also Cranach, who painted several portraits of Charles V and his brother Ferdinand I. Albertas' wife, following the example of Queen Bona, probably also commissioned several of her portraits. Nothing is known about her burial place, but since she was probably Orthodox, she was not buried with her husband in the Catholic Cathedral in Vilnius. In the State Art Museum in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, there is a painting of Lucretia, painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his workshop in 1535 (panel, 77 x 52 cm, inv. 966). The same woman in a similar pose was depicted standing next to Queen Bona's favourite Dorota Dzierzgowska née Sobocka in the 1534 painting in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg (inv. Gm1108). The face is almost identical, as if the painter had used the same study drawing to create both effigies. The Nizhny Novgorod painting comes from the collection of Mikhail Platonovich Fabricius (1847-1915), a military engineer, who participated in the reconstruction of a number of Kremlin buildings in Moscow. Fabricius collected materials and wrote a book on the history of the Kremlin. He began collecting in Moscow and continued in St. Petersburg. If we assume that the painting depicts the wife of Albertas Gostautas, it could have come to Russia as a gift to her family there (in 1493, the Grand Princess of Moscow Sophia Palaiologina obtained pardon and permission for Prince Vereysky and his wife to return to their homeland, but for some reason the exiles did not take advantage of this). As the property of an aristocratic family outside Moscow, it could survive iconoclasm of 1654-1655. It could also have been acquired in the former territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Partitions or come from the collection of many Polish-Lithuanian and Ruthenian aristocrats who settled in St. Petersburg in the 19th century. At least two copies of the Nizhny Novgorod painting are known, both made by the painter's workshop more than ten years later, in 1548, when Roysius probably wrote his malicious poem. Both are signed with the artist's winged serpent and dated. One of these copies, now in a private collection (panel, 77.5 x 52.4 cm, Christie's London, Auction 5013, April 26, 2006, lot 124), comes from the Electoral Collection in Dresden (inventory from 1722 to 1728, number 351 inscribed on the painting), the possible earlier provenance being the royal residences in Warsaw from where Augustus II the Strong moved many paintings and objects during the Great Northern War. The other is also in a private collection (oil on panel, 80 x 53 cm, Dorotheum in Vienna, October 17, 2017, lot 210) and was sold in 1966 in Lucerne, Switzerland. In the 1530s, Cranach and his workshop depicted the same woman in two other paintings depicting the virtuous Roman Lucretia. One of them, dated "1535", like the Nizhny Novgorod painting, is in the Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum in Hanover (panel, 51.7 x 34.8 cm, inv. PAM 775), and comes from the collections of the Electors of Brunswick-Lüneburg, mentioned in the collection of the Hanover Palace in 1802 (no. 83). This provenance also indicates that the woman depicted as Lucretia was a member of the European high aristocracy. This painting is frequently compared to Cranach's later Lucretia in Wilanów Palace (Wil. 1749), which is similar in pose and depicts Queen Bona, according to my identification. The other, undated, is in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem (panel, 63 x 50 cm, inv. B89-0059) and was in New York before 1931. The similarity of the costume with the Nizhny Novgorod painting is notable and the painting is also compared to that in the Wilanów Palace. The expensive furs worn by the woman were typical of Lithuania and Ruthenia at that time. We can identify the same woman in a portrait attributed to the workshop of Bernardino Licinio, now kept at the Galleria Sabauda in Turin (oil on canvas, 74 x 67 cm, inv. 466). The painting came at the gallery following the donation of Riccardo Gualino (1879-1964) in 1930 and its previous history is unknown. This likeness is very similar to two portraits of Queen Bona by Licinio that I have identified (British Embassy in Rome and private collection). The costume is very much alike and as in the portrait of the queen, the ribbon that ties the bodice of the model's dress is inspired by German fashion of the time. Unlike Cranach's portraits, her forehead is not shaved according to the Nordic fashion. She holds a dog, a symbol of fidelity, and directs her gaze to the left as if she were looking at the man, her husband, in the counterpart painting, which probably accompanied this effigy. The Madonna by Lucas Cranach the Elder, made around 1525, now in a private collection (panel, 56.5 x 39.9 cm), has the same facial features. This painting comes from the collection of the Barons of Mecklenburg, a noble family originally from Mecklenburg, who owned estates in Sweden, Prussia and Pomerania. The effigies of the "disguised" Princess Sophia most likely inspired the Augsburg painter Jörg Breu the Elder (ca. 1475-1537) to create the effigy of the Roman heroine in his composition depicting the Story of Lucretia, now in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (inv. 7969). Breu travelled to Italy twice (about 1508 and 1514), but this painting was painted more than ten years later, in 1528 (dated top left). It also bears the coat of arms of William IV (1493-1550), Duke of Bavaria, and his wife Maria Jakobaea of Baden-Sponheim (1507-1580), as it was part of the cycle commissioned by the Duke for the decoration of his residence. The Story of Lucretia was acquired in 1895 from the collection of Carl Edvard Ekman at Finspang Castle in Sweden, built between 1668 and 1685. Breu's study drawing, held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest (inv. 62), indicates that the main character's face was originally different and that patrons probably requested for it to be changed. Although the Gostautas prayer book in Munich is believed to have come from the dowry of Princess Anna Catherine Constance Vasa (1619-1651), the earliest confirmed provenance of this book is the collection of the Jesuit Ferdinand Orban (1655-1732) in Ingolstadt. Like Breu's painting, the prayer book was also created in 1528 (dated on one of the pages). The face of a lady in another painting by Bernardino Licinio is very similar to that in Cranach's Madonna from the collection of the Barons of Mecklenburg. The work is now in a private collection (oil on canvas, 71 x 59 cm, Asta Finarte in Milan, 29 November 1995, lot 131). This portrait, known as "Portrait of a Lady with a Fan" (Ritratto di gentildonna con ventaglio), comes from the Contini Bonacossi collection in Florence, from which also come several portraits of the Jagiellons, identified by me. Like the portraits of the Jagiellons, it was probably sent to the Medici or other important ruling families in Italy. The sitter's costume indicates the early 1530s and is entirely black (or dark grey). The woman's black veil, like a Roman matron, indicates mourning, hence mourning after the death of Pope Clement VII Medici, who died in September 1534 (he granted the title of count to Gostautas). This gesture by the probably Orthodox princess and papal and imperial countess undoubtedly had a special meaning for her and for the Medici. In the 16th century, Italian and German influences, as well as Netherlandish influences (in the northern regions), mixed in artistic patronage from Poland, Lithuania and Ruthenia. The works of art preserved in the Cathedral and the Archdiocesan Museum in Przemyśl are the best illustration of this. It was sometimes associated with the education of the patrons of these works of art, as in the case of the splendid funerary monument of Jan Dziaduski (1496-1559), bishop of Przemyśl, educated in Padua and Rome (between 1519 and 1524), sculpted by the Venetian sculptor Giovanni Maria Mosca known as Padovano (1493-1574) around 1559 (IOANI DZIADVSKI ‣ I ‣ V ‣DOCTO/RI ‣ EPICOPO PREMISLIEÑ ‣ [...] ‣ANNO ‣ ÆTATIS SVÆ / L XIII ‣ SALVTIS VERO M D LIX DIE XXIX / I VLII VITA FVNCTO AMICI MERENTES PO/SVERE ‣). Another source of foreign influences was the presence of a local community from a specific country or cultural cycle, as in the case of the so-called Master of the Klimkówka Triptych, active in Krosno and the surrounding area in the first quarter of the 16th century. Since the Middle Ages, this area was inhabited by the community of Saxon settlers called "Deaf Germans" (Głuchoniemcy in Polish or Taubdeutsche in German). As his style indicates, the Master of the Klimkówka Triptych was probably trained in Kraków, however, either there or in Krosno he had the opportunity to see the imports of painting and graphics from southern Germany. The Farewell of Saint Peter and Paul from Osiek Jasielski, painted in 1527 (inv. MAPrz I/110), reveals the inspiration of the works of the Master of Messkirch, active between 1515 and 1540, probably a student of Hans Leonhard Schäufelein. The Klimkówka Lamentation of Christ from 1529 is based on Schäufelein's woodcut from the Speculum Passionis Domini Nostri Jhesu Christi, published in Nuremberg in 1507 (inv. MAPrz I/337). These images, however, are not direct transpositions of works by German masters. In the Lamentation from Klimkówka, the painter gave the figures the effigies of members of the local community, perhaps members of the noble Sienieński family, who owned the village at that time. He also dressed them according to the fashion in vogue in the region, thus Saint Joseph of Arimathea, possibly Wiktoryn Sienieński (ca. 1463-1530), castellan of Małogoszcz, wears a hat lined with grey fur and his costume and beard are typical for Western European fashion of the time. In turn, Saint Mary Magdalene, perhaps the daughter of a man represented as Saint Joseph (possibly Agnieszka or Katarzyna Sienieńska), wears a costume more typical of Ruthenia. The men behind Saint Peter in the painting from Osiek Jasielski are dressed according to the Western European fashion, while the sermon of Saint Paul in Athens on the right wing of this triptych probably takes place in one of the churches in Kraków or Krosno. The same is true for a painting of Jew whipping the statue of Saint Nicholas of Bari from Rzepiennik Biskupi (Czartoryski Museum, inv. MNK XII-242), painted by the same master or his workshop, where the Jew is dressed in a costume typical of this community from the first quarter of the 16th century. This Mimesis, which consists of placing religious scenes in authentic places and involving members of the local community in the religious scene, had a great moralizing significance. Wealthy patrons like Sophia could afford greater diversity in their patronage and commission their effigies from the most important centres of pictorial production in Europe. 
Portrait of Princess Sophia Vasilievna Vereyska (ca. 1490-1549) holding a dog by workshop of Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1524-1534, Galleria Sabauda in Turin.
Portrait of Princess Sophia Vasilievna Vereyska (ca. 1490-1549) as Madonna and Child by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1525, Private collection.
Portrait of Princess Sophia Vasilievna Vereyska (ca. 1490-1549) in mourning by Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1534, Private collection. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Princess Sophia Vasilievna Vereyska (ca. 1490-1549) as Lucretia by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1535, Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum in Hanover.
Portrait of Princess Sophia Vasilievna Vereyska (ca. 1490-1549) as Lucretia by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1535, Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Portrait of Princess Sophia Vasilievna Vereyska (ca. 1490-1549) as Lucretia by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, 1535, State Art Museum in Nizhny Novgorod.
Portrait of Princess Sophia Vasilievna Vereyska (ca. 1490-1549) as Lucretia by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1548, Private collection.
Portrait of Princess Sophia Vasilievna Vereyska (ca. 1490-1549) as Lucretia by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1548, Private collection.
Portraits of royal banker Seweryn Boner by Giovanni Cariani and workshop
In 1536 Jan (1516-1562) and Stanisław (1517-1560), sons of Seweryn Boner (1486-1549), royal banker of Bona Sforza and Sigismund I, burgrave of Kraków and starost of Biecz, went on a scientific trip around Italy. They traveled to Naples and to Rome, where their tutor Anselmus Ephorinus (d. 1566) was ennobled by Emperor Charles V. They returned to Kraków in autumn 1537. Few years earlier, in September 1531, at the instigation of the Łaskis, Ephorinus and his disciples Jan Boner and Stanisław Aichler found themselves in Basel benefiting from teachings of a Netherlandish philosopher and theologian Erasmus of Rotterdam for almost 6 months. The philosopher dedicated his P. Terentii Comoediae sex to Jan and Stanisław (Ioanni et Stanislao Boneris fratribus, Polonis) and he refers to their father (Seuerinum Bonerum) in this work. During a seven-year peregrination they also visited France and Germany, where in Erfurt and Nuremberg they made acquaintance with a number of eminent humanists.
Erasmus, who corresponded with Seweryn and other Poles, died in Basel on July 12, 1536. In his will he bequeathed to Bonifacius Amerbach, his friend in Basel, two gold medals of King Sigismund and Seweryn Boner, both from 1533 and both works by Matthias Schilling from Toruń or an Italian medallist, such as Padovano, Caraglio, Pomadello, perhaps created in Venice or Verona. The reverse side of the medal with a portrait of King Sigismund had the inscription: "To Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus Seweryn Boner as a souvenir" (after "Wiek złoty i czasy romantyzmu w Polsce" by Stanisław Łempicki, Jerzy Starnawski, p. 354). The Poles also acquired Erasmus' library - in 1536, Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski stayed in Nuremberg in the house of his friend Daniel Schilling, a merchant from Kraków, and in November this year, at the request of Jan Łaski, he goes to Basel in order to bring the library to Poland. The books were sent first to Nuremberg, where the library was deposited in the apartment of Schilling, staying there with his brother on commercial business, either his own, or perhaps for the Boners or Justus Ludwik Decjusz. Seweryn Boner (or Bonar) was the son of Jakob Andreas (1454-1517), a banker in Nuremberg and in Wrocław, and the nephew of Johann (Hans) Boner (1462-1523), royal banker, born in Landau in Palatinate, from whom he inherited all the property along with the offices held by his uncle. On October 23, 1515, he married Zofia Bethmanówna - the heiress of Balice, which became the suburban residence of the Boners. From 1532 he was a city councilor in Kraków and from Emperor Ferdinand he received the title of baron in Ogrodzieniec and Kamieniec. Boner acted as an intermediary in international monetary transactions. Through Fuggers' bank, he transfers money to Venice using promissory notes, the basis of trade between cities. Even before his coronation, Sigismund owed him 7,000 florins. In 1512, the debt amounted to 65,058 florins, which is 4,000 more than all the annual revenues of the treasury. When he was elected king, in 1506 Boner become his exclusive supplier of all goods from glass panes imported from Venice for the windows in the Wawel Castle, to cloth and pepper (after "Przemysł polski w dawnych wiekach" by Aleksander Bocheński, Stefan Bratkowski, p. 131). Banking and commercial relations with Nuremberg of Johann and Seweryn Boner, closely associated with the artistic patronage of Sigismund the Old, also influenced the importation of outstanding works of artistic craftsmanship from there to Kraków. Silver and gold products were purchased by Boner in Nuremberg, and above all in Italy. His wagons loaded with pomades, soaps, perfumes, silk, Venetian glass, costly goblets and rings of pure gold were coming from Italy and Venice. Through Lviv merchants, he purchased Turkish goods, and very sought after pepper and spices (after "Kraków i ziemia krakowska" by Roman Grodecki, p. 125). Seweryn also organized his own post office from Kraków to Germany, which was often used by the court. In December 1527 a shipment of costly fabrics for the queen, together with a letter to Bona from the Margrave of Mantua, was to be sent by her Venetian agent Gian Giacomo de Dugnano to Seweryn Boner, however, the transport was detained by the Viennese customs chamber (allegedly due to the violation of customs regulations). In 1536, foreign orders increased due to planned marriage of the eldest daughter of Bona and Sigismund - Isabella, as well as the fire of the newly built Wawel Castle (October 17) and costly repair works. The king and queen were in Lithuania at the time. Upon learning of the fire, the monarch ordered the governor, Seweryn Boner, to secure the roofs and make preparations for immediate reconstruction. A fire broke out in the apartments of Sigismund Augustus, in the new part of Wawel. The fire consumed the paintings purchased in Flanders and the golden throne covered with scarlet. A contract was signed with Bartolommeo Berrecci as the main works manager. When he was murdered a few months later, his duties were entrusted to another Italian, Niccolo Castiglione. Queen Bona frequently used Venetian banking services and deposited large sums there before returning to Italy in 1556. Sigismund I and Bona financed the activities of their envoy Jan Dantyszek by sending money and buying his bills of exchange at the banks of the Fuggers and Welsers. In 1536 a seller of Venetian goods (rerum venetiarum venditor) Paul was recommended by the council of Poznań to Vilnius city council and envoys sent from Kraków to Venice that year all took 20 florins from the royal treasury - Marcin in June, Andreas (Andrzeich) and an unknown Italian in August. In 1536 Melchior Baier and Peter Flötner in Nuremberg created silver candlesticks for the Sigismund Chapel, soon they accomplished the silver altar for the chapel (1538) and a sword of Sigismund Augustus with Hercules vanquishing the Lernaean Hydra (1540). Many exquisite works of art were commissioned through Seweryn Boner, like tapestries in Flanders in 1526 and in 1533 or pendants for daughters of the royal couple in Nuremberg in 1546. Bronze tombstone for himself and his wife Seweryn also ordered in Nuremberg - created by Hans Vischer between 1532-1538. In the Picture Gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, there is a "Portrait of a Nuremberg patrician", a work signed by Giovanni Busi, called Cariani (oil on canvas, 98.5 x 89 cm, inventory number 6434, inscribed left above the parapet: Joannes Cariani -p-). The painting is verifiable in the gallery in 1772, could therefore come from old collections of the Habsburgs, having been sent to them as a gift. The old man from the portrait holds a letter in his hands which in the upper part mentions in Latin: "Including Nuremberg 1470 was issued on Tuesday on the 17th, while he brought this form to Venice in 1536 in the same year" (Inclyta nurimberga protulit 1470 Mensis Martis die 17 / Usq. dum attulit formam hanc Venetiis 1536 eodem lustro), most likely referring to the transfer of money from Nuremberg to Venice, a promissory note. Below there is another inscription: "What nature produced more slowly, the painter quickly represented" (Natura produxit tardius / Pictor figuravit extemplo), which together with a second piece of paper, at the right, which says: "Death destroys nature, time art" (Mors Naturam / destruit / Tempus Artem) and the objects of the vanitas, a skull and an hourglass, set on the parapet, reminds that nature transforms man and that the painter did not age the model, contrary to nature. The features of the old man correspond to known effigies of royal banker and supplier Seweryn Boner from silver medal with his bust, created in 1533 (National Museum in Kraków, MNK VII-MdP-263), and his bronze tombstone, cast in Nuremberg (St. Mary's Basilica in Kraków). A copy of this portrait by Cariani's workshop from anonymous sale (oil on canvas, 91 x 71 cm, Sotheby's London, April 18, 2000, lot 367) was sold in Paris (Artcurial, November 9, 2022, lot 165). Cariani and his workshop also painted the effigies of Seweryn's sister Magdalena Bonerówna (1505-1530), lady-in-waiting of Queen Bona, and his daughter Zofia Firlejowa née Bonerówna (d. 1563). The Governor's salon at the Wawel Castle, a representative interior in which guests were received, is one of 3 rooms of the so-called Governor's apartment. German furniture and paintings are presented there to emphasize the fact that the most eminent governors from the times of King Sigismund I - Hans and Seweryn Boner - came from Germany. The furniture and paintings were acquired from different collections after the reconstruction of the castle in the 1930s, because nothing has been preserved of the original furnishings and paintings of the royal residence. 
Portrait of royal banker Seweryn Boner (1486-1549) by Giovanni Cariani, after 1536, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of royal banker Seweryn Boner (1486-1549) by workshop of Giovanni Cariani, after 1536, Private collection.
Portraits of Dorota Sobocka and Barbara Kościelecka by Lucas Cranach the Elder and Hans Döring
"Queen Bona persuades the king to convene the Sejm [Diet] in Warsaw. This idea came to her from the archbishop [Piotr Gamrat (1487-1545)], not for reasons of public interest, but because he has his mistress here [ubi Archiepiscopus habet amationes suas sabbatorias, i.e. Dorota Dzierzgowska née Sobocka (died after 1548), chatelaine of Czersk]. He tells everyone that the burghers of Warsaw, once assured that the Sejm will be held here, will not fail to build new houses and repair those that have burned down in a short time.
Your Lordship, having already mentioned so many trivial things, I must add another: the special grace and attachment of our lady for the blood and family of the Sobodzki [Sobocki]. She praises them, raises them to heaven, calls happy the womb that gave birth to such sons. She strives by all means to make the chatelaine of Czersk the voivodess of Mazovia, not so that her foolish husband is worthy of this dignity, but so that his wife holds the first place here. To achieve this, Bona constantly explains to the king that there are many quarrels, affairs, appeals that fall within the discretion of the voivode. To settle them, the voivode must always be present here, while the current voivode Gamrat [Jan Gamrat (1502-1544), younger brother of the primate] is weak and often unconscious, and moreover he has few assets in this country. So, after the first vacancy, Gamrat will receive higher voivodeships; and Dorota, who is the wife of two, will become voivode of Mazovia, for certainly not her husband Dzierzgoski [Jan Dzierzgowski (1502-1558)], who can't tell a fly from a mosquito. And so our Mazovia is at the mercy of either fools, or drunkards, or harlots, not through the fault of the nation, but through the incompetence of those in power. This shameless woman lives in the greatest intimacy with the queen, and she is very much loved by her. The queen ordered a portrait of her to be made, she constantly looks at it with the greatest joy, she placed this portrait, next to a similar woman, the voivodess of Vilnius [most likely Princess Sophia Vasilievna Vereyska (ca. 1490-1549)], and other portraits of the most distinguished people. She often says to her: Oh! How happy you are that you were able to please such a prelate [Piotr Gamrat]. Everyone laughs at this madness. I would not like to know about these shamelessnesses, but they are constantly making themselves known. I will keep silent about the rest: it is a shame to speak any longer about these fornications", wrote to a friend in a letter given in Warsaw on May 26, 1544 Stanisław Górski (1497/99-1572), canon of Płock and Kraków (after "Zbiór pamiętników historycznych o dawnej Polszcze ..." by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Volume 4, p. 28-29, 34-36, 48). Father Górski was the queen's secretary between 1535 and 1548 and thanks to her he received the canonry of Kraków in 1539 and the parish of Wiskitki in Mazovia in 1546. He frequently criticized the queen, accusing her of greed, of concealing her wealth and of influencing parliamentary decisions in her favor and to the detriment of the kingdom. This letter, however, seems very reliable and there is no reason to believe that it is a product of overflowing imagination of a clergyman, educated in Padua and hostile to Bona. In the cited fragment, he explicitly accuses the queen of having intimate lesbian relations with Sobocka. The 1540s were very difficult for Bona. In 1544 she reached the age of 50, while her husband Sigismund was 77 and often ill. For the first time in many years she was not the most important woman in the kingdom, because in May 1543 her son married Elizabeth of Austria (1526-1545) and Bona became from then on "the old queen". In addition, Elizabeth was the daughter of her great enemy Ferdinand I of Austria, her son Sigismund Augustus wanted to free himself from his mother's influence and many people attacked Bona. It was also a time of great cultural changes brought about by the Reformation and the rejection of many old customs. It is therefore possible that the queen was bisexual and that at this time in her life she became more open to the charms of Lady Sobocka. According to Bronisław Kruczkiewicz (1849-1918), it is likely that the Latin epigram of the Spanish poet Pedro Ruiz de Moros (Petrus Roysius, d. 1571) under the title In Chlorim ("To Chloris") is a direct reference to Sobocka (after "Royzyusz : jego żywot i pisma", Rozprawy Wydziału Filologicznego, p. 62). The poet states: "Night and day you frequent the roofs of the very old, this is not luxury, O Chloris! it is greed" (Nocte dieque senum nimium quod tecta frequentas, Haec non luxuria, a Chloris! avaritia est). According to Ovid's Fasti V, the nymph Chloris was partly responsible for the conception of Mars, the god of war. With the help of a flower, Chloris made Juno, queen of the gods, pregnant. At that time, the Queen's apartments were located on the second floor of the west wing of Wawel Castle, called the piano nobile, while the courtiers' rooms were on the first floor. In the next poem under the meaningful title Ad Lesbiam ("To Lesbia"), Ruiz de Moros writes that he should neither condemn nor judge her because "it has been said: an imperfect animal is a woman" (Cur te non venerer, cur te non, Lesbia, curem Contemnamsque tuum, Lesbia, iudicium. Non longe repetam causas; breve, Lesbia, dictum est: Imperfectum animal, parce mihi, est mulier). In the poem Ad Maeviam ("To Maevia"), which probably refers to Princess Sophia Vereyska, he adds that "the ocean does not wash away Helen's filth" (Non Helenes sordes abluet oceanus, compare "Petri Rozyii Maurei Alcagnicensis Carmina ...", ed. Bronisław Kruczkiewicz, part II, pp. 465-466, poems V-VI, IX). There are 13 poems of this kind addressed to influential women from the court of Queen Bona, and most likely to the queen herself. Roysius, a simple professor at the Kraków Academy, was undoubtedly paid by someone very influential to slander them. The letter of March 15, 1544 from Piotrków to Jan Dantyszek is a clear confirmation that Górski was a staunch supporter of the Habsburgs, praising the "Most Serene" King of Rome and his daughter and slandering Queen Bona and her son "raised by women and Italians more fearful than women themselves". Father Górski's views were frequently quoted by 19th-century authors, when large parts of Poland were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire of Franz Joseph I, a member of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, but they probably did not know or forgot, like Górski himself, that the Habsburgs married and had children with their close relatives. In 1543, Charles V's son, Prince Philip married his close relative, the Infanta Maria Manuela of Portugal, who was also a close relative of Philip's father and mother. Both of Sigismund Augustus's Habsburg wives were granddaughters of his uncle. It seems, however, that apart from the "doctor Spaniard" and Górski, no one in Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia felt concerned about Bona's sexual life, as no other comments are known. Since such homosexual acts were punishable by death at the time, it is quite possible that by making them public, the instigator(s) hoped to get rid of the "dragon who sat at the Wawel". The event that took place in 1545, after the death of Elizabeth of Austria, was probably a response to this campaign. In that year, an order was placed in Vienna, the seat of Ferdinand I, for the queen's bed and the piece of furniture was to be modeled on a bed belonging to Elizabeth. The intensive use of the queen's bed is confirmed by the accounts. The first piece of furniture, brought from Italy, was repaired several times. Later, Bona acquired at least two more beds (including a large bed for the queen's bedroom and a smaller one for the king's bedroom, commissioned in 1543, after "Sypialnia królowej Bony na Wawelu ..." by Kamil Janicki). Also in 1545, Poland was threatened with war with Turkey and the pro-Habsburg party was ready to push the country into an armed conflict with the Ottoman Empire, but the queen, with the help of her supporters, adopted a resolution to pay compensation to Turkey, thus saving the peace (after "Słownik biograficzny arcybiskupów ..." by Kazimierz Śmigiel, p. 151). Dorota Sobocka, a noblewoman of the Doliwa coat of arms, met Piotr Gamrat, who, according to a contemporary source, came from the Italian school of cortegiano (courtiers), before 1528, because at that time this Pułtusk scholastic was defended by Andrzej Krzycki (1482-1537), Bishop of Płock, against the rumors that he had some affection for Dorota (malicious lampoons were circulating in the country). Krzycki wrote in a letter of October 23, 1528 to his uncle, Vice-Chancellor Piotr Tomicki (1464-1535) that there were no witnesses and the defense was easy (after "Z dworu Zygmunta Starego. (Dokończenie)" by Kazimierz Morawski, p. 535). Gamrat, a close associate of Bona, famous for his lavish and dissolute lifestyle, was administrator of the queen's estate in Mazovia between 1532 and 1538. He probably entered the queen's service shortly after her arrival in Poland-Lithuania in 1518. Thanks to Queen Bona, he was appointed Bishop of Kraków in July 1538, then Archbishop of Gniezno and Primate of Poland in January 1541. Sobocka was the daughter of Tomasz (d. 1527), Lord of Sobota, and Elżbieta Bielawska (died after 1546). Her brother was Tomasz Sobocki (ca. 1508-1547), who in 1525, together with his brother Jakub, enrolled at the University of Wittenberg and was a student of Philipp Melanchthon. Probably thanks to Dorota, he became the royal courtier of Sigismund I before 1532. In the service of the king, he was ambassador to John Zapolya, King of Hungary (1535), to Prussia (March 1537) and to Pope Paul III (May 1537) and to the Ottoman Empire (1539). Her sister Anna was married to Piotr Okuń, court marshal of Queen Elizabeth of Austria, and she also had a brother Brykcy (d. 1549), cupbearer to Queen Elizabeth. Before 1520 she married Jan Dzierzgowski (1502-1558) of the Jastrzębiec coat of arms, castellan of Ciechanów in 1532 and castellan of Czersk in 1542. They had two children, a daughter Dorota, who married Zygmunt Parzniewski, and a son Feliks Zbożny (Auctus, 1520-1571). "Some think that Sobodzko will be Archbishop or Bishop of Kraków. It is only certain that a lot of gold for the [papal] bulls will go to Rome," comments Stanisław Górski after Gamrat's death in a letter from Kraków, dated October 9, 1545. This "Sobodzko" was Dorota's brother-in-law, Mikołaj Dzierzgowski (ca. 1490-1559), who thanks to her received the rich bishopric of Kuyavia in January 1543 and on October 20, 1545 he was actually elected Gamrat's successor as primate. Through Bona and her brother Tomasz, Dorota obtained the Mazovian Voivodeship for her husband in 1544. In the same year, she also wanted to secure for her brother the position of Grand Chancellor of the Crown, and Górski left another malicious comment on this (letter of 26 May 1544): "Many assume that the king will not give the chancellery to Soboczka, the cupbearer, because the Soboczka house is despised by the people because of his sister's licentious life and that the chancellery would be defiled as a result. When Soboczka, as cupbearer, served the king at the table, a cake was brought to the king from his sister. This one too, said the king, you will not defile this Soboczka with guilt. However, I think that the king, following the advice of the queen and the archbishop, will give Father Paweł [Dunin Wolski] the Bishopric of Poznań, and the seal to Mr. Sobeczko, because women and effeminates rule everything today". After Jan Dzierzgowski's death on August 22, 1548, Dorota erected a funeral monument for her husband in St. Anne's Church in Warsaw, in the main nave on the right side next to the altar of the Virgin Mary, carved in marble, but it was destroyed during the Deluge (1655-1660). It was probably made by Giovanni Cini or Giovanni Maria Padovano in their workshops in Kraków and transported to Warsaw. There are no material traces of the influential and very wealthy Sobocka preserved in today's Poland, she is also largely forgotten and known thanks to the malicious comments of Stanisław Górski and the Habsburg agent Giovanni Marsupino, who in a letter to Ferdinand I of August 19, 1543, called her the wife of Archbishop Gamrat (after "Jagiellonki polskie w XVI wieku" by Alexander Przezdziecki, Volume 1, p. 139). There is also a Mazovian legend connected with Lady Sobocka and Queen Bona: during the queen's stay at the hunting palace of the Mazovian dukes at Lake Krusko (today Lake Serafin) near Łomża, the child of her favourite, left unattended, drowned in the marshy lake. Bona Sforza and her companion, in a fit of anger, cursed the lake and this place. The Czartoryski Museum in Kraków houses a portrait of a woman, previously attributed to the German painter Conrad Faber von Kreuznach, active in Frankfurt am Main before 1553, and today to an unknown German painter from the circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder (oil on panel, 51.5 x 40 cm, inv. XII-238). The painting comes from the collection of the last elected king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski (1732-1798), where it was considered the work of Hans Holbein the Younger. In 1818 it was purchased by Princess Izabela Czartoryska, who placed it in the Gothic House in Puławy as a portrait of Katharina von Bora, a fugitive nun and wife of Martin Luther. Around 1818, an inscription in Polish was added to the upper left corner of the painting: Katarzyna Boore / żona Marcina Lutra. The costume is similar to that from the portrait of Bora by Cranach the Elder in the Coburg Fortress (inv. M.418), but the facial features are different, Bora has larger (Slavic?) cheekbones. Therefore, this identification, like many other inscriptions on the paintings from the Puławy collection, usually based on a general resemblance, is today rejected. The inscription Anna de Boulen in the upper left corner of the portrait of Charles V's sister Isabella of Austria (1501-1526), Queen of Denmark, Norway and Sweden (Czartoryski Museum, inv. XII-299) was removed in the early 2000s because it is obviously not the famous second wife of King Henry VIII of England, Anne Boleyn (d. 1536), although the costume is similar to that seen in the portrait of Anne in the National Portrait Gallery (inv. NPG 4980(15)). The portrait of Isabella comes from the Sułkowski collection in Rydzyna and could probably have come from the collection of Sigismund I. It was later acquired by Stanislaus Augustus. By the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, the rich and powerful Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia of the Renaissance had long been forgotten, and Protestant Prussia, which together with Russia and Austria divided the country, was the dominant power in the region. The earlier history of the portrait by Cranach's entourage in the Czartoryski Museum is not known, so it either comes from earlier royal collections or was purchased by Poniatowski from a magnate collection. To make the identification with the famous Lutherin even more obvious, a coat of arms was added to the woman's ruby ring, however the author probably did not know Katharina's coat of arms and based it on descriptions of Martin's coat of arms, since this emblem resembles that of the Luther family - two golden apples and a white rose. The resemblance to Cranach's style in the painting described is obvious, so the most likely author seems to be Hans Döring (ca. 1490-1558), Cranach's chief assistant until the mid-1510s. His signed and dated portrait of Philipp (1468-1544), Count of Solms-Lich, is very similar (Sotheby's London, December 6, 2007, lot 135, HD.1520). His presence in Wetzlar north of Frankfurt in 1533 is confirmed, however his biography is not well known, so his stay in Poland-Lithuania is likely. If this were the case, it would also mean that the majority of his works were destroyed. The same woman, dressed in a similar costume, is depicted in the painting from the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, preserved in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg (inv. Gm1108). This painting tells the story of an adulterous wife - The Fable of the Mouth of Truth (Duplicity of Women) - and Queen Bona is depicted as the main character. Like Queen Bona, the woman in the black dress on the right looks at the viewer meaningfully, so she must be identified as the influential mistress of the queen - Sobocka. The same woman, dressed in a similar costume, can also be identified in another painting by Cranach. The work, now held at the Fondation Bemberg in Toulouse (oil on panel, 83.4 x 120.5 cm, inv. 1098), was sold in London in 2000. It is a courtly scene depicting Hercules at the court of Omphale, Queen of Lydia, where this mythological hero is dressed as a woman and the queen required him to do women's work. Two of Omphale's servants put a lady's bonnet on his head and two others hand him a distaff to spin. It was a popular motif at the Polish-Lithuanian court, as a similar scene depicting the family of Sigismund I is in the National Museum in Poznań (inv. Mo 109) and the oldest ones from 1531 depict the family of Bona's favourite Beata Kościelecka (private collection), all identified by me. The scene was painted in 1537 and signed with the artist's sign. "The Lydian maidens entrust their daily tasks to Hercules, and he, though equal to the gods, submits to the will of his lady. Thus lust robs a man of his intelligence, and fickle love robs him of his strength" (HERCVLEIS MANIBVS DANT LYDÆ PENSA PUELLÆ / IMPERIVM DOMINÆ FERT DEVS ILLE SVÆ / SIC CAPIT INGENTIS ANIMOS DAMNOSA VOLVPTAS / FORTIAQVE ENERVAT PECTORA MOLLIS AMOR), reads the Latin inscription above the scene, a perfect illustration of the refined court of Queen Bona and that of Sobocka in Ciechanów, Czersk and Warsaw. In this court scene in mythological disguise, Dorota wears an orange French-style dress with a large neckline in the back. Hercules is undoubtedly her husband Jan Dzierzgowski. The woman on the left, who looks like Sobocka, is probably her daughter Dorota, later Parzniewska, or less likely her sister Anna. The facial features of the two women behind Sobocka are different, so they are most likely her future daughter-in-law Anna Szreńska (Srzeńska) in the blue dress and her mother Barbara Kościelecka (died after 1550) in the green dress. Barbara, daughter of Stanisław Kościelecki (1460-1534), voivode of Poznań, was officially Beata Kościelecka's cousin (her "father" Andrzej was Stanisław's brother) and, like Beata, was a member of Queen Bona's court. Before April 1526, she married a courtier, Feliks (Szczęsny) Szreński (Srzeński) Sokołowski (ca. 1498-1554), who on April 12, 1526 acknowledged receiving a considerable dowry of 3,000 florins. In 1532, at the age of 29, he took office as voivode of Płock and in 1537 he received the starosty of Malbork. Like other members of the queen's court, Barbara was a colourful character and subject to commentary by Górski. On Barbara's orders, the noblewoman Pniewska, who was having an affair with her husband, was murdered. She also had a lover, probably Feliks Sieprski from Gulczewo, castellan of Rypin. Queen Bona, whose favor Szreńska enjoyed, tried to reconcile the spouses in 1533 through Bishop Krzycki, while Feliks denied all accusations of mistreating his wife at that time. Kościelecka soon began to manage the Płock starosty, which her husband had given her in 1531, on her own. Between 1537 and 1543, she bought small plots of land near Płock, creating "her own little farm". In 1540, following a complaint from the citizens of Płock that she was taking away the municipal benefits for this purpose, a royal commission investigated the matter on the spot, but it did not find any abuses on Szreńska's part. Later, she sold this farm with her husband's consent and made a profit from it. Barbara had good relations with Duke Albert of Prussia, who was painted by Cranach. In 1549, she asked him to send her a grey English puppy, and in 1550 - to sell 100 Silesian sheep. Szreńska had two daughters: Anna, mentioned above, wife of Zbożny Dzierzgowski, castellan of Sochaczew, and Barbara, who married Andrzej Firlej, castellan of Lublin (after "Polski słownik biograficzny: Sowiński Jan-Stanisław August ...", 1935, p. 253). The same woman in a green dress similar to the one in the Toulouse painting was depicted as the biblical heroine Judith holding the head of Holofernes in a painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder from around 1545 (oil on panel, 21 x 14.6 cm, Sotheby's New York, Auction 2282, January 27, 2010, lot 7). However, since the Toulouse painting is dated "1537", it could also be dated earlier. The painting was auctioned in London in 1963. Interestingly, the man's head resembles the features of Barbara's husband Feliks from his funerary monument in the parish church in Szreńsk. The monument was probably made in Kraków in a workshop influenced by Giovanni Maria Padovano in 1546 and shows him in splendid Renaissance armour that can also be seen in many of Cranach's paintings (compare "Funerary sculpture in sixteenth-century Mazovia" by Olga M. Hajduk, p. 69, 325-329). A short biography of Feliks and his daughters was included by Bartłomiej Paprocki in his Herby Rycerztwa Polskiego ..., published in Kraków in 1584 (p. 309). A stove tile with a male bust from the second quarter of the 16th century (District Museum in Toruń) and another tile with the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife from the first quarter of the 16th century (Klaipeda Castle Museum), as well as Martin Schoninck's The Story of Judith (The Siege of Bethulia) from 1536 (Artus Court in Gdańsk) prove that the fashion in Poland-Lithuania was very similar to that visible in Cranach's paintings. The voivode of Płock, Feliks Szreński, one of the most trusted collaborators of King Sigismund Augustus, died in 1554. All his property was passed on to his daughters born from his marriage to Barbara Kościelecka. The funerary monument of Anna Szreńska in the parish church in Pawłowo Kościelne, sculpted by the royal sculptor Santi Gucci Fiorentino in the 1560s, is very interesting because it refers to the Venetian images of the sleeping Venus. Lady Dzierzgowska née Szreńska is pointing at her womb. Perhaps by today's standards, all these women were not role models in their private lives, but as administrators and guardians of peace they contributed enormously to the economic and cultural development of Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia before the Deluge. 
Portrait of Dorota Dzierzgowska née Sobocka by Hans Döring, ca. 1534-1537, Czartoryski Museum in Kraków.
Hercules at the court of Omphale with portrait of Dorota Dzierzgowska née Sobocka and members of her family by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1537, Fondation Bemberg in Toulouse.
Portrait of Barbara Szreńska née Kościelecka as Judith with the head of Holofernes (bearing the features of her husband Feliks) by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1537-1545, Private collection.
King Sigismund I, his wife and his four daughters as Hercules and Omphale's maids by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder
"The Lydian maidens entrust their daily tasks to Hercules, and he, though equal to the gods, submits to the will of his lady. Thus lust robs a man of his intelligence, and fickle love robs him of his strength" (HERCVLEIS MANIBVS DANT LYDÆ PENSA PVELLÆ / IMPERIVM DOMINÆ FERT DEVS ILLE SVÆ / SIC CAPIT INGENTIS ANIMOS DAMNOSA VOLVPTAS / FORTIAQVE ENERVAT PECTORA MOLLIS AMOR), reads the Latin inscription above the scene of Hercules and Omphale in several paintings made by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his workshop in the late 1530s. The mythological hero, courageous and wise, was not afraid of powerful women, he succumbed to them and this obviously gave him great joy.
Sigismund I the Old was frequently compared to the mythological hero Hercules, it was a standard during renaissance. In 1537 the king was celebrating 20th anniversary of his coronation (January 24, 1507) and 70th anniversary of his birth (January 1, 1467). The composition of a painting from the Mielżyński collection, now in the National Museum in Poznań (oil on panel, 48 x 73 cm, inv. Mo 109), surprisingly correspond to the composition of the Jagiellon family around 1537. It is a workshop copy, most probably a copy of a copy, hence resemblance might be not so evident. Cranach workshop was famous for its "mass production" of quality paintings. The study for a portrait, a drawing with all details of the sitter's costume meticulously described, was prepared by some court painter or a Cranach's pupil sent to the patron. Just as in case of preparatory drawings to portraits of Margaret of Pomerania (1518-1569) and Anna of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1502-1568), Duchess of Pomerania, relatives of Sigismund through his sister Anna Jagiellon, Duchess of Pomerania (1476-1503), such drawings were sent from Poland to facilitate the work on commission. In this courtly scene showing Hercules, who was sold to the court of Queen Omphale where he had to remain as a slave for three years, we could distinguish the 70 years old king Sigismund (1467-1548), his 43 years old second wife Bona Sforza (1494-1557), and his four daughters: 18 years old Isabella (1519-1559), 15 years old Sophia (1522-1575), 14 years old Anna (1523-1596) and 11 years old Catherine (1526-1583). Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg (1490-1545), Bishop and Elector of Mainz, Archbishop of Magdeburg and Archchancellor of the Holy Roman Empire, was not afraid either and succumbed to ... the fashion for such disguised portraits, because the painting in the Danish National Gallery (Statens Museum for Kunst) bears his coat of arms and corresponds perfectly to the composition of the Cardinal's family in 1535, the year the painting was painted (panel, 82 x 118 cm, inv. KMSsp727). The work comes from the Danish royal collection, mentioned in the inventory of Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen in 1784. In the centre, the prince-elector can be seen in secular costume as Hercules. Albert's daughter Anna Schütz von Holzhausen (ca. 1515-1599), the child from his previous affair with Elisabeth (Leys) Schütz von Holzhausen (d. 1527), places a woman's bonnet on his head. Agnes Pless née Strauss (1502-1547), mistress of the cardinal from around 1527 until his death in 1545, is depicted as another court lady of the mythological Omphale (or the queen herself). She gives the distaff to "Hercules" and looks at the viewer in a meaningful way. The older lady behind her is her mother Ottilia Strauss née Semer (d. 1543), the second wife of Agnes' father, the Frankfurt butcher Hans Strauss (d. 1519). In 1531/32, Agnes bought a house on the old market square in Halle an der Saale for over 2,000 guilders. She lived there with her mother and held court in great splendor. Her relationship with Albert was known to the public. She also received gifts from several nobles, such as a precious pearl necklace from Duke Henry of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1489-1568), later husband of Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575). In 1541, following the victory of the Reformation, she left Halle with her mother and Albert. A reduced copy of the painting from the Danish royal collection, which was in the Albert Langen collection in Munich before 1899, is now in the Stiftsmuseum in Aschaffenburg (inv. 12578). It is believed to be a fragment of a larger composition that was cut into pieces and the portrait of Ottilie, also from the Langen collection in Munich, is now in a private collection (Hampel in Munich, June 27, 2019, lot 674). Such a secular disguise in a court scene should not be considered unusual. In a drawing attributed to the German sculptor and medallist Hans Schwarz and earlier to Albrecht Dürer, Christopher of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1487-1558), Bishop of Verden and Archbishop of Bremen, brother of Henry, is depicted in a completely secular costume - a fur coat and hat (Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, inv. KdZ 6020). Cardinal Albert, a splendid patron of the arts and prince of the Renaissance, corresponded with King Sigismund I and imitated the fashion at the royal court of Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia. 
Hercules at the court of Omphale with portrait of King Sigismund I (1467-1548), his wife and his four daughters by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1537, National Museum in Poznań.
Hercules at the court of Omphale with portrait of Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg (1490-1545), his daughter Anna Schütz von Holzhausen (ca. 1515-1599), his concubine Agnes Pless née Strauss (1502-1547) and her mother Ottilia Strauss née Semer (d. 1543) by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1535, National Gallery of Denmark.
Portraits of Bona Sforza by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder
In a letter of 29 June 1538 in response to accusations that his second wife Bona appropriated the robes of his first wife Barbara Zapolya, the king Sigismund I testified that the Queen arrived to Poland with so many garments, clothes and ornaments that it would be enough for a few queens.
The Queen's passion for fabrics revived crafts and trade. Under her patronage, attempts were made to establish Italian-style silk weaving mills, as evidenced by entries in the accounts of the royal court (after Ksawery Piwocki's "Tkanina polska", 1959, p. 14). In December 1527 Federico II Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua sent a large shipment of costly materials, including gold cloth, silk and satin fabrics commissioned by Bona, to her Venetian agent Gian Giacomo de Dugnano. Trade took Venetian merchants all over the Mediterranean and as far as China, a fact that affected not only the city's economic prosperity but its cultural identity, making 15th century Venice one of the most culturally diverse cities in Europe (after Carol M. Richardson's "Locating Renaissance Art", 2007, p. 211). So was "Guanyin look" of Bona and her step-daughter in some paintings by Cranach inspired by Chinese art? Bona's taste for German garments and embroideries is confirmed by employment at her court of German embroiderers. Jan Holfelder from Nuremberg became her court embroiderer in about 1525 and Sebald Linck from Nuremberg or Silesia was mentioned in the accounts in the years 1537-1579. The "portrait of a woman" (ritratto di donna) produced by the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, today kept in the Villa del Poggio Imperiale in Florence (oil on panel, 38 x 27 cm, Poggio Imperiale 558 / 1860), most probably comes from the old collections of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany. Similar to the Habsburgs, the Medici also collected effigies of the rulers of Europe and today some of the most important effigies of the monarchs of Poland can be found in Florence, sent to them as diplomatic gifts or commissioned by the grand dukes, like the portraits of Sigismund I (Uffizi Gallery, inv. 1890, 412), Stephen Bathory (inv. 1890, 8855) and the young Sigismund Vasa (inv. 1890, 2436). Several portraits of Bona, who in addition to being Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania with enormous possessions in Ruthenia, was also reigning duchess and heiress to several Italian duchies, should also have been provided to them, so we should assume that all have been lost or forgotten. The mentioned portrait is generally dated between 1525 and 1540 and the woman bears a striking resemblance to the queen in her portraits by Francesco Bissolo (National Gallery in London, NG631) and by Cranach against the idealized view of Kraków (Hermitage Museum, ГЭ-683), both identified by me. Given her more mature appearance, the portrait should be dated more to the 1530s than the 1520s. A similar portrait is now in the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck in Remagen, Germany (oil on canvas, mounted on wood panel, 31.2 x 26.8 cm). As in Cranach's earlier painting at Wilanów Palace (Wil.1518), the queen holds forget-me-nots, perhaps addressing her husband who, despite his old age, was still traveling across the vast country. 
Portrait of Bona Sforza d'Aragona (1494-1557), Queen of Poland by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1530s, Villa del Poggio Imperiale.
Portrait of Bona Sforza d'Aragona (1494-1557), Queen of Poland holding a flower by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1530s, Arp Museum Rolandseck.
Portraits of daughters of Bona Sforza by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder
Around the year of 1537 three of four daughters of Sigismund I and Bona Sforza reached puberty age (twelve for brides) and their marriage become a principal concern for the queen. Two years earlier, in 1535, the princesses were accommodated in a separate building, the Domus Reginularum (House of the Princesses), at Wawel Castle. Their apartment was richly furnished. The royal court accounts record expenses such as the purchase and repair of various luxury items, such as frames for paintings, ivory crucifixes, golden icons, chests and coffers with ornamental fittings, chessboards, dice, checkers and chess imported from Italy and bird-cages etc. (after "The Court of Anna Jagiellon: Size, Structure and Functions" by Maria Bogucka, p. 93-94).
All three, Isabella, Sophia, Anna, apart from the youngest 11 years old Catherine, were depicted with their hair covered with a snood in the painting from the Mielżyński collection showing the daughters and the wife of Sigismund I in 1537. The portraits of three unkown ladies from the late 1530s, created by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, surprisingly fit the Mielżyński painting and effigies of daughters of Bona by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger from the 1550s. They were probably part of a series of copies commissioned to be sent to relatives and potential suitors. The woman in a green dress from a painting sold in London in 2004 (panel, 37.1 x 25.2 cm, Sotheby's, July 7, 2004, lot 32), perfectly matches the appearance and age of the eldest daughter of Sigismund and Bona. This painting was probably in the late 18th century in the collection of James Whatman in Maidstone, Kent. The lady in a crimson dress from a painting sold in New York in 2002 (panel, 56 x 38 cm, Sotheby's, January 24, 2002, lot 156), resemble the second daughter of the royal couple Sophia. The painting comes from the collection of Mrs. Rachel Makower (d. 1960), sold at auction in London on June 14, 1961. The woman in the painting held at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (panel, 76 x 56.5 cm, G-73-51), corresponds perfectly to the effigy of the third daughter - Anna in the Mielżyński painting. This painting was also acquired in London (Arcade Gallery). The garments are more German in style, however Italian influences with low-cut bodices are visible. In 1537 the royal tailor was Francesco Nardocci (Nardozzi) from Naples. Also the fabrics are Italian, Venetian sumptuous silk satins and velvets. During the Prussian Homage in 1525 the royal family was dressed in clothes made of rich Venetian fabrics acquired by Jan Boner in Venice (Acta Tomiciana, vol. IV). Before the advent of cheaper Mexican cochineal in the 1540s, Polish cochineal (Porphyrophora polonica) from which the natural dye carmine is derived, colloquially known as "Saint John's blood", and widely traded in Europe during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, was utilized in Venice to dye fabrics. Polish merchants were present in Venice since at least 1348 and the first permanent dipomatic agent of Poland-Lithuania in Venice between 1535-1543 was Lodovico Alifio, head of the chancellery of queen Bona. The royal embroiderer Sebald Linck from Nuremberg, active at the court from 1537, also worked for the Princesses, like in 1545 when he redo the collars offered by Primate Piotr Gamrat to Sophia, Anna and Catherine and embroidered their dresses with pearls. Splendid clothes and jewelry were made for the princesses by local craftsmen, but also ordered from abroad, such as necklaces ordered from Nicolaus Nonarth in Nuremberg in 1546 for Sophia, Anna and Catherine or expensive and fashionable berets, which the embroiderer Bartholomew had brought from Vienna; since he initially had only two, special care was taken to buy a third (after "Anna Jagiellonka" by Maria Bogucka, p. 10). The painting featuring Herodias in the Speed Art Museum in Louisville (panel, 57 x 49.8 cm, 1968.26) is similar to portrait of princess Sophia Jagiellon. Also her face features match perfectly her portraits in Spanish costume. The inscription identifying the sitter as mother of Salome was most probably added in the 17th or 18th century. The portrait, originally displaying also the decapitated head of John the Baptist, was cut later and lower part was sold separately. A radiograph of the portrait in the Winnipeg Art Gallery, depicting Anna, reveals that her right arm originally featured a decapitated head on an oval platter. The composition was altered during its production. All of Bona's daughters were therefore to be depicted in the popular guise of the legendary biblical and mythological femmes fatales such as Salome, Judith, Delilah or Lucretia. The painting by Lucas Cranach the Younger in the Güstrow Palace (Staatliches Museum Schwerin, panel, 89.5 x 70 cm, G 201), very similar to the Winnipeg portrait, shows Anna Jagiellon as Judith with the Head of Holofernes. A copy of this portrait from an old East Prussian aristocratic collection was sold in Munich in 2011 (panel, 92.7 x 82.5 cm, Hampel, June 30, 2011, lot 235). The painting is attributed to the circle of Lucas Cranach the Younger, but its style recalls works attributed to student of his father active in Lübeck, Hans Kemmer (ca. 1495-1561), such as the Adoration of the Magi (National Museum in Warsaw, M.Ob.2537 MNW) and Judith (National Museum in Wrocław, VIII-2670). The portrait by Cranach's studio, similar to the Winnipeg and Güstrow paintings, depicting the same woman, was in 1934 in the collection of the Jewish art dealer Rudolf Heinemann (1901-1975), partner in the Galerie Fleischmann in Munich (oil on panel, 58.4 x 43.2 cm). It was acquired from a private collection in Italy. The resemblance of the young woman to Anna's mother, Queen Bona, from her portrait of 1526 by Cranach in the Hermitage Museum (inv. ГЭ-683), identified by me, is so obvious that Max Jakob Friedländer and Jakob Rosenberg in their "Die Gemälde von Lucas Cranach" (items 238, 238 d, pp. 73, 118), clearly considered it to be an effigy of the same woman (hence the catalog number and dating), despite the fact that the costume indicates that the painting from Heinemann's collection was created at least ten years later. The wide sleeves of her dress and her unusual hat indicate that Anna wished to combine elements of Italian and German fashion of the time. In 1538 also the youngest daughter of Bona, Catherine Jagiellon, reached the legal age of marriage. Her mother, as for the rest of her daughters preferred Italian match to strengthen her position and the rights to the principalities she owned (Bari and Rossano) as well to these that she claimed (Milan). A small portrait of a girl as Saint Catherine by Lucas Cranach the Elder in Museo Civico Amedeo Lia in La Spezia (panel, 33 x 26 cm, inv. 249), between Florence and Genoa, in a costume from the late 1530s is very similar to effigy of the youngest daughter of Bona from the portrait of Sigsimund I's family from the Mielżyński collection and to other portraits of Catherine Jagiellon. 
Portrait of Crown Princess of Poland-Lithuania Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559) by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1537, Private collection.
Portrait of Crown Princess of Poland-Lithuania Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575) by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1537, Private collection.
Portrait of Crown Princess of Poland-Lithuania Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575) as Herodias by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, after 1537, Speed Art Museum in Louisville.
Portrait of Crown Princess of Poland-Lithuania Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1537, Winnipeg Art Gallery.
Portrait of Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) as Judith with the Head of Holofernes by Lucas Cranach the Younger, after 1537, Güstrow Palace.
Portrait of Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) as Judith with the Head of Holofernes by Hans Kemmer, after 1537, Pivate collection.
Portrait of Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, after 1537, Galerie Fleischmann in Munich, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Princess Catherine Jagiellon (1526-1583) as Saint Catherine by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1538, Museo Civico Amedeo Lia in La Spezia.
Portraits of Isabella Jagiellon and Sophia Jagiellon by Lucas Cranach the Elder
What better way to depict a potential bride then in a guise of virtuous biblical or historical heroine, the goddess of love or the Virgin?
On January 11, 1537 died in Dresden John, Hereditary Prince of Saxony, the eldest son of Barbara Jagiellon. It was now his younger brother Frederick, born in 1504, second of only two sons of Barbara to survive to adulthood, who would inherit the title of the Duke of Saxony from his father George, nicknamed the Bearded. Despite being mentally handicapped he was declared a heir by his father. Frederick was 33 and was unmarried. Maintaining the alliance with Saxony was important to Poland-Lithuania and it was beneficial for Papacy and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V if the Catholic and pro-Habsburg Albertine line (headed by George, a staunch opponent of Martin Luther), would stay in power. "The marriage of royal maidens, or what was called resolution, was in the spirit of the time a matter of very open diligence on the part of parents and family. They did not hesitate to use methods for this purpose that are not necessarily in keeping with today's sense of delicacy. Finding a husband for the princesses and daughters of the king was often one of the secret diplomatic orders, given not only to envoys, but also to merchants and agents of banking houses, etc.", comments the Polish historian Józef Szujski (1835-1883) about the marriages of the sisters of Sigismund Augustus (after "Ostatnie lata Zygmunta Augusta i Anna Jagiellonka", p. 298). The dowry of Jagiellonian women from the late 15th century was customarily 32,000 Hungarian florins payable in five or two installments. The eldest daughter of Sigismund and Bona, Isabella Jagiellon received 32,000 ducats in cash in 1539, and her bridal trousseau was worth 38,000 ducats, therefore her dowry amounted to 70,000 ducats. The wedding contract of the second in line Sophia, concluded in 1555, stipulated her dowry to 32,000 ducats (or 48,000 thalers) in cash and 100,000 thalers in jewels and other valuables, among which were huge amounts of table and church silver, about 60 precious garments, 5 tents, 34 tapestries, 32 carpets and lots of wonderful jewelry (12 berets set with precious stones, 9 gold necklaces set with precious stones, 34 pendants, 17 gold chains, two gold belts, 4 bracelets). She was accompanied by 8 carriages, including one gilded carriage and one chariot, valuable harnesses and 28 horses. Both princesses were unmarried in 1537, therefore their cousin Frederick of Saxony undeniably received their portraits. Two pendant paintings of Lucretia and Judith by Lucas Cranach the Elder, which were recorded in the inventory of the Ducal Kunstkammer (art cabinet) in Dresden as far as 1595, most likely destroyed in 1945, match perfectly effigies of two mentioned daughters of Sigismund I and Bona. Both paintings had identical dimensions (panel, 172 x 64 cm, inv. 1916), similar composition and were dated to around 1537. The resemblance of Isabella-Lucretia to the famous Venus of Urbino (Uffizi, 1890 no. 1437, mirror view) is striking, while the face of Sophia-Judith is almost identical to that of Herodias at the Speed Art Museum (1968.26). To describe Lucretia from these two panels, Max J. Friedländer and Jakob Rosenberg in their 1932 publication refer to a half-length Lucretia by Cranach from 153(9) which was in the Vilnius Museum (Wilna Museum, panel, 62 x 50 cm, compare "Die Gemälde von Lucas Cranach", p. 82, item 289). Bona Sforza favored her oldest daughter Isabella, who received a thorough education and she could speak and write four languages. Isabella was depicted as Lucretia, the epitomy of female virtue, chastity, fidelity and honour. The younger Sophia, considered the wisest and the most intelligent of all Bona's daughters and described as "an example and a mirror of virtue, piety, and dignity" (exemplum et speculum virtutis, pietatis et gravitatis) by Stanisław Sędziwój Czarnkowski in 1573, was shown as Judith, intelligent, strong, virtuous and devout woman who saved her people from destruction. Opting for closer ties with Emperor Charles V, Frederick was eventually married on January 27, 1539 in Dresden to Elisabeth (ca. 1516-1541), from the Counts of Mansfeld, one of the oldest noble families in Germany and sister of Peter Ernst I von Mansfeld, who participated in Charles V's expedition against Tunis in 1535. The groom died childless just four weeks later on February 26, 1539 followed by his father, who died on April 17, 1539. Duke George was succeeded by his Lutheran brother Henry IV (1473-1541), married to Catherine of Mecklenburg (1487-1561). In April 1538 Isabella Jagiellon was engaged to the King of Hungary. In 1539 John George of Brandenburg (1525-1598), the eldest son of Magdalena of Saxony, daughter of Barbara Jagiellon, reached the legal age of marriage (14). His father Joachim II Hector, Elector of Brandenburg and his stepmother Hedwig Jagiellon were concerned to find a good match for him. Exactly as in the case of Hedwig's portrait as Venus by Cranach from the early 1530s, there is a painting showing Venus from the late 1530s in Berlin. It was accquired by the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin from the Royal Castles' collection in 1830 (panel, 174 x 64.9 cm, inv. 1190). The woman depicted as Venus resemble greatly other effigies of Sophia Jagiellon. When on November 1, 1539 Joachim II openly introduced the Reformation into Brandenburg by receiving Communion according to the Lutheran rite, the marriage with a Catholic princess could not be considered and on 15 February 1545 his son married Protestant Princess Sophie of Legnica (1525-1546), great-granddaughter of King Casimir IV of Poland. Exactly the same effigy of princess Sophia's face as in the Berlin Venus portrait, like a template, was used in the effigy of Madonna and Child with grapes by Lucas Cranach the Elder in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (panel, 57.1 x 34.6 cm, 68.41.4). She offeres the Child a bunch of grapes a Christian symbol of the redemptive sacrifice, but also a popular Renaissance symbol for fertility borrowed from the Roman god of the grape-harvest and fertility, Bacchus, similarly to the effigy of her father's first wife Barbara Zapolya (Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid). The same template was also used in the effigy of Madonna lactans in Vienna by workshop of Cranach, showing the Virgin breastfeeding the infant Jesus, a common motif in European art since the Middle Ages and a symbol of purity and humility. This motif was borrowed from the image of Isis lactans, a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world, nursing her son, Horus, the god of divine kingship. The painting, now in the Cathedral Museum (Dom Museum) in Vienna (panel, 84 x 57 cm, L/61), was deposited by the Weinhaus Parish in Vienna, a votive temple, built to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Vienna in which John III Sobieski, king of Poland led the army to a decisive victory over the Ottomans on September 12, 1683. In the spring of 1570, two years after death of her husband Henry V, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Sophia Jagiellon converted to Lutheranism. 
Portraits of Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559) as Lucretia and Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575) as Judith by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1537, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Crown Princess Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575) as Venus with Cupid as the honey thief by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1539, Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.
Portrait of Crown Princess Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575) as Madonna and Child with grapes by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1539, Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
Portrait of Crown Princess Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575) as Madonna lactans by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1538-1550, Dom Museum in Vienna.
Portraits of Isabella Jagiellon by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop and portrait of John Zapolya by workshop or circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder
The plan to wed Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559), the eldest daughter of Sigismund I the Old and his second wife Bona Sforza, to John Zapolya (1487-1540), Voivode of Transylvania and King of Hungary emerged around 1531. Sigismund von Herberstein (1486-1566) in his 1531 report to King Ferdinand I of Austria (1503-1564) cites Hieronim Łaski (1496-1541) as a source of information: "The King of Poland will marry the eldest daughter of the current queen to Count John of Spis [the Habsburgs refused to give Zapolya the title of king]. Then Łaski told me that about the marriage of his master [John Zapolya] he had negotiated with the King of Poland and received a favorable answer". Perhaps Łaski himself, one of the most skillful politicians of the time, a close associate of Zapolya, or Bona, were the authors of this project. For many years the queen tried in vain to persuade her husband to take an anti-Habsburg position. The marriage of her daughter to Zapolya would mean a victory for the queen and a change in Polish policy (after "Jagiellonowie: leksykon biograficzny" by Małgorzata Duczmal, p. 60, 265, 413).
At that time, Zapolya again sought help from the West against the Habsburgs. The help for Zapolya was sought by Hieronim Łaski, who used the entire year of 1531 for diplomatic trips. From Kraków, he went to Bohemia, then to Vienna and Buda, then back to Kraków, but soon went to Innsbruck, then to France and Hesse, from there again to Kraków, then to Spis and finally to Transylvania, to Zapolya. However, he did not provide any concrete help to the Hungarian king. It was then that Łaski's idea was born, not entirely original, because Andrzej Krzycki, perhaps at the instigation of Bona, had already suggested such a solution in 1526, to marry Zapolya to a Polish princess. Łaski believed that in Europe only Poland could provide Zapolya with effective support against the Habsburgs (after "Izabela Jagiellonka, królowa Węgier" by Małgorzata Duczmal, p. 158). Accounts of royal expenses by royal banker Seweryn Boner (Severin Bonar, 1486-1549) confirm the expenditures made on Isabella's jewellery and clothing in 1536, such as the money allocated for her dress, a sapphire signet ring ordered for her to match her jewellery (Die 17 Decembris 1536. dedit pro Schaphiro pro signeto Sermae reginulae Isabellae monetae fl. 29 et a sculptura eiusdem signiti monetae fl. 8 facit in toto fl. 37/15), or a ruby rose sent to Nuremberg to have a new stone set in place of the missing one. At the same time, Bona ordered jewelry for Isabella from the goldsmiths in Wrocław. In 1537, the four princesses received a gold chain from her, also ordered in Wrocław (after "Izabella királyné, 1519-1559" by Endre Veress, p. 22, 27-28, 45). The city was at that time the economic centre of Silesia and many of Cranach's paintings were imported there, as evidenced by some paintings kept in the National Museum and the Archdiocesan Museum in Wrocław. The marriage project, so important for Hungary, was first seriously discussed in November 1537, when Franjo Frankopan (Franciscus Frangepanus, d. 1543), Archbishop of Kalocsa and Bishop of Eger, received a letter from Hetman Jan Amor Tarnowski, who proposed Isabella as a bride to the King of Hungary. Although the old, sick King John did not really want to marry, he yielded to the persuasion of his advisors. Zapolya first communicated his agreement to Tarnowski privately. All these negotiations were kept secret, especially from the Habsburgs and their agents in Hungary, such as Johan Weze (1490-1548), Archbishop of Lund and later Bishop of Constance. Weze was secretary to King Christian II of Denmark and a diplomat in the service of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and at that time negotiated the Treaty of Oradea (Nagyvárad / Grosswardein), signed on February 24, 1538. The King of Hungary planned to come to Buda on St. Martin's Day and to celebrate his marriage immediately after the New Year 1539, around the Epiphany. But this was impossible, because Isabella's wedding dress was not yet ready, and so it was agreed at the court in Kraków that the symbolic marriage would take place before King John's envoys at the end of January, and the religious ceremony in Hungary would take place in the first half of February, on the 9th, as the invitations had been sent out. The wedding ceremony on January 31, 1539 in Kraków was followed by a sumptuous feast, at which court poets such as Stanisław Aichler (Glandinus), Stanisław Kleryka (Anserinus), Sebastian Marszewski (Sebastianus Marschevius) and Wacław Szamotulski (Wenceslaus Samotulinus) read their occasional poems and wedding songs praising Isabella. Some of them were also published in Kraków, such as two works by Marszewski (Kórnik Library, Sygn.Cim.Qu.2205, Sygn.Cim.Qu.2206) or Aichler's Epithalamium Isabellae ... (Czartoryski Library, 250 II Cim). Queen Bona's physician, Giacomo Ferdinando da Bari (Jacobus Ferdinandus Bariensis, Jakub Ferdynand z Bari), in his De foelici connubio serenissimi Ungariae regis Joannis et S. Isabellae Poloniae regis filiae ..., also published in Kraków in 1539 (Kórnik Library, Sygn.Cim.Qu.2379), wrote about her marriage that not a hundred languages could adequately describe Isabella's physical and mental gifts and beauty and that her body is pretty, graceful, her face shows joy and modesty. Her limbs are beautiful and proportionate, and King John can rejoice in receiving such a bride, as can Hungary, which has suffered so much until now. A portrait of a young woman by Lucas Cranach the Elder in the Danish National Gallery (panel, 41.5 x 25.5 cm, inv. DEP4), bears a strong resemblance to other effigies of Isabella, in particular the best-known effigy of the Jagiellonian princess made by the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger around 1553 or later (Czartoryski Museum, inv. MNK XII-542). It can therefore be dated to around 1532, as the medal with the bust of Isabella by Giovanni Maria Mosca (Gallerie Estensi, Palazzo Coccapani in Modena, inv. R.C.G.E. 9313). The painting comes from the collection of Abraham Oppenheim (1804-1878) in Cologne, and its earlier history is unknown. This work is generally dated before 1537 because of the raised wings of the dragon in Cranach's mark. Although this portrait is also considered to represent Emilia of Saxony (1516-1591), the resemblance to the best-known portrait of the Saxon princess in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (group portrait with her sisters, inv. GG 877) or to a portrait by Hans Krell in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool (inv. WAG 1222), is barely visible. The same woman can be identified in another painting by Cranach and his workshop, now in the Hallwyl Museum in Stockholm, considered to be an effigy of the Roman goddess Venus (panel, 94 x 59.5 cm, inv. XXXII:B.156. HWY). This is also evident not only from the resemblance of the facial features, but also from the general context of such effigies of Jagiellonian women, identified by me. The woman even wears the same necklace as that visible in the portrait of Isabella in a green dress by the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder (Sotheby's London, January 24, 2002, lot 156). The painting is undated and is generally dated to 1526-1537. It was therefore most likely part of Isabella's dowry, which she took with her to Hungary and brought back to Poland on her return in September 1551. The painting was originally part of a larger composition depicting Venus and Cupid, similar to the portrait of Isabella's half-sister Hedwig Jagiellon, daughter of Barbara Zapolya, in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (inv. 594). It was most likely cut down by later, more prudish owners. Before its acquisition in 1915, the painting was located at Edsberg Castle, north of Stockholm, which once belonged to Gabriel Oxenstierna (1619-1673), much valued by the Brigand of Europe, as Stefan Czarniecki called him, King Charles X Gustav of Sweden. Isabella died just three years after her return to Transylvania on September 15, 1559, at the age of 40, allegedly as a result of a poorly performed abortion, a child of her lover Stanisław Nieżowski (ca. 1520-1573). Like Isabella, very few confirmed effigies of her husband have survived and some are probably waiting to be rediscovered. John Zapolya, like his predecessor Louis II Jagiellon, whose portraits were painted by Bernhard Strigel, Hans Krell, Flemish and Italian painters, must have commissioned several of his painted effigies. The effigy which probably represents Zapolya most faithfully is a woodcut by the German engraver Erhard Schön (ca. 1491-1542) from Nuremberg, published by Hans Guldenmund (d. 1560), with the inscription in the upper part in German: Johans von Gottes gnaden König zu Hungern and Hans Guldenmundt below the effigy. Between 1532 and 1548 Guldenmund also created an engraving with the portrait of the Elector of Saxony John Frederick I (1503-1554), inscribed Gedruckt zu Nürnberg durch Hans Guldenmundt, bey den Fleisch pencken, which was undobtedly based on original by Cranach (British Museum, inv. 1850,0612.111). Considering the king's costume as well as Schön's dates of life, the original must have been made in the 1530s or in 1541 like the print depicting the siege of Buda by the Ottoman army, which is also attributed to him (University Library of Erlangen-Nuremberg, H62/DH 4). Woodcuts with portraits of Anna Jagiellonica (1503-1547), Mary of Hungary (1505-1558) and Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, 1504-1558) are also attributed to Schön, who is considered to have spent his entire life and career in his hometown, where he died in 1542. Highly realistic depictions of the Siege of Buda, as well as the portraits mentioned, must be based on effigies by other artists, probably itinerant painters or draughtsmen or, in the case of the effigy of the Hungarian king, a drawing or portrait by his court painter or an artist who stayed temporarily at his court. It is interesting to note that the woodcut depicting the portrait of the Transylvanian humanist and Protestant reformer Johann Honter (Johannes Honterus, 1498-1549), who studied in Kraków, is very close to the style of Lucas Cranach, which is particularly visible in the part of the model's hands, shirt and beard (inscription: VIGILATE ET ORATE·JOHANES·HONT ...). Honter played a decisive role in the introduction of the Reformation in Transylvania and corresponded with Luther and Melanchthon. In the autumn of 1529 he stayed briefly in Nuremberg and in November he went to Kraków, where on March 1, 1530 he entered his name in the register of the Kraków Academy as Johannes Georgii de Corona. Honterus's first two works were published in Kraków - a description of the world Rudimentorum Cosmographiae libri duo (1530) and a Latin grammar De Grammatica Libri Duo (1532). In 1532 he printed in Basel his map of Transylvania, which he had already made in Kraków, and returned to his hometown of Brasov (Kronstadt in German) in January 1533, where he set up a printing press in 1539 to enable the distribution of his own works. The Protestant Reformers from Transylvania and Hungary Matthias Dévay (ca. 1500-1545), Valentin Wagner (ca. 1510-1557), János Sylvester (ca. 1504–1552) and István Szegedi Kiss (1505-1572), all studied in Kraków and Wittenberg. In his work Geschichte des Kronstädter Gymnasiums, published in 1845 in Brasov, Joseph Dück, citing three Saxon writers from the 18th century, mentions that Honter was Isabella Jagiellon's teacher. He was supposed to have taught the princess Latin and probably also taught her German. He dedicated to Isabella Preface to the Sentences of Saint Augustine (SENTENTIAE EX OMNIBVS OPERIBVS DIVI AVGVSTINI DECERPTAE), published in Brasov in 1539 with a title page decorated with her coat of arms (AD SERENISSIMAM PRINCIPEM / ET DO. DOMINAM ISABELLAM / Dei gratia Reginam Vngariæ, Dalmatiæ, Cro/atie, etcæ. Io. Honteri C. in Sententias diui / Augustini Præfatio). Honter and other members of the German-speaking community in Sarmatia and Transylvania undoubtedly supported and facilitated contacts with artists established in Germany. Portrait of a Bearded Man, formerly attributed to Lucas Cranach the Younger and now to the painter from Cranach's circle known as the Master of the Mass of Saint Gregory, shows a man in rich costume - a fur-trimmed cloak and a gold-embroidered collar set with pearls (oil on panel, 55.9 x 41.3 cm, Christie's London, July 8, 2008, lot 11). The painting was on private loan to the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg before 1930 and has appeared on the art market several times in recent decades. In 1910 it was reported as belonging to L. Hess in Wiesbaden in Hesse, where Łaski travelled in 1531. The signet ring on the sitter's right hand bears the mirrored letters HF, beneath which is a symbol possibly composed of other ligatured letters, interpreted as IH. Such symbols, usually coats of arms, were very important to the people who commissioned the paintings, so this ambiguity regarding the symbol could be the result of a copy, where the copyist misinterpreted or incorrectly painted the symbol, as in the similar painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art by the circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder (inv. 32.100.61), which according to my identification is an effigy of King Sigismund I. The clearly visible letters HF are probably the monogram of the painter, which could be considered the work of Lucas the Elder's closest collaborator, his son Hans Cranach (ca. 1513-1537) - Hans Fecit, who probably produced his own works from 1527. If Hans copied a portrait made by his father or another German painter and the letters IH are monograms, it could originally be JHR in ligature, comparable to the signature of the Hungarian King John Zapolya: Joannes Rex Hungariæ. The painting is dated "1527" at the top left in Latin numerals (M·D·XX VII). The man in this portrait wears a floral diadem of a bridegroom, which means that he is either engaged or wants to find a wife. In 1526, in addition to the marriage with the Jagiellonian princess, Zapolya also considered marrying the widow of Louis Jagiellon - Mary of Hungary (Mary of Austria), sister of Emperor Charles V and King Ferdinand I, although she stated that she would rather go to a convent than betray her brother by marrying Zapolya. In early 1527, the Habsburgs still deceived Zapolya into believing that this marriage was not out of the question. In this way, they wanted to persuade John to yield. Mary also rejected other candidates, although they were not enemies of the Habsburgs like Zapolya. The 1527 portrait is very similar to Erhard Schön's woodcut with the portrait of the Hungarian king. 
Portrait of Crown Princess Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559) by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1532, Statens Museum for Kunst.
Portrait of Crown Princess Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559) as Venus by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, ca. 1537, Hallwyl Museum in Stockholm.
Portrait of John Zapolya (1487-1540), King of Hungary and Croatia by workshop or circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder, probably Hans Cranach, 1527, Private collection.
Woodcut with portrait of Johannes Honterus (1498-1549) by workshop or circle of Lucas Cranach the Younger, 1540s, Picture Collection of Archive and Library of the Evangelical Church A.B. Kronstadt in Brasov.
Allegorical portraits of Bona Sforza by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop
"Bona loved power and did not like to share it with anyone, not even her own son - as evidenced by her reluctance to handing over Lithuania to him. For this reason, even earlier, in 1538, she prevented the functioning of the institution of four resident senators alongside Sigismund Augustus, created during the Diet of that year" (after Maria Bogucka's "Bona Sforza", 1989, p. 224).
The 1537 anti-royalist and anti-absolutist rebellion (rokosz) of the Polish nobility, ridiculed by the nickname of the Chicken War, criticized the role of queen Bona, whom they accused for the "bad upbringing" of young Sigismund Augustus, centralizing policies and seeking to increase her power in the state. As a result the 1538 Diet declared elections vivente rege, that Bona forced, illegal in the Polish kingdom and insisted that all estates had the right to be present at such events in the future. That same year it was also agreed that the only son of Bona will marry archduchess Elizabeth of Austria (1526-1545), which Bona "a great enemy of the king of Rome" Ferdinand I, her father, strongly oposed. So does she commissioned a painting to express her dissatisfaction? The painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder, dated 1538, from the old collection of the Royal Wilanów Palace in Warsaw (oil on panel, 60.3 x 42.1 cm, Wil.1749, recorded in 1743) can be considered as such. It shows Lucretia, a noblewoman in ancient Rome, whose suicide led to the political rebellion against the established power. Bona is credited with introducing many Italian "novelties" to Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia and portraiture was very developed at that time in her native country. Numerous portraits of the queen's relatives of the House of Sforza, such as the portrait of her paternal grandfather Galeazzo Maria Sforza (1444-1476), Duke of Milan, by Piero del Pollaiuolo (Uffizi Gallery, inv. 1890, 1492) became a classic of European portrait. However, the effigies of the queen are not mentioned in the inventories of notable collections, such as those from the second half of the 17th century of the Lubomirskis or the Radziwill family, which indicates that they were probably forgotten or hidden in mythological or religious disguises (portrait historié). The 1661 inventory of the Lubomirski collection indicates that only the most recent effigies were saved and that the oldest were left at the "mercy" of the barbarians during the Deluge. Similarly Boguslaus Radziwill (1620-1669), who evacuated his possessions to Königsberg/Królewiec. The register of his paintings from 1657 (AGAD 1/354/0/26/84), however, lists a few paintings by Cranach (one of the rare names of painters mentioned in this inventory), including two or three paintings of Lucretia probably by him (the author's name is not mentioned) - "A painting on a board of a woman man who killed herself" (Obraz na desce białeygłowy ktora się zabiła, [...] obraz ktora się sama zabia), as well as several portraits whose identity has already been lost: "Two Italian Ladies", "Two unknown ladies", "Unknown cavalier", "Unknown Hetman", "Large paintings of women ... 3", "A Cardinal", "Moldavian Voivode", "Radziwill without a name", "A German person in a cuirass", "Foreign Duchess", "Face of a woman", "Holy head", "A girl with a dog" and "Image of Antichrists". Very similar Lucretia as a naked three-quarter length figure, covered only by a veil, is in the private collection (oil on panel, 75.5 x 57.7 cm, with the Weiss Gallery, London in 2014). Her facial features were modelled on other effigies of the Queen by Cranach and resemble greatly the effigy in Villa del Poggio Imperiale. The same effigy, almost like a template, was used in the painting depicting the Virgin and Child with grapes in front of a curtain held by an angel in the National Gallery in Prague (oil on panel, 85 x 59 cm, O 9321). This painting is attributed to workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder and dated to about 1535-1540. It was previously in the collection of the Sternberg family (recorded since 1806), most probably in Prague. Mary is depicted here as a noble vine, whose fruit is Jesus. At the same time, the vine is the Redeemer himself and his branches are believers: "If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). Like the Virgin, Bona was the mother of the king, so she is equally important. This painting could be a gift for Bona's main opponent, Ferdinand of Austria (1503-1564), who resided in Prague. Similar Madonna is in Gdańsk, which was the main port of Poland in the 16th century (National Museum in Gdańsk, oil on panel, 55 x 36.5 cm, inventory number MNG/SD/268/M). However, the pose of the Virgin and the Child resemble more closely the portrait of Queen Bona Maria Sforza in guise of Mary in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt. The Child is offering an apple to his mother, a symbol of original sin (peccatum originale), as well as temptation, salvation and the royal power (royal orb or royal apple). According to a Milanese manuscript, probably from the 17th century, Bona was criticized by her opponents, like probably all strong female leaders in history, for three things in Poland: monetae falsae, facies picta et vulva non stricta - allegedly fake coins mixed in with her dowry, excessive use of cosmetics and licentiousness (after Mónika F. Molnár, "Isabella and Her Italian Connections", p. 165). "If I seem a lecherous image to the viewer, what kind of shame do you have a greater ideal? You will marvel at my power and accomplishment in that form, so I will become religious to you" (Si videor lasciva tibi spectator imago, / Die maius specimen quale pudoris habes? / Virtutem factumque meum mireris in ista / Forma, sic fiam religiosa tibi), wrote in his Latin epigram entitled "On Lucretia depicted more lasciviously" (In Lucretiam lascivius depictam), secretary of Queen Bona Andrzej Krzycki (1482-1537), Archbishop of Gniezno. 
Allegorical portrait of Bona Sforza as Lucretia by workshop Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1538, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
Portrait of Bona Sforza as Lucretia by Lucas Cranach the Elder or workshop, ca. 1535-1540, Private collection.
Portrait of Bona Sforza as Madonna and Child with grapes by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1535-1540, National Gallery in Prague.
Portrait of Bona Sforza as Madonna and Child with an apple by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1535-1540, National Museum in Gdańsk.
Portrait of king Sigismund I by circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder
In 1538 Sigismund I and his second wife Bona Sforza were celebrating 20 years of their fruitful marriage which produced a heir to the throne and four daughters, one of which was about to become the Queen of Hungary and large festivities were held at the Wawel Castle.
The portrait of a man in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (oil on panel, 55.9 x 42.5 cm, 32.100.61) from 1538, date top center: MDXXXVII(I), is very similar to the effigy of King Sigismund I from Aleksander Gwagnin's Sarmatiae Europae descriptio, published in Kraków in 1578 and other portraits of the king. The oldest confirmed provenance of the painting is the Lindemann collection in Vienna in 1927, therefore coming from the collections of the Habsburgs, relatives of Sigismund, or transfer from the collections of Polish-Lithuanian magnates, who transferred their collections to Vienna after the Partitions of Poland, are possible. Christian II of Denmark (in the Museum der bildenden Künste) and Elector Frederick III of Saxony (in the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia) are depiced in very similar black caps with earflaps, costumes and beards in their portraits by Cranach and his workshop from the 1520s. Therefore the painting could be a copy of a portrait from the 1520s. The initals on a signet ring displaying a coat of arms are illisible and unidentifiable as of today, however they are very similar to these visible on signet seal of Sigismund I with monogram SDS (Sigillum Domini Sigimundi) in the State Archives in Gdańsk and in Poznań. Finally the age of the sitter (?) on the painting is also illisible and identified as xlv, so it could be XX, as 20th anniversary or LXXI, as age of Sigismund in 1538 and commissioned by the king or his wife on this occasion as one from a series commemorating it? "If the present work had a female pendant, which is quite possible, the orange as a symbol of fertility would have been especially appropriate" (after The Met Catalogue Entry). The 1657 inventory of paintings by Boguslaus Radziwill (1620-1669) held at the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw (AGAD 1/354/0/26/84), which lists several paintings by Cranach and very probably his circle, includes two paintings by the master which could be pendants, such as the portrait of Joachim Ernest (1536-1586), prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, depicted as Adam, and his wife Agnes of Barby-Mühlingen (1540-1569) as Eve (Dessau Castle, inv. I-58 and I-59). One of the paintings was "Lucas Cranach's art with Venus and Cupid" and the other was "Lucas Cranach's painting of an old man". Both were probably destroyed during numerous wars, invasions and accidental fires, but the general context suggests that the portraits represented Sigismund I the Old and his second wife Bona Sforza "in the guise" of Venus. Similarly to the Met painting, although naked, the king was most likely depicted in a small painting showing the Fountain of Youth (in the right corner), painted by Hans Dürer in 1527 (National Museum in Poznań, MNP M 0110, signed and dated center left, on a tree trunk: 1527 / HD). The man embraces his wife, also depicted nude, who in turn greatly resembles the effigies of Queen Bona, identified by me, in particular the painting in London (National Gallery, NG631). The couple watches the bathers in the mythical spring which restores youth to anyone who drinks or bathes in its waters. It is quite possible that Bona used such "magic" potions, but in the paintings both will remain young and beautiful forever. 
Portrait of king Sigismund I by circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1538, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Portraits of Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski and Jan Łaski the Younger
Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski was born on 20 September 1503 in Wolbórz in central Poland. He studied in Kraków between 1517 and 1519. He was ordained a vicar in about 1522 and worked in the office of Jan Łaski the Elder, Primate of Poland.
At the turn of 1531/32 he went to Germany, probably on the mission entrusted to him by Łaski, and he enrolled in the University of Wittenberg. The letter of recommendation from Łaski enabled him to live in Philip Melanchthon's house. Acquaintance with the prince of German humanists turned into friendship over time and he also met Martin Luther and other Protestant reformers. The leading painter in the city, who also held the office of mayor, was Lucas Cranach the Elder. Frycz was a diplomatic agent and he often traveled between Wittenberg and Nuremberg and to Poland. He probably left Wittenberg in mid-1535, when a great plague broke out in the city. In November 1536 Modrzewski was sent by Jan Łaski to Basel to take over Erasmus of Rotterdam's great library, purchased by Łaski during the lifetime of the great humanist. Then he went briefly to Paris, Nuremberg, Strasbourg and Kraków and at the beginning of February 1537 he was in Schmalkalden as an observer on a congress of Protestant princes. On May 1, 1537 he took part in the talks in Leipzig on dogmatic issues with Jan Łaski the Younger and Melanchthon and after the conference he stayed longer in Nuremberg to learn German. At the beginning of 1538, he was at the fairs in Frankfurt am Main. Most probably through Wittenberg, he returned to Poland. Later, in 1547 he became a secretary of king Sigismund II Augustus. During his studies and travels in Germany he undeniably dressed as other students and Protestant reformers, however as a nobleman of Jastrzębiec coat of arms and hereditary mayor of Wolbórz, he could allow himself a more extravagant attire, like Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg. A portrait of a man who was 35 in 1538 (ANNODO: M.D.XXXVIII / AETATI SVÆXXXV / 1538), painted by Cranach, from private collection, can be therefore considered as effigy of Frycz Modrzewski (panel, 49.7 x 35.3 cm, Sotheby's New York, Janary 27, 2005, lot 188). From the 18th century to before 1918 it was in the Benedictine Abbey in Lambach, near Linz in Austria. Its prior history is unknown. In October 1567 Queen Catherine of Austria, third wife of Sigismund Augustus, settled in the castle in nearby Linz with her servants and all the goods she has accumulated during her 14-year stay in Poland. Although Catholic, the Queen was known for generally favorable views on Protestantism. Andrzej Dudycz (András Dudith de Horahovicza), bishop of Knin in Croatia and Imperial envoy who agitated for her stay in Poland, soon after his arrival to Poland in 1565 joined the Protestant church of Polish Brethren and married a Polish woman. The Queen studied the Bible and other theological works and supported nearby monasteries. She died childless in Linz on 28 February 1572 and donated most of her property to charity. The same man was depicted in a portrait of a man with beret in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (oil on canvas, 103 x 82 cm, inv. GG 1552). It is dated similarly as the painting by Cranach: 1538 + NATVS + ANNOS + 35 +. The portrait was in the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria in Brussels and was included in the Theatrum pictorium (Theatre of Painting), a catalog of 243 Italian paintings in the Archduke's collection, under number 56. The painting is attributed to the Lombard-Venetian school and it was probably made in Brescia, a city in Lombardy that was part of the Republic of Venice. Its style recalls the works of Moretto da Brescia, such as his portrait of Count Fortunato Martinengo, dating from around 1540-1545 (National Gallery in London, inv. NG299), but also those attributed to Bernardino Licinio, such as the portrait of a man in a red coat (Hampel Fine Art Auctions in Munich, June 26, 2014, lot 245). This ambiguity regarding authorship could result from a copy; for example, Moretto could have received a painting from Licinio to copy and draw inspiration from the style of the painter active in the capital of the Republic of Venice. The same man can also be identified in a painting attributed to Joos van Cleve (d. 1540/1541), now at Petworth House and Park, West Sussex (oil on panel, 43.2 x 33 cm, inv. NT 486251). This work may have been at Northumberland House in 1671. It is dated around 1535-1540 and was thought to depict Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), hence the inscription in the upper left corner: Sir.Tho. More. This traditional identification is probably related to the fact that Cleve painted the portrait of Henry VIII without having met the King of England (Hampton Court Palace, inv. RCIN 403368). The costume and facial features of this man are very reminiscent of portraits of Modrzewski by Cranach and the Lombard-Venetian painter. The man is also wearing the same ring as in the Vienna painting. The portrait of Jan Łaski the Younger (Johannes a Lasco, 1499-1560), a Polish Calvinist reformer, in the Johannes a Lasco Library in Emden in northwest of Germany, is painted on a wood panel and dated dendrochronologically to about 1555 (oil on panel, 81.5 x 66 cm). Łaski worked in Emden between 1540 and 1555. This portrait is attributed to an unknown Netherlandish painter or less known painter Johannes Mencke Maeler (or Johann Mencken Maler) active in Emden around 1612. Stylistically this effigy is very close to the portrait of Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and to the style of Bernardino Licinio, who died in Venice before 1565. His workshop frequently used wood instead of canvas, like in paintings attributed to Licinio and his workshop in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest. The way the model's hands were painted is reminiscent of the paintings of Giulio Licinio (1527-1591), nephew of Bernardino, son of Arrigo, such as the roundels commissioned in 1556 by the procurators of Saint Mark de supra for the ceiling of the reading room of the Biblioteca Marciana. In 1559, Giulio moved to Augsburg and, between 1562 and 1570, together with his brother Giovanni Antonio Licinio, he worked for the Habsburgs on the decoration of Bratislava Castle. The inscription in the upper part of the frame with the coat of arms of Łaski - Korab, confirms the identity of the model (JOANNES A LASCO POLONIE BARO). Another known painted portrait of Łaski from 1544, now lost, was also painted by a Venetian painter. The composition and technique visible in the only known photo of the painting clearly indicate this. Inscription in Latin in the upper part of the painting: ÆTATIS SVÆ 45 ANNO 1544 (after "Szlakami dziejopisarstwa staropolskiego ..." by Henryk Barycz, p. 60), confirmes his age - 45 years in 1544. The style of this painting is reminiscent of works attributed to Giovanni Battista Maganza (ca. 1513-1586), father of Alessandro (1556-1630), who, according to my research, painted several portraits of Sarmatian nobles and monarchs. Particularly similar is the style of composition with several figures, now in a private collection, representing Judith with the head of Holofernes, attributed to Giovanni Battista. Another similarly painted composition is in a private collection in Poland. It is a version of the original composition attributed to Paolo Veronese (1528-1588) depicting the Virgin and Child with Saint Barnabas and Saint John the Baptist (oil on canvas, 89.5 x 90.5 cm, Rempex in Warsaw, auction 188, December 19, 2012, lot 114), another copy of which, possibly by Andrija Medulić, known as Andrea Schiavone (d. 1588), was in the Wilanów Palace in Warsaw before the Second World War (oil on canvas, 91 x 100 cm, inv. 106). Łaski studied in Vienna and later in Italy, at the universities of Bologna and Padua. He knew Latin, Greek, German, and Italian and traveled to many European countries, including England and East Frisia. Several printed images with his portrait were produced in the Netherlands, including the engraving in the National Library of Poland (G.25203) with a Dutch inscription at the bottom. Other of his best-known effigies were also produced by the Dutch engraver Hendrik Hondius I (1573-1650). The portrait of a man wearing an eastern hat decorated with feathers - aigrette (szkofia, egreta) and a brooch closely resembles Łaski's effigies (oil on panel, 55.5 x 44 cm, Capitolium Art, Auction 387, December 13-14, 2022, lot 27). The painting comes from a private Italian collection and bears the inscription in the center right: ALASSCO.,, interpreted as the painter's signature, although it appears to be an Italianized version of Łaski's Latin name: [Joannes] a Lasco. The painting is attributed to a 16th-century Northern European artist, while its style closely resembles the works of a Flemish Renaissance painter who was active in Bruges in the 16th century - Pieter Pourbus (ca. 1523-1584), such as his Adoration of the Shepherds in the Church of Our Lady in Bruges, signed and dated: PERTVS POVRBVS. / FACIEBAT. AN° DNI, 1574,. This diversity of painters and representations perfectly reflects the diversity of Renaissance Sarmatia, as well as its main thinkers. 
Portrait of Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski (1503-1572), called "the Father of Polish democratic thought", aged 35 by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1538, Private collection.
Portrait of Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski (1503-1572), called "the Father of Polish democratic thought", aged 35 by Moretto da Brescia or circle, 1538, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski (1503-1572), called "the Father of Polish democratic thought" from the Theatrum Pictorium (56) by Lucas Vorsterman II after Moretto da Brescia or circle, 1660, Princely Court Library in Waldeck.
Portrait of Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski (1503-1572), called "the Father of Polish democratic thought", by Joos van Cleve, ca. 1538, Petworth House.
Portrait of Jan Łaski the Younger (Johannes a Lasco, 1499-1560), Polish Calvinist reformer by Giulio Licinio, ca. 1544-1555, Johannes a Lasco Library in Emden.
Portrait of Jan Łaski the Younger (Johannes a Lasco, 1499-1560), Polish Calvinist reformer, aged 45 by Giovanni Battista Maganza, 1544, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Jan Łaski the Younger (Johannes a Lasco, 1499-1560), Polish Calvinist reformer by Pieter Pourbus, 1550s, Private collection.
Portrait of Illia, Prince of Ostroh by Giovanni Cariani or Bernardino Licinio
"Mr. Nicolaus Nypschitz, my singularly generous friend and supporter, has recently sent me two letters, one from his Sacred Imperial Majesty, which is of the greatest importance and comfort to me, the other from your Reverend Paternity, my most respected master and friend, which was most agreeable to me" (Dominus Nicolaus Nypschitz amicus et fautor meus singulariter generosus, in hiis paulo transactis temporibus binas ad me transmisit literas, unas a Sacra Maiestate Imperiali, que michi maximi momenti et consolationis adsunt; alias vero ab Vestra R. Paternitate a domino et amico meo observantissimo, que michi etiam plurimum in modum extiterant gratissime), is a fragment of a letter of Illia (1510-1539), Prince of Ostroh (Helias Constantinovicz Dux Ostrogensis) to Bishop Jan Dantyszek (1485-1548), envoy of Poland-Lithuania at the Imperial court in Vienna (before 1878 in the Czartoryski Library in Paris, Mss. Nr. 1595, published in "Jagiellonki polskie w XVI. wieku ..." by Aleksander Przeździecki, Józef Szujski). In this letter, dated from the castle of Ostroh on the Wednesday before the feast of the Transfer of Saint Stanislaus (September 22), in the year 1532, he also thanked the prelate for his recommendations to the Emperor (me comendare in gratiam Cesaree Catholice Maiestatis) and other letters.
In the imperial archive in Vienna there was also a letter of Prince Illia (or to him) dated February 2, 1538, in which the Prince asked King Ferdinand for a passport to travel to Jerusalem. Sigismund I's sentence from December 20, 1537 released Illia from the obligation to marry Anna Radziwill. Shortly after this, in 1538, the Prince decided to visit the Holy Land and arrived at the king's court to obtain the necessary documents and authorizations. However, the ruler dissuaded him from traveling because of a threat from the Tatars and Saracens and Queen Bona took steps to reunite the young prince with her favorite Beata Kościelecka, which ended in an engagement. Around that time, Illia, who loved a luxurious life and visit the royal court quite often, is said to have sent gardeners from Italy and set up an orangery in Ostroh. According to the 1620 description, his castle in Ostroh had Venetian glass in the windows, and there was also a stock of glass from Gdańsk. The dining room with a stove and a large a cabinet with silverware was quite large (five windows, a high vault) and the rooms had stoves with green tiles of local and Italian production. The Orthodox Church of the Epiphany in Ostroh with its Gothic elements, founded by his father Constantine (ca. 1460-1530), was probably built by Italians who worked at that time in Kraków, and the church utensils were allegedly ordered almost exclusively abroad, in Germany and Italy. His famous father, often compared to ancient heroes and leaders, introduced Illia into military service. The papal legate Jacopo Pisoni wrote in 1514, that "Prince Constantine can be called the best military leader of our time... in battle he is not inferior to Romulus in bravery", he also described his devotion to the Greek Church and added that he is "more pious than Numa". Queen Bona's physician, the Italian Giovanni Valentino, in a letter of September 2, 1530 to Duke Federico Gonzaga of Mantua, written immediately after Constantine's death, stated that he was "so much pious in his Greek faith that the Ruthenians considered him a saint" (after "Prince Vasyl-Kostyantyn Ostrozki ..." by Vasiliy Ulianovsky, pp. 42, 158, 160, 323-324, 524-525, 1171-1172). From the second half of the 17th century, portrait gallery of the Princes of Ostroh was kept in the Dubno Castle, built by Constantine in 1492. Their collections as well as their clothing represented both Eastern and Western traditions. At the coronation sejm in February 1574, Constantine Vasily (1526-1608), Illia's stepbrother, arrived with his sons, one of them was dressed in Italian, and the other in Cossack style, as well as four hundred hussars, dressed in Persian style. He offered king Henry of Valois a very expensive and original gift - five camels. Inventory of the treasury of the Princes of Ostroh in Dubno of March 10, 1616, made six years after the death of Constantine Vasily (Archives in Dubno, published in 1900 by Jan Tadeusz Lubomirski), lists many items from the princely collections. Apart from Turkish fabrics, Persian rugs, gold and silver tableware, clocks, music boxes, a bezoar, precious Eastern, Cossack, German and Italian saddles, armours and armament, gold and gilded maces, the treasury also contained the gifts, like these from the Wallachian Hospodar, and souvenirs and trophies from the Battle of Orsha in 1514: "Moscow cannon with a Centaur, with the Moscow coat of arms", "a long florid cannon", and the golden mace of the Great Tsar of Moscow. Zofia Tarnowska, hetman's daughter, and wife of Constantine Vasily, contributed: three armours of the Tarnowski family, a great cannon, "a second cannon from Tarnów", and also items received from her mother, Zofia Szydłowiecka: "painting on copper of Szydłowiecki" and "The Great Chain of Lord Szydłowiecki", possibly a gift from the Emperor, received in 1515 by the chancellor Krzysztof Szydłowiecki. Among 41 cannons cast in Dubno, Ostroh, Lviv, imported from Gdańsk or donated by Hornostaj, Radziwill and Lubomirski families, Bishops of Kraków and the Vasas, one was a gift from Queen Bona. In the treasury there were also: "Venetian armour, misiurka helmet of Damascus steel, made in Venice, studded with gold", "Wax picture of the Duke of Brandeburg behind glass in a round little box", gold face of His Majesty Prince Constantine Vasily, "German chest from Vienna" with silverware, "German vanity table woven with silk", "Marble table from Poland", "Turkish green tent, Turkish tent from Mr Jazłowiecki", "The third chest, inside it: Leopards 108, Tigers 13, Dyed bears 2, Dyed lioness 1". The inventory also lists many paintings, some of which were purchased in Lublin, Kraków and abroad, like "14 paintings bought in Lublin, 6 paintings bought in Kraków, 4 large, 2 small", "Alabaster image with the Descent from the Cross of Jesus in golden frame", "Picture of the Lord's Passion framed in silver", "Picture made of stone [pietra dura] from the voivode of Podolia", "A picture of peacock feathers", as well as "Moscow paintings" and many other objects typical of early 17th century art cabinets. The paintings, as much less valued than weapons and fabrics, were described very generally, with particular emphasis on the valuable material on which they were painted or framed. In private collection in the United States there is a "Portrait of a warrior", attributed to Giovanni Cariani (after "Giovanni Cariani" by Rodolfo Pallucchini, Francesco Rossi, p. 350). It was also attributed to Bernardino Licinio (by William Suida), Bartolomeo Veneto and Paolo Moranda Cavazzola. Licinio's authorship is also very likely, the style of these two painters is sometimes very similar, which indicates that they could cooperate, in particular on large orders from Poland-Lithuania. In the 19th century the painting was in the Palais Coburg in Vienna, built between 1840-1845 by the Ernestine line of the Wettin Dynasty, Dukes of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. Its previous history is not known, so it is possible that it was sent to Vienna already in the 16th century. The costume of a young man indicates that the portrait was created in the 1530s - similar to that seen in a portrait of the three-year-old Archduke Maximilian of Austria (1527-1576), son of King Ferdinand, by Jakob Seisenegger, dated '1530' (Mauritshuis in The Hague), similar to costume of a soldier in the Christ crowned with Thorns by Lucas Cranach the Elder, dated '1537' (Grunewald hunting lodge in Berlin) and to attire of Matthäus Schwarz from his portrait by Christoph Amberger, dated '1542' (Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum). His crinale cap is also more Northern European, and close to that visible in many effigies of king Sigismund I. The young man is holding a stick or a cane and viaticum, a small provision for a journey, as in the known portraits of pilgrims. The marble relief on the right is an explanation of the reason for his penance. It shows a woman holding a baby and a man leaving her. Between them there is another child or a blindfolded figure, like in the scenes of the marriage of Jason and Medea, created after 1584 by the Carracci family (Palazzo Fava in Bologna), and Jason rejecting Medea by Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini from about 1711 (Northampton Museum and Art Gallery). Princess and sorceress Medea, who figures in the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, was a daughter of King Aeetes of Colchis on the east coast of the Black Sea, further south from the domains of the princes of Ostroh. Out of love, she helps Jason and the Argonauts to get the golden fleece guarded by Aeetes and flees with them. Then Jason abandons her to marry the daughter of King Creon of Corinth. In revenge, guided by emotions contrary to reason, Medea murders Creon, his daughter and her own children. So the young man from the portrait wants to make amends for abandoning a woman - breaking the engagement with Anna Radziwill, fixed by his father. From 1518 the Radziwills were Imperial Princes (title granted by Emperor Maximilian I, grandfather of King Ferdinand) and the story of the Argonauts was undoubtedly particularly appealing to the Habsburgs who were members and grand masters of the Order of the Golden Fleece. The symbol on his crinale cap is the Seed of Life or more broadly Seed of Life within the Flower of Life, one of the ancient sacred geometry symbols. It is often used to symbolize the sun, the cycle of life and the seasonal cycles of nature. It is also "a symbol of fertility, the Divine Feminine, and growth since it contains the Vesica Piscis symbol, which initially represented the female vulva or womb. [...] Many cultures use the rosette [Seed of Life] to avoid bad luck and the central six petals symbolize blessings. In Eastern Europe, the Seed of Life and the Flower of Life were called 'thunder marks' and were carved on building to protect them from lightning" (after "Seed Of Life Secrets You Want To Know" by Amanda Brethauer). Leonardo da Vinci studied this symbol in his Codex Atlanticus (fol. 459r), dating from 1478 to 1519 (Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan). The central six petals also bring to mind the six-pointed star from the portrait of Alexander (d. 1603), Prince of Ostroh (Ostroh Castle) and coat of arms of his brother Janusz (d. 1620) on the main gate of the Dubno Castle. The young man with high cheekbones, often associated with people of Slavic origin, resemble greatly Prince Illia from his effigies by workshop of Cranach, identified by me (Hercules and Omphale's maids from Kolasiński collection, preparatory drawing for Saint George fighting a dragon), and effigies of his father Prince Constantine. 
Portrait of Illia (1510-1539), Prince of Ostroh by Giovanni Cariani or Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1538, Private collection. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of manager of the royal mints Justus Ludwik Decjusz by Dosso Dossi
"Whoever wrote that justice [Iustitia or Justitia in Latin] is not worth selling for all the gold in this world predicted the future well. He predicted that near the city of Krakus there would be a village bearing the famous name of justice, your village, Ludwik, which is not worth selling for all the gold hidden in the earth in its dark bosom. I am so delighted with the recently erected mansion, and the garden, and the shade cast by the beautiful vineyards, and the forest that seems to wander in the nearby hills; I am so charmed by ponds with waters as transparent as glass; I like it so much to be free to drink at my will, sweet daughter of Auson's land [Italy]" (partially after "Dzieła wszystkie: Carmina" by Andrzej Trzecieski, p. 167), praises the beauty of the suburban villa of Justus Ludwik Decjusz, Polish poet Klemens Janicki (Clemens Ianicius, 1516-1543) in his Latin epigram "To Justus Ludwik Decjusz, the father" (Ad Iustum Ludovicum Decium patrem).
Janicki, who during his stay in Venice in the years 1538-1540 found himself in the circle of humanists grouped around Cardinal Pietro Bembo, described the residence of the informal minister of finance (financial adviser) and secretary to the king Sigismund I the Old, built in the style of Italian Renaissance between 1530-1538 in Wola Justowska near Kraków. The design of the building is attributed to Giovanni Cini from Siena, Bernardo Zanobi de Gianottis (Romanus) from Rome or Filippo da Fiesole (Florentinus) from Florence. The owner of the magnificent villa, the royal secretary Justus Ludwik Decjusz (Justus/Jodocus Ludovicus Decius in Latin or Justo Lodovico Decio in Italian) was born Jost Ludwig Dietz in about 1485 in Wissembourg, a town north of Strasbourg in today's France. He settled in Kraków at the turn of 1507/1508. At first he was a secretary and associate of Jan Boner, his countryman, the royal banker and administrator of the salt mines in Wieliczka and Bochnia, thanks to which he was able to make many trips to Italy, Netherlands and Germany and establish contacts for Boner. From 1520 Decjusz was a secretary and diplomat of King Sigismund I. It was he who was sent to Venice in 1517 to buy an engagement ring and richly decorated fabrics for the king in preparation for the king's wedding to Bona Sforza. In June 1523 he was sent as a royal envoy to Venice, Naples and to Queen Bona's mother, Duchess Isabella of Aragon in Bari, taking with him as a gift a statue of Saint Nicholas made of gilded silver. In 1524, together with Jan Dantyszek, he was in Ferrara and in Venice, and a year later in 1525 he was entrusted with the task to purchase pearls in Venice for Bona, which was accomplished with the help of a Jewish merchant Lazarus from Kazimierz, who was sent by the king to Venice as a commercial expert (after "Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego", Issues 153-160, p. 6). Decjusz soon became influential and made personal acquaintances with Erasmus of Rotterdam and Martin Luther. From Emperor Maximilian I he received a noble title, which was confirmed in Poland in 1531 and the Tęczyński family adopted him to the Topór coat of arms. Decjusz's career peaked with his appointment as the king's personal adviser and overseer of the royal mint. He was appointed by the king the manager of the mints in Kraków and Toruń, and later also in Königsberg (Królewiec in Polish) and entrusted with the task of reforming the monetary system in the Crown, Lithuania and the Duchy of Prussia. The reform program was included in the work "Treatise on minting coins" (De monetae cussione ratio) from 1525, where he argued that a ruler could profit from minting money. He was also the author of a three-volume Latin work entitled "On the Ancient Origins of the Poles" (De vetustatibus Polonorum), an early version of the Sarmatian myth about the origin of the Polish kings. A man born into a patrician family in a German-speaking community far from the historical lands of the Jagiellonian elective monarchies, he became one of the most important politicians of multicultural Poland-Lithuania, one of the largest countries of Renaissance Europe. Justus was also one of the richest people in Poland-Lithuania, owner a tenement houses in Kraków and in Toruń, and estates near Kraków renamed in his honour Wola Justowska, mines of lead and silver in Olkusz, estates in Silesia and the Duchy of Świdnica, including a copper mine in Miedzianka (Kupferberg), the Bolczów Castle, the villages of Janowice and Waltersdorf. The year 1538 was inportant for Decjusz, who on 7 March had to prove the reliability of his monetary policy in Toruń at the Sejm and who received a confirmation of mining privileges from Emperor Ferdinand I, as well as for Polish commercial contacts with Venice. In 1538 Michael Wechter of Rymanów, a bookseller from Kraków, who received a very expensive printing commission from Bishop Jan Latalski, published in Venice the Kraków Breviary (Breviariu[m] s[ecundu]m ritum Insignis Ecclesie Cracovien[sis], preserved copy in the Ossolineum, XVI.O.528). Earlier edition was printed in France in 1516 by Jan Haller and Justus Ludwik Decjusz, who, possibly, was also indirectly involved in the 1538 edition. At that time, contacts with the ducal court in Ferrara also intensified. In April 1537 Giovanni Andrea Valentino (de Valentinis), court physician of Sigismund the Old and Bona, was sent to Ferrara and Mantua, Mikołaj Cikowski, whose brother Jan was a courtier of the Dukes of Ferrara, became a courtier, and soon the royal secretary, on July 2, 1537 Ercole II, Duke of Ferrara adressed a letter to Queen Bona, and in October 1538 the queen sent her envoys to Ferrara (after "Działalność Włochów w Polsce w I połowie XVI wieku" by Danuta Quirini-Popławska, p. 80). Wealthy Venetian merchants who imported from Poland cochineal, animal skins and furs, as well as woolen cloth and exported huge amounts of mirrors and glass for the windows, silk products, expensive fabrics and stones of eastern origin, gold and silver wire, metal threads and various women's ornaments, as well as wine, spices and books (after "Z kręgu badań nad związkami polsko-weneckimi w czasach jagiellońskich" by Ewelina Lilia Polańska), they were undeniably interested in Polish-Lithuanian monetary policy and their finance minister. In the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest there is a "Portrait of a Moneychanger" (inventory number 53.449, oil on canvas, 107.5 × 89 cm), attributed to Dosso Dossi, a court painter of Duke Ercole II d'Este in Ferrara, who also travelled to Venice and painting in a style mainly influenced by Venetian painting, in particular Giorgione and early Titian. Before 1865 this picture was in the collection of the Duchess of Berry in Venice and later acquired by Count Jeno Zichy, who bequeathed it to the museum. The man wears a black fur-lined coat similar to late Medieval houppelande or knee-length Italian cioppa and black crinale headband. Such headdress was popular with the older generation of men well into the 1530s. Ennoblement of the progenitor of the Odrowąż family by Stanisław Samostrzelnik, created in 1532 (Kórnik Library), Bishop Piotr Tomicki and King Sigismund I and his courtiers kneeling before Saint Stanislaus, also by Samostrzelnik, created between 1530-1535 (National Library of Poland), marble tombstone of Mikołaj Stanisław Szydłowiecki (1480-1532) by Bartolommeo Berrecci or workshop, created in about 1532 (Parish Church in Szydłowiec) and a wooden sculpture of a man in a crinale cap by Sebastian Tauerbach from a coffered ceiling in the Chamber of Deputies at the Wawel Castle, created between 1535-1540, are examples of crinale in the court fashion in Poland-Lithuania. King Sigismund I the Old was depicted in very similar crinale in a print by Monogrammist HR and Hieronymus Vietor, created in 1532 (State Graphic Arts Collection in Munich). On an inkstand there is a slip of paper inscribed in Italian: Adi 27 de febraro 1538 M Bartolommeo, voria festi contento de dare in felipo quelli ... denari perché io ne o bisognio ne Vostro io Dosso. The last word of the letter to Messer Bartolommeo dated February 27, 1538 with the signature was formerly rather difficult to decipher. Elena Berti Toesca in 1935 linked the painting and the person who signed the paper and needs the money with Io[annes] Dosso, that is to say Dosso Dossi (after "Italian Renaissance Portraits" by Klára Garas, p. 32). This Messer Bartolommeo could be the secretary of the Duke of Ferrara Bartolomeo Prospero who corresponded with Bona's court physician Giovanni Andrea Valentino and his cousin Antonio, the same who in 1546 (March 20) recommended Bartolomeo to send a portrait of Ercole's daughter Anna d'Este (1531-1607) not by royal mail, but by a private route in the hands of Carlo Foresta, one of the agents of Gaspare Gucci from Florence, a merchant in Kraków (after "Studia historyczne", Volume 12, Issues 2-3, p. 182). The man is holding a scale and weighing coins, in a composition similar to typical northern school portraits of merchants (like in paintings by Adriaen Isenbrant, Quentin Matsys or Marinus van Reymerswaele). His costume is also more northern, this was the reason why, apart from the physical appearance, this image was previously identified as a portrait of a famous German banker Jakob Fugger. However, he died in 1525, so he could not have been involved in the 1538 letter. The man is therefore Justus Ludwik Decjusz, manager of the royal mints, who was accused of the depreciation of the Polish silver coin and abuse and who cleared himself at the Sejm in 1538. Decjusz died in Kraków in 1545 at the age of about 60, consequently he was about 53 in 1538, that match the appearance of the man in the Budapest portrait. Scales of Justice is a symbol of Themis, goddess of justice (Justitia), divine law and order, like in the Latin version of Decjusz's first name Justus (the Just) and in a print with Allegory of Justice (IVSTICIA) by Sebald Beham (1500-1550) in the National Museum in Warsaw (inventory number Gr.Ob.N.167 MNW). 
Portrait of Justus Ludwik Decjusz (ca. 1485-1545), manager of the royal mints holding a scale by Dosso Dossi, 1538, Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.
Portrait of Princess Isabella Jagiellon nude (Venus of Urbino) by Titian
Who would not like to marry a goddess? A beautiful, educated and wealthy daughter of a king? But she had an important flaw, she was from a distant country with elective monarchy, where parliament decided everything. Her husband will have no right to the crown, his children would need to stand in election, he woud have no title, he could even not be sure that her family will stay in power. She was finally not a niece of an Emperor, hence she cannot bring valuable connections and prestige. This was a hudge disadvantage to all hereditary princes of Europe. This was the case of Isabella Jagiellon, the eldest daughter of Sigismund I and Bona Sforza. She was born in Kraków on 18 January 1519 and named after her grandmother, Isabella of Aragon, Duchess of Milan and Duchess of Bari.
Together with her brother, Isabella received a good education, including from humanist Johannes Honter, and she could speak four languages: Polish, Latin, German, and Italian. Her mother willing to reclaim the inheritance of Isabella of Aragon pursued a French and an Italian marriage for her daughter. She hoped that King of France would install his son Henry and Isabella in the Duchy of Milan. Isabella, being the eldest granddaughter of the rightful Duke of Milan after her mother, would strengthen the French claims to the Duchy. These plans were abandoned after Battle of Pavia on February 25, 1525. Then Isabella's grandmother wanted to marry her granddaughter for one of her late husband's cousins Francesco II Sforza, Duke of Milan, however Sigismund I opposed as Francesco's hold of the title was tenuous. In 1530 Bona proposed Federico Gonzaga, a son of her friend Isabella d'Este, and sent her envoy Giovanni Valentino (de Valentinis) to Mantua. Bona's daughter was 11 and the potential groom 30 years old. Federico, however, who was made Duke of Mantua by Emperor, pushed for marriage with Maria Paleologa and after her death with her sister Margaret Paleologa, as she brought March of Montferrat as her inheritance and claimes to the title of Emperor of Constantinople. Then Valentino corresponded (25 November 1534) about Isabella's marriage with Ercole II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, the eldest son of Alfonso I d'Este and Lucrezia Borgia, another friend of Bona. He wrote to Ercole that since the king and queen of Poland have a fifteen-year-old daughter, full of virtues and refined beauty (verluti et bellezza elegantissima), it would be a pity to marry her among German barbarians, from which nationality many powerful men are seeking her hand (after "Izabela Jagiellonka, królowa Węgier" by Małgorzata Duczmal, p. 75). In 1535 Habsburgs proposed Ludovico, eldest son of Charles III, Duke of Savoy. The marriage was negotiated by Bona's secretary, Ludovico Monti and the envoy of King Ferdinand of Austria, Baron Herberstein, but Ludovico died in 1536. Between 1527-1529 and 1533-1536 Isabella lived in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In his texts entitled De Europa written in the 1440s Enea Silvio Bartolomeo Piccolomini, future Pope Pius II, reported about women in Lithuania, that: "Married noble ladies have lovers in public, with the permission of husbands, whom they call assistants of marriage" (Matronae nobiles publicae concubinos habent, permittentibus viris, quos matrimonii adiutores vocant). These assistants, whose number depended on the position and financial situation of the husband, who were fed at his expense, replaced him by old custom in his marital duties if he had neglected them due to illness, prolonged absence or any other cause. The husbands were not allowed to have lovers and marriages were easy to dissolve by mutual consent (Solvuntur tamen facile matrimonia, mutuo consensu, compare "Stosunki Eneasza Sylwiusza z Polska i Polakami" by Ignacy Zarebski, p. 366). In other writings, he also claimed that Isabella's great-grandfather, Jogaila of Lithuania (Ladislaus II), at the age of almost one hundred, finally had descendants with his subsequent wives, but this was also thanks to marriage assistants (after "Jadwiga (5. Wilhelm i republika listów)" by Marta Kwaśnicka). Although some 19th and 20th century authors have attempted to prove that Piccolomini had invented or propagated this "rumor", it should be kept in mind that "there is a grain of truth in every rumor". Such habits undoubtedly terrified many male readers across Europe. On November 12, 1537 Mikołaj Nipszyc wrote to Albert, Duke of Prussia about "the secret women's practice, which you could get over with, if the princess Isabella was rendered a good favor in this way". He was probably referring to marriage of Isabella with elected King of Hungary, John Zapolya, secretly planned by Bona. But he could also refer to a painting. In October 1536, on the order of the queen, an unknown capellano Laurencio was paid for his mission to Venice. Everything in Titian's painting known as Venus of Urbino emphasize the qualities of a bride depicted (Uffizi Gallery in Florence, oil on canvas, 119 x 165 cm, 1890 n. 1437). She is beatiful, young, healthy and fertile. She is loyal and faithful and a sleeping dog symbolize devotion, faithfulness and fidelity. She is loving and passionate and red roses in her hand symbolize this. She is also wealthy, her servants are searching the coffers of her dowry for a suitable dress. Sumptuous wall hangings are undeniably allso part of her dowry and a pot of myrtle, used in marriage ceremonies, suggest that she is available for marriage. Her face resemble greatly other effigies of Isabella Jagiellon. The painting is identifiable with certainty at the Villa del Poggio Imperiale in 1654-1655. In Villa del Poggio Imperiale, there is a portrait of Isabella's mother by Lucas Cranach from the same period and in Poland preserved one of the oldest copies of Venus of Urbino (Museum of Art in Łódź, oil on canvas, 122 x 169.5 cm, MS/SO/M/153). The latter painting possibly comes from the Radziwill collection and could be tantamount to description in the catalogue of paintings exhibited in Królikarnia near Warsaw in 1835: "TITIAN. (copy). 439. Venus lying on a white bed, a dog at her legs, two servants occupied with clothes. Painted on canvas. Height: elbow: 1, inch 20, width: elbow: 2, inch 20" (TITIAN. (kopia). 439. Wenus leżąca na białem posłaniu, przy jej nogach piesek z tyłu dwie służące zajęte ubraniem. Mal: na płótnie. Wys: łok: 1, cali 20, szer: łok: 2, cali 20, after "Katalog galeryi obrazow sławnych mistrzów ..." by Antoni Blank, p. 123). Two old replicas with minor changes to the composition are in the Royal Collection in England (RCIN 406162 and 402661) - one was recorded at Whitehall Palace in London in 1666 (no. 469) and the other in the King's Little Bedchamber at Windsor Castle in 1688 (no. 754). One of them of good quality could come from Titian's workshop (oil on canvas, 109.5 x 166.3 cm, RCIN 406162). Certainly the English monarchs were more interested in the portrait of the Polish-Lithuanian princess and queen of Hungary than the unknown mistress of the Duke of Urbino. The painting in Florence is generally considered as tantamount to that of the "naked woman" (la donna nuda), mentioned in the letters of March 9 and May 1, 1538 that Guidobaldo della Rovere (1514-1574) wrote to his agent in Venice, Gian Giacomo Leonardi. Another reduced version of the painting, probably from Titian's workshop, was sold on July 8, 2003 (Sotheby's London, lot 320). In the version held at Nottingham City Museums and Galleries (Nottingham Castle), the model is transformed into Diana, goddess of the hunt, childbirth, and fertility (oil on canvas, 68 x 115.5 cm, inv. NCM 1910-1960). Her womb is covered, probably referring to her status as a married woman. The green color of the curtain behind her also evokes fertility. This painting is closer to the style of Lambert Sustris and the facial features more closely resemble the portrait of Isabella Jagiellon, then Queen of Hungary and Croatia, holding a white dog (private collection), attributed to Sustris. It was presented to the museum in 1910 by Sir Kenneth Muir-Mackenzie (1845-1930) and, before that, was probably in the collection of his father-in-law William Graham (1817-1885). Similar pose is visible in monument to Barbara Tarnowska née Tęczyńska (d. 1521) by Giovanni Maria Padovano in the Tarnów Cathedral from about 1536 and monument to Urszula Leżeńska by Jan Michałowicz of Urzędów in the Church in Brzeziny, created between 1563-1568. These are not the only particular examples of the combination of elements of life and death in 16th-century art preserved in the former territories of Renaissance Sarmatia. The National Art Museum in Kaunas, Lithuania holds an interesting painting inspired by the Venus of Urbino: Vanity (oil on canvas, 97 x 125 cm, inv. ČDM MŽ 1188). It is one of several copies of this composition, the original of which was also painted by Titian - probably the one from the Kingston Lacy Estate, Dorset (inv. NT 1257116), originally held in the Widmann collection in Venice. In this composition, the sitter is looking upwards towards a painted plaque above her head, on which is written: OMNIA / VANITAS (All is vanity). The symbols of the vanity of royal power, a crown and a scepter, lie at her feet; on the ground, near her hand, are bags of money and a pile of gold coins. The large silver vase, or rather the urn, symbolizes death. Similar to the version in the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, the most likely author of the Kaunas painting is Alessandro Varotari (1588-1649), known as Il Padovanino, who frequently copied Titian's paintings in early 17th century. As its style suggests, the Kingston Lacy Estate painting can be dated to the late period of Titian's work, in the 1560s, and therefore after the death of Isabella Jagiellon. In the 17th and 18th centuries, famous paintings from other eras frequently inspired wealthy patrons to commission similar works of art. Usually these paintings were well known to customers, so they wanted to have a similar work of art or be represented "in the guise" of that particular figure. One of the best-known examples, at least in Poland, of this practice is the painting identified as self-portrait by Jan Lievens, now kept at Wawel Castle (inv. 600). It comes from the Jerzy Mycielski collection and is inspired by the lost portrait of a "Young Man" by Raphael from the Czartoryski Museum. In the Bratislava Municipal Gallery (A 2446) there is another transposition of this famous work by Raphael, painted at the end of the 17th century and possibly depicting a member of the Dal Pozzo family. Interestingly, the portrait by Raphael, which was stolen by the Nazi German invaders during World War II, probably does not depict "a man" at all, as the same youth was depicted in the School of Athens by Raphael (Vatican Museums), identified as the female mathematician Hypatia and "his" face also resembles a woman from a painting in the Louvre (INV 612 ; MR 434), variously attributed to Raphael, Giulio Romano or the school of Raphael and identified to represent Doña Isabel de Requesens y Enríquez de Velasco (d. 1532), vicereine of Naples. The most beautiful inspiration by the "Venus of Urbino" in what is considered 18th-century Polish painting is probably the posthumous portrait of Anna Lampel née Stiegler (d. 1800), imagined as a reclining Venus. It was painted around 1801 (i.e. at the beginning of the next century) by the painter Marcello Bacciarelli, born and educated in Rome and naturalized as a Polish nobleman in 1768 by the Commonwealth's parliament. Anna, a theater actress of Austrian origin, was a lover of the actor, director and playwright Wojciech Bogusławski (1757-1829) and she died in 1800 in Kalisz, probably in childbirth. Bogusławski then commissioned a large portrait of Anna which he kept until the end of his life. The model is lying on a bed in a negligee. Next to her is Cupid or putto (genius of death) who extinguishes the torch of life. Anna holds her hand on a small dog, a symbol of fidelity. In the background on the left is an idealized landscape. The painting revives the same canon and concept of the "disguised portrait" that was also popular in the Renaissance and ancient Rome, particularly similar to the statue of a wealthy Roman lady depicted as Venus on a lid of her sarcophagus, now kept at the Pio Clementino Musem (inv. 878). The scene is generally thought to be imaginative and Bacciarelli used other effigies of Anna as inspiration (compare "Zidentyfikowany obraz Bacciarellego" by Zbigniew Raszewski, p. 194-196). The painting as well as a drawing and a preparatory painting sketch for the composition are held in the National Museum in Warsaw (Rys.Pol.6085, MP 1102, MP 5150). They had to be approved by the sponsor and differ in many details, which indicates that Bogusławski had a great influence on the final effect and that he must have been well acquainted with "Venus of Urbino" and other Venetian nudes, despite the fact that, according to known sources, he never visited Italy. The art collector, physician and historian Paolo Giovio (1483-1552), bishop of Nocera de' Pagani, who owned several portraits painted by Titian, must have been familiar with the likenesses of Bona's eldest daughter, because he claimed that she "combined the charm of an Italian woman with the beauty of a Polish woman" (Madama Isabella, figliuola di Gismondo Re di Polonia, fanciulla di virile di Polonia, & erudito ingegno; & quel che molto importò per allettare l'animo di lui amabilissima per vaghezza Italiana, & per leggiadria Polonica, after "La seconda parte dell'historie del suo tempo ...", published in Florence in 1553, p. 771). In 1549 Giovio moved to the court of Cosimo I de' Medici in Florence, where he died in 1552. 
Portrait of a young man or woman in a fur coat by Raphael, 1513-1514, Czartoryski Museum, lost during World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Princess Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559) nude (Venus of Urbino) by Titian, 1534-1538, Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Portrait of Princess Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559) nude (Venus of Urbino) by follower of Titian, after 1534, Museum of Art in Łódź.
Portrait of Princess Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559) nude (Venus of Urbino) by follower of Titian, after 1534, The Royal Collection.
Portrait of Princess Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559) nude (Venus of Urbino) by workshop of Titian, after 1534, Private collection.
Portrait of Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559), Queen of Hungary and Croatia as Diana by Lambert Sustris, after 1539, Nottingham Castle.
All is vanity by Alessandro Varotari, first half of the 17th century, National Museum of Art in Kaunas.
Postmortem portrait of Anna Lampel née Stiegler (d. 1800), depicted as a reclining Venus, by Marcello Bacciarelli, ca. 1801, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portraits of Isabella Jagiellon by follower of Titian and Jacopino del Conte
"As fate wills it. Queen Isabella" (Sic fata volunt. Ysabella Regina) – the eldest daughter of Sigismund I and Bona Sforza painted these words with her own hand on the wall of her beautifully painted bedroom. This inscription still existed in 1572 (after "Izabella királyné, 1519-1559" by Endre Veress, p. 28, 36-37, 81, 489-490).
No painted effigy of Isabella from the period between 1538 and 1553, made before Cranach's famous miniature, appears to have survived to the present day. However, sources confirm the existence of such effigies. In a letter dated August 31, 1538, Bona Sforza speaks of two portraits of her daughter, one half-length and the other full-length, made by a court painter of Jan Dantyszek, Prince-Bishop of Warmia, perhaps a painter from a German school of painting. However, it is not excluded that Dantyszek, a diplomat in the service of Sigismund I, who traveled frequently to Venice and Italy, had at his court a painter from Titian's workshop. In the letter, Bona also complains that the features of her daughter in the portrait are not very faithful (Scimus P. V. habere imaginem Sme filie nostre Isabelle. Ea imago, si semiplena est, et similis illi imagini, quae a capite secundum pectus est depicta, quam apud nos pictor V. P. vidit: volumus ut eam nobis V. P. mittat. Sin autem hec ipsa imago plena est et staturam plenam in se continet, estque similis illi imagini, quam pictor V. P. isthic existens depinxit, quia turpis est, nec omnino speciem formamque filie nostre refert, eam non cupimus habere. Itaque P. V. non hanc, sed semiplenam imaginem ad nos mittat et valeat feliciter. Dat. Cracovie die ultima Augusti Anno domini M. D. XXX. VIII°, after "Jagiellonki polskie w XVI. wieku: Obrazy rodziny i dworu Zygmunta ..." By Aleksander Przezdziecki, Volume 1, p. 82, 281). It is very likely that she herself ordered a better effigy from Titian's workshop. Until 1848, there was supposed to be a portrait of Isabella in Gyalu Castle in Transylvania (now Gilău in Romania), where she had stayed for some time, but the owner of the castle took it to Vienna and the painting disappeared (after "Izabela Jagiellonka, królowa Węgier" by Małgorzata Duczmal, p. 40, 187-188). The marriage of Bona's daughter, "a girl of a brave and educated mind, who combined the charm of an Italian woman with the beauty of a Polish woman" (Fanciulla di virile e erudito ingegno, amabilissima per vaghezza italiana e per leggiadria polonica), as famous art collector Paolo Giovio (1483-1552), Bishop of Nocera de' Pagani, described her, was an important event. In 1538, the royal tailor Pietro Patriarcha (Patriarca) from Bari made a number of dresses in damask, satin, velvet, silver and colored brocades for the trousseau of the future Queen of Hungary (after "Działalność Włochów w Polsce ..." by Danuta Quirini-Popławska, p. 58). On January 15, 1539, five hundred Hungarian knights arrived to Kraków. The marriage contract with the dowry of 32,000 ducats in cash was probably signed between January 28 and February 2. Her trousseau was worth 38,000 ducats, which makes a total of 70,000 ducats. This was a huge sum compared to the wages of the time in Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia - a master carpenter, for example, employed at Wawel, received 34 to 48 groszy per week (grosz - a copper coin worth about 1/30 of a zloty). When Hieronim Łaski sold three villages in 1526, he received 3,000 zloty (ducats) in exchange. Due to Zapolya's precarious situation, Isabella's marriage contract was quite complicated. It was therefore foreseen that within the next two months King John would deposit 70,000 ducats in cash for his wife in a bank in Venice or in the bank of the Boner family, or directly in the hands of the King of Poland. Despite these precautions, Isabella's dowry in cash was not paid out just in case, and she did not take the entire trousseau to Hungary, but only the value of 26,005 ducats. The dowry and the rest of the trousseau were to be sent when Zapolya had settled the matter of the dower or paid the appropriate sum into the bank. Zapolya also undertook to leave 2,000 ducats from his own estates in Transylvania as a wedding gift to the young bride. If Isabella died without issue before her husband, the dowry and the trousseau would be returned to the family. Among the dresses she took to Hungary were three dresses embroidered with silver, a brown satin dress with sable fur, a black damask dress, a green brocade dress, a violet damask dress, as well as many expensive furs. Many beautiful fabrics were also needed for her carriages. Her golden bridal carriage was covered with brocade fabric, while the interior was upholstered in crimson brocade decorated with gold and silver roses, and her second carriage was upholstered in red silk. She also received expensive church utensils for her home altar, silver candlesticks, censers and the like, while the Kraków City Council presented the future Queen of Hungary with a gilded silver cup of "Hungarian workmanship", purchased from Erasmus Schilling (d. 1561), an international wholesaler. Besides Italian and Latin, before her arrival in Hungary, Isabella probably knew some Hungarian, because there were Hungarians at the royal court and accounts from 1520 confirm the performance of a "Hungarian joculator" (Hungarus joculator), who was paid 1 florin, and of an Italian acrobat who saltas faciebat, who was paid 6 florins. Shortly after her coronation (February 23, 1539), she sent a letter in Italian to King Ferdinand I, addressed "From Buda, March 20, 1539" (Datum a Buda, 20 Martii 1539): "I do not doubt that Your Majesty will also deign to bear good love towards the Most Serene Lord and my dearest husband, for his virtue, for my consolation, for the common good of the kingdoms so close to you. [...] knowing already that I am greatly grateful to Your Majesty, and that I am also most desirous of having the love of the Most Serene Queen [Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547)], Your Majesty's consort and my most beloved sister, to whom I most desire to be a devoted sister" (Non dubito, che medesmamente se degnarà Vostra Maestà portar bon amor ancora verso el Sermo [Serenissimo] Signor et marito mio carissimo, per sua virtù, per mia consolatione, per lo ben commune degli regni a se tanto vicini. [...] conoscendo gia io assai gratia de Vostra Maestà esser ancora desider[at]osissima aver lo amor della Serma [Serenissima] regina de Vostra Maestà consorte et mia sorella amantissima, alla qual summamente desidero esser sorella commendatissima). The interest that the Queen of Hungary aroused in the Italians is illustrated by a letter from Ludovico Monti, agent of Sigismund Augustus, to Ercole II, Duke of Ferrara, dated May 1554. Monti speaks of the very tense relations between Ferdinand I (King of the Romans since 1530) and the eldest daughter of Bona Sforza who, after the death of her husband in 1540, had been deprived of most of the kingdom: "Queen Isabella had left Opole in disagreement with the King of the Romans, and was staying at Piotrków, and the King of the Romans had sent ambassadors to the King and his Most Serene Mother, but they had done little" (La reina Isabella era partita di Opolia discorde col re de Romani, et stava in Pijotrkowia, et il re de Romani havea mandato ambasciatori al re et a la serenissima madre, ma poco havevano fatto, after "L'Europa centro-orientale e gli archivi ..." by Gaetano Platania, p. 78). The facial features of a lady with a dog in the portrait made by Titian's entourage are identical to those from the known effigies of Isabella Jagiellon - the miniature by the workshop of Cranach the Younger, made in Wittenberg (Czartoryski Museum, inv. MNK XII-542) and the full-length portrait (Royal Castle in Warsaw, inv. ZKW 61), both in widow's costume. This painting, from a private Italian collection, is also attributed to Lambert Sustris (oil on canvas, 98 x 74 cm) and was auctioned in 1996 as a possible effigy of Eleonora Gonzaga (1493-1570), Duchess of Urbino. It is likely that the same painting was put up for sale in 2000, however, the woman has dark hair, which brings her closer to the known effigies of Eleonora Gonzaga. A similar effigy, representing a blonde woman holding a zibellino, comes from the Contini Bonacossi collection in Florence, as do several portraits of the Jagiellons, identified by me. It is now in the Samek Art Museum in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania (oil on panel, 100 x 76.2 cm, inv. 1961.K.1200), sold to Samuel Henry Kress (1863-1955) on September 1, 1939. This painting is attributed to the School of Agnolo Bronzino or Florentine school of the 16th century (compare Fototeca Zeri, Numero scheda 37442). The most likely author is therefore Jacopino del Conte (ca. 1515-1598), a pupil of Andrea del Sarto, active in Rome and Florence. The style of the painting is similar to the portrait of a boy in the National Gallery in London (inv. NG649), which according to my identification is a portrait of Isabella's son, John Sigismund Zapolya, and the Madonna in the National Museum in Warsaw (inv. M.Ob.639 MNW). However, at first glance, the resemblance of the facial features is not so obvious: is it then the painting mentioned by Bona in her letter or a copy of it offered to the Medici family in Florence? The portrait that was in the Hungarian National Museum before 1853, known from a lithograph, depicted a woman in a similar costume, sitting in the 16th-century Savonarola chair and holding a fan. The lithograph was made in 1853 by the Hungarian lithographer Alajos Rohn. This portrait was identified as an effigy of Mary of Anjou (1371-1395), Queen of Hungary, granddaughter of Elizabeth of Poland (1305-1380) - I. MARIA MAGYAR KIRÁLYNŐ. A copy of the painting from Budapest from the 18th or 19th century or painted after Rohn's lithograph was sold in Vienna in 2021 as by a follower of Alessandro Allori (oil on panel, 17.5 x 12.8 cm, Dorotheum, April 27, 2021, lot 89). This painting was on the art market in Brussels, where it was acquired in the 1980s. It is likely that Sustris, to whom the painting with the white dog is attributed, created a painting clearly inspired by Titian's famous Venus of Urbino, which was in a private collection in France before 1997 (oil on canvas, 110 x 138.5 cm). The facial features, although idealized, are also reminiscent of Venus of Urbino and the woman in the portrait with the white dog. The pose of the nude woman and her hairstyle are similar to those depicted on the reverse of a medal of Giovanni Battista Castaldo (1493-1563) to commemorate the capture of the town of Lipova in Transylvania in November 1551. This medal was probably made in Milan around 1552, commissioned by Castaldo, whose portraits were painted by Titian and Antonis Mor. On the left is a trophy of Ottoman arms and the inscription reads the "Transylvania captured" (TRANSILVANIA CAPTA), while the nude female figure seated on the bank of a river holds a crown in her left hand and a sceptre in her right (Bargello Museum in Florence, inv. 6223). 
Portrait of Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559), Queen of Hungary and Croatia with a dog by follower of Titian, 1538-1540, Private collection.
Portrait of Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559), Queen of Hungary and Croatia holding a zibellino by Jacopino del Conte, 1538-1540, Samek Art Museum.
Portrait of Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559), Queen of Hungary and Croatia holding a fan, 1853 lithograph after lost original by Titian or Jacopino del Conte from about 1539, Private collection.
Portrait of Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559), Queen of Hungary and Croatia holding a fan, 18th or 19th century after lost original by Titian or Jacopino del Conte from about 1539, Private collection.
Portrait of Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559), Queen of Hungary and Croatia nude by follower of Titian, ca. 1551, Private collection.
"Transylvania captured", reverse of a medal of Giovanni Battista Castaldo (1493-1563), ca. 1552, Bargello Museum in Florence.
Portrait of court physician Giovanni Andrea Valentino by Gaspare Pagani
"John Andrew de Valentinis from Modena, provost of Kraków, Sandomierz and Trakai, etc. very proficient doctor of medicine, who served the venerable Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, the Most Serene King Sigismund I and the Most Serene Queen Bona Sforza for many years, so summoned by the almighty God on February 20, 1547, he moved to eternity" (Ioannes Andreas de Valentinis natus Mutinensis praepositus cracoviensis, sandecensis, trocensis et cetera, artium medicinaeque doctor peritissimus qui reuerendissimi Cardinali Hippoliti Estensi atque Serenissimi Poloniae Regi Sigismundo I et Serenissimae Reginae Sfortiae faeliciter pluribus servivit annis, tandem a Deo Optimo Maximo vocatus. XX • Februarii M • D • XLVII ad aeternam migravit vitam), reads the Latin inscription on the tombstone plaque of Giovanni Andrea Valentino (ca. 1495-1547), court physician of Queen Bona Sforza in the St. Mary's Chapel (Bathory Chapel) at the Wawel Cathedral.
The tombstone, funded by Bona as the executor of Valentino's will, was carved by Giovanni Soli from Florence or Giovanni Cini from Siena. The sculpted effigy of a canon holding a chalice and adorned with coat of arms of two paws in circles on each side depict most probably Valentino, although it is traditionally identified as the image of Bernard Wapowski (Vapovius, 1475-1535), canon of Kraków. Valentino, a nobleman from Modena, son of Lodovico and his wife née Barocci, had a vulture's paw in his coat of arms. He studied with a famous physician Niccolò Leoniceno (1428-1524) in Ferrara and he became the court physician of Queen Bona Sforza in 1520 (after "Studia renesansowe", Volume 3, p. 227). He played a very important role at the royal court in Poland acting as an agent of the Dukes of Mantua and Ferrara and over time he rose to the rank of a secretary. He also acted as an intermediary in sending valuable gifts between courts in Poland and Italy, like in June 1529 when he sent, through Ippolito of Mantua who arrived to Vilnius, a skin of a white bear to Alfonso (1476-1534), duke of Ferrara, a very rare and sought after item even in Lithuania (according to Valentino, only the king had one piece, which was used to cover the carriage). Perhaps this emissary brought the queen a portrait of Marquess of Mantua, Federico II Gonzaga (1500-1540), most likely by Titian. Bona was showing the portrait to the court barber Giacomo da Montagnana from Mantua "with the same ceremony with which the mantle of Saint Mark is shown in Venice", so that the barber had to kneel before it with folded hands, reported Valentino in a letter to Alfonso (after "Królowa Bona, 1494-1557: czasy i ludzie odrodzenia", Volume 3, p. 187). Giovanni Andrea became rich thanks to Bona's support and numerous endowments. He owned a house in Vilnius and estates near Brest. As a trusted household member of the royal family, he was sent as an envoy to Italy several times, like in 1537 when he also visited his family in Modena. Valentino contributed to the education of his relatives, like two nephews of Bonifazio Valentino, canon of Modena and Pietro Paolo Valentino, son of Giovanni. Other members of his family received on November 25, 1538 from Ercole II d'Este, Duke Ferrara, at his request, exemption from payment of import duty in Modena. When in Poland, Valentino also conducted scientific research and his observations on Polish cochineal found an echo in Antonio Musa Brassavola's work on syrups (after "Odrodzenie w Polsce: Historia nauki" by Bogusław Leśnodorski, p. 132) and commissioned works of art. In about 1540 he founded the altar of St. Dorothy for the Wawel Cathedral (today in the Bodzów Chapel in Kraków), created by circle of Bartolomeo Berecci and adorned with coat of arms of Poland, Lithuania and the Sforzas as well as Latin inscription: IOANNES ANDREAS DE VALENTINIS EX MUTIN BON PHYSICVS SANDOMIRIENSIS PRAEPVS DEDICAVIT. He died after a fourteen-day illness on the night of February 19/20, 1547 at the age of about 52 and left all his property in Poland to a family residing in Italy. In the Ducal Chancellery of Modena are the ducal instructions addressed to Valentino on March 18, 1523. Giovanni Andrea left the duke in his will a golden cup and a small dwarf (una coppa d'oro e uno suo naino picolino e ben fattos, after "Lodovicus Montius Mutinensis ..." by Rita Mazzei, p. 12). In the Philadelphia Museum of Art there is a "Portrait of an Elderly Physician" (oil on canvas, 67.3 × 55.3 cm, inventory number Cat. 253), created in about 1540 and attributed to Gaspare Pagani (d. 1569), Italian painter active in Modena, first documented in 1521. This painting was acquired in 1917 from the collection of John G. Johnson and was previously attributed to Dosso Dossi, court artist to the dukes of Ferrara. According to the description of the work in the museum "this man is identified as a physician by the caduceus, or staff, in his hand. The caduceus became a symbol of the medical profession because of its association with Asclepius, a legendary Greek physician and god of healing". However, caduceus was also the symbol of Mercury, Roman god of commerce, travellers and orators, the emissary and messenger of the gods. Both rods were each given to Asclepius and to Mercury by Apollo, god of the sun and knowledge. So this man was a doctor and an emissary, just like Giovanni Andrea Valentino. 
Portrait of court physician Giovanni Andrea Valentino (ca. 1495-1547) by Gaspare Pagani, ca. 1540, Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Portrait of Beata Kościelecka holding a book by Bernardino Licinio
"In the hands of Her Majesty the Queen for images to the Kraków Cathedral florins 159/7, which the factor of Her Majesty paid in Venice" (In manus S. Reginalis Mtis pro imaginibus ad eccl. Cathedralem Crac. fl. 159/7, quos factor S. M. Reginalis Veneciis exposuit), a note in the royal accounts (In communes necessitates et ex mandato S. M. Regie) on August 9, 1546 (after "Renesansowy ołtarz główny z katedry krakowskiej w Bodzentynie" by Paweł Pencakowski, p. 112), is the only known confirmation so far that the paintings were ordered by Queen Bona in large quantities in Venice. Many nobles living at the court, attending Sejm (parliament) sessions, or just visiting the capital and interested in affairs of state around the court, imitated the style there and other customs.
Between January 14 and March 19, 1540 Sejm was held at the Wawel Castle in Kraków. During this Sejm, on February 15, in the cathedral, Hieronim Bozarius (possibly Girolamo Bozzari from Piacenza near Milan) presented Sigismund Augustus with a hat and a sword consecrated by Pope Paul III. The exact agenda of the session it not known, however one of the important topics discussed was undoubtedly the case of inheritance of Ilia, Prince of Ostroh, who died just few months earlier on August 19 or 20, 1539. Two very influential women were involved in the matter - the widow Beata Kościelecka, illegitimate daughter of Sigismund I and protegee of Queen Bona and Princess Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska, second wife of Ilia's father and mother of his brother Constantine Vasily, a descendant of Grand Princes of Kiev and Grand Dukes of Lithuania. On August 16, 1539, Ilia, who according to Nipszyc succumbed too much to his energetic wife Beata, signed a will in which he left his possessions to his unborn child and his wife and named king Sigismund Augustus and his mother Bona as guardians. Until Ilia's half-brother came of age, Beata was to manage her husband's vast estates and his brother's estate (after "Dzieje rodu Ostrogskich" by Tomasz Kempa, p. 61). The will was confirmed by the king. Nevertheless, the inheritance disputes soon began. Constantine Vasily applied for his part of the Ostroh property and recognition of his rights to custody of the minor Elizabeth (Halszka), daughter of Ilia and Beata. In 1540 Sigismund took under sequestration the estate and confirmed his coming of age in 1541 at the age of 15. At that time Beata's management of the estates caused dissatisfaction of many nobles and the king. She changed a significant part of the officials appointed in Ilia's estates, used all the profits for her own needs and did not pay the debts of her late husband and father-in-law, the administrators appointed by her did not take care of the defense of the lands against Tatar attacks, but several times a year they collected serebshchyna (quitrent in silver coins, established in 1513 by Sigismund). Complaints poured in about the princess from the servants, neighbors and government officials. Under such conditions, on March 3, 1540 Sigismund instructed Fyodor Andreevich Sangushko (d. 1547), marshal of Volhynia and one of the guardians - to exercise control over the profits from the Ostroh estates and Beata's decisions. The trial regarding the Ostroh inheritance began in Vilnius on August 27, 1540. Princess Alexandra and her son were represented by Florian Zebrzydowski with a statement about the illegality of the transfer of the inheritance to Beata that she "to the great hurt and harm of Prince Vasily kept for herself and she did a lot of damage there and destroyed those estates". The final decree of the Compromise Court was issued on December 20, 1541. The property left by Prince Ilia (with the exception of Beata's dowry) was divided into two parts. The division was carried out by Princess Beata and Prince Constantine Vasily was to decide of one of the two parts of the estate (after "Dzieje rodu Ostrogskich" by Tomasz Kempa, p. 64). Pedro Ruiz de Moros's malicious epigram entitled In Chorim probably refers to Beata. In the 1540s, the poet attacked influential women in Queen Bona's circle. The woman in the poem, whom the poet calls Choris, was already a mother, and yet appeared as a young girl with her head uncovered and her hair loose (In cunis vagit partus, tu fusa capillos / Incedis. Virgo es sic mulierque, Choris). Portrait of a lady in a red dress holding a petrarchino by Bernardino Licinio in the Musei Civici di Pavia (oil on canvas, 100 x 78 cm, inventory number P 24) is very similar to the portrait of Beata from 1532 by the same author in terms of facial features, costume and pose. Her clothes and jewellery indicate high position, noble origin and wealth. The little book that the she shows closed in one hand is complement of the sumptuous robe, as a fashionable item to show off the refined silk binding. As in the portrait of Queen Bona Sforza by Licinio being seen holding a petrarchino, a book by Petrarch, was a courtly intellectual fashion. Inscription in Latin on the marble parapet "1540 DAY/ 25 FEB" (1540 DIE/ 25 FEB) refers to an important event in her life. She is not wearing a black mourning gown, so she's not commemorating someone's death, therefore it could be some important document like a royal decree that didn't survive. At the end of 1539 or at the beginning of 1540, Princess Beata came to Kraków asking the king to confirm her husband's will. Her signed portraits (BEATA KOSCIELECKA / Elice Ducis in Ostrog Conjunx) from the beginning of the 1540s indicate that she closely followed the fashion prevailing at the royal court. Beata's costume, jewellery and even the pose in these effigies are identical as in the portraits of the young Queen Elizabeth of Austria (1526-1545), who preferred the German style. The painting was transferred to the Museum from the School of Painting in Pavia, where in inventory of 1882 it was recored as coming from the collection of the Marquis Francesco Belcredi in Milan, offered in 1851 and attributed to Paris Bordone. The painting is identifiable in the collection of Karl Joseph von Firmian (Carlo Firmian, 1716-1782), who served as Plenipotentiary of Lombardy to the Austrio-Hungarian Empire. In 1753 Firmian was recruited as ambassador to Naples, where many belongings of Queen Bona were transferred after her death. 
Portrait of Beata Kościelecka holding a book by Bernardino Licinio, 1540, Musei Civici di Pavia.
Portrait of Anna of Masovia in crimson dress by Bernardino Licinio
"Let me look at the power or royalty of the Piasts, When it comes to noble origin: no woman is equal to you" (Virtutem spectem seu regia sceptra Piasti, Unde genus: par est femina nulla tibi), praised the Duchess of Mazovia (DUCISSÆ MASOVIÆ) the Spanish poet educated in Italy Pedro Ruiz de Moros.
Italian fashion and novelties quickly reached Poland-Lithuania. One of the few surviving examples is the epitaph painting of Marco Revesla (Revesili, Revexli or Revesli, d. October 19, 1553) from Novara near Milan, who was a pharmacist at the court of Queen Bona. It is considered as one of the earliest reflections of The Last Judgment by Michelangelo, created between 1536-1541 (after "Wczesne refleksy twórczości Michała Anioła w malarstwie polskim" by Kazimierz Kuczman). The painting is in the Franciscan Monastery in Kraków and it was founded by his wife Catharina Alentse (also Alantsee, Alants or Alans). Her family came from Venice and was well known in Kraków and in Płock in Masovia in the first half of the 16th century. Giovanni or Jan Alantsee from Venice, who died before 1553, an aromaticist and pharmacist of Queen Bona, was a mayor of Płock who in August 1535 initiated the construction of waterworks in the city. He was also suspected of poisoning of the last Masovian dukes on the queen's order. Despite tremendous losses during many wars and ivasions, some traces of Venetian portraiture from the 16th century preserved in Masovia. During exhibition of miniatures in Warsaw in 1912 two tondo miniatures by Venetian school were presented - portrait of a Venetian lady from the second half of the 16th century (oil on canvas, 10.6 cm, item 190), owned by the Zamoyski Estate and a miniature of a lady in a costume from the mid-16th century (oil on wood, 7.5 cm, item 192), owned by Count Ksawery Branicki (after "Pamiętnik wystawy miniatur, oraz tkanin i haftów" by Władysław Górzyński and Zenon Przesmycki, p. 31-32), both were probably lost during World War II. After the incorporation of Masovia Polish troops immediately occupied Warsaw, Princess Anna, sister of the last dukes and beloved daughter of Sigismund I (Quam si nostra filia esset), as the king called her in a letter, was to live in a smaller castle in Warsaw until she got married. According to the agreements of 1526, Anna was to give the king her extensive Masovian estates in exchange for a dowry of 10,000 Hungarian ducats and renounce hereditary rights to the duchy. However, the ambitious duchess delayed the decision to marry. In 1536, when she was approaching 38, King Sigismund entrusted Andrzej Krzycki, secretary of Queen Bona, Piotr Gamrat, bishop of Przemyśl and Piotr Goryński, voivode of Masovia, to arrange marriage pacts with Stanisław Odrowąż (1509-1545), voivode of Podolia. On March 1, 1536, Krzycki, his retinue and many senators arrived in Warsaw for the wedding. After a year of delaying the decision the Duchess refused to return her possessions to the king which caused a conflict between the couple and Sigismund and Bona and led to the deprivation of Odrowąż of his offices, and even to skirmishes between the armed forces of the Crown and the private troops of the Duchess of Masovia. The dispute was ended by the Sejm of 1537, which forced Anna and her husband to take an oath before the king, to renounce hereditary rights to Masovia and her estates for the benefit of the Crown. Her husband was deprived of the starosty of Lviv and Sambir, and was forced to leave Bar in Podolia. After leaving Masovia, Anna settled in the Odrowąż estates, where her husband was promoting religious innovations (according to Piotr Gamrat). For the rest of her life, she stayed mainly at the castle in Jarosław between Kraków and Lviv, where around 1540 she gave birth to her only daughter, Zofia. The couple reconciled with Sigismund and Bona. In 1540 Stanisław offered the queen the village of Prusy in Sambir land and between 1542-1543 he become voivode of Ruthenia. The final monetary settlement with the queen took place in March 1545 and Bona paid him 19,187 in gold. Portrait by Bernardino Licinio from the Schaeffer Galleries in New York (oil on panel, 38.5 x 33.5 cm), depict a lady whose facial features are very reminiscent of the effigy of Anna of Masovia in mourning with a portrait of her brother (Castello Sforzesco in Milan). She is older and her costume and hair style resemble greatly that of Bona's protegee Beata Kościelecka, created in about 1540 (Musei Civici di Pavia), identified by me. Her dress of Venetian silk is dyed entirely with Polish cochineal and she holds her hand close to her heart as if taking an oath of allegiance. A portrait of the Duchess of Mazovia (Xzna Mazowiecka), most likely Anna, and probably an effigy of her mother (Radziwilowna Xzna Mazowiecka) are mentioned in the 1657 inventory of the painting collection of Boguslaus Radziwill (1620-1669), which included several paintings by Lucas Cranach, a painting by Paolo Veronese and several Italian paintings (AGAD 1/354/0/26/84, p. 20, 22). 
Portrait of Anna of Masovia (ca. 1498-1557) in crimson dress by Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1540, Private collection.
Portraits of Queen Bona Sforza as Diana the Huntress-Egeria by Lucas Cranach the Elder and Lucas Cranach the Younger
"Such a good queen and such a hunter, That I don't know: are you Juno or are you Diana?" (Tam bona regina es, bene tam venabula tractas Ut dubitem Iuno an sisne Diana magis), plays with words and the name of Queen Bona ("Good" in Latin) comparing her to Juno, queen of the gods, goddess of marriage and childbirth and to Diana, goddess of the hunt and wild animals in his epigram entitled "Cricius, bishop of Przemyśl, to Bona, queen of Poland" (Cricius episcopus Premisliensis ad Bonam reginam Poloniae), her secretary Andrzej Krzycki (1482-1537).
On August 2, 1540 Giovanni Cini, an architect and sculptor from Siena, concludes a contract with Helena Malarka (quod honesta Helena malarka sibi nomine), a female painter in Kraków, for work on finishing her house "in the street of the Jews" (in platea Judaeorum), but at the same time he delegates the work to his assistants, due to his imminent return to Lithuania (after "Nadworny rzeźbiarz króla Zygmunta Starego Giovanni Cini z Sieny i jego dzieła w Polsce" by Stanisław Cercha, Felix Kopera, p. 22). Helena adopts the city law in 1539 and she was mentioned in a register Liber juris civilis inceptus as a widow of another painter Andrzej of Gelnica in Slovakia (Helena Andree pictoris de Gelnicz relicta vidua). This Malarka (Polish for female painter) was apparently a very rich woman that she could afford to have a house in the city center, Jewish Street, today Saint Anne's Street (Świętej Anny), is close to the Main Market Square and the main seat of the Jagiellonian University (Collegium Maius), as well as the royal architect to renovate it. Judging by the available information she was most probably a Jewish female painter from Italy or Poland-Lithuania, close to the royal court of Queen Bona Sforza. So was she involved in any secret or "sensitive" missions for the royal court, like preparation of initial drawings for the royal nudes? In the National Gallery of Art in Washington there is a painting of the Nymph of the Spring by Lucas Cranach the Elder, created after 1537 (oil on panel, 48.4 x 72.8 cm, inventory number 1957.12.1). It probably comes from the collection of Baron von Schenck in Flechtingen Castle, near Magdeburg. The city was the seat of Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg (1490-1545), Archbishop of Magdeburg and Mainz, patron of the arts and collector, whose concubines Elisabeth "Leys" Schütz and Agnes Pless were frequently painted in guise of different Christian Saints by Cranach. The cardinal, who maintained good relations with the Jagiellons, undoubtedly had effigies of King Sigismund and Queen Bona. The painting shows Diana the Huntress as the Nymph of the Sacred Spring, whose posture recalls Giorgione's and Titian's Venuses. Egeria, the nymph of a sacred spring, celebrated at sacred groves close to Rome, was a form of Diana. She was believed to bless men and women with offspring and to assist mothers in childbirth. Beguilingly through lowered eyelids she observes two partridges, a symbol of sexual desire, like in a very similar painting depicting the lady-in-waiting of Queen Bona - Diana di Cordona (Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid). The inscription in Latin on this painting "I am the Nymph of the Sacred Spring. Do not disturb my sleep. I am resting" (FONTIS NYMPHA SACRI SOM: / NVM NE RVMPE QVIESCO) can be taken as an indication that the person who commissioned the painting did not speak German. The landscape behind her is a view of Grodno although seen through the lenses of a German painter and mythological, magical aura. The topography match perfectly the main city of the Black Ruthenia (Ruthenia Nigra) in present-day Belarus, as depicted in an engraving Vera designatio Urbis in Littavia Grodnae with coat of arms of king Sigismund Augustus, created by Matthias Zündt after a drawing by Hans Adelhauser (made in 1568), reproduced in Georg Braun's Civitates orbis terrarium (published in 1575), and the panorama by Tomasz Makowski (created in about 1600). Bona was known for her passion for hunting, but one hunt in Niepołomice near Kraków for bison and bears in 1527 ended tragically for her. She fell from her horse, miscarried her son and was unable to have children later. Possibly in connection to this, in 1540, thanks to his renowned medical and gynecological practice, as well as an edition of his volume on childbirth dedicated to Bona and her daughter Isabella, Giorgio Biandrata (1515-1588) from Saluzzo near Torino was called to the court of Poland-Lithuania and appointed as personal physician to the queen. The main feature of the city was a large wooden bridge (depicted as stone one in the painting) with a gate tower. The first permanent bridge across the Neman River in Grodno is mentioned in 1503. On the left we can see the brick Gothic Old Castle, built by Vytautas the Great between 1391-1398 on the site of previous Ruthenian settlement. On the right there is a Gothic St. Mary's Church, also known as Fara Vytautas, founded before 1389. In 1494, Alexander Jagiellon, Grand Duke of Lithuania, demolished the old wooden structure and erected a new church on its place and in 1551, by order of Queen Bona, the church was repaired. Grodno economy belonged to the queen. During her management, many reforms of the city's organization were carried out and new trade privileges were granted. In 1540, she confirmed the former privileges and allowed the mayor and jurors to have seals. In 1541, Sigismund, at her request, reduced the kopszczyzna (tax on wine sales) from 60 to 50 kop groszy. The queen's residence was built on Horodnica by her secretary Sebastian Dybowski and the oldest hospital in Grodno was founded by Bona in 1550. In Kobryn near Brest, there was a letter from Queen Bona written on December 20, 1552 from Grodno to the starost of Kobryn, Stanisław Chwalczewski, ordering him to designate a plot for building a house with a garden for the goldsmith Peter of Naples (Piotr Neapolitańczyk, Pietro Napolitano), distinguished at the court, where he could freely pursue his craft (after "Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego ...", Vol. 4, p. 205). Another very similar painting of Diana the Huntress-Egeria, attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder or his son, today in the San Diego Museum of Art (oil on panel, 58 x 79 cm, 2018.1), comes from Polish collections. In 1925 it was in the collection of Rudolf Oppenheim in Berlin. According to Wanda Drecka this painting is probably identical to the "Reclining Nymph" by Cranach the Elder, exhibited in Warsaw in the Bruhl Palace in 1880 as the property of Jan Sulatycki. In both described paintings in Washington and in San Diego the face of the sitter resembles greatly the effigies of Queen Bona as Lucretia. Paintings of Diana and her nymphs were present in many collections in Poland-Lithuania among the works of Venetian and German School of painting. The "Inventory of belongings spared from Swedes and escapes made on December 1, 1661 in Wiśnicz" in the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw (number 1/357/0/-/7/12), lists some of the preserved paintings from the collection of Helena Tekla Ossolińska, daughter of Great Crown Chancellor Jerzy Ossoliński, and her husband Aleksander Michał Lubomirski, owner of the Wiśnicz Castle. The description is very general, however some of these paintings were from the 16th and 17th century Venetian and German School: "Great painting of Diana with greyhounds", "Herodias holding the head of St. John in Ebony Frames", possibly by Cranach, "Abram killing Isaac. Titian", "The Blessed Virgin with little Jesus on wood. Alberti Duri", that is Albrecht Dürer, "Tres virtutes cardinales. Paulo Venorase", that is Cardinal virtues by Paolo Veronese, "Copy of Susanna's painting", i.e. Susanna and the Elders, "Two Landscape paintings from Venice on one St. John taking water from a spring on the second a Shepherd with cattle", "Portrait of Her Majesty in the shape of Diana with greyhounds", i.e. portrait of Helena Tekla as Diana the Huntress and many portraits, like that of Venetian Duke Molini (most probably Francesco Molin, Doge of Venice, reigning from his election in 1646 until his death), Dukes of Florence, Modena, Mantua and Parma. In the collection of Stanisław Dziewulski before around 1938 there was Cranach's Diana (semi-sitting, with a landscape with deer in the background), sold to a private collection in Warsaw (after "Polskie Cranachiana" by Wanda Drecka, p. 29). In the Dziewulski collection in Warsaw before the Second World War there was also a painting of Diana at rest, painted on panel and attributed to the Netherlandish painter. The National Museum in Warsaw keeps an old photo of this painting (DDWneg.1166 MNW, DDWneg.17585 MNW). It was a workshop copy of a version kept at the Senlis Museums (D.V.2006.0.30.1, Louvre MNR 17), considered to be a portrait of Diane de Poitiers (1500-1566), mistress and advisor to the King of France Henry II. Its provenance is not known, but a contemporary, almost exact copy indicates that it could be a gift for Queen Bona from France. "The pagan and mysterious image of the nymph Egeria, a hidden being who directs but does not act, seems to be a symbol of a Christian woman" (after "Dzieje Moralne kobiet" by Ernest Legouvé, Jadwiga Trzcińska, p. 73) and perfect allusion to Queen Bona Sforza. 
Portrait of Queen Bona Sforza as Diana the Huntress-Egeria against the idealized view of Grodno by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1540, National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Portrait of Queen Bona Sforza as Diana the Huntress-Egeria by Lucas Cranach the Elder or Lucas Cranach the Younger, ca. 1540, San Diego Museum of Art.
Portrait of Christoph Scheurl from the Polish Chronicle by Lucas Cranach the Elder
"Truly, with the exception of the one and only Albrecht Dürer, my compatriot, that incontestably great genius, it is to you alone, for this century, that is granted […] the first place in painting", praised Lucas Cranach the Elder in 1509 in a letter addressed to him the Nuremberg humanist, lawyer and diplomat Christoph Scheurl (1481-1542). In a print entitled Oratio doctoris Scheurli attingens litterarum prestantiam ..., published in Leipzig in 1509, the author dedicates the preface to the painter. In the same year, Cranach produced a beautiful portrait of Scheurl, dated under the artist’s insignia "1509", today preserved in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg (inv. Gm2332), representing him at the age of 28 (CHRISTOFERVS • SCHEVRLVS • I • V • D / NATVS • ANNOS • Z8).
Scheurl was born in Nuremberg, the eldest son of Christoph Scheurl, originally from Wrocław in Silesia, and his wife, Helena Tucher. From 1498 he studied in Bologna, where he probably met Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543). In 1510, the year after his portrait was painted, Christoph visited his uncle Johann Scheurl (d. 1516), a graduate of the University of Bologna, in Wrocław (after "Prawnicy w otoczeniu Mikołaja Kopernika" by Teresa Borawska, p. 302). Scheurl maintained close ties with Wrocław, his father's city, and often visited Silesia. A keen historian, he corresponded with Justus Ludwik Decjusz (ca. 1485-1545) in Kraków and asked him for information on the history of Poland and Ruthenia. He greatly appreciated Maciej Miechowita (1457-1523), whose book Chronica Polonorum ("Polish Chronicle") he had in his library (after "Na marginesie „Polskich Cranachianów”" by Anna Lewicka-Kamińska, p. 148-149). This book, written in collaboration with Andrzej Krzycki (1482-1537), secretary to Queen Bona Sforza, and published by Jost Ludwik Decjusz in 1521 in Kraków, is now in the Jagiellonian Library (BJ St. Dr. Cim. 8516). The title page of Chronica Polonorum, belonging to Scheurl, is hand-coloured and preceded by a bookplate, a hand-coloured woodcut depicting the owner and his two sons kneeling before the crucified Christ. The coat of arms and the inscription below the bookplate (Liber Christ.[ophori] Scheurli. I.V.D. qui natus est. 11 Nouemb. 1481, / Filij uero Georg. 19. April. 1532. & Christ. 3. August. 1535.) confirm the identity of the model. The bookplate is unsigned, however, according to Anna Lewicka-Kamińska, "it is undoubtedly the work of Cranach the Elder" and was probably made around 1540, and certainly before 1542. In 1511, at Scheurl's request, Cranach made a woodcut bookplate (also unsigned) for his parents. Scheurl's uncolored bookplate, attributed to Lucas Cranach the Younger and his workshop, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 21.35.14). Although indirectly and implicitly, this bookplate can be considered as one of the evidences of the contacts of the Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian clients with Cranach and his workshop, of which very few traces remain in the territories of the former Jagiellonian Monarchies. It is interesting to note that the painted frieze of the Tournament Hall of Wawel Castle, probably begun by Hans Dürer, Albrecht's brother, around 1534 and completed after 1535 by a Wrocław painter Anton Wiedt, is largely inspired by four woodcuts depicting knightly tournaments by Lucas Cranach the Elder from 1506 and 1509 (compare "Rola grafiki w powstaniu renesansowych fryzów ..." by Beata Frey-Stecowa, p. 35). 
Hand-colored woodcut with portrait of Christoph Scheurl (1481-1542) and his two sons kneeling before the crucified Christ from the Polish Chronicle by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1540, Jagiellonian Library.
Portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus by Lucas Cranach the Younger and portrait of Rheticus by Hans Maler
Probably in May 1539 Georg Joachim Iserin de Porris (1514-1574), known as Rheticus reached Frombork, where the young professor from Wittenberg was warmly welcomed by the 66-year-old scholar Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543). Rheticus stayed there for two years and he was to become Copernicus' only student. At the farewell, as Rheticus recalled in his preface dedicated to Emperor Ferdinand I, Copernicus ordered him to finish "what he himself, due to his age and the inevitability of the end, could no longer complete". Rheticus convinced the astronomer to publish his work. In 1540, Franz Rhode in Gdańsk published Narratio Prima ("First Account") in the form of an open letter to Johannes Schöner, constituting the first printed edition of Copernicus' theory. The interest in the work - which soon had to be renewed - encouraged Copernicus to publish his main work. In October 1541, Rheticus returned to Wittenberg, where he served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts for seven months. He wanted to print Copernicus's main work in Wittenberg. However, this was not possible primarily because of Melanchthon's resistance. Copernican theory was met with incomprehension, rejection, and sometimes even sharp ridicule from the Wittenberg reformers.
Rheticus did not share this view. In 1542, while still in Wittenberg, he published, with Copernicus's consent, a small fragment of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, the so-called Trigonometry. Perhaps he hoped that in this way he would gain Melanchthon's favor in terms of printing the work. However, in vain. Rheticus commissioned the printing of the work in Nuremberg from Johann Petreius, the best Nuremberg printer. In 1542 Rheticus left Wittenberg and accepted a position at the University of Leipzig. Accordind to Franz Hipler (1836-1898), Rheticus took the image of Copernicus with him on his return to Wittenberg in order to add a portrait of the author to the main Copernican work when it was printed (after "Die Porträts des Nikolaus Kopernikus", p. 88-89). This original image of the astronomer was most likely re-used almost half a century later in Icones sive Imagines Virorum Literis Illustrium ... by Nikolaus Reusner, published in Strasbourg in 1587 (p. 128). What's interesting the portait of Sarmatian astronomer was published before the portrait of Martin Luther (p. 131), who called Copernicus a "fool" in his "The Table Talk" (Tischreden Oder Colloqvia Doct. Mart. Luthers, published in 1566 in Eisleben by Urban Gaubisch, p. 580, Bavarian State Library, Res/2 Th.u. 63). The effigy of Luther was undobtedly based on a work by Cranach. The woodcuts by Cranach the Younger, his workshop or circle, were also based on painted effigies or created simultaneously, as evidenced by the great similarity of several of them, for example the woodcut with the portrait of Luther by Cranach the Younger's entourage from around 1546 in the National Gallery of Art in Washington (inv. 1943.3.2874), resembles the painted portrait of the reformer in the National Museum in Wrocław from around 1540 (inv. MNWr VIII-2987). A woodcut with portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus holding a lily of the valley in the Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg (paper, 14.7 x 11.5 cm, inv. I,50,25) is considered to be the work of Lucas Cranach the Younger or his circle because of the absence of a famous mark (winged serpent). However, the style of this woodcut and the mastery of its execution indicate that despite the absence of a mark, it could be the work of Cranach himself. There is also a coloured copy in a private collection in Italy and probably before 1600 it was also reused in an engraving commissioned by Sabinus Kauffmann made in Wittenberg (Witebergae, apud Sabinum Kauffmanum, National Museum in Kraków, inv. MNK III-ryc.-56303). This engraving, together with the portrait of Copernicus, which was in the Warsaw Observatory before World War II (oil on panel, 51 x 41 cm), indicate that one or more portraits of the astronomer were made by Cranach and his workshop around 1541. The painting from the Warsaw Observatory was destroyed in 1944 during the Warsaw Uprising, when the German army bombed and burned the building. It bore an inscription in Latin confirming the identity of the model (D. NICOLAVS COPERNICVS DOCTOR ET CANONICVS / WARMIENSIS ASTRONOMVS ...) and the following inscription on the left near the astronomer's lips: NON PAREM PAVLO VENAM REQVIRO / GRATIM PETRI NEQ POSCO SED QVAM / IN CRUCIS LIGNO DEDERAS LATRONI / SEDVLVS ORO ("I do not ask for a grace equal to the grace of St. Paul, nor for the forgiveness that St. Peter received, but for such as you granted to the thief on the tree of the cross, I constantly beg"). The author of the text on the portrait of the astronomer was Enea Silvio Piccolomini (1405-1464) - Bishop of Warmia between 1457-1458, humanist, cardinal and Pope Pius II from 1458, who dedicated these words in 1444 to Emperor Frederick III. The same inscription is also found on the epitaph of Copernicus created before 1589, located in the Cathedral Basilica of St. John in Toruń. The Warsaw portrait was considered the 17th century copy of a lost original and in the upper right corner was the coat of arms, most likely that of a previous owner of the painting. The coat of arms resembles that of the von der Decken family from Lower Saxony and various other families (Zerssen, Twickel and Zieten families). The work was donated to the Observatory in 1854 by Franciszek Ksawery Pusłowski (1806-1874) and the note on the back added that the painting came from the collection of the Królikarnia Royal Palace in Warsaw and in addition to that, at the bottom there was a small seal on red wax with the Janina coat of arms (after "Wizerunki Kopernika" by Zygmunt Batowski, p. 51), so it is possible that the painting belonged to the Sobieski family. The portrait was reproduced in a woodcut published in "Kłosy" in 1876 (No. 593, p. 301, National Library of Poland, b2150801x) and the original in a 17th century engraving in the National Museum in Kraków (MNK III-ryc.-54707). This effigy depicts the astronomer as being relatively young, so the original was probably made at the beginning of the 16th century. The lily of the valley he holds in his hands is considered a symbol of the medical guild, but it is also used as a symbol of love, motherhood and purity, mainly in connection with the veneration of the Virgin Mary in Renaissance painting. The lily of the valley was not unusual as an attribute in portraits during Copernicus' lifetime, as evidenced by a painting from the first half of the 16th century, which has been in the possession of the Paris Observatory (Musée de l'Observatoire) since 1824 as a presumed portrait of Copernicus. It was deposited there by P. F. de Percy, a surgeon in the Napoleonic armies, who had brought it back from one of his campaigns. Its Polish provenance could therefore not be ruled out. The man, probably a nobleman, judging by his attire, is holding a lily of the valley. His pose and the direction of his gaze indicate that this could be a counterpart painting for a woman's portrait. The author of this alleged portrait of Copernicus is considered to be a painter from the circle of Joos van Cleve or Christoph Amberger. In the woodcut by Cranach the Younger and the portrait from the Warsaw Observatory, Copenisus looks at the viewer or towards the sky. The portrait of Copernicus that was in the Gołuchów Castle before the Second World War was also close to Cranach's style (oil on panel, 43 x 31.5 cm, inv. KFMP 1000, inscription: R · D · NICOLAO COPERNICO). This painting was attributed to Crispin Herrant, court painter to Duke Albert of Prussia (1490-1568), who maintained lively artistic contacts with the Bishop of Chełmno in Lubawa, Jan Dantyszek (1485-1548) and was painted by Cranach. Herrant was considered to have been a student of Albrecht Dürer, but strong influences of Cranach's style are also visible in his works (after "Kulturgeschichte Ostpreussens in der Frühen Neuzeit" by Klaus Garber, Manfred Komorowski, Axel E. Walter, p. 436). He also worked in Lidzbark, where he painted two portraits of Mauritius Ferber (1471-1537), Bishop of Warmia, as well as for the Polish magnates Stanisław Kostka and Stanisław Tęczyński (after "Malarstwo Warmii i Mazur od XV do XIX wieku" by Kamila Wróblewska). It is to Rheticus that we owe the Copernican revolution and probably also the most beautiful effigy of the astronomer by Cranach the Younger. Without his involvement, the paradigm shift from a geocentric to a heliocentric view of the world would probably have been long in coming, and Nicolaus Copernicus's main work might never have been published (after "Z Wittenbergi do Fromborka i z powrotem: Retyk i Kopernik" by Reiner Haseloff, p. 8-10). It should be noted, however, that his colleagues in Wittenberg described his personality as abnormal and enthusiastic, with homosexual tendencies. They perceived Rheticus as a man who was carried away by the fame and knowledge of older men, and fantasized about them. This led them to believe that the sole purpose of Rheticus's request for leave from Melanchthon in Wittenberg was to get closer to Copernicus (compare "The Melanchthon Circle, Rheticus, and the Wittenberg Interpretation of the Copernican Theory" by Robert S. Westman, p. 165-193). There is no known portrait of Rheticus. Before going to Frombork, the young scholar travelled to Nuremberg in October 1538, then to Ingolstadt, Tübingen and his hometown of Feldkirch in Austria, near Liechtenstein. In the Liechtenstein Museum in Vienna there is a "Portrait of a Young Man", attributed to Hans Maler, a painter born in Ulm and active as a portrait painter in the village of Schwaz, near Innsbruck, where he painted numerous portraits of members of the Habsburg court. This painting was probably acquired by Johann II (1840-1929), Prince of Liechtenstein (oil on panel, 35.1 x 25.3 cm, inv. GE 711). The alleged author of the painting, Hans Maler, is believed to have died around 1529, however this painting is clearly in his style and bears the date 1538. According to the Latin inscription in the upper part of the painting, the man was 24 years old in 1538 (᛫ ÆTATIS SVÆ XXIII IOR ᛫ / ᛫ 1 5 3 8 ᛫), exactly like Rheticus, when he went to Austria and then to Frombork. 
Portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) by Crispin Herrant, ca. 1533, Gołuchów Castle, lost during World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Georg Joachim de Porris (1514-1574), known as Rheticus, aged 24 by Hans Maler, 1538, Liechtenstein Museum in Vienna.
Woodcut with portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) holding a lily of the valley by Lucas Cranach the Younger, ca. 1541, Veste Coburg.
Woodcut with portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) holding a lily of the valley by Lucas Cranach the Younger, after 1541, Private collection.
Portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) holding a lily of the valley, first half of the 17th century, Warsaw Observatory, destroyed in 1944. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Forgotten portraits of the Dukes of Pomerania, Dukes of Silesia and European monarchs - part I3/16/2022
Portraits of George I of Brzeg and Anna of Pomerania by Hans Suess von Kulmbach
On June 9, 1516 in Szczecin, Duke George I of Brzeg (1481-1521) married Anna of Pomerania (1492-1550), the eldest daughter of Duke Boguslaus X of Pomerania (1454-1523) and his second wife Anna Jagiellon (1476-1503), daughter of King Casimir IV of Poland.
According to Brzeg city book (fol. 24 v.) their engagement took place as early as 1515. In June 1515, George imposed a two-year tax on the inhabitants of his Duchy in order to collect dowry sums of 10,000 guilder (after "Piastowie: leksykon biograficzny", p. 507), the sum the princess also received from her father. In the years 1512-1514 there were negotiations regarding Anna's marriage with the Danish king Christian II. This marriage was prevented by the Hohenzollerns, leading to his marriage to Isabella of Austria, sister of Emperor Charles V. George, the youngest son of Duke Frederick I, Duke of Chojnów-Oława-Legnica-Brzeg-Lubin, by his wife Ludmila, daughter of George of Poděbrady, King of Bohemia, was the true prince of the Renaissance, a great patron of culture and art. Often staying at the court in Vienna and Prague, he got used to splendor, so that in 1511, during the stay of the Bohemian-Hungarian royal family in Wrocław, all courtiers were eclipsed by the splendor of his retinue. In February 1512 he was in Kraków at the wedding of King Sigismund I with Barbara Zapolya, arriving with 70 horses, then in 1515 at the wedding of his brother with the Polish-Lithuanian princess Elizabeth Jagiellon (1482-1517) in Legnica, and in 1518 again in Kraków at the wedding of Sigismund with Bona Sforza. He imitated the customs of the Jagiellonian courts in Kraków and Buda, had numerous courtiers, held feasts and games at his castle in Brzeg (after "Brzeg" by Mieczysław Zlat, p. 21). He died in 1521 at the age of 39. George and Anna had no children and according to her husband's last will, she received the Duchy of Lubin as a dower with the lifelong rights to independent rule. Anna's rule in Lubin lasted twenty-nine years, and after her death it fell to the Duchy of Legnica. The major painter at that time at the royal court in Kraków was Hans Suess von Kulmbach. His work is documented between 1509-1511 and 1514-1515, working for the king Sigismund I (his portrait in Gołuchów, Pławno triptych, a wing from a retable with effigy of a king, identified as portrait of Jogaila/Ladislaus Jagiello, in Sandomierz, among others), his banker Jan Boner (altar of Saint Catherine) and his nephew Casimir, Margrave of Brandenburg-Kulmbach from 1515 (his portrait dated '1511' in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich). Hans, born in Kulmbach, was a student of the Venetian painter Jacopo de' Barbari (van Venedig geporn, according to Dürer) and then went to Nuremberg, where he became close friends with Albrecht Dürer as his assistant. The portrait of a man by Kulmbach in private collection (auctioned at Sotheby's, London in 1959) bear inscription · I · A · 33 (abbreviation for Ihres Alters 33 in German, his age 33, in upper left corner), monogram of the painter HK (joined) and above the year 1514 (in upper right corner). The man was the same age as Duke George I of Brzeg, born according to sources between 1481 and 1483 (after "Piastowie: leksykon biograficzny", p. 506), when Kulmbach moved to Kraków. This portrait has its counterpart in another painting of the same format and dimensions (41 x 31 cm / 40 x 30 cm), portrait of a young woman in Dublin (National Gallery of Ireland, inventory number NGI.371, purchased at Christie's, London, 2 July 1892, lot 15). Both portraits were painted on limewood panels, they have a similar, matching composition and similar inscription. According to the inscription on the portrait of a woman, she was 24 in 1515 (· I · A · 24 / 1515 / HK), exaclty as Anna of Pomerania, born at the end of 1491 or in the first half of 1492 (after "Rodowód książąt pomorskich" by Edward Rymar, p. 428), when she was engaged to George I of Brzeg. The woman bear a strong resemblance to effigies of Anna of Pomerania by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, identified by me. Her costume is very similar to that visible in the painting depicting Self-burial of St. John the Evangelist (St. Mary's Basilica in Kraków), created by Kulmbach in 1516, possibly showing the interior of the Wawel Cathedral with original gothic, silver sarcophagus of Saint Stanislaus. The female figures in the latter painting could be Queen Barbara Zapolya (d. 1515) and her ladies or wife of Jan Boner, Szczęsna Morsztynówna and other Kraków ladies. Despite different dates, the two portraits are also considered as a possible pair in the exhibition catalog "Meister um Albrecht Dürer" at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg in 1961, according to which "the figures probably represent people from Kraków, because Kulmbach worked there in 1514/15 on the altar of St. Catherine of the St. Mary's Church" (Dargestellt dürften Krakauer Persönlichkeiten sein, da Kulmbach dort 1514/15 am Katharinenaltar für die Marienkirche arbeitete, compare "Anzeiger des Germanischen Nationalmuseums", items 166-167, p. 107). The portraits are also compared to two similar paintings depicting a woman and her husband, which were before 1913 in the collection of Marczell Nemes (1866-1930) in Budapest, sold in Paris, and earlier in the Weber collection in Hamburg (after "Collection Marczell de Nemes", Galerie Manzi-Joyant, items 26-27). Both paintings were probably destroyed during the First or Second World War. The portrait of a woman (panel, 58.5 x 44), wearing expensive jewelry indicating her wealth, was signed with the artist's monogram and dated: J. A. Z. 4. / 1.5.1.3. HK, which means that the woman was 24 years old in 1513. The portrait of a man (panel, 58 x 43.5) was also signed with the artist's monogram and dated: J. A. Z. 7. / 1.5.1.3. HK, indicating that the model was 27 years old in 1513. The age of a man in 1513 perfectly matches Seweryn Boner (1486-1549), a wealthy banker to King Sigismund I, whose family moved from Nuremberg to Kraków in 1512 and who throughout his life maintained active contact with this German city. Boner's year of birth - 1486, is confirmed on his bronze funerary sculpture in St. Mary's Church in Kraków, created between 1532 and 1538 by Hans Vischer in Nuremberg. According to a Latin inscription, he died in 1549 at the age of 63 (SANDECEN(SIS) ANNV(M) ÆTATIS SVÆ SEXAGESIMV(M) · TERCIV(M) AGE(N)S DIE XII MAY A[NNO] 1549). Seweryn married the daughter of Severin Bethman of Wissembourg (d. 1515) and his wife Dorothea Kletner - Sophia Bethman (d. 1532), also Zofia Bethmanówna (MAGNIFICÆ DOMINÆ ZOPHIÆ BETHMANOWNIE. QVÆ. DIE V MAII AN[NO] MDXXXII OBIIT), according to the inscription on her funerary sculpture, or Sophie Bethmann in German sources, born around 1490, her age therefore also corresponds to that of a woman in the Kulmbach's portrait (around 1489). Zofia was a heiress of Balice and her wealth helped build Boner's successful career. The effigies of a woman and a man also recall Seweryn and Zofia from their funerary sculptures. Although Kulmbach apparently returned to Nuremberg in 1513, that year he painted a votive panel for Provost Lorenz Tucher to Saint Sebaldus in Nuremberg, considered his most important work (signed right in middle panel: HK 1513), the direct meeting with Seweryn Boner around that year is not excluded (whether in Nuremberg or Kraków). The man's costume in the 1513 portrait is typical for Kraków fashion of that era and similar ones can be seen in Hans von Kulmbach's 1511 Adoration of the Magi, the central panel of a triptych founded by Stanisław Jarocki, castellan of Zawichost (d. 1515) for Skałka Monastery in Kraków (Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, inv. 596A). It also greatly resembles the outfit of King Sigismund from his portrait attributed to Kulmbach at Gołuchów Castle (oil on panel, 24 x 18 cm, Mo 2185) or from his portrait, most likely made by Kulmbach, which was at the beginning of the 20th century in the antique shop of Franciszek Studziński in Paris. Regarding the effigy of the king in Gołuchów, it should also be noted that although it is undoubtedly a version of the same prototype, most likely made by Kulmbach, which was also copied by Cristofano dell'Altissimo in a painting in the Uffizi Gallery (inv. 1890, n. 412), the style of the painting more closely resembles to the works of Flemish painters of the 17th century. The most striking element of the two mentioned portraits of Sigismund I is the way in which the nose was depicted and perfectly illustrates how the practice of copying effigies changed facial features. According to Mieczysław Morka ("Sztuka dworu Zygmunta I Starego ...", p. 450, 452), it is probably King Sigismund I who shakes the hand of Saint Joseph, spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in the Adoration of the Magi from Skałka, however, the golden crinale cap and green cloak of a man are very similar to the portrait of a man from 1513. The woman's costume, with its characteristic bulbous coif, called Wulsthaube, also finds equivalents in Kraków fashion in the Miracle at the tomb of the Patriarch from the polyptych of John the Merciful, painted by Jan Goraj around 1504 (National Museum in Kraków, MNK ND-13), founded by Mikołaj of Brzezie Lanckoroński for the Church of St. Catherine in Kraków. A similar dress can be seen in the miniature portrait of Agnieszka Ciołkowa née Zasańska (d. 1518) as Saint Agnes in the Kraków Pontifical by the Master of the Bright Mountain Missal from 1506 to 1518 (Czartoryski Library, 1212 V Rkps, p. 37). Aa a wealthy merchant and banker, sometimes compared to Jakob Fugger the Rich (1459-1525), Seweryn Boner was a great patron of the arts. His family, especially his uncle Jan or Johann (Hans) Boner (1462-1523), were also known for their splendid patronage. In addition to Kulmbach paintings, Hans bought luxury items in Venice. The beautiful Renaissance tombstone of Seweryn's father-in-law, Severin Bethman, in the presbytery of St. Mary's Church in Kraków, carved from red marble, is most likely the work of Giovanni Cini. The only thing preventing us from fully recognizing the 1513 portraits as effigies of Zofia and her husband is the date of the paintings. According to sources, she married Seweryn on October 23, 1515, so two years later. A few days after the wedding, her father died (October 28). Nevertheless, this does not completely rule out identification as Zofia Bethmanówna and Seweryn Boner. The exact source confirming the date of their marriage is not specified, so it could be incorrect. The date of their engagement is also not known. Although, according to traditional iconography, the portraits represent a married couple (pendant portraits, woman's hair covered), as in the case of the portraits made in 1514 and 1515, described above, the interpretation that they were made not as confirmation but as anticipation of a successful marriage is also possible. 
Portrait of a woman aged 24, probably Zofia Bethmanówna (d. 1532) by Hans Suess von Kulmbach, 1513, Private collection, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of a man aged 27, probably Seweryn Boner (1486-1549) by Hans Suess von Kulmbach, 1513, Private collection, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of George I of Brzeg (1481-1521), aged 33 by Hans Suess von Kulmbach, 1514, Private collection.
Portrait of Anna of Pomerania (1492-1550), aged 24 by Hans Suess von Kulmbach, 1515, National Gallery of Ireland.
Portrait of Sigismund I (1467-1548) by Hans Suess von Kulmbach (?), after 1514, Private collection, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Sigismund I (1467-1548) by Flemish painter after Hans Suess von Kulmbach (?), first quarter of the 17th century, Gołuchów Castle.
Silesian Cranachiana
The great popularity of Cranach's works, as in Poland-Lithuania and Bohemia, had a considerable impact on art in Silesia, as evidenced by numerous paintings of the Silesian school from the early 16th century, exhibited in the National Museum and the Archdiocesan Museum in Wrocław. Although it is possible that some of these anonymous painters, working mainly in Wrocław, were trained in Cranach's workshop in Wittenberg, it is more likely that they were inspired by the style of the works imported to Silesia, since their own style prevailed. Among the best examples are The Raising of Lazarus, a panel from the epitaph of Balthazar Bregel (d. 1521) from St. Elizabeth's Church in Wrocław, painted in 1522, and Christ's Farewell to Mary from the epitaph of Hans Starzedel, painted in 1528 (National Museum in Wrocław), as well as the Holy Family from the 1520s (Archdiocesan Museum in Wrocław), which shows strong influences from Cranach's style. Among the oldest are also The Deposition with a donor from the Cathedral of St. Vincent and St. James in Wrocław, inspired by Cranach's woodcut from The Passion, created around 1509 (National Museum, inv. MNWr VIII-2663) and The Man of Sorrows with the Virgin and St. John with a donor (Archdiocesan Museum), borrowing the composition from a painting by Cranach from around 1525, today in the Stadtmuseum in Baden-Baden.
This practice, together with the many works by Cranach and his workshop that have survived despite the turbulent history of Silesia, prove that this importation and the contacts with the Wittenberg workshop were significant from the beginning of the German master's popularity in Central Europe. Cranach's connections with the German reformers Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon and his, so to speak, monopoly on their likenesses also had a great influence on his popularity in Silesia. Several of these works have a confirmed provenance, sometimes from the end of the 16th or the beginning of the 17th century, but it can be assumed that they were imported shortly after their creation. Individual patrons from Silesia, inspired by Cranach's innovative style and his popularity among the aristocracy and officials of the Jagiellonian elective monarchies, also commissioned works of art from Wittenberg. One of the earliest and most beautiful paintings is Cranach the Elder's Christ as a Man of Sorrows (Vir Dolorum), probably painted between 1515 and 1520 (panel, 27.6 x 17.8 cm, Christie's London, Auction 6068, December 16, 1998, lot 41, dated "1530" and artist's insignia in the centre right, not genuine). The painting bears the coat of arms of the Henckel von Donnersmarck in the lower left corner, a noble family from the former Spiš region of Upper Hungary (now Slovakia). The original seat of the family was in Spišský Štvrtok in Slovakia, known as Donnersmarck in German. This painting was most probably commissioned by Johannes Henckel von Donnersmarck (1481-1539), a scholar who corresponded with Luther, Melanchthon, and Erasmus of Rotterdam. He began his career as a pastor in Levoča and Košice. Later, he stayed at the court of Louis II Jagiellon (1506-1526), King of Hungary, Croatia, and Bohemia, and his wife, Maria of Austria (1505-1558), as court chaplain. In 1531, he came to Silesia and became a canon in Wrocław. He died there eight years later and was buried in the local cathedral. Another beatiful painting by Cranach and workshop showing the Man of Sorrows, connected with Wrocław and painted in about 1545 (National Museum in Poznań, inv. Mo 472), comes from the collection a Silesian humanist and book collector Thomas Rehdiger (also Rhediger and Redinger, 1540-1576), who studied in Wittenberg and from where he most likely brought the painting by Cranach. One of the oldest and most beautiful works by Cranach related to Silesia is the painting The Virgin on the Crescent which was in the monastery of St. Magdalene in Lubań near Legnica before the Second World War (panel, 119 x 76 cm). The painting was probably destroyed between February and May 1945, when the monastery became the scene of fierce fighting between the enemy powers. It was considered one of the artist's earliest works and belonged to the last Cistercian of Neuzelle, Father Vincenz, who came to Lubań and died around 1883, bequeathing the painting to the monastery. It is likely that it belonged to the Neuzelle Abbey (Monasterium Nova Cella) until its secularization in 1817. Neuzelle was founded in the 13th century by the House of Wettin, but from 1367, together with Lower Lusatia, it was part of the Kingdom of Bohemia. During the Reformation, the majority of monks came mainly from North Bohemia and Catholic Upper Lusatia and studied at Charles University in Prague after the novitiate. The monastery was incorporated into the Bohemian Province of the Cistercian Order. When the Habsburgs ceded Lower Lusatia to the Saxon House of Wettin in the Peace of Prague in 1635, the Protestant Elector of Saxony had to guarantee the continued existence of the Neuzelle Abbey. The Lubań painting was signed with Cranach's mark, the serpent with wings pointing outwards, located at the lower end of the crescent moon. It resembled a similar composition attributed to Cranach's student Simon Franck bearing the arms of Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg (1490-1545), which was probably in the collegiate church of Halle until 1541, today in the Staatsgalerie in Aschaffenburg (inv. 6276), as well as the Madonna of the Saxon Chancellor Hieronymus Rudelauf (d. 1523), today in the Städel Museum (inv. 1731), both considered to have been painted in the early 1520s. The face of the Madonna, however, is very reminiscent of The Virgin and Child with a Bunch of Grapes, today in the Franconian Gallery in Kronach (deposit of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, inv. 1023). The Madonna in the Franconian Gallery is believed to have been created around 1525 and before 1824 it belonged to Maximilian I Joseph (1756-1825), King of Bavaria. The Saint Anne with the Virgin and Child, a work by Cranach's circle, probably by Simon Franck and made around 1530, comes from the church in Grodziec (Gröditzberg), where the castle of the Dukes of Legnica is located. It was acquired by the National Museum in Wrocław in 1963 (inv. MNWr VIII-1452). One of the most beautiful portraits of Martin Luther, painted by the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder around 1540, is in Wrocław (National Museum, panel, 34.7 x 30.5 cm, inv. MNWr VIII-2987). Marked lower right with the artist's insignia, this portrait is a central panel of the epitaph of Hanns Ebenn von Brunnen from the Church of St. Elizabeth in Wrocław, created around 1620. It is one of several portraits of Luther made by Cranach and his workshop, linked to Wrocław - others are in Weimar (Schlossmuseum, inv. G 559, dated 1528, companion to the portrait of Katharina von Bora, inv. G 560, both purchased in Wrocław in 1908), Berlin (Gemäldegalerie, inv. Dep26, companion to the portrait of Melanchthon, dated 1532, inv. Dep27, both from the Church of St. Elizabeth in Wrocław) and Warsaw, painted by the workshop of Cranach the Younger in 1564 (National Museum, inv. M.Ob.1757, companion to the portrait of Melanchthon, inv. M.Ob.1761, both from the Church of St. Elizabeth in Wrocław, deposited in the Wrocław City Museum). Two pairs of portraits of Luther and Melanchthon, made by Cranach's workshop and follower, now kept in the National Museum in Kraków, probably also come from Silesia (inv. MNK XII-A-553, MNK XII-A-554, MNK XII-A-138, MNK XII-A-139). Double portrait with Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon in half-figures facing each other, attributed to Cranach the Younger or his workshop (unsigned), now in a private collection (panel, 36.8 x 56.5 cm, sold at auction in London in 1955), was in the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts in Wrocław before World War II and is listed in the Polish Catalog of Wartime Losses (number 63410). Another magnificent portrait by circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder, from the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts, was also lost during the Second World War (panel, 51 x 38 cm, inv. 628, Catalog of Wartime Losses, number 10471). It may have been painted by the Master of the Mass of St. Gregory, who takes his name from the many depictions of this subject, all painted for Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg, and shows a man wearing a fur coat and hat. According to the German inscription in the upper left corner, the man was 46 years old in 1527 ([…] ICH WAR 46 IAR ALT ∙ […] ICH DY GE= / STALT ∙ 1527 ∙) and the inscription in the upper right corner confirms that he died on August 5, 1541 (IST GESTHORBEN / AM ∙ 5 ∙ DAGE AVGVS / IM JAR ∙ 1 ∙ 5 ∙ 41 ∙). It is possible that this man was a fur merchant from Wrocław who traded with Kraków. Interestingly, two other 16th-century portraits from the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts, lost during World War II, are also close to Cranach. One of them was painted in 1548 and depicts Peter Haunold (1522-1585) at the age of 26, according to the inscription in the upper left corner (PETRVS ∙ HAVNOLT. / Æ ∙ 26 ∙ ANNO ∙ 48, oil on panel, 27 x 18 cm, Catalog of Wartime Losses, number 63411). Peter came from Rościsławice (Riemberg), north of Wrocław, and became a citizen of Wrocław in 1548. He was a merchant and later became Lord of Rościsławice. He had particularly strong trade relations with Hungary and was appointed chamber secretary to Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559), Queen of Hungary in 1554. He married Ursula Lindner in 1547 and Martha von Holtz in 1553 and had eight daughters and two sons (after "Der Rat und die Ratsgeschlechter des alten Breslau" by Rudolf Stein, p. 238). In 1564 he owned a house in Wrocław. The other shows a German musician, theologian and Protestant reformer, Nikolaus Selnecker (or Selneccer, 1530-1592), holding right hand on open book (oil on panel, 42 x 31 cm, Catalog of Wartime Losses, number 63412). Selnecker studied in Wittenberg in 1550 and was a friend of Melanchthon. From 1559 he was chaplain and musician at the court of Augustus, Elector of Saxony in Dresden. At the turn of the years 1573/74 he was a professor in Leipzig and in 1576 he also became pastor of the St. Thomas Church, as well as canon of Meissen Cathedral and it was most likely at this time that an engraving with his portrait holding a book was made by Hieronymus Nützel (Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, inv. RP-P-1914-628). Selnecker's portrait from Wrocław was similar and its style was close to works by Cranach the Younger or his workshop, such as the portrait of the Saxon lawyer Leonhard Badehorn (Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, inv. 614). It has been dated to around 1592, so a few years after the painter's death (1586), based on a Latin inscription in the upper part, which was probably added later and was incorrect because it stated his age was 63, while he died at almost 62 (ANNO ÆTATIS, LXIII / NICOLAVS SELNECCERVS.D.). Some old documents also confirm the existence of Cranach's works in Silesia. Two paintings "Judith with Holofernes" (Judith cum Holoferne) and "Christ among the Children" (Christus inter gregem puerulorum), probably by Cranach or his workshop, were in the Hatzfeld Palace in Wrocław and were destroyed in the fire of 1760. The Catalogue of the Picture Gallery of the House of the Silesian States in Wrocław from 1863 mentions "A Judith with the Head of Holofernes by Kranach (?)" (Eine Judith mit dem Kopf des Holofernes von Kranach (?), item 135), a gift from the auctioneer (Auctions-Commissarius) Pfeiffer around 1820, and "Portrait of Dr. Martin Luther with the Kranach monogram. 1533" (Bildniss des Dr. Martin Luther mit dem Monogramm Kranachs. 1533, item 136) from the former Saint Matthias Gymnasium (Matthiasstift), today Ossolineum in Wrocław, both painted on wood (after "Katalog der Bilder-Galerie im Ständehause zu Breslau", p. 19, 25, 36). It also mentions the Holy Family on copper, possibly by Cranach the Elder (item 316), from the collection of Albrecht von Säbisch (1685-1748), a portrait of Luther from 1529 by the school of Cranach (item 615), a portrait of Elector Augustus (1526-1586) and a mentioned portrait of Haunold from 1548, both from the school of Cranach (items 619, 620), followed by Judith with the Head of Holofernes (item 623) and Cranach's Head of Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony (item 626), all listed as coming from the collection of Thomas Rehdiger. In the collection of the von Falkenhausen family in their palace in Wolany (Wallisfurth) near Kłodzko, in 1899, there was the Venus with green-winged Cupid, signed with Cranach's mark in the right corner (48 x 34 cm) and the painting of the sleeping nymph (46 x 37 cm). The family also owned Cranach's The Judgement of Paris, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (inv. 28.221, after "Neue Cranachs in Schlesien" by Richard Förster, p. 265-266, 273-274). 
Christ as a Man of Sorrows with coat of arms of Johannes Henckel von Donnersmarck (1481-1539), court chaplain of King Louis II Jagiellon (1506-1526), by Lucas Cranach the Elder or workshop, ca. 1515-1520, Private collection.
The Virgin on the Crescent by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, ca. 1520-1525, Monastery of St. Magdalene in Lubań, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Martin Luther (1483-1546) by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1540, National Museum in Wrocław.
Double portrait of Martin Luther (1483-1546) and Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560) from Wrocław by Lucas Cranach the Younger or workshop, ca. 1558-1570, Private collection.
Portrait of a 46-year-old man by circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1527, Silesian Museum of Fine Arts in Wrocław, lost during World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of merchant Peter Haunold (1522-1585), aged 26, secretary to Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559), Queen of Hungary in 1554, by workshop or circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1548, Silesian Museum of Fine Arts in Wrocław, lost during World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of musician and theologian Nikolaus Selnecker (1530-1592) by workshop or circle of Lucas Cranach the Younger, ca. 1576, Silesian Museum of Fine Arts in Wrocław, lost during World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portraits of Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino by Venetian painters
"As to Florence, 1513 also saw another Medici, Lorenzo de' Medici (the grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent), return to power as a 'leading citizen,' a development felicitous to some, odious to others. He too pursued the Medici drive toward expansion, desiring, and with the help of his uncle the pope, achieving the title of duke of Urbino in 1516. It was to him, in fact, that Machiavelli wound up dedicating The Prince, in the hope, vain in retrospect, that Lorenzo might become the sought-after redeemer of Italy for whom The Prince's final lines cry out so urgently. As duke of Urbino he married a daughter of the count of Auvergne, with whom he had a daughter, Catherine de' Medici, who would later become queen of France" (after "Machiavelli: A Portrait" by Christopher Celenza, p. 161).
Lorenzo, born in Florence on 12 September 1492, received the name of his eminent paternal grandfather Lorenzo the Magnificent. Just as for his grandfather, Lorenzo's emblem was the laurel tree, because of the play on the words laurus (laurel) and Laurentius (Lorenzo, Lawrence). A bronze medal cast by Antonio Francesco Selvi (1679-1753) in the 1740s, believed to be inspired by the medal created by Francesco da Sangallo (1494-1576), depict the duke in profile with inscription in Latin LAVRENTIVS. MEDICES. VRBINI.DVX.CP. on obverse and a laurel tree with a lion, generally regarded as symbol of strength, on either side with the motto that says: .ITA. ET VIRTVS. (Thus also is virtue), to signify that virtue like laurel is always green. Another medal by Sangallo in the British Museum (inventory number G3,TuscM.9) also shows laurel wreath around field on reverse. The so-called "Portrait of a poet" by Palma Vecchio in the National Gallery in London, purchased in 1860 from Edmond Beaucousin in Paris, is generally dated to about 1516 basing on costume (oil on canvas, transferred from wood, 83.8 x 63.5 cm, NG636). The laurel tree behind the man have the same symbolic meaning as laurel on the duke of Urbino's medals and his face resemble greatly effigies of Lorenzo de' Medici by Raphael and his workshop. The same man was also depicted in a series of paintings by Venetian painters showing Christ as the Redeemer of the World (Salvator Mundi). One attributed to Palma Vecchio is on display in the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Strasbourg (oil on panel, 74 x 63 cm, MBA 585), the other in the National Museum in Wrocław (oil on canvas, 78.5 x 67.7, VIII-1648, purchased in 1966 from Zofia Filipiak), possibly from the Polish royal collection, was painted more in the style of Giovanni Cariani or Bernardino Licinio, and another in the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston (oil on canvas, 76.8 x 65 cm, 10-011) is attributed to Girolamo da Santacroce from Bergamo, a pupil of Gentile Bellini, active mainly in Venice. This practice of disguised portraits, dressed as Christian saints or members of the Holy Family, was popular among the Medici family since at least the mid-15th century. The best example is a painting commissioned in Flanders - the Medici Madonna with portraits of Piero di Cosimo de' Medici (1416-1469) and his brother Giovanni (1421-1463) as Saints Cosmas and Damian, painted by Rogier van der Weyden between 1460 and 1464 when the artist was working in Brussels (Städel Museum, 850). As in "The Prince" by Machiavelli, the message is clear, "more than just a prince, Lorenzo can become a 'redeemer' who drives out of Italy the 'barbarian domination [that] stinks to everyone'" (after "Apocalypse without God: Apocalyptic Thought, Ideal Politics, and the Limits of Utopian Hope" by Ben Jones, p.64). 
Portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici (1492-1519), Duke of Urbino by Palma Vecchio, ca. 1516, National Gallery in London.
Portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici (1492-1519), Duke of Urbino as the Redeemer of the World (Salvator Mundi) by Palma Vecchio, ca. 1516, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg.
Portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici (1492-1519), Duke of Urbino as the Redeemer of the World (Salvator Mundi) by Giovanni Cariani or Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1516, National Museum in Wrocław.
Portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici (1492-1519), Duke of Urbino as the Redeemer of the World (Salvator Mundi) by Girolamo da Santacroce, ca. 1516, Agnes Etherington Art Centre.
Crucifixion with saints and disguised portrait of Margaret of Ziębice, Princess of Anhalt by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop
Around 1757, Christoph Friedrich Reinhold Lisiewski (1725-1794), also Lisiewsky and often mistakenly called Christian Friedrich Reinhold, a German painter of Polish origin, painted a portrait of Margaret of Ziębice (1473-1530), Princess of Anhalt, known as Margarethe von Münsterberg in German. Anna Dorothea Lisiewska's brother, then court painter to the Princes of Anhalt-Dessau (between 1752 and 1772), depicted the princess kneeling before the picture in a decorative Baroque frame. The portrait, now housed at Mosigkau Castle near Dessau (inv. MOS-10), comes from the collection of the Princes of Anhalt-Dessau, and a German inscription in the lower part confirms the identity of the sitter (Margaretha Fürstin zu Anhalt, Gebohrne Prinzeß zu Münsterberg: Ist gebohren 1473, / vermählt 1494, verstorben 1530 und von dieser Fürstin Margaretha kommen alle jetzige Fürsten von Anhalt her Dessau-Roßlau). What is most interesting is that the figure of Margaret is a copy of Saint Mary Magdalene from a Crucifixion scene painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his workshop around 1523, now in St. John's Church in Dessau (panel, 220 x 118.5 cm). Cranach's original painting, depicting Christ on the cross, flanked by St. John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary, St. John the Evangelist, St. Francis, and St. Mary Magdalene kneeling at the foot of the cross and looking at Christ, comes from St. Mary's Church in Dessau, which was destroyed during World War II. It was in Dessau Castle at the time the copy was made and returned to St. Mary's Church in 1779. St. John's Church in Dessau also houses other works by Cranach, such as The Last Supper, created by Cranach the Younger in 1565 and depicting German reformers as apostles, as well as members of the House of Ascania.
The model's rich costume and characteristic features (despite the raised face) indicate that this is indeed a disguised portrait of Margaret. In the 18th century, such portraits were inappropriate, which is why Lisiewski did not depict the Princess of Anhalt in the Crucifixion scene, but in prayer in a late Baroque palace, a typical setting of the 1750s. The painter probably relied entirely on study drawings, which explains the difference in the color of the dress (blue in Lisiewski's painting and green in the original). Around 1773, another artist, Friedrich Georg Weitsch (1758-1828), a painter from Brunswick, also copied the same portrait of Margaret as Saint Mary Magdalene, wearing a dark green velvet robe as in the original, but placed the scene in the interior of a Gothic church (Wörlitz Castle, inv. I-420). The facial features of Margaret's son, John of Anhalt-Zerbst (1504-1551), in his portrait by the workshop of Cranach the Elder (Anhalt Gallery, inv. M17-2006) are similar, confirming that this is a portrait of his mother. Margaret, born in Wrocław on August 25, 1473, was the daughter of Henry the Elder (1448-1498), Duke of Ziębice and Count of Kłodzko, and his wife Ursula of Brandenburg (1450-1508). On her father's side, she was the granddaughter of the Bohemian King George of Podebrady (1420-1471). On January 20, 1494, in Cottbus, Margaret married Prince Ernest of Anhalt (1474-1516) and, after his death, assumed the regency over his minor sons: John, George, and Joachim. The princess strongly opposed the Reformation, which began to spread from the nearby town of Wittenberg in 1517. She found allies, among others, in the Archbishop of Magdeburg, Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg (1490–1545), her cousin, who was frequently depicted in religious disguises (as Saint Jerome, Saint Erasmus, or Saint Martin). On July 19, 1525, Margaret founded the League of Dessau, an alliance of Catholic princes opposed to the Reformation. Undoubtedly contrary to her wishes, the princes of Anhalt later became the most fervent supporters of the Reformation. A few years after Lisiewski made the copy of Margaret's portrait, her descendant, Catherine II (1729-1796), Empress of Russia, born as Sophie Auguste Friederike von Anhalt-Zerbst in Szczecin, played a major role in the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. 
Crucifixion with Saints and disguised portrait of Margaret of Ziębice (1473-1530), Princess of Anhalt by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, ca. 1523, St. John's Church in Dessau.
Disguised portrait of Margaret of Ziębice (1473-1530), Princess of Anhalt, fragment of Crucifixion with Saints by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, ca. 1523, St. John's Church in Dessau.
Portraits of Anne Lascaris and Magdalene of Savoy by Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio and Bernardino Luini
At the beginning of 1524, Hieronim Łaski (1496-1541), Great Crown Carver and his brothers Jan (1499-1560) and Stanisław (1491-1550), went to the court of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, under the official pretext of committing France to make peace with its neighbors in consideration of the Ottoman threat. His mission was to sign a treaty with the French king concerning mainly the Duchy of Milan and a double marriage. Antoine Duprat (1463-1535), Chancellor of France (and a cardinal from 1527) and René (Renato) of Savoy (1473-1525), Grand Master of France and uncle of king Francis I, who dealt with Łaski on behalf of the king, immediately began to draw up a covenant treaty, including marriage contracts between children of kings of Poland and of France. The Polish and the French courts undoubtedly exchanged some diplomatic gifts and effigies on this occasion. After completing his mission at the French court Hieronim Łaski returned to Poland at the beginning of autumn 1524, leaving his brothers in Paris. Jan went to Basel where he met Erasmus of Rotterdam and Stanisław joined the court of Francis I and the French army and participated in the Battle of Pavia in 1525. He was then sent by Louise of Savoy (1476-1531), mother of king Francis I and Regent of France, to Spain.
Louise's half-brother, René, who when Francis ascended the French throne was made Governor of Provence and Seneschal of Provence, died in the Battle of Pavia. René married on 28 January 1501, Anne Lascaris (1487-1554). As a count of Tende he was succeeded by his son Claude of Savoy (1507-1566) and then by his other son Honorat II of Savoy, who married Jeanne Françoise de Foix and whose great-granddaughter Marie Louise Gonzaga become Queen of Poland in 1645. Marie Louise brought to Poland some paintings in her dowry, a small part of which preserved in Warsaw's Visitandines Monastery. A descendant of Claude of Savoy, Claire Isabelle Eugenie de Mailly-Lespine (1631-1685), a distant relative, lady-in-waiting and confidante of Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga married in 1654 Krzysztof Zygmunt Pac (1621-1684), Grand Standard-Bearer of Lithuania. René of Savoy and Anne Lascaris also had three daughters. Magdalene of Savoy (1510-1586), who spent part of her youth at the cour of her aunt, Louise of Savoy, and on her decision she married Anne de Montmorency (1493-1567), Marshal of France, shortly after her father's death. The contract was signed on January 10, 1526 and the ceremony was held in royal palace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Younger Isabella (d. 1587), married in 1527 René de Batanay, count of Bouchage and Margaret (d. 1591) married in 1535 Anthony II of Luxembourg, Count of Ligny (d. 1557), brother of Françoise de Luxembourg-Ligny (d. 1566), Margravine of Baden-Baden. The portrait of a young lady in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, created in the style of Bernardino Luini, is dated to around 1525 (oil on panel, 77 x 57.5 cm, inv. 1937.1.37). She is holding a zibellino (weasel pelt) on her hand, a popular accessory for brides as a talisman for fertility, and standing before a green fabric, a color being symbolic of fertility. This painting was acquired by the Gallery in 1937 and in the 19th century it was possibly owned by Queen Isabel II of Spain. This Leonardo type of beauty from the Washington painting might become a muse for Luini (the paintings may also depict her sisters), as her features can be found in other works by this painter, however, ony few effigies are the most similar and more portrait-like, like the Nursing Madonna in a green dress in the National Museum in Warsaw (oil on panel, 74 x 56 cm, inv. M.Ob.624, earlier 129167). This painting was in the 19th century in the collection of Konstanty Adam Czartoryski (1774-1860), the son of famous art collector Princess Izabela Czartoryska (1746-1835), in his palace in Weinhaus near Vienna. In 1947 it was acquired by the museum in Warsaw. In the royal Wilanów Palace in Warsaw, there are two paintings of Cupids, possibly acquired by Aleksandra Potocka, and thought to be from Leonardo da Vinci's school in the 1895 inventory (oil on panel, 68 x 48 cm, Wil.1589 and 68 x 49 cm, Wil.1588). They are today attributed to Aurelio Luini, son of Bernardino. The conservation of both paintings revealed that they were initially a part of a larger composition showing Venus with two Cupids, possibly damaged, cut into pieces and then repainted. The pose of her legs indicate that it was a Venus Pudica type, similar to the statue of Eve from the late 15th century on the apse of the Milan Cathedral, attributed to a Venetian sculptor Antonio Rizzo. One Cupid is holding a myrtle, consecrated to Venus, goddess of love and used in bridal wreaths, the other is presenting his bow to Venus. It is highly probable that Polish-Lithuanian monarchs Sigismund and Bona or Janusz III, Duke of Masovia, whose portrait by Bernardino Licinio, from the old collection of the dukes of Savoy, is in the Royal Palace of Turin, received the effigies of the eldest daughter of the Grand Master of France in guise of the Virgin and the goddess of love. Preserved Venus by Bernardino Luini is also in the National Gallery of Art in Washington (oil on panel, 106.7 x 135.9 cm, inv. 1939.1.120). It was offered to the Gallery in 1939 and in the 19th century it was in England. The goddess' face is the same as in the mentioned portrait of a lady holding a zibellino and Nursing Madonna in Warsaw and landscape behind her is astonishingly similar to the view of Tendarum Oppidum, published in the Theatrum Statuum Sabaudiæ in 1682 in Amsterdam by Joan Blaeu. It is showing Tende (Tenda) in the southeastern corner of France, the hillside village, overlooked by the Lascaris castle and a mountain monastery. In 1261 Guglielmo Pietro I di Ventimiglia, lord of Tende, married Eudoxia Laskarina, sister of the Byzantine emperor, John IV Laskaris. In 1509 the county passed, by marriage, to the prince of Savoy, René, whose branch died out in 1754. The same woman, also in a green dress, was depicted as Saint Mary Magdalene holding a container of ointment. This painting, also in the National Gallery of Art in Washington (oil on panel, 58.8 x 47.8 cm, inv. 1961.9.56), was until 1796 in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan and later in the collection of Lucien Bonaparte, Prince de Canino. She was also represented as this saint in the composition by Luini in the San Diego Museum of Art showing the Conversion of the Magdalene, most probably also from the collection of Lucien Bonaparte (oil on panel, 64.7 x 82.5 cm, inv. 1936.23). The same effigy as in the Venus in Washington was also used like a template in two paintings from the French royal collection, both in the Louvre. One is showing biblical temptress Salome receiving the head of Saint John the Baptist (oil on canvas, transferred from wood, 62.5 x 55 cm, INV 361 ; MR 483). It was acquired by king Louis XIV in 1671 from Everhard Jabach. The second, showing the Holy Family, was acquired before 1810 (oil on panel, 51 x 43.5 cm, INV 359 ; MR 332). In all mentioned paintings the face of a woman bears strong resemblance to effigy of Magdalene of Savoy, Duchess of Montmorency and her eldest daughter in a stained-glass window number 14 in the church of Saint Martin in Montmorency. This window, created in about 1563, is a pendant composition to a window of Magdalene's husband Anne de Montmorency. It shows her kneeling and recommended by her patron saint Mary Magdalene in a green dress and her coat of arms below. In the center of the nave of the church, which served as a burial place for the lords of Montmorency, was the magnificent tomb of Anne de Montmorency and his wife Magdalene. The marble recumbent figure of the Constable and his wife is now in the Louvre Museum in Paris. It was commissioned by Magdalene and created bewteen 1576-1582 by Barthélemy Prieur and Charles Bullant and depict her in her old age and in a costume covering almost all her face, however, also in this effigy some resemblance is visible. A very similar woman was depicted in a painting of a lady with a scorpion chain in a green dress in the Columbia Museum of Art, painted in Leonardo's style (oil on panel, 56.2 x 43.8 cm, inv. CMA 1961.9). Her costume is more from the turn of the 15th and 16th century, it is therefore Magdalene's mother Anne Lascaris. She was born in November 1487, under the astrological sign of Scorpio. When she was just 11 years old she married in February 1498 Louis de Clermont-Lodève, but her husband died just few months after the wedding. On January 28, 1501, at the age of 13, she married René. In astrology the various zodiac signs are identified with different parts of the body. Scorpio, the sign which rules the genitals, is the most sexually charged of all zodiac signs and associated with fertility. The work comes from the collection of Count Potocki in Zator Castle and Jabłonna Palace in Warsaw. When in Zator the portrait was viewed by Emil Schaeffer (1874-1944), an Austrian art historian, journalist and playwright, who described it in an article published in the Beiblatt für Denkmalpflege in 1909. The castle of the Piast dukes in Zator was built in the 15th century and extended in the 16th century after being acquired by king John Albert in 1494. Later the Zator estate was owned by different noble and magnate families including Poniatowski, Tyszkiewicz, Wąsowicz and Potocki, while the neoclassical palace of Bishop Michał Jerzy Poniatowski, brother of king Stanislaus II Augustus Poniatowski, in Jabłonna near Warsaw, was constructed by royal architect Domenico Merlini between 1775-1779. In 1940 during World War II the portrait was taken to Italy and sold to the family of princes Contini Bonacossi in Florence. In 1948 the work was acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and offered to the Columbia Museum of Art in 1961. This portrait can be consequently linked, with high probability, with the collection of Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga or Claire Isabelle Eugenie de Mailly-Lespine (better known in Poland-Lithuania as Klara Izabella Pacowa), descendants of Anne Lascaris. A copy of this portrait, attributed to the Master of the Virgin with Scales, after the work in the Louvre, or to follower of Leonardo da Vinci, which was in a collection in New York by February 1913, shows her in a gold silk dress (oil on panel, 60.6 x 50.5 cm, Christie's New York, January 27, 2010, lot 176). 
Portrait of Anne Lascaris (1487-1554), countess of Tende with a scorpion chain by Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, ca. 1500-1505, The Columbia Museum of Art.
Portrait of Anne Lascaris (1487-1554), countess of Tende in a gold silk dress by Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio or follower, ca. 1500-1505, Private collection.
Portrait of Magdalene of Savoy (1510-1586) holding a zibellino by Bernardino Luini, ca. 1525, National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Portrait of Magdalene of Savoy (1510-1586) as Nursing Madonna by Bernardino Luini, ca. 1525, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of Magdalene of Savoy (1510-1586) as Mary Magdalene by Bernardino Luini, ca. 1525, National Gallery of Art in Washington.
The Conversion of the Magdalene with a portrait of Magdalene of Savoy (1510-1586) by Bernardino Luini, ca. 1520-1525, San Diego Museum of Art.
Portrait of Magdalene of Savoy (1510-1586) as Salome receiving the head of Saint John the Baptist by Bernardino Luini, ca. 1525, Louvre Museum.
The Holy Family with a portrait of Magdalene of Savoy (1510-1586) by Bernardino Luini, ca. 1525, Louvre Museum.
Portrait of Magdalene of Savoy (1510-1586) as Venus against the idealized view of Tende by Bernardino Luini, ca. 1525, National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Cupid with a bow, fragment of a bigger painting "Venus with two Cupids" by workshop of Bernardino Luini, ca. 1525, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
Cupid with a myrtle, fragment of a bigger painting "Venus with two Cupids" by workshop of Bernardino Luini, ca. 1525, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
Portraits of Dukes of Silesia by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop
In 1526 Louis II Jagiellon, King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia died in the Battle of Mohács and Ottoman forces entered the capital of Hungary, Buda. The sultan re-conquered Buda in 1529, and finally occupied it in 1541. Illustrious, Italian style royal palace in the Hungarian capital was ransacked and burned and famous Bibliotheca Corviniana was in great part transferred to Istanbul. The fall of the Jagiellonian monarchy in Hungary and Bohemia was undeniably considered by many people as God's punishment for sins, also inside the union.
Jagiellonian elective monarchies and their allies with their bold, liberated and powerful females (according to the text of Pope Pius II on noble ladies in Lithuania, among others), multiculturalism and religious freedom represented everything that pious and prudish men and their obedient wives, inside and outside the union, were afraid of. They should destroy this debauchery and the memory of it and introduce their own order. They will, however, keep nude and erotic paintings, for themselves. On November 14, 1518, just few days before her sister and few months after her uncle Sigismund I, king of Poland, Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1485-1537), married Duke Frederick II of Legnica (1480-1547). Sophia, was a daughter of Sophia Jagiellon, Margravine of Brandenburg-Ansbach-Kulmbach and a cousin of Louis II Jagiellon, while her husband a member of the Polish Piast dynasty, who was first married to Sophia's aunt Elizabeth Jagiellon (1482-1517), was a vassal of Bohemian crown. Duchy of Legnica, created during fragmentation of the Kingdom of Poland in 1248, was a fiefdom of Bohemia from 1329 onwards. As a son of Ludmila of Poděbrady, daughter of George of Poděbrady (who was elected King of Bohemia in 1458) in his early youth he spent some time at the court of King Vladislaus II Jagiellon in Prague. In 1521 after death of his younger brother George (1481/1483-1521), he inherited the Duchy of Brzeg. George I of Brzeg, Frederick's brother, married on June 9, 1516 with Anna of Pomerania (1492-1550). She was born as the eldest daughter of Duke Boguslaus X of Pomerania and his second wife Anna Jagiellon (1476-1503), daughter of King Casimir IV of Poland. They had no children and according to her husband's last will, Anna received the Duchy of Lubin as a dower with the lifelong rights to independent rule. Anna's rule in Lubin lasted twenty-nine years, and after her death it fell to the Duchy of Legnica. Even though Gustav Vasa, King of Sweden from 1523, sent a legation to Brzeg bearing a proposal of marriage to Anna, according to Nicolaus von Klemptzen's revision of Pomeranian chronicle (Chronik von Pommern), Anna remained unmarried. When in 1523 the rich Frederick II, who was already Duke of Legnica, Brzeg, Chojnów and Oława, bought the principality of Wołów from the Hungarian nobleman John Thurzo, brother of the bishop of Wrocław, John V Thurzo, he almost encircled with his domains the main economic center of Lower Silesia - the city of Wrocław. In the same year, he converted to Lutheranism and granted the population religious freedom. In 1528 or 1529 his radical preacher Caspar Schwenckfeld, according to which the Vigin Mary "was simply a conduit through which the 'heavenly flesh' had passed" (after "A Companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 1521-1700" by John Roth, James Stayer, p. 131), was banished by the duke, both from the court and the country. Just five years later the duke substantially changed his approach towards the freedom of religion. In 1534, he issued an edict against the ceremonies of Catholic worship in the Duchy of Legnica. He strengthened the fortifications of Brzeg, which was caused by the threat of the Turkish invasion of Silesia, ordered to demolish the Church of the Virgin Mary and the Dominican monastery and he established particularly close contacts with the Brandenburg elector. In the fall of 1536, a family reunion was held in Frankfurt an der Oder, and there it was decided to marry the children of the elector and the Duke of Legnica. A year later, on October 18, 1537, the Elector of Brandenburg Joachim II went to Legnica, where a document was signed regarding a double marriage and concluded a treaty of mutual inheritance. Frederick II's wife, Sophia, died earlier that year on May 24, 1537 in Legnica. The other important union of the royal houses of Poland and Bohemia, Piast and Poděbrady, Anna of Głogów-Żagań (1483-1541) and Charles I (1476-1536), Duke of Ziębice-Oleśnica (Münsterberg-Oels) ruled the other principalities near Wrocław. Anna, the last surviving member of the Głogów-Żagań branch of the Silesian Piasts, and Charles were married on March 3, 1495 (marriage contract was signed on January 7, 1488). Charles, who remanied Catholic during the Reformation, became governor of Silesia in 1524. He was born in Kłodzko, and although he and his brothers had sold the county to their future brother-in-law Ulrich von Hardegg in 1501, he and his descendants continued to use the title of Count of Kłodzko. Between 1491-1506, the Jagiellons, including Sigismund, ruled in Głogów, a part of Anna's inheritance. The king of Poland renounced his claims to the Duchy in 1508, while his wife, Bona Sforza still made attempts to reintegrate it with the Kingdom of Poland in 1522, 1526 and 1547.
The Judgement of Paris
A small painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his workshop in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York shows a mythological scene of the Judgement of Paris (panel, 101.9 x 71.1 cm, inv. 28.221). Mercury, the god of trade and commerce and the supporter of success, in fantastic armour and headpiece, just brought before Paris, the son of King Priam of Troy, the three goddesses of whose beauty he is to be judge. He is holding the Apple of Discord, which, according to the myth, was inscribed - "For the most beautiful one", or "To the fairest one". Each goddesses attempted with her powers to bribe Paris; Juno offered power, Minerva, wisdom and skill in war and Venus offered the love of the world's most beautiful woman, Helen of Troy. Paris accepted Venus' gift and awarded the apple to her.
This painting is dated to about 1528 due to similarity to another, dated Judgement of Paris in Basel. Fashionable, princely armour and the hat of Paris from the 1520s, as well as composition of the scene, reflect perfectly the main princely courts around Wrocław at that time. We can distinguish in this courtly scene Frederick II of Legnica-Brzeg, a candiate to the Bohemian crown after death of king Louis in 1526, as Paris, and his wife Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach, who most probably commissioned the painting, as she is in the center of the composition, as Venus. Charles I of Ziębice-Oleśnica, chief governor of Silesia from 1527, is the "divine trickster" Mercury, son of Jupiter, king of the gods. Next to him is his wife Anna of Głogów-Żagań as Juno, the wife of Jupiter, queen of the gods, protector of women and associated with marriage and fertility. Juno is holding her hand on the arm of Minerva, the virgin goddess of wisdom, justice and victory and pointing to Cupid (meaning "desire"), the son of the love goddess Venus and the god of war Mars, who shoots an arrow at Minerva. The last goddess is Anna of Pomerania, Duchess of Lubin. The castle on a fantastic rock in the background is also in "disguise". It is the main ducal residence of Silesia at that time, Legnica Castle, "dressed" as a palace of King Priam in Troy. The layout and overall shape of the edifice match perfectly the Legnica Castle (east-west) from the view of Legnica by Matthäus Merian, created in about 1680, or an anonymous drawing from 1604 in the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel. The painting was until 1889 in the collection of Freiherr von Lüttwitz in their palace Lüttwitzhof in Ścinawka Średnia in the County of Kłodzko. The palace, initially a house built in 1466, was extended and rebuilt during renaissance and baroque. From 1628 it was owned by the Jesuits from Kłodzko and after the dissolution of the order in 1773, it was acquired by von Lüttwitz family, who owned it between 1788-1926. Ścinawka Średnia is not far from Ząbkowice Śląskie (Frankenstein), where in 1522 or 1524 Charles I started the reconstruction of the the original Gothic castle of the Dukes of Ziębice in the Renaissance style. Other version of this composition dated "1528" is in the Kunstmuseum Basel (panel, 84.7 x 57 cm, inv. G 1977.37). From about 1936 it was in the Hermann Göring collection and bears the coat of arms of Marschall von Bieberstein, an old Meissen noble family, who settled in Silesia at the beginning of the 16th century, as well as in Pomerania and Prussia in the 18th and 19th centuries. Protagonists are the same and are arranged in the same order, however the castle in now on the left side of the painting and correspond to the west-east layout of the Legnica Castle. There is also a drawing in the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Brunswick (brown pen on paper, 20.3 x 14.4 cm, inv. Z 27 recto), most probably a study to the Basel version or to another, not preserved painting. The same people were also depicted in two very similar compositions by Cranach and his workshop, in the Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie Dessau (panel, 59 x 39 cm, originally, inv. 15) and Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe (panel, 35 x 24 cm, inv. 109. The painting in Dessau was damaged during World War II. It comes from the old collection of the Princes of Anhalt-Dessau. In about 1530 the principality of Anhalt-Dessau was ruled by three sons of Margaret of Ziębice (1473-1530), elder sister of Charles I, who also served as regent in their first years of rule. The "gods" are placed in the same order, however there is more emphasis on Anna of Pomerania-Minerva who is looking at the viewer. She was threfore a candidate to marry Margaret of Ziębice's eldest son John V of Anhalt-Zerbst (1504-1551), he however married on February 15, 1534 Anna's sister-in-law Margaret of Brandenburg (1511-1577), widowed Duchess of Pomerania. The castle on the hilltop is different and it is similar on the Karlsruhe version, where the protagonists were re-arranged and Anna of Pomerania is more like a Venus. This painting was in the late 17th century in castle of Toužim (Theusing) in Bohemia (inventory number 42). The Lord of Toužim in 1530, when this painting was created was Henry IV (1510-1554), Burgrave of Plauen and Meissen, who on September 19, 1530 obtained a confirmation of his fief from Emperor Charles V and in the summer of 1532 he married Margaret, Countess of Salm and Neuburg. It is highly possible that he earlier received a portrait of the Duchess of Lubin. It seems that probably in the 19th century the Dessau painting was censored because the transparent veils of the goddesses were replaced by thicker fabrics.
Portraits of Anna of Pomerania, Duchess of Lubin
Anna's pose and features as well as the castle in the background are almost identical with a small painting of Venus with Cupid stealing honey also from 1530, which was before World War II in the State Art Collections in Weimar, today in private collection (panel, 50 x 35 cm, Sotheby's London, June 24, 1970, lot 35). The castle in these paintings greatly resemble the Lubin Castle and the Catholic Chapel visible in the print published in 1738.
Another effigy of Anna as Venus created by Cranach's workshop in 1530 is known from two copies from the early 17th century, most probably created by a Flemish painter active in Prague. Both were likely taken by the Swedish army in Prague in 1648 or in Lubin in 1641, when the castle was conquered and destroyed by Swedish troops. One was before 2013 in private collection in Stockholm (oil on panel, 37.9 x 25.3 cm) and the other from Transehe-Roseneck collection in the Jaungulbene Manor (former territory of the Swedish Livonia) is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (oil on panel, 36.3 x 25.2 cm, inv. 1975.1.135). In about 1530 Anna was also depicted as Judith with the head of Holofernes. This painting, most probably from the collection of the Catholic bishops of Wrocław in their palace in Nysa, is from 1949 in the Museum in Nysa (panel, 61 x 40 cm). Another version of the Nysa portrait in brown-green tones is in a private collection and, because of the French fleurs-de-lys on the woman's hat and on the blade of the sword, it has been considered to be the effigy of Joan of Arc. The painting comes from the collection of Mrs. Hilda Schlösser de Slowak in Montevideo, Uruguay and is attributed to the follower of Lucas Cranach (panel, 31.2 x 21 cm, Christie's London, July 5, 1991, lot 256). The fleurs-de-lys were probably added later to support the traditional identification, or if they were original, they could indicate the pro-French sympathies of the sitter. Judith's head is too large compared to other effigies and the head of Holofernes, indicating that this painting is based entirely on study drawings or other portraits.
Portraits of Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach, Duchess of Legnica-Brzeg
The main protagonist in described paintings of the Judgement of Paris, Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach as Venus, is also known from other effigies. In a large Venus from about 1518 is the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa (panel, 178 x 71 cm, inv. 6087) her features are similar to these in the painting in Basel, as well as in the miniature as Venus and Cupid stealing honey dated "1529" in the National Gallery in London (panel, 38.1 x 23.5 cm, inv. NG6680). In the latter painting the castle in the background resemble the Legnica Castle as seen from the east. The facial features of the Virgin in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum (panel, 56.5 x 38.8 cm, inv. WRM 3207), dated "1518", are identical to these visible in the painting of Venus in Ottawa and the castle tower on the fantastic rock behind is similar to the smallest, eastern tower of the Legnica Castle. This Madonna was most probably in the collection of the Hungarian noble family Festetics, before being sold in Vienna in 1859. Another version of the Venus in Ottawa, painted on canvas, possibly a 17th century copy of a lost original, is in the Schlossmuseum in Weimar (oil on canvas, 178 x 80.8 cm, inv. G 2471). The prototype for this Venus was most likely the painting from the Imperial collection in Vienna of which only Cupid preserved (Kunsthistorisches Museum, panel, 81 x 36 cm, inv. GG 3530).
Copies of Madonna from the Wallraf-Richartz Museum are in the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh (panel, 41.9 x 26 cm, inv. 2000.3), owned before 1940 by the Viennese industrialist Philipp von Gomperz (1860-1948), and in the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht (panel, 40.5 x 26.3 cm, inv. 1003465), which was in private collection in the Netherlands before the Second World War. A good copy, perhaps by the master himself or by his workshop, cut into an oval shape probably at the end of the 17th century, is in a private collection in France (oil on panel, 48.5 x 38.5 cm). Another, simplified version of Madonna from Wallraf-Richartz Museum against a dark background and dated "1516", is in private collection (panel, 42.5 x 28 cm). In 1961, the panel was in the Schwartz collection in Mönchengladbach. Stylistically, it seems to be a much later copy, hence the date 1516 may be commemorative and may not correspond to the actual date of creation of the work. In 1516, Sophia's husband, Frederick II of Legnica, became the Governor of Lower Silesia. The composition of the figures corresponds to the Madonna in Karlsruhe (portrait of Anna of Głogów-Żagań). The effigy of Sophia from Wallraf-Richartz Museum was like a template used in another Virgin and Child dated "1529" in the Kunstsammlung Basel (panel, 84 x 58 cm, inv. 1227), which was sold in Augsburg in 1871 and in a fragment of a portrait as Lucretia from about 1530 in the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton (tempera and oil on panel, 31.1 x 23.5 cm, inv. 1996.07). She was also represented in other two paintings of Lucretia, in both her face and pose is very similar to that visible in the painting in Karlsruhe. The castle tower in the background is in both paintings similar to the towers of the Legnica Castle. One of these Lucretia portraits, in private collection, is signed with artist's insignia I W and dated 1525 (oil and gold leaf on panel, 101 x 59 cm, Sotheby's London, July 8, 2015, lot 36). Master IW or Monogramist IW, was a Czech or Saxon Renaissance painter, trained in the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, and active between 1520-1550 mainly in northwestern Bohemia. The other Lucretia, dated "1529", today in the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation in Houston (panel, 74.9 x 54 cm, inv. BF.1979.2), is similar to the portrait of Sophia's younger sister Anna of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1487-1539), Duchess of Cieszyn as Lucretia, created just a year earlier in 1528 (Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, inv. NM 1080). A version of Lucretia in Houston, more undressed, is in the Grunewald hunting lodge in Berlin (panel, 56.6 x 38.2 cm, inv. GK I 30187). The painting was probably originally in the Potsdam City Palace and in 1811 it was recorded in the Sanssouci Palace. A Madonna, similar to that in the Kunstsammlung Basel (portrait of Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach), is in the Johannisburg Palace in Aschaffenburg (panel, 61 x 39.5 cm, inv. WAF 179). It comes from the Oettingen-Wallerstein collection, a family that had ties to Prussia and Bohemia. This painting is attributed to follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder and dated to about 1520-1530. It represent the model before a curtain held by two angels, a motif of glorification, and also as an artistic medium to heighten the three dimensionality of the figures.
Portraits of Anna of Głogów-Żagań, Duchess of Ziębice-Oleśnica
The last woman of this "divine trinity", Anna of Głogów-Żagań, was also represented in other works by Cranach and his workshop. Like Sophia, Duchess of Legnica-Brzeg, Anna also commissioned her effigies as Venus and as the Virgin in 1518. The Madonna and Child which was before World War II in the Collegiate Church in Głogów, today most likely in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, was dated "1518" (panel, 42 x 30 cm, Catalog of Wartime Losses, number 11622). Her face resemble greatly other effigies of Anna from the paintings of the Judgement of Paris. The Child is holding an apple, a symbol of original sin, but also a symbol of royal power (king Sigismund I, was a ruling Duke of Głogów between 1499-1506) and of new teaching (in 1518 Luther's first sermons on indulgences and grace were published in Wrocław). The castle on the mountian behid the Virgin can be compared with the main fortress of Silesia at that time, the Kłodzko Castle. A workshop copy of this painting is in the National Gallery of Norway in Oslo (panel, 40.6 x 28.1 cm, inv. NG.M.00173). Other version of this composition is in Karlsruhe (Staatliche Kunsthalle, panel, 35 x 24 cm, inv. 108), and like the Judgement of Paris there, it comes from the Toužim Castle in Bohemia. The effigy of the Virgin from Głogów was copied in the large painting of Venus, similar to that in Ottawa, which was in the early 20th century in the collection Kleiweg van Zwaan in Amsterdam, today in the Princeton University Art Museum (panel, 101.5 x 37.5 cm, inv. y1968-111).
The painting of Lucretia framed by Renaissance arch in the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht is similar to the Lucretia in Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton. It is attributed to workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder or so-called Master of the Mass of St Gregory and before 1940 it was in private collection in Amsterdam (panel, 39.5 x 27.5 cm, inv. 1003467). While Lucretia in Fredericton bears the facial features of Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach, that in Maastricht has the face of Anna of Głogów-Żagań, similar to the Madonna in Oslo and Venus in Princeton University Art Museum. Another version of the Maastricht Lucretia, dated "1519" (top left with the artist's insignia), possibly a later copy from Cranach's workshop or follower, is in the Museum Haldensleben (panel, 27.4 x 17.5 cm, inv. IV/53/312). This painting comes from the collection of Friedrich Loock (1795-1871), royal building inspector, bequeathed to the city of Haldensleben in 1877 by his sister. Loock visited Italy on several occasions and another similar Lucretia depicting the same woman is in Italy, in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena (panel, 42 x 27.7 cm, inv. 537). The painting now preserved in Siena comes from the Piccolomini-Spannocchi collection and was probably originally in the fabulous collection of the Gonzaga family in Mantua (Celeste Galeria) or in the collection of Italian nobleman Ottavio Piccolomini (1599-1656), who served as marshal of the Holy Roman Empire. Both women, i.e. the Duchess of Ziębice-Oleśnica and the Duchess of Legnica-Brzeg, commissioned similar portraits of themselves, because the surviving fragment of Lucretia (panel, 18 x 15.5 cm), which was in 1931 in the collection of the art dealer Paul Rusch in Dresden, is very similar to the one in the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, but the face is different. The portrait of Anna of Głogów-Żagań as Venus with Cupid stealing honey, similar to the portraits of Anna of Pomerania, copied by the same Flemish painter, is in the National Gallery in Prague (oil on panel, 26.3 x 17.3 cm, inv. O 467). The original was lost, however, due to similarity to effigies in the Judgement of Paris and to portraits of Anna of Pomerania, it should be dated to about 1530. The castle in the background is a large Gothic manor, similar to that in the portrait of Anna of Głogów-Żagań as Judith in the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo (panel, 37.2 x 25 cm, inv. P.2018-0001). Exacly as Ziębice Castle, main seat of the Duchess and her husband in about 1530, which was built as a large manor house after 1488 in the eastern part of the city, close to the Gothic Nysa Gate and the Church of St. George. The painting as Judith was also copied by some Flemish painter in the early 17th century, today in the private collection. Both were most likely in the collection of Agnes von Waldeck (1618-1651), Abbess of Schaaken Monastery, great-granddaughter of Barbara of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1495-1552), Landgravine of Leuchtenberg, younger sister of Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach, Duchess of Legnica-Brzeg. In 1530 Anna of Głogów-Żagań was 47, however the painter depicted her as a young girl, possibly basing on the same preparatory drawing that was used to create Madonna in Karlsruhe. He could not have done it otherwise, the gods are not getting old. Around 1530, shortly after Cranach painted the nude effigies of the Silesian duchesses in the scenes of The Judgement of Paris, he created his famous "Golden Age", which is considered to depict the Garden of Paradise with twelve naked people of both sexes and animals, including two lions, in a walled paradise garden. Interestingly, some of the women in this highly erotic painting also resemble the Silesian duchesses. The castle in the background on the left is Colditz Castle near Leipzig, whose park was transformed into one of the largest zoos in Europe in 1523 (cf. "Schloss Colditz auf dem Gemälde "Das Goldene Zeitalter" von Lucas Cranach d. Ä." by Thomas Schmidt, Christa Syra, p. 264-271). This painting is now in the National Museum of Norway in Oslo (inv. NG.M.00519), while a copy dated "1534" was in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome in the 19th century, and later in a private collection in England. 
Portrait of Anna of Głogów-Żagań (1483-1541), Duchess of Ziębice-Oleśnica as Madonna and Child by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1518, Collegiate Church in Głogów, lost.
Portrait of Anna of Głogów-Żagań (1483-1541), Duchess of Ziębice-Oleśnica as Madonna and Child by follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1518, National Gallery of Norway in Oslo.
Portrait of Anna of Głogów-Żagań (1483-1541), Duchess of Ziębice-Oleśnica as Madonna and Child by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1518, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe.
Portrait of Anna of Głogów-Żagań (1483-1541), Duchess of Ziębice-Oleśnica as Venus and Cupid by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1518, Princeton University Art Museum.
Portrait of Anna of Głogów-Żagań (1483-1541), Duchess of Ziębice-Oleśnica as Lucretia by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1519, Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht.
Portrait of Anna of Głogów-Żagań (1483-1541), Duchess of Ziębice-Oleśnica as Lucretia by workshop or follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1519 or later, Museum Haldensleben.
Portrait of Anna of Głogów-Żagań (1483-1541), Duchess of Ziębice-Oleśnica as Lucretia by workshop or follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1519, Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena.
Portrait of Anna of Głogów-Żagań (1483-1541), Duchess of Ziębice-Oleśnica by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, Private collection. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1485-1537), Duchess of Legnica-Brzeg nude (Venus) by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1518, National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.
Portrait of Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1485-1537), Duchess of Legnica-Brzeg as Venus and Cupid by workshop or follower Lucas Cranach the Elder, after 1518, Schlossmuseum in Weimar.
Cupid, fragment of portrait of Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1485-1537), Duchess of Legnica-Brzeg as Venus and Cupid by Lucas Cranach the Elder, after 1518, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1485-1537), Duchess of Legnica-Brzeg as Madonna and Child by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1518, Wallraf-Richartz Museum.
Portrait of Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1485-1537), Duchess of Legnica-Brzeg as Madonna and Child by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1518, North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh.
Portrait of Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1485-1537), Duchess of Legnica-Brzeg as Madonna and Child by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1518, Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht.
Portrait of Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1485-1537), Duchess of Legnica-Brzeg as Madonna and Child by Lucas Cranach the Elder or workshop, ca. 1518, Private collection.
Portrait of Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1485-1537), Duchess of Legnica-Brzeg as Madonna and Child by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1529, Private collection. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1485-1537), Duchess of Legnica-Brzeg as Madonna and Child by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1529, Kunstsammlung Basel.
Portrait of Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1485-1537), Duchess of Legnica-Brzeg as Madonna and Child by follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, Johannisburg Palace in Aschaffenburg.
Portrait of Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1485-1537), Duchess of Legnica-Brzeg as Lucretia by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton.
Portrait of Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1485-1537), Duchess of Legnica-Brzeg as Lucretia by Master IW, 1525, Private collection.
Portrait of Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1485-1537), Duchess of Legnica-Brzeg as Lucretia by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1529, Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation in Houston.
Portrait of Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1485-1537), Duchess of Legnica-Brzeg as Lucretia by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1529, Grunewald hunting lodge.
Portrait of Dukes of Legnica-Brzeg, Ziębice-Oleśnica and Lubin in the scene of the Judgement of Paris against the idealized view of the Legnica Castle by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, ca. 1528, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Study drawing for portrait of Dukes of Legnica-Brzeg, Ziębice-Oleśnica and Lubin in the scene of the Judgement of Paris against the idealized view of the Legnica Castle by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, ca. 1528, Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Brunswick.
Portrait of Dukes of Legnica-Brzeg, Ziębice-Oleśnica and Lubin in the scene of the Judgement of Paris against the idealized view of the Legnica Castle by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, 1528, Kunstmuseum Basel.
Portrait of Dukes of Legnica-Brzeg, Ziębice-Oleśnica and Lubin in the scene of the Judgement of Paris against the idealized view of the Lubin Castle by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, 1530, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe.
Portrait of Dukes of Legnica-Brzeg, Ziębice-Oleśnica and Lubin in the scene of the Judgement of Paris against the idealized view of the Lubin Castle by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, ca. 1530-1533, Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie Dessau.
Portrait of Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1485-1537), Duchess of Legnica-Brzeg as Venus with Cupid stealing honey by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1529, National Gallery in London.
Portrait of Anna of Głogów-Żagań (1483-1541), Duchess of Ziębice-Oleśnica as Venus with Cupid stealing honey by circle of Roelant Savery in Prague after original by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, early 17th century after original from about 1530, National Gallery in Prague.
Portrait of Anna of Głogów-Żagań (1483-1541), Duchess of Ziębice-Oleśnica as Judith with the head of Holofernes by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo.
Portrait of Anna of Pomerania (1492-1550), Duchess of Lubin as Venus with Cupid stealing honey by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, 1530, Private collection. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Anna of Pomerania (1492-1550), Duchess of Lubin as Venus with Cupid stealing honey by circle of Roelant Savery in Prague after original by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, early 17th century after original from 1530, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Portrait of Anna of Pomerania (1492-1550), Duchess of Lubin as Venus with Cupid stealing honey by circle of Roelant Savery in Prague after original by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, early 17th century after original from 1530, Private collection.
Portrait of Anna of Pomerania (1492-1550), Duchess of Lubin as Judith with the head of Holofernes by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, Museum in Nysa.
Portrait of Anna of Pomerania (1492-1550), Duchess of Lubin as Judith with the head of Holofernes by workshop or follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, Private collection.
Portraits of Anna of Brandenburg by Lucas Cranach the Elder
A painting showing Venus and Cupid as honey thief by Lucas Cranach the Elder in Güstrow Palace (panel, 83 x 58.2 cm, inv. G 199), dated 1527, is very similar to the work in the National Gallery in London, the women, however, are different. The painter used the same effigy in a small painting of the Virgin and Child from 1525, which was owned by the Swabian Stein family in 1549 (date and coat of arms at the back of the painting), today in the Royal Palace of Berchtesgaden (panel, 14.5 cm, inv. WAF 171).
The painting in Güstrow comes from the old collection of the estate (acquired by the Museum in 1851). Medieval castle in Güstrow, originally a Slavic settlement, was rebuilt in Renaissance style between 1558 and 1565 for Ulrich III, Duke of Mecklenburg-Güstrow (1527-1603) by an Italian architect Francesco de Pario (Franciscus Pahr), who earlier constructed arcaded courtyard of the Brzeg Castle. Mother of Ulrich was Anna of Brandenburg (1507-1567), the eldest daughter of Joachim I Nestor (1484-1535), Elector of Brandenburg. On January 17, 1524 in Berlin she married Duke Albert VII of Mecklenburg-Güstrow (1486-1547), and few months later she bore her first child Magnus, who died in childbirth. While Albert's elder brother Henry V of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, promoted the Reformation, Albert opposed it, although he also leaned toward the Lutheran doctrin (according to Luther's letter to Georg Spalatin on May 11, 1524). Henry joined the Protestant Torgau League on June 12, 1526, against the Catholic Dessau League of Anna's father, and in 1532 he publicly declared himself a follower of Luther. While the duke Albert ceded the parish church in Güstrow to the Protestants in 1534, Anna turned away from Lutheranism to become a Catholic and after the death of her husband in 1547, she moved to Lübz, which was the only part of the country that had not joined the Lutheran Reformation. Facial features of a woman in both described paintings greatly resemble Anna of Brandenburg's brother Joachim II Hector, Elector of Brandenburg and her son Ulrich. Her portrait in the Doberan Minster was created by Cornelius Krommeny in 1587, twenty years after her death. Ancient Roman tradition of depiction in the guise of deities, was undeniably one of the factors that repulsed people from Roman Catholicism during the Reformation. Their sometimes unpopular rulers portrayed themselves as the Virgin and Saints. 
Portrait of Anna of Brandenburg (1507-1567), Duchess of Mecklenburg as Virgin and Child by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1525, Royal Palace of Berchtesgaden.
Portrait of Anna of Brandenburg (1507-1567), Duchess of Mecklenburg as Venus and Cupid by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1527, Güstrow Palace.
Lamentation of Christ with disguised portraits of Joachim II of Brandenburg, his mother and sisters by workshop or circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder
Although his stay in Berlin is not confirmed by the sources, Lucas Cranach the Elder created not only several paintings for the electoral court, but also portraits, which indicates that many of them were based on study drawings made by members of his workshop sent to Brandenburg (it is assumed that Cranach travelled there in 1529 and 1541, compare "Cranach und die Kunst der Renaissance unter den Hohenzollern ...", p. 18). These works include two portraits of Joachim I Nestor (Staatsgalerie Aschaffenburg, inv. 8514 and Grunewald hunting lodge, inv. GK I 9377), both dated "1529", the portrait of his son Joachim II Hector, also dated "1529" (Philadelphia Museum of Art, inv. Cat. 739) and the portrait of Joachim II's first wife, Magdalena of Saxony (Art Institute of Chicago, inv. 1938.310). The oldest surviving painting is the portrait of Joachim II, when he was prince, dated "1520" and depicting him at the age of 16, according to the Latin inscription on the upper edge (ÆTATIS / EI/VS SEDE/CIMO ANNO / VERO SA/LV/TIS 1520, Grunewald hunting lodge, inv. GK I 10809). This inscription is not entirely correct, because the prince born on January 13, 1505 was 15 years old at that time, which indicates that it was difficult to demand a correction, so the painter did not see the real model at that time. The magnificent portrait of Joachim's second wife, Hedwig Jagellon, in a dress with her father's S monogram on the sleeves is dated around 1537 and attributed to Hans Krell, whose stay in Berlin is also not confirmed by the sources (Grunewald hunting lodge, inv. GK I 2152). In 1533 Krell was granted citizenship of Leipzig, where his presence is confirmed until 1573.
Another painting from Cranach's workshop, probably connected with Joachim II (1505-1571), is now in the Protestant St. Mary's Church (Marienkirche) in Berlin (panel, 151.5 x 118.5 cm). It comes from the Franciscan Church in Berlin, although it is also thought to have been part of the Passion cycle commissioned by Joachim II from Cranach's workshop in 1537/38 for the collegiate church in Cölln. Stylistically, however, the painting is dated earlier to the 1520s. Following the Reformation introduced in Berlin in 1539, the monastery was dissolved and the Franciscan friars had to leave. The scene depicts the Lamentation of Christ, and the effigy of a boy depicted as Saint John the Apostle, supporting the body of the dead Christ, is very portrait-like. He looks very much like Joachim II, based on his portrait in armour at the age of 16. Therefore, the other protagonists in this scene should represent members of Joachim's family, the Virgin is his mother Elizabeth of Denmark (1485-1555), who is surrounded by her three daughters, as the Three Marys - Anna (1507-1567), Elizabeth (1510-1558) and the youngest Margaret (1511-1577). The eldest daughter of the Electress of Brandenburg looks at the viewer in a meaningful way to inform us that this scene has an additional meaning. So why was such a scene with disguised portraits made? The story of Elizabeth of Denmark's brother provides a clue and an explanation. In 1521-1522, Christian II (1481-1559) attempted to introduce a radical reform in Denmark. The nobility rose up against him in 1523, and he was exiled to the Netherlands. After attempting to regain the throne in 1531, he was arrested and held captive for the rest of his life. The face of Christ resembles that of Christian II according to his portrait painted by Cranach between about 1523 and 1530 (Museum der bildenden Künste in Leipzig, inv. 44). This is why the Electress of Brandenburg, her daughters and her son mourn the fate of her brother (and their uncle). No portrait of Elizabeth of Denmark, painted during her lifetime, is known. Since Cranach painted her husband and son on several occasions, many portraits of the Electress were probably commissioned in Wittenberg. If many of these portraits of Elizabeth were in religious or mythological disguises, they probably await discovery or were destroyed after 1539. Around 1616, Andrzej Köhne-Jaski, a Calvinist amber merchant from Gdańsk and a diplomat in the service of Sigismund III, commented on the destruction of paintings by Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach in Brandenburg (compare "Das Leben am Hof ..." by Walter Leitsch, p. 2358). The same applies to the effigies of Joachim II's second wife, Hedwig Jagellon (1513-1573). 
Lamentation of Christ with disguised portraits of Joachim II of Brandenburg (1505-1571), his mother and sisters by workshop or circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1523-1531, Protestant St. Mary's Church in Berlin.
Portraits of Christine of Saxony and Elizabeth of Hesse by Lucas Cranach the Elder
Christine of Saxony, the eldest daughter of Barbara Jagiellon, Duchess of Saxony, was born on 25 December 1505. When she was almost 18 years old, on 11 December 1523, she married Landgrave Philip I of Hesse (1504-1567) in Kassel to forge an alliance between Hesse and Saxony. Next year, in 1524, after a personal meeting with the theologian Philipp Melanchthon, Landgrave Philip embraced Protestantism and refused to be drawn into the anti-Lutheran league formed in 1525 by Christine's father, Duke George of Saxony, a staunch Catholic.
Duke George sensed the danger that his daughter would be introduced to the Lutheran religion in Hesse. He was informed by his secretary that some at Philip's court were Lutherans, so he admonished his daughter to remain true to the faith of her fathers and to resist Lutheran teaching. In a letter to her father from Kassel, dated February 20, 1524 Christine assured him that she would not become a "Martinis" (Lutheran): "I would like to thank you for the good instructions you have given me, oh that I will not become a martinis, you have no worries (Ich bedank mich keigen Ewer genaden der guten underrichtunge, di mir Ewer g. gethan haben, och das ich nicht martinis sal werden darf Ewer g. kein sorge vor haben). In March 1525, however, at the age of 21, Landgrave Philip publicly declared himself in favor of new religion and expropriated the monasteries in Hesse. On March 11, 1525, Landgravine Christine, convinced by her husband, wrote to her father as a follower of Luther, a glowing testimony of her new faith. It is on this occassion that she commissioned her portrait as biblical Judith from the Saxon court painter, Lucas Cranach the Elder, inspired by Italian and Venetian painting (Botticelli, Vincenzo Catena). The portrait in the collection of the Syracuse University (panel, 83.5 x 54.6 cm, inv. 0018.006), greatly resemble the effigies of Christine's sister, mother and brother by Cranach as well as effigy of her maternal grandmother Elizabeth of Austria (1436-1505), Queen of Poland by Anton Boys. Her double portraits with her husband, in Kassel by Jost vom Hoff and in Gripsholm Castle near Stockholm, were created long after her death in late 16th or 17th century and resemble more the portrait of Landgrave's morganatic wife, Margarethe von der Saale. Christine and her younger sister Magdalena (1507-1534), future Margravine of Brandenburg, were depicted as relatives of Sigismund I in De Jegellonum familia liber II, published in Kraków in 1521. Christine loved her husband, but despite her sacrifice and her devotion he never desired or loved her (das ich nihe liebe oder brunstlichkeit zu irr gehabt), as he declared later, and as early as 1526 he began to consider the permissibility of bigamy. On August 27, 1515, Christine's brother John of Saxony (1498-1537) married in Marburg Elizabeth of Hesse (1502-1557), sister of Landgrave Philip of Hesse. The bride continued to live in Marburg, where she was born and it was not until January 1519 that she moved to Dresden. In 1529, at the invitation of Landgrave Philip, the Marburg Colloquy took place at Marburg Castle which attempted to solve a disputation between Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli over the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Like biblical Salome, Elizabeth was between two camps, "the old religion" of the family of her husband and "the new religion" of her brother. Elizabeth leaned towards the Lutheran teachings and she constantly fought for her independence against old Duke George, John's father, and his officials. Both John and Elizabeth were also depicted as relatives of Sigismund I in De Jegellonum familia liber II. The couple remained childless and when John died in 1537, Elizabeth moved to Rochlitz. Salome with the head of Saint John the Baptist from the collection Esterhazy in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest (panel, 88.4 x 58.3 cm, inv. 132, acquired in 1871) depicts a woman in rich costume against the background of a castle, which shape and topography are very similar to views of the Marburg Castle from the turn of the 16th and 17th century. This portrait is known from many versions, created by Cranach workshop. Among the best are copies in the royal Wilanów Palace in Warsaw (oil and tempera on panel, 91.8 x 55.5 cm, inv. Wil.1519, recorded in inventory of 1696) and in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg (panel, 58.6 x 59.8 cm, inv. Gm217, before 1811 in the Holzhausen collection in Frankfurt am Main), which was cut in half. Facial features of a lady resemble greatly the effigy of Elizabeth of Hesse from the so-called Sächsischen Stammbuch, created in 1546 by Cranach workshop and facial features of her brother Landgrave Philip in his portrait in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. The same woman was also depicted as Venus in a painting from Emil Goldschmidt's collection in Frankfurt (acquired before 1909), today in the National Gallery in London (panel, 81.3 x 54.6 cm, inv. NG6344). She reaches up to grab a branch from the apple tree behind her, an allude to paintings of Eve by Cranach. An apple is a symbol of sexual temptation and a symbol of royal power, but also a symbol of new beginnings and a new faith. A quote most often attributed to Martin Luther reads: "If I knew that the world were to end tomorrow, I would plant an apple tree today". It is very similar to the effigy of Katarzyna Telniczanka, mistress of Sigismund I, as Venus with Cupid stealing honey (lost during World War II). The painting was inscribed in Latin, not in German, therefore it was most likely sent to some Catholics abroad, possibly as a gift to the Polish royal couple Sigismund and Bona Sforza. 
Portrait of Christine of Saxony (1505-1549), Landgravine of Hesse as Judith with the head of Holofernes by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1525, Syracuse University Art Galleries, New York.
Portrait of Elizabeth of Hesse (1502-1557), Hereditary Princess of Saxony as Venus and Cupid (Cupid complaining to Venus) by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1527-1530, National Gallery in London.
Portrait of Elizabeth of Hesse (1502-1557), Hereditary Princess of Saxony as Salome with the head of Saint John the Baptist by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.
Portrait of Elizabeth of Hesse (1502-1557), Hereditary Princess of Saxony as Salome with the head of Saint John the Baptist by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
Portrait of Elizabeth of Hesse (1502-1557), Hereditary Princess of Saxony by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.
Portraits of Duchess Anna of Cieszyn by Lucas Cranach the Elder
On 1 December 1518 Princess Anna of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1487-1539), third daughter of Sophia Jagiellon, Margravine of Brandenburg-Ansbach and a cousin of Louis II, King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia, married Prince Wenceslaus of Cieszyn, of the Piast dynasty. Earlier that year her uncle, Sigismund I, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania married Bona Sforza.
Wenceslaus was made co-ruler of his father in 1518 as Wenceslaus II and a Duke of Cieszyn (Teschen), one of Silesian duchies, created in 1290 during the feudal division of Poland. The Duchy was a fiefdom of the Bohemian kings since 1327 and was incorporated into the Lands of the Bohemian Crown in 1348. Anna bore him a son, who died shortly after birth, and two daughters, Ludmila and Sophie. The second son of Wenceslaus - Wenceslaus III Adam was born after his father's death on November 17, 1524. The old Duke Casimir II, who outlived his two sons, died on 13 December 1528. Since the time of his birth, as his only heir, Wenceslaus III Adam was placed under the guardianship of his grandfather, who had him engaged to Mary of Pernštejn (1524-1566) when he was just one-year-old. In his will, the Duke left his Duchy to his grandson under the regency of his mother Anna of Brandenburg-Ansbach and the Bohemian magnate John IV of Pernštejn (1487-1548), called "The Rich". The young duke was sent to be educated at the imperial court in Vienna. After death of Louis II during the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the Habsburgs took the western part of divided Hungary and Bohemia. Both Hungary and Bohemia were elective monarchies and the main goal of the new ruler, Ferdinand I, was to establish a hereditary Habsburg succession and strengthen his power in territories previously ruled by the Jagiellons, also in Silesian duchies. A painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder or workshop in Kassel shows a woman in allegorical guise of biblical heroine Judith, who cleverly defeated an enemy who has been feigning friendship (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, panel, 87.3 x 57.4 cm, inv. GK 16). Her hat, instead of a brooch, is adorned with a gold coin, so-called Joachim thaler minted in Kingdom of Bohemia from 1519 until 1528. The crowned Bohemian lion with title of king Louis, LVDOVICUS PRIM[us]: [D] GRACIA: R[ex]: BO[hemiae]: is clearly visible. The new coins minted by Ferdinand I in 1528 shows his personal coat of arms on reverse and his effigy on horseback, amidst a group of subjects paying homage to him on obverse. This painting was acquired before 1730, like the portraits of the Jagiellons in Kassel, identified by me. In the backgound of the painting there is a distant town of Bethulia, however the castle on the top of a fantastic hill is very similar to the shape of the Cieszyn Castle, visible in a drawing from 1645. Another later version of this painting from the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, painted in the 1530s, is in the Lviv National Art Gallery (oil on panel, 54.5 x 37.5, inv. Ж-758). The painting comes from the Lubomirski collection. The same woman is also depicted as Lucretia, the Roman heroine and a victim of the tyrant's abuse, whose suicide ignited the political revolution, in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, most probably taken from Prague by the Swedish army (oil on panel, 57 x 38 cm, inv. NM 1080). It is dated 1528 and the castle atop the fantastic rock is similar to Fryštát Castle used by the Dukes of Cieszyn as their second seat. The castle was built in 1288 and reconstructed in the first half of the 15th century by Duchess Euphemia of Masovia. Facial features of a woman in a painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder, which was in private collection in Munich by 1929 (oil on panel transferred to canvas, 81.6 x 55 cm, Sotheby's New York, January 24, 2008, lot 30), are almost identical with the painting in Stockholm. She is holding a bunch of grapes, a Christian symbol of redemptive sacrifice, and two apples, a symbol of original sin and the fruit of salvation. Like in Stockholm painting, the landscape in the background is fantastic, however, the overall layout of the castle is identical with the Fryštát Castle. This painting is also dated 1528. In 1528 John IV of Pernštejn, who was made governor of Moravia by Ferdinand I in 1526, relocated the ducal court to Fryštát Castle. The widowed Duchess Anna, beyond doubt, opposed all these actions against her power and commissioned some paintings, to express her dissatisfaction. Famous Lucas Cranach, the court painter of her aunt Barbara Jagiellon, Duchess of nearby Saxony, which also opposed the Habsburgs, was the obvious choice. 
Portrait of Anna of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1487-1539), Duchess of Cieszyn as Judith with the head of Holofernes by Lucas Cranach the Elder or workshop, 1526-1531, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Kassel.
Portrait of Anna of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1487-1539), Duchess of Cieszyn as Judith with the head of Holofernes by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1530s, Lviv National Art Gallery.
Portrait of Anna of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1487-1539), Duchess of Cieszyn as Lucretia by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1528, Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.
Portrait of Anna of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1487-1539), Duchess of Cieszyn holding a bunch of grapes by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1528, Private collection.
Portraits of Federico II Gonzaga as the Christ by Titian and followers
In his letter of June 1529 from Vilnius to Alfonso d'Este (1476-1534), Duke of Ferrara, Giovanni Andrea Valentino (de Valentinis) of Modena, court physician to Sigismund I and Bona Sforza, recounts a rather particular event. Queen Bona was showing the court barber, the Mantuan Giacomo da Montagnana, the portrait of Marquis Federico II Gonzaga (1500-1540) that had just been brought to her. He wrote that she demonstrated it "with the same ceremony with which the mantle of Saint Mark is shown in Venice", so that the barber had to kneel before it with folded hands, reported Valentino in a letter to Alfonso (after "Królowa Bona, 1494-1557: czasy i ludzie odrodzenia" by Władysław Pociecha, Volume 3, p. 187). He was most likely referring to the Feast of the Relics of Our Lady (May 28), when portions of the Blessed Virgin's robe, mantle, veil and girdle are displayed for veneration by the faithful in Venice. Montagnana was the Marquis' representative at the Polish court from 1527 and this clearly ironic remark was not without reason.
Gonzaga was known in all European courts for his dissolute life and tried to redeem his sins, at least officially, to have the marriage contract with Maria Paleologa (1508-1530), celebrated on April 15, 1517, annulled. He accused Maria and her mother Anne of Alençon of attempting to poison his mistress Isabella Boschetti. On 6 May 1529, convinced by Isabella d'Este, Federico's mother, Pope Clement VII annulled the marriage, which was never consummated. He was then betrothed to Giulia d'Aragona of Naples (1492-1542), the daughter of Federico I of Naples and distant relative of Queen Bona, by Emperor Charles V, which gave Federico the coveted title of Duke of Mantua in 1530. As a grandson of Eleanor of Naples (1450-1493), the Duke was also a relative of Queen Bona. Federico never married Giulia, but in 1531 he married Margaret Palaeologa (1510-1566), the sister of his first wife. He suffered long from syphilis and died on 28 June 1540 at his villa at Marmirolo. In his famous portrait by Titian, now in the Prado Museum in Madrid, he wears a doublet of blue velvet, painted with expensive ultramarine, with gold embroidery. From his neck hangs an expensive gold and lapis lazuli rosary that testifies to his faith, a visible sign of his redemption from the stormy past. Similar is the role of the Maltese dog, more appropriate as a symbol of fidelity for female portraits than for male portraits. Interestingly, the blue tunic and red trousers (with protruding codpiece) are typical colours of the clothes in the effigies of Christ (red robe overlaid by a blue mantle). This portrait was most likely made in 1529 because on April 16 of that year, Federico apologized to his uncle Alfonso d'Este for retaining Titian "because he has started a portrait of me which I greatly desire to be finished" (perché ha conienzo un retratto mio qual molto desidero sii finito). The comparison with one of the most sacred relics of the Republic of Venice in Valentino's letter indicates that the portrait of Federico was by the Venetian painter, Titian in this case, and that the Marquis was depicted as a Christian saint or even as the Christ, the Redeemer of sins, which explain this unusual veneration. We will probably never know it for sure as the Jagiellonian collections were looted, destroyed and dispersed due to the multiple invasions of the country and the subsequent impoverishment when many of the valuables that survived were sold. Connected with family ties of the ruling houses, the royal collections of Poland-Lithuania were beyond any doubt as sumptuous as those of Spain, Austria and Florence, if not richer. Effigies of relatives and members of the reigning houses were frequently exchanged. Portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici (1492-1519), Duke of Urbino as the Redeemer of the World (Salvator Mundi) by Giovanni Cariani or Bernardino Licinio, created in about 1516 (National Museum in Wrocław), was most likely such a diplomatic gift. In the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, which contains many family collections of the House of Habsburg, there is a painting of Christ as the Redeemer of the World, holding his hand on a crystal ball, which signifies the world and alludes to the universal validity of redemption and to God as the creator of light (oil on canvas, 82.5 x 60.5 cm, inv. GG 85). Scholars date the work to around 1520-1530 and the inclusion of a Hebrew inscription on Christ's tunic referring to Kabbalah suggests that the work was commissioned by a well-educated patron. This painting was attributed to workshop of Titian and it was mentioned in the treasury of the Imperial collection at the beginning of the 18th century. After thorough examitation of the canvas in 2022, it is now considered to be a genuine Titian. X-ray revealed a completely different composition underneath - a Madonna and Child. Titian, like Tintoretto and other Venetian workshops, frequently reused other canvases. Perhaps this Madonna was a painting for which the artist did not receive payment or it was a study for another painting. It also revealed that the face was changed, the model initially had sharper eyebrows and thicker nose. Despite these changes, the resemblance to the mentioned portrait of Federico with a rosary is striking. Beard, lips and an embroidered band on his attire are very much alike, which suggest that Titian and his workshop were using the same set of study drawings and just changing elements of the composition. The resemblance to two other portraits of the Duke of Mantua by workshop of Titian (1539-1540, private collection) and follower, possibly Flemish Anton Boys, who copied many portraits from the Imperial collection (Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna), is also visible. It is possible that the face of Christ was repainted by a court painter of the Habsburgs after the Council of Trent (1545-1563), when such representations were no longer appropriate. Christ coming out of the tomb (Resurrection) is visible on the reverse of a gold coin scudo del sole of Federico II Gonzaga with his coat of arms from 1530-1536, bearing inscriptions in Latin: FEDERICVS II MANTVA DVX I / SI LABORATIS EGO REFICIAM ("If you work, I will give you rest"). Beautiful gold coin of Federico's father, Francesco II Gonzaga (1466-1519), Marquis of Mantua with his bust, designed by Bartolomeo Melioli between 1492-1514, shows him in a hairstyle and beard evoking the Renaissance representations of Jesus. Later, around 1570, the painter reused the same effigy in his Salvator Mundi (Christ Blessing), kept at the Hermitage Museum, acquired from the Barbarigo collection in Venice (inv. ГЭ-114). Another version from Titian's workshop at Cobham Hall, collection of the Earls of Darnley, shows the same model as the Blessing Christ (oil on canvas, 73.6 x 57 cm). In 1777 it was in the Vitturi collection in Venice and earlier in the Ruzzini collection, also in Venice. Carlo Ruzzini (1653-1735), who rebuilt Palazzo Ruzzini was the 113th Doge, so it is possible that the painting was originally in the state collections of the Republic. Similar effigy of Christ with the same model, although more in profile, as in the mentioned coin of Francesco II Gonzaga, is in the Pitti Palace in Florence (oil on canvas, 77 x 57 cm, Palatina 228). It is also dated to around 1530 or 1532 ("Savior" mentioned in a letter dated March 23, 1532). In 1652 the picture was in Vittoria della Rovere's wardrobe, so it was earlier, either in the family collections of the Dukes of Urbino or sent to the Medicis as a gift. Although attributed to Titian, this work can also be considered to be from the workshop or from a follower like Bonifacio Veronese (Bonifacio de' Pitati), whose style is very close. Bonifacio's Sacra Conversazione with portraits of Sigismund I and Bona Sforza is also in the Pitti Palace. A copy of this painting, most probably from the early 19th century, was sold in 2004 (Bonhams London, April 21, 2004, lot 39). This diversity of representations and provenance from the ducal collections also suggests that this is a disguised portrait of an important figure. The same man was also depicted as Saint James the Great, patron saint of Spain, in the Last Supper painted before 1564 for the Spanish king Philip II, now in the Escorial near Madrid, where Titian depicted himself as one of the apostles (compare "El marco de la Última Cena de Tiziano en El Escorial" by Jesús Jiménez-Peces, p. 202-203). Philip visited Mantua in January 1549 and, around 1579/80, Domenico Tintoretto painted the scene of the Entry of the Infante Philip into Mantua, now in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (inv. 7302), undoubtedly drawing inspiration from other portraits to depict the Habsburg monarch. 
Portrait of Federico II Gonzaga (1500-1540), Marquis of Mantua with a rosary around his neck and a dog by Titian, ca. 1529, Prado Museum in Madrid.
Portrait of Federico II Gonzaga (1500-1540), Marquis of Mantua as the Redeemer of the World (Salvator Mundi) by Titian or workshop, ca. 1529, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Federico II Gonzaga (1500-1540), Duke of Mantua as Blessing Christ by workshop of Titian, ca. 1530-1532, Cobham Hall. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Federico II Gonzaga (1500-1540), Duke of Mantua as the Christ by follower of Titian, possibly Bonifacio Veronese, ca. 1530-1532, Pitti Palace in Florence.
Portrait of Federico II Gonzaga (1500-1540), Duke of Mantua as the Christ by follower of Titian, early 19th century (?), Private collection.
Portrait of Federico II Gonzaga (1500-1540), Duke of Mantua as Saint James the Great, fragment of the Last Supper by Titian and workshop, before 1564, El Escorial.
Portrait of Hernán Cortés by Titian or circle
Around 1529 King Ferdinand of Austria, personally handed (manu porrexit et dedit) to Chancellor Krzysztof Szydłowiecki an interesting book written in Latin with the words: "that what is written in it should be believed as in the Gospels". It was the work of the conqueror of Mexico, Hernán Cortés (Ferdinandus Corthesius), containing a description of his deeds, Liber narrationum. In 1529, Cortés, who arrived in Europe in 1528, stayed at the imperial court to personally justify himself for accusations of various kinds of abuse. On this occasion he presented his monarch with the gifts of a new world, and next to them, the greatest peculiarity for Europe, the Indians. In a letter of July 23, 1529 from Kraków (Acta Tomiciana, XI / 287) chancellor Szydłowiecki even asked the Polish envoy Jan Dantyszek, who was staying at the court of Charles V to bring him an Indian. "The glorious deeds" of Cortés, a man singularis et magnanimi, as Szydłowiecki writes to Dantyszek, apparently interested him keenly since he sought the "image" (effigies) of the famous Spaniard, according to letter of 27 April 1530 (Acta Tomiciana, XII / 110), and he also received it from Dantyszek (after "Kanclerz Krzysztof Szydłowiecki ..." by Jerzy Kieszkowski, Volume 3, pp. 336, 618-619).
During his stay in Spain in 1529, Cortés obtained from Charles V the title of Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca and the government over future discoveries in the South Sea and returned to Mexico in 1530. At that time, Dantyszek accompanied the Emperor on his journey from Barcelona (July 1529) through Genoa and Piacenza to Bologna - the place of the coronation, where the court stopped for a longer time and where Dantyszek stayed from the autumn of 1529 to the spring of 1530. The next longer stop was in Mantua, from where, after May 30, he set out with the imperial court through Trento and Innsbruck to Augsburg, where the emperor met his brother Ferdinand I and where Dantyszek stayed until the beginning of December 1530, taking part in the Imperial Diet (after "Itinerarium Jana Dantyszka" by Katarzyna Jasińska-Zdun, p. 198). It is said that in 1530, Titian was invited to Bologna by Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, through the agency of Pietro Aretino. There he made a most beautiful portrait of the Emperor showing him in armour holding a commander's baton, according to Vasari's "Lives of the Artists" (confirmed by a letter dated 18 March 1530 from Giacomo Leonardi, ambassador of the Duke of Urbino to the Republic of Venice), considered lost. According to other authors, they did not meet in person in 1530 (after "The Earlier Work of Titian" by Sir Claude Phillips, p. 12), while a number of art historians are insisting that the painter must have seen the sitter to paint a portrait and attributing errors to Vasari. However, it is also likely that Titian created his portrait based on a preparatory drawing by another artist who was in Bologna. In 1529 Christoph Weiditz, a German painter and medalist, active mainly in Strasbourg and Augsburg (he went to the royal court in Spain in 1528-1529), created a bronze medal of Cortés at the age of 42 (DON · FERDINANDO · CORTES · M·D·XXIX · ANNO · aETATIS · XXXXII). It should be noted that the similarity of the model with the most famous images of Cortés is quite general. That same year and around Weiditz also created a medal of Jan Dantyszek and of Elisabeth of Austria (d. 1581), illegitimate daughter of Emperor Maximilian I (after "Artyści obcy w służbie polskiej" by Jerzy Kieszkowski, p. 15). There is no mention of any precious material, such as gold or silver, regarding the "image" of the Spanish conquistador for Szydłowiecki, so it was most likely a painting commissioned in Italy from an artist close to the Imperial court. Dantyszek was renowned for his artistic taste and commissioned and received exquisite works of art. Conrad Goclenius, the closest confidant of humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam, thanks to Dantyszek's support received a rich beneficium and various gifts from him: furs, bas-reliefs, his portrait, for which he gave Dantyszek a portrait of Erasmus painted by Holbein (In praesentia in ejus rei symbolum mitto tibi dono effigiem D. Erasmi Roterodami, ab Ioanne Holbeyno, artificumin - wrote Goclenius in a letter of April 21, 1531 from Leuven), a bust of Charles V and others, which were part of a later rich collection at the ducal residence of Dantyszek in Lidzbark (after "Jan Dantyszek - człowiek i pisarz" by Mikołaj Kamiński, p. 71). In a letter to Piotr Tomicki of March 20, 1530, Dantyszek sadly informed that for eighty ducats he sold to Anton Welser an emerald received from Prince Alfonso d'Este during his stay in Ferrara in 1524, which he intended to give to the addressee, to the wife of Helius Eobanus Hessus he offered a chain and pearls set in gold, a Spanish horse to Piotr Tomicki, gold (or ducats) from Spain to his friend Jan Zambocki, earrings or rings (rotulae), unspecified handicrafts of Spanish women and scissors or pliers (forpices) to Queen Bona, and expensive silk fabrics and gold coins with images of rulers to Johannes Campensis (after "Itinerarium Jana Dantyszka", pp. 224, 226). In April 1530, when he sent his letter to Szydłowiecki, Dantyszek was in Mantua and the most important effigies of Federico II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua created at that time were painted by Titian - in 1529 and 1530, one is in Prado in Madrid (inv. P000408, after "El retrato del Renacimiento", pp. 215-216). Therefore, the diplomat must have commissioned or purchased a painting from the Venetian master. On October 29, 2019 a portrait of gentleman (Retrato de caballero) by Italian school was sold in Seville, Spain (oil on canvas, 58 x 48 cm, Isbilya Subastas, lot 62). This portrait is almost an exact, reduced version of a painting attributed to Peter Paul Rubens (The Courtauld Gallery in London, oil on canvas, 98.2 x 76.6 cm, inv. P.1978.PG.354), painted between 1608-1612, a copy of a painting by Titian which the painter probably saw in Mantua. Other copy, attributed to Jan Steven van Calcar, is in the Klassik Stiftung Weimar (oil on canvas, 96.7 x 74 cm, inv. G 49), acquired at an auction in Vienna in 1820 and previously considered a work by Rubens. Another copy was auctioned as manner of Francesco Salviati (1510-1563), who lived and worked in Florence and Rome, with periods in Bologna and Venice (oil on canvas, 96.5 x 73.7 cm, Freeman's Philadelphia, July 17, 2013, lot 1012). An engraving by George Vertue dated 1724 bears an inscription identifying the sitter as Hernán Cortés and the artist as Titian (HERNAN CORTES. Ex pictura TITIANI or Titian pinx - Scottish National Portrait Gallery, FP I 38.1 or British Museum, R,7.123). The same effigy was also reproduced as Cortés by Titian in Historia de la conquista de México, published in Madrid in 1783 - engraving by Fernando Selma (HERNAN CORTES. Titian Vecel pinx. / Ferdin Selma. sc.). The style of the painting sold in Seville is indeed close to Titian and his entourage, in particular Bonifazio Veronese, hence it is a one of a series of similar effigies ordered in Venice, the lost painting from the Gonzaga collection in Mantua copied by Rubens being probably a prototype. The man in the described portrait resembles the effigy of the Spanish explorer and conqueror of Mexico, published in Academie des sciences et des arts … by Isaac Bullart in 1682 (Volume 2, p. 277, National Library of Poland, SD XVII.4.4179 II), his portrait in the Museum of Cultures of Oaxaca (Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca) in Santo Domingo, Mexico and a likeness from the Portrait Gallery of the Viceroys (series in the Salon de Cabildos, Palacio del Ayuntamiento), both most probably from the 17th century. Cortés died on December 2, 1547 in Castilleja de la Cuesta near Seville. Consequently, the painting made around 1530 for Chancellor Szydłowiecki was most likely a copy of the described painting, possibly by Titian himself, as it was a gift for one of the most important people in Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia. 
Portrait of Hernán Cortés (1485-1547) by Titian or circle, ca. 1530, Private collection.
Portrait of Hernán Cortés (1485-1547) by Jan Steven van Calcar, ca. 1530, Klassik Stiftung Weimar. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Hernán Cortés (1485-1547) by Francesco Salviati, after 1530, Private collection.
Portrait of Hernán Cortés (1485-1547) by Peter Paul Rubens, 1608-1612, Courtauld Gallery in London.
Portrait of George I of Pomerania by Jan Cornelisz. Vermeyen
"Family ties with the Polish kings, permanent dynastic and political contacts allowed to broaden horizons, to adopt new artistic models, to shape new needs and preferences. [...] Dynastic ties were an important element in the formation of the artistic tastes and needs of the court. They facilitated the circulation of works of art, which were offered as gifts on many official and private occasions, and contributed to the exchange of artists. The princely court of West Pomerania was no exception among the European ruling courts. Many artists working at other courts also found employment here. This is how they ended up in West Pomerania: Hans Schenck - Scheusslich, Antoni de Wida, Friedrich Nüssdorfer, Cornelius Crommeny, Giovanni Perini and many others. The extensive contacts of the Griffins allowed them to use court art centres from Prague to the Netherlands, through Hamburg, Kołobrzeg to the north and Saxony to the south", reads the introduction to the catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition at the Royal Castle in Warsaw and the National Museum in Szczecin in 1986-1987, referring to the important role played by the marriage of Boguslaus X with the daughter of Casimir IV Jagiellon, Anna (1476-1503), as well as the consideration of the person of Duke Barnim X (XII), as a candidate for the hand of the Polish-Lithuanian princess Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596), daughter of Sigismund I and Bona Sforza, later queen and wife of Stephen Bathory (after "Sztuka na dworze książąt Pomorza Zachodniego w XVI-XVII wieku ...", ed. Władysław Filipowiak, p. 8).
The 1560 inventory of Wolgast Castle confirms the existence of three painted portraits of the eldest son of Boguslaus X and his wife Anna Jagiellon - George I of Pomerania (1493-1531). They belonged to his son Philip I (1515-1560) and most of them were probably made during the Duke's lifetime, i.e. before 1531. The inventory mentions a bust-length portrait "made in Leipzig" (Ein Brustbilde M. G. H. Herzog Georgens zu Stettin Pommern, zu Leipzig gemacht, item 1), painted on wood (An Contrafei in Olifarbe auff Taffeln), probaly by Hans Krell. Among the paintings on canvas (An Contrafej auff Tüchern) there were two other portraits of Philip's father: "Duke George of Pomerania etc. in trousers and doublet" (Herzog Georg zu Pommern pp. in Hosen und Wambß, item 6), most probably a full-length portrait, and another "with the cloak" (mit dem Rocke, item 18) as well as portrait of Emperor Ferdinand I (item 1) and a portrait of Philip I by Lucas Cranach painted in 1541 (item 27, after "Neue Beitrage zur Geschichte der Kunst und ihrer Denkmäler in Pommern" by Julius Mueller, p. 31-33). This inventory also lists several tapestries, probably commissioned or purchased in Flanders or made in Szczecin by the Dutch weaver Peter Heymans, including the tapestry depicting Boguslaus X's pilgrimage to the Holy Land between 1496-1498 (Peregrinatio Domini Bugslai zum heiligen Lande) and the Baptism of Christ with portraits of dukes of Saxony and Pomerania. The surviving work by Heymans, the Croy Tapestry from 1554 in the Pomeranian State Museum in Greifswald, includes a portrait of Duke George, most likely based on a likeness created by Cranach or his workshop. Two drawings with portraits of the duke attributed to Antoni Wida were included in the so-called "Book of effigies" (Visierungsbuch), lost during the Second World War. The inventory of Wolgast Castle from 1560 also mentions two portraits of Emperor Charles V (items 8, 14) and the Netherlandish Historia Judit (item 18), as well as the "Image of the Virgin Mary, holding the infant Jesus, [painted] with oil [paint]" (Marien Bilde, heldt das Kindlein Jesu, mit Olie, item 11), which could be the painting currently in the Pomeranian State Museum in Greifswald (oil on wood, 38 x 27 cm), which comes from the collection of Victor Schultze (1851-1937). This small painting is attributed to the circle of Quentin Massys (ca. 1466-1530) and according to a sticker on the back, it was once in Wolgast Castle (... und aus dem Wolgaster Schloß an die Universität in Greifswald gekommen seyn). It is therefore very likely that this painting is a disguised portrait of Philip's grandmother, Anna Jagiellon, who ruled Pomerania during her husband's pilgrimage between 1496 and 1498 (she was then 20 years old and the mother of three children). In the former territories of the Duchy, there are no known portraits of George I created during his lifetime. The three-quarter-length portrait in the Pomeranian State Museum in Greifswald is a copy made around 1750 of a painting originally in the town hall in Anklam, itself painted around 1650 (inscription: GEORGIUS. I. D. G. DUX / STETINI POMERANIÆ ...). Before the Second World War, the Ludwig Roselius Museum in Bremen owned a Portrait of a Nobleman (Porträt eines Edelmannes), the man with the red beard on a green background, believed to be the work of Hans Krell (oil on panel, 71 x 53 cm, inv. LR 1593). This painting, listed as coming from an English collection, was auctioned between 26 and 27 April 1935 in Berlin (after "Die Bestände der Firmen Galerie van Diemen & Co., GmbH - Altkunst, Antiquitäten, GmbH", part II, p. 41, item 105). The painting was sold with an attribution to the Dutch painter Jan Cornelisz. Vermeyen (ca. 1503-1559), which seems more correct given the surviving photographs of the painting. The gesture of a man's hand, the frontal representation and the general composition of the painting are very typical of this painter, who was court painter to Margaret of Austria in Mechelen from 1525. Similar paintings can be found, for example, in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (Portrait of a Man, inv. 739) and in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore (Portrait of a Woman in a Leopard Cloak, inv. 37.370). The fact that the man from the painting had a red beard does not mean that he actually had that hair colour, as evidenced by two similar bust portraits of King Ferdinand I - one in the Fondation Bemberg in Toulouse (inv. 1056) with dark brown hair and the other in a private collection (Christie's London, Auction 13674, December 8, 2017, lot 106) with red hair. The portraits of Ferdinand are part of several versions of the same composition, each with some differences, attributed to Vermeyen and his workshop, the original of which is thought to have been made around 1530 when the painter travelled with Archduchess Margaret to Augsburg and Innsbruck from 25 May to 27 October 1530, during which time he painted portraits of various members of the imperial family. It is also possible that the portrait of Ferdinand mentioned in the Wolgast inventory was made by Vermeyen for Duke George. The facial features of a red-bearded nobleman are very similar to those in the mentioned portraits of Duke George I of Pomerania, who in two of his best-known effigies, now in Greifswald - from the Croy Tapestry and a portrait made around 1750 - has blond and dark hair and beard respectively. 
Portrait of George I of Pomerania (1493-1531) by Jan Cornelisz. Vermeyen, ca. 1530, Ludwig Roselius Museum in Bremen, lost during World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Madonna and Child with cherries, possibly a disguised portrait of Anna Jagiellon (1476-1503), Duchess of Pomerania by circle of Quentin Massys, ca. 1500, Pomeranian State Museum in Greifswald.
Portraits of Dukes of Pomerania and Dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg by Lucas Cranach the Elder
On January 23, 1530 in Berlin, Duke George I of Pomerania (1493-1531), son of Anna Jagiellon (1476-1503), sister of Sigismund I, married Margaret of Brandenburg (1511-1577), daughter of Joachim I Nestor (1484-1535), Elector of Brandenburg.
Margaret brought a dowry of 20,000 guilders into the marriage. She was quite unpopular in Pomerania due to Brandenburg's claims to Pomerania. In 1524 George crafted an alliance with his uncle King Sigismund I, which was directed against Brandenburg and Duke Albert of Prussia and in 1526 he went to Gdańsk, to meet his uncle and paid homage of Lębork and Bytów, thus becoming a vassal of the Polish crown together with his brother Barnim IX (or XI) the Pious. George died a year after the marriage on the night of May 9 to 10, 1531 in Szczecin. He was succeeded by his only son Philip I (1515-1560), who became a co-ruler of the Duchy alongside his uncle, Barnim IX. Few months later on November 28, 1531 Margaret bore a posthumous child, a daughter named after her father Georgia. As a result of the division of the principality, which took place on October 21, 1532, Philip I became the Duke of Pomerania-Wolgast, ruling over the lands west of the Oder and on Rügen and his uncle Barnim IX, the Duke of Pomerania-Szczecin. As the lands of Margaret's jointure/dower, a provision after the death of her husband, were in Pomerania-Wolgast her stepson had to sort out the relationship with his unloved step-mother and to levy a special tax to pay her dowry and redeem her jointure. On February 15, 1534 in Dessau she married her second husband Prince John IV of Anhalt (1504-1551) and on December 13, 1534, Philip and Barnim IX introduced Lutheranism in Pomerania as the state religion. Barnim IX was a renowned patron of arts and brought many artists to his court. He also collected works of art and he, his brother and nephew frequently commissioned their effigies in Cranach's workshop. The so-called "Book of effigies" (Visierungsbuch), which was lost during World War II, was a collection of many drawings depicting members of the House of Griffin, including preparatory or study drawings by Cranach's workshop. In February 1525 Barnim concluded an alliance with the House of Guelph by marrying Anne of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1502-1568), daughter of Henry the Middle (1468-1532), Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and Margaret of Saxony (1469-1528). Henry, who sided with the French king Francis I during the Imperial election, and so earned the enmity of the elected Emperor Charles V, abdicated in 1520 in favor of his two sons Otto (1495-1549) and Ernest (1497-1546), and went into exile to France. He returned in 1527 and tried to regain control of the land. When this failed, he went back to France and returned only after the imperial ban was lifted in 1530. Henry spent his last years in Wienhausen Castle, near Celle, where he lived "in seclusion" and died in 1532. He was buried in the Wienhausen Monastery. A few days after the death of his wife Margaret of Saxony on December 7, 1528, he entered into a second, morganatic marriage in Lüneburg with Anna von Campe, who had been his mistress since 1520 and who had previously borne him two sons. In autumn 1525, Henry's eldest son Otto secretly and against his father's wishes married a maid-in-waiting of his sister Anna, Mathilde von Campe (1504-1580), also known as Meta or Metta, most probably a sister of Anna von Campe. When Otto renounced participation in the government of the principality in 1527, Ernest became sole ruler. In 1527 with the advent of the Lutheran doctrine to Brunswick-Lüneburg, the life of Otto's and Ernest's sister Apollonia (1499-1571) change fundamentally. She was born on March 8, 1499 as the fifth child of Duke Henry the Middle and Margaret of Saxony. When she was five years old, her family sent her to the Wienhausen Monastery. At the age of 13 Apollonia was consecrated, and at the age of 22 she takes her religious vows. Ernest summoned Apollonia to Celle, on the occasion of her mother's planned trip to relatives in Meissen. Her brothers and her mother urged her to change her religion, but Apollonia refused. Back in Celle, where she was the educator of the ducal offspring, she met Urbanus Rhegius, the reformer and her brother's theological adviser. He become her spiritual partner and brought her closer to the new doctrine. Nonetheless, she remained Catholic. At the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 Ernest signed the Augsburg Confession, the fundamental confession of the Lutherans, and George and Barnim received the imperial enfeoffment. Despite the opposition of the entire community, the Wienhausen Monastery was transformed from a Roman Catholic into a Lutheran establishment for unmarried noble women (Damenstift) in 1531 (compare "Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik", ed. Erika Langbroek, Volume 56, p. 210). Duke Ernest, like Barnim, also commissioned portraits from the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder. His portrait by Cranach's workshop is in Lutherhaus Wittenberg (inv. G89), and a study drawing to a series of portraits is in the Museum of Fine Arts in Reims (inv. 795.1.273). Ernest married Sophia of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1508-1541) on June 2, 1528. She was a daughter of Duke Henry V (son of Sophia of Pomerania) and Ursula, daughter of Elector John Cicero of Brandenburg. The Duke and his bride, probably shortly after or before the marriage, were depicted as first parents - Adam and Eve in a painting by Cranach the Elder, now in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp (inv. 42), while the young bride was also painted by Cranach in 1526 wearing a cap embroidered with her father's monogram H and a bridal wreath (from the collection of Julius Caesar Czarnikow (1838-1909) in London), according to my identification. A portrait of young woman in guise of Judith comes from the old collection of the Grunewald hunting lodge (Jagdschloss Grunewald), near Berlin (panel, 74.9 x 56 cm, inv. GK I 1182). This Renaissance villa was built between 1542 and 1543 for Joachim II Hector, Elector of Brandenburg, elder brother of Margaret of Brandenburg. The painting is dated 1530, below the window, a date when Margaret become the Duchess of Pomerania and the castle visible in distance is similar to the Klempenow Castle, which was part of Margaret's jointure. The same woman was also depicted as Venus with Cupid stealing honey in a painting by Cranach the Elder from the private collection in London (panel, 52.5 x 37 cm, Rouillac in Cheverny, June 10, 2001, lot 60). She is wearing bridal wreath with a single feather on her head, thereby announcing that she is ready for marriage. The painting is very similar to portrait of Beata Kościelecka as Venus from 1530 in the National Gallery of Denmark and it is dated "1532" on the trunk of the tree, a date when Margaret was already widowed and her stepson wanted to get rid of her. A good copy of this painting comes from the collection of August Salomon in Dresden (panel, 52.5 x 35 cm), who also owned the portraits of Sigismund Augustus and his sister Isabella Jagiellon as children painted by Cranach (National Gallery, Washington, inv. 1947.6.1 and inv. 1947.6.2), identified by me. This copy is, however, also considered to be a work by a late 19th-century imitator of Cranach. In the same year, she was also represented in a popular courtly scene of Hercules with Omphale. Two partridges, a symbol of desire, hang directly over her head and her face features are very similar to the effigies of Margaret's father and siblings. Above the woman opposite there is a duck, associated with Penelope, queen of Ithaca, marital fidelity and intelligence. This symbolism as well as woman's effigy match perfectly Anne of Brunswick-Lüneburg, who became a driving force behind the division of Pomerania in 1532 and who considered that George's intent to marry Margaret of Brandenburg threatened her own position. The man depicted as Hercules is therefore Anna's husband, Barnim IX. The painting is dated 1532 below the inscription in Latin. It was acquired by the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin before 1830 and lost in the World War II (panel, 80 x 118 cm, inv. no. 576). The capital of Germany was the city where many items from the collection of dukes of Pomerania were transferred, including the famous Pomeranian Art Cabinet. Another painting depicting Hercules and Omphale created by Lucas Cranach the Elder in 1532 was also in Berlin before 1931 (Matthiesen Gallery), today in private collection (oil on panel, transferred to canvas, 83.3 x 122.3 cm, Christie's New York, Auction 23294, February 5, 2024, lot 20). It is very similar to the painting showing Barnim IX, his wife and his sister-in-law and it have similar dimensions, composition and style. In this painting two partridges hang only over the couple on the left. The man is holding his right hand on the breast and heart of a woman, she is his love. The young woman to the right is placing a white cloth over his head like a bonnet in a way of engaging with him like a sister. The older woman in a white bonnet of a married or a widowed lady behind her is handing Hercules the distaff. It is therefore their mother or stepmother. Consequently the scene depict Ernest I of Brunswick-Lüneburg, his wife Sophia of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, his sister Apollonia and their stepmother Anna von Campe. The two young women from the latter painting were also depicted together in a scene of Judith with the head of Holofernes and a servant from the late 1530s. This painting, today in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, comes from the Imperial Gallery in Prague (transferred before 1737), therefore it was sent to or acquired by the Habsburgs (panel, 75.2 x 51 cm, inv. GG 3574). The woman in red from the Vienna painting was also depicted in another painting by Cranach, painted a few years earlier around 1530 and showing her as the biblical Judith. This painting is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and was acquired in 1911 from the collection of Robert Hoe in New York (panel, 89.5 x 61.9 cm, inv. 11.15). Her face features are very similar to effigies of Sophia of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, her father and sons. The same woman can also be identified in a painting by workshop of Cranach, which comes from the collection of Baron von Eckardstein in Plattenburg Castle between Schwerin and Berlin (panel, 21.5 x 16.5 cm, Lempertz in Cologne, November 14, 2020, lot 2015). It shows her half-naked in a fur coat and is considered to be a painting of a Roman Lucretia with the lower part cut off. 
Portrait of Margaret of Brandenburg (1511-1577), Duchess of Pomerania as Judith with the head of Holofernes by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1530, Grunewald hunting lodge.
Portrait of Margaret of Brandenburg (1511-1577), Duchess of Pomerania as Venus with Cupid stealing honey by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1532, Private collection.
Portrait of Margaret of Brandenburg (1511-1577), Duchess of Pomerania as Venus with Cupid stealing honey by follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, after 1532 (19th century?), Private collection.
Hercules at the court of Omphale with portrait of Barnim IX (1501-1573), Duke of Pomerania, his wife Anne of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1502-1568), and his sister-in-law Margaret of Brandenburg (1511-1577) by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1532, Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Sophia of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1508-1541), Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg as Judith with the head of Holofernes by Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Portrait of Sophia of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1508-1541), Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg as Lucretia by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530-1535, Private collection.
Hercules at the court of Omphale with portrait of Ernest of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1497-1546), his wife Sophia of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1508-1541), his sister Apollonia (1499-1571) and stepmother Anna von Campe by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1532, Private collection.
Portrait of Sophia of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1508-1541) and her stepsister Apollonia of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1499-1571) as Judith with the head of Holofernes and a servant by Lucas Cranach the Elder, after 1537, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portraits of Anne of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Duchess of Pomerania as Judith with the head of Holofernes by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop and Hans Kemmer
Among the preparatory drawings for the portraits in the so-called "Book of effigies" (Visierungsbuch), which was in the Pomeranian State Museum in Szczecin before World War II, one of the most important was that of Anne of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1502-1568), wife of Barnim IX (1501-1573), Duke of Pomerania-Szczecin. Its style was close to that of Cranach and it was probably made by a member of the painter's workshop sent to Pomerania. The student made annotations on a delicate watercolour and pen drawing with colours of fabrics and detailed drawings of the duchess's jewellery, in order to facilitate the work in the painter's studio in Wittenberg. Hellmuth Bethe (1901-1959) considered it to be the work of Cranach himself, as a costume study for a lost painting (after "Die Bildnisse des pommerschen Herzogshauses", p. 7), but since his stay in Pomerania is not confirmed in the sources, as is his meeting with the Duchess elsewhere, the option with a member of his workshop seems more likely. A similar drawing depicted Barnim IX's sister, Margaret of Pomerania (1518-1569). Both drawings focus on the ladies' clothing, while the faces are treated very generally, indicating that better studies of their faces were made separately. The drawings were probably made around 1545, because a similar effigy of the duchess was placed on the stone plaque with the portraits of Barnim and Anne from their residence in Kołbacz (former monastery), created in 1545 (National Museum in Szczecin), in which clothing and jewellery were rendered with great precision. Another similar effigy of Barnim's wife was included in the so-called Croy Tapestry of 1554 with her coat of arms and a corresponding inscription confirming her identity (Pomeranian State Museum in Greifswald). Anne's costume, as well as her facial features on the Croy Tapestry differ from the image in the "Book of effigies", as well as the Kołbacz plaque, and it was probably also made by Cranach's workshop in Wittenberg. A year earlier, in 1553, study drawings for portraits of the sons of Philip I of Pomerania-Wolgast (1515-1560), who most likely commissioned the Croy Tapestry, were made by Cranach's workshop, also included in the "Book of effigies". Thus, around 1545 and in 1553, portraits of Duchess Anne were also made in Wittenberg and, like the bridal portraits of Mary of Saxony (1515-1583), Duchess of Pomerania-Wolgast from 1534 or the portraits of Sibylle of Cleves (1512-1554), Duchess of Saxony from 1533, they were made in several copies for various members of the family and friendly courts in Europe.
It is interesting to note that the mentioned Kołbacz plaque is attributed to Hans Schenck the Younger, known as Scheusslich, a Saxon sculptor who lived mainly in Berlin and worked for the electoral court. Before 1526, Schenck worked for Duke Albert of Prussia (1490-1568) in Królewiec (Königsberg). Duke Albert recommended him in 1526 to Chancellor Krzysztof Szydłowiecki for the Polish court as a sculptor capable of depicting human portraits in metal, stone and wood, and he was back in Królewiec in 1528 (after "Zespół pomorskich płyt kamiennych ..." by Maria Glińska, p. 351). In the 1540s Schenck is supposed to have worked in Pomerania for Dukes Philip I and Barnim IX. His biography is another perfect illustration of the artistic relations between the ruling houses of Sarmatia, Pomerania, Prussia and Brandenburg. None of the portraits of Anne of Brunswick-Lüneburg painted by Cranach's workshop seem to have survived. Anne was the daughter of Duke Henry I of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1468-1532) from his marriage to Margaret of Saxony (1469-1528), daughter of Elector Ernest of Saxony. Electors Frederick III (1463-1525) and John the Constant (1468-1532), known from so many effigies produced by Cranach and his workshop, were therefore her uncles. Anne and Barnim were married on February 2, 1525 in Szczecin. She had a significant influence on the power in Pomerania and was one of the driving forces behind the break between Barnim and his brother George I (1493-1531) and the division of Pomerania in 1532 (Von nun an hörte die Herzogin Anna zu seinen Widersachern. Sie und Andere brachten es denn auch dahin, daß Herzog Barnim noch auf demselben Landtage eine Theilung der Lande forderte, after "Geschichte der Einführung der evangelischen Lehre im Herzogthum Pommern" by Friedrich Ludwig von Medem, p. 21). She believed that George put her husband at a disadvantage in the government of Pomerania and that his intention to marry Margaret of Brandenburg (January 23, 1530 in Berlin) undermined her own position. The effigies of such an important figure in the power in Pomerania must therefore have also been made before 1545. Another interesting fact is the absence of portraits of Anne in the 1560 inventory of Wolgast Castle, the residence of her brother-in-law Philip I of Pomerania-Wolgast. Philip owned portraits of his mother, his wife and his two sisters (items 3-6), as well as of his uncle Barnim (item 8), but no effigy of Barnim's wife. This inventory, however, lists three paintings with the "Story of Judith" (Historia Judit). The first was listed among the portraits and other paintings on canvas (An Contrafej auff Tüchern, item 26), together with portraits of Emperor Ferdinand I (item 1), two portraits of Philip's father George (items 6, 18), and a portrait of Philip painted by Cranach in 1541 (item 27). Two other "Stories of Judith" are listed among the "Other Pictures" (Andere Bilder, items 2, 18), while the last one was made in the Netherlands. Similarly, Philipp Hainhofer (1578-1647), who visited Szczecin in 1617, does not mention any portrait of Duchess Anne in his diary, but he confirms that in the apartments of Duchess Hedwig of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1595-1650), wife of Duke Ulrich of Pomerania (1589-1622), there was a large painting by Cranach depicting Caritas. This painting was probably destroyed during the Swedish rule in Szczecin between 1630 and 1720. Since many paintings of Caritas by Cranach are very portrait-like effigies, this painting could be a disguised effigy of Duchess Anne. Furthermore, Cranach's paintings depict Caritas as a naked woman surrounded by children. Such disguised portraits were popular in northern European countries in the 16th and 17th centuries, as evidenced by the naked image of Terminus, the Roman god of boundaries, bearing the features of Erasmus of Rotterdam, painted by Hans Holbein the Younger around 1532 in Basel or London (Cleveland Museum of Art, inv. 1971.166) or the disguised portrait of Sophie Amalie of Brunswick-Calenberg (1628-1685), Queen of Denmark and Norway, depicted as the naked Juno (Hera), the queen of the gods, goddess of marriage and childbirth in a ceiling painting by Abraham Wuchters from the 1660s in the Queen's Bedchamber at Rosenborg Castle. The National Museum in Wrocław holds a painting depicting Judith with the head of Holofernes (panel, 85 x 54 cm, inv. MNWr VIII-2670). The provenance of this painting has not been established with certainty; it could be Judith with the Head of Holofernes from the collection of the Silesian humanist and book collector Thomas Rehdiger (1540-1576) or another Judith considered to be a work by Cranach, a gift from the auctioneer Pfeiffer, both mentioned in the Catalogue of the Picture Gallery of the House of the Silesian States in Wrocław from 1863 (after "Katalog der Bilder-Galerie im Ständehause zu Breslau", items 623, 135). This painting, like all similar ones by Cranach and his followers, was probably created between 1525 and 1530 and is attributed to Hans Kemmer (ca. 1495-1561), a pupil of Cranach in Wittenberg from around 1515. In 1520 he returned to his hometown of Lübeck, closer to Szczecin than Wrocław. Before the introduction of the Reformation in Lübeck in 1530, Kemmer painted mainly religious scenes and disguised portraits, such as the Courtship (or The Offer of Love), inspired by Cranach's 6th Commandment "You shall not commit adultery" from 1516 (Lutherhaus in Wittenberg, inv. G25) and considered to be a betrothal portrait of the merchant Johann Wigerinck (1501-1563) and his second wife Agneta Kerckring, married in 1529, or Christ and the Adulteress painted in 1530 (St. Anne's Museum in Lübeck) bearing the coat of arms of Wigerinck and his second wife. The beardless disciple standing behind Jesus in the last painting is considered to be another disguised portrait of Wigerinck (after "Hans Kemmer ..." by Christoph Emmendörffer, p. 100-106). Was Wiegerinck therefore in an adulterous relationship with Agneta before the death of his first wife Margarete Possick, the daughter of the Livonian merchant Peter Possick? Like Lucas Cranach in Wittenberg, Hans Kemmer had a monopoly and a well-organized workshop in Lübeck. The woman depicted as Judith resembles Duchess Anne of Brunswick-Lüneburg according to her confirmed effigies. If this painting arrived in Silesia in the 16th century, it could be a gift from Pomerania to the Silesian dukes. The Judith is not the only painting by Kemmer connected with Silesia, for in the National Museum in Warsaw there is a well-painted Adoration of the Magi attributed to him, which is probably also full of disguised portraits, as the costumes and portrait-like representations in this painting suggest (panel, 159 x 110 cm, inv. M.Ob.2537 MNW). Before World War II, it belonged to the consistorial councilor Konrad Büchsel (1882-1958) in Wrocław. The Adoration of the Magi is a version of the painting now in St. Wenceslas Church in Naumburg, attributed to the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder or to Kemmer. The Wrocław Judith, however, is not an original invention by Kemmer, but rather a copy of an original by Cranach, as two other very similar compositions from the Wittenberg workshop are in a private collection. One of them was in France before 1962 (panel, 84 x 58 cm) and the other in London (panel, 62 x 42 cm, Sotheby's, October 30, 1997, lot 42). In this context, it is also quite possible that a study drawing of Duchess Anne made in Szczecin was sent to Wittenberg and Lübeck, which explains the differences in the appearance of the face as well as in the costume of the model. 
Portrait of Anne of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1502-1568), Duchess of Pomerania as Judith with the head of Holofernes by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop, ca. 1530, Private collection.
Portrait of Anne of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1502-1568), Duchess of Pomerania as Judith with the head of Holofernes by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1530, Private collection.
Portrait of Anne of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1502-1568), Duchess of Pomerania as Judith with the head of Holofernes by Hans Kemmer, ca. 1530, National Museum in Wrocław.
Adoration of the Magi by Hans Kemmer, 1520s, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portraits of Catherine of Saxe-Lauenburg, Queen of Sweden as Lucretia by Lucas Cranach the Elder
In 1526, the thirty-year-old king of Sweden, Gustav I Vasa (1496-1560), sent Johannes Magnus, Archbishop of Uppsala to matchmaking for a thirteen-year-old Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573), daughter of Sigismund I and Barbara Zapolya. However, as the ruler of a poor country, elected king three years earlier from among the Swedish lords, and leaning towards Lutheranism, he was considered too modest party for the Jagiellonian princess and this candidacy was rejected (after "Jagiellonowie ..." by Małgorzata Duczmal, p. 295). He also tried in vain to obtain the hand of the widowed Duchess of Brzeg, Anna of Pomerania (1492-1550), and earlier he was rejected by Dorothea of Denmark (1504-1547), who become Duchess of Prussia and Sophia of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1508-1541), later Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg, whose parents thought his reign was too unstable and he was heavily in debt.
Gustav was recommended to open negotiations with Saxe-Lauenburg. The duchy was considered rather poor but its dynasty was related to several of Europe's most powerful dynasties, including the House of Pomerania. The negotiations for the hand of Catherine of Saxe-Lauenburg (1513-1535), second daughter of Magnus I, Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg and Catherine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, began in 1528. Finally, with mediation from Lübeck, they were completed and in late summer 1531, Catherine was escorted to Sweden. The wedding took place in Stockholm on her 18th birthday, September 24, 1531. Almost a year before the marriage, on November 12, 1530, Catherine's father Magnus received the enfeoffment of his duchy from Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Augsburg. His wife, Catherine's mother, also Catherine, was considered a strict Catholic with close ties to her Brunswick relatives, which prompted Gustav I to marry her daughter to dissuade the German Catholic princes from supporting King Christian II of Denmark. Catherine's mother was also respected by the Emperor and the Jagiellons. She was depicted as Saint Catherine in paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his workshop (National Gallery of Denmark, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe), together with Queen Barbara Zapolya (1495-1515) and Barbara Jagiellon (1478-1534), Duchess of Saxony. In 1531, Magnus spread the ideas of the Reformation in his duchy and became a Lutheran, like most of his subjects. For these reasons, their daughter could not be brought up as a Protestant, as some sources claim, and possibly converted to Lutheranism in Sweden. The marriage with Gustav Vasa was described as unhappy. In older Swedish historiography, Catherine is described as capricious, cold-hearted, and constantly complaining about all things Swedish. She had never learned the Swedish language either. Gustav himself only learned a little German, which made communication between the spouses very difficult. However, she fulfilled her dynastic duty and bore her husband a male heir to the throne named Eric, later Eric XIV, born on December 13, 1533. The first tutor of a young prince was a learned German, Georg Norman from Rügen. During a ball given in Stockholm in September 1535 in honor of her brother-in-law Christian III of Denmark, when Catherine was probably pregnant, the queen fell so badly while dancing with Christian that she became bedridden. She died the day before her 22nd birthday with her unborn child. Rumors claimed that Gustav murdered Catherine by hitting her on the head with an ax, after he learned from a spy that she had slandered him in front of the Danish king during the dance. Catherine was first buried in the Storkyrkan in Stockholm on October 1, 1535, and her body was moved in 1560 to Uppsala, where she was buried in the Cathedral along with Gustav and his second wife Margaret Leijonhufvud (1516-1551). Her effigy on the sarcophagus, carved by the Flemish painter and sculptor Willem Boy, is considered the most faithful, however the statue was created around 1571 in Flanders and sent to Sweden. In traditional historiography, Catherine has often been portrayed negatively as a contrast to Gustav's second wife, Margaret, a Swedish noblewoman, who has been presented as an ideal queen. The king married Margaret, on 1 October 1536, a year after Catherine's death. It is likely that she was a maid of honor to Gustav Vasa's first queen. Several portraits of Margaret survived, including the full-length effigy, attributed to the Dutch painter Johan Baptista van Uther, in which she was portrayed stereotypically for northern monarchs in rich costume and wearing crown jewels (Gripsholm Castle, NMGrh 434). The realism of this effigy suggests that it could be created in her lifetime, the author could be different and like the triple sarcophagus of Catherine, Gustav and Margaret it could be created in Flanders and sent to Sweden. No painted effigy of Catherine of Saxe-Lauenburg, made during her lifetime, is known. The portraits that have sometimes been identified as her likenesses are most likely portraits of Polish-Lithuanian noblewomen from the late 16th century (Gripsholm Castle, NMGrh 427, NMGrh 426). In 2013 a small portrait miniature of a lady in guise of naked Roman matron Lucretia was sold in London (oil on panel, 14.9 cm, tondo, Sotheby's, December 4, 2013, Lot 3). "Works such as this, most notably the portraits, seem to have been among the earliest German paintings to adapt the format of Renaissance medals or plaquettes", according to Catalogue Note. The painting most likely comes from the collection of the Dukes of Parma in northern Italy or Rome and later it was in the collection of Count Grigory Sergeievich Stroganoff (1829-1910) in Rome, Paris and Saint Petersburg. This provenance from the ducal collection in Italy suggests that the woman was an important international figure. Interestingly, the same woman, although dressed, is seen in a painting from the so-called Gripsholm suite or the triumphal paintings of Gustav Vasa, standing next to a man identified to represent the king himself. The paintings were probably commissioned by king Gustav or his wife to decorate one of the halls at Gripsholm Castle. The cycle is attributed to the local Swedish painter Anders Larsson, who in 1548 executed decorative paintings at Gripsholm Castle, but some undeniable influences from Cranch's works can be listed. This is particularly noticeable in the composition of the scenes and costumes, and the scene of a judgment with a woman falling to the ground supported by a man recalls the fable of the Mouth of Truth (Bocca della Verità) by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, dated '1534' (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Gm1108) and especially the version of this composition from the Schloss Neuhardenberg from about 1530. Consequently, the authorship of Cranach's studio cannot be ruled out, also because the whole cycle is known from 18th century watercolors, created in 1722 by Jacob Wendelius (Royal Library in Stockholm), as the original paintings not preserved. Additionally, many authors compare the scenes to works from Wittenberg's workshop. Interpretations of the paintings' motif have long been debated. Some authors thought it was an allegorical depiction of the king's war of liberation against the Danes in 1521-1523 and the woman is a symbol of the Catholic Church - Ecclesia. The story of Virginia and Appius Claudius, Karin Månsdotter and Eric XIV, Catherine Jagiellon, when Eric was planning to extradite her to Moscow were also suggested and that they were not paintings, but tapestries. The interpretation that the cycle was textiles does not exclude the authorship of Cranach's workshop because, like the Flemish painters, they produced cartoons for tapestries. Nicolaus "the Black" Radziwill had a tapestry after Lucas Cranach's "Baptism of Christ in Jordan", which he orders to hang in the hall of his palace for royal reception in 1553 (after "Lietuvos sakralinė dailė ..." by Dalia Tarandaitė, Gražina Marija Martinaitienė, p. 123) and the so-called Croy tapestry, commissioned by Philip I of Pomerania and created by Peter Heymans in 1554 (Pommersches Landesmuseum), was most likely based on a cartoon by Cranach's studio. In his 2019 article ("Gripsholmstavlorna ..."), Herman Bengtsson suggested that "it is not unlikely that the paintings depicted the legend of Lucretia, which was very popular and widespread in Northern Europe during the early Renaissance", with reference to the inventories drawn up in the 1540s and 1550s. However, the suicide scene is missing. The inventory of Gripsholm Castle in 1547-1548 mentions a small painting with "Luchresia" in the wife's chamber and inventory of the Norrby royal estate in 1554 lists four large new paintings with scenes from Lucretia's story. According to Peter Gillgren ("Wendelius' Drawings ...", 2021) the cycle depict the biblical story of Esther and Ahasuerus and the paintings (or tapestries) were produced in Poland in the 1540s and could have come with Catherine Jagiellon. At the Turku Castle in Finland in 1563 there was "an old piece with the story of Hestrijdz", which Catherine most probably brought with her from Poland because it is not listed in inventories from previous periods. Another proposal is that the cycle originally belonged to Gustav Vasa's first wife, Catherine of Saxe-Lauenburg, who evidently brought several lavish art objects with her to her new homeland (after "Gripsholmstavlorna ..." by Herman Bengtsson, p. 55). What is indisputable is the influence of the works of Cranach, costumes from the 1530s or 1540s and the predominant role of a woman. Her golden dress suggests she was a queen and the biblical or mythological disguise implies that she wants to emphasize her virtues. If we assume that this woman is Catherine of Saxe-Lauenburg, then the residence in the miniature from the collection of the Dukes of Parma should be her palace. The building on the left almost perfectly matches the large manor house (Stora borggården towards the east) of the Tre Kronor Castle in Stockholm, as depicted in a print from about 1670 by Jean Marot - Arcis Holmensis Area versus Orientem. Two windows and a rounded door are almost identical. The medieval castle was rebuilt and extended after 1527. During the reign of John III, the structure was rebuilt again by Dutch architects who made larger windows and built the castle church. Catholic chapel of John III's consort, Catherine Jagiellon, was installed in the northeast tower. Tre Kronor was destroyed in the fire of 1697, and the current Stockholm Palace was later built on the site. The same woman in a similar pose was depicted in another painting of Lucretia by Lucas Cranach the Elder, today in the Finnish National Gallery in Helsinki (oil and tempera on panel, 38 x 24.5 cm, inventory number S-1994-224). At the end of the 18th century it was possibly in a private collection in Finland. The painting is signed with artist's insignia (winged serpent) and dated '1530' on the left. Catherine was married to Gustav Vasa in 1531, however, preparation for such an important event as the royal wedding took time, which is why the marriage contract was most likely signed at least a year earlier. Although many items for the bride's dowry were collected throughout her young life, the more exquisite clothing, jewelry, and items fit for a queen must have been prepared and ordered shortly before the wedding. The trained eye will spot in the form of the castle on a fantastic rock behind her the building important for the history of Finland - Turku Castle viewed from the harbour. It was founded in the 1280s as an administrative castle of the Swedish crown. The castle's heyday was in the 1560s during the reign of Duke John of Finland (future John III) and Catherine Jagellon. As in the virtual reconstruction of the castle between 1505-1555, we can see two main towers and the main residential building on the left. Like the portrayed person, Catherine of Saxe-Lauenburg in the guise of Lucretia, the castle is also disguised, so this is probably not an exact appearance of the structure in 1530, however no view of the castle from that time has survived, so we cannot rule out that the tower originally had such a tall Nordic-style spire. Renaissance painters, especially in Italy, loved such riddles. The viewer must therefore strain his mind and find the true meaning. The "obvious things" were sometimes not so obvious, such as that Leonardo's Mona Lisa was probably not a woman and Raphael's Young Man from the Czartoryski collection was probably not a man. This painting was created for purely propaganda purposes. In the 1530s, Gustav Vasa started to bring in German officials, along with whom new visions of royal power arrived. In 1544, the monarchy was changed to hereditary and Gustav's eldest son Eric was named heir to the throne. So this painting is like a message: look my subjects, you will have a beautiful and virtuous queen, like the Roman Lucretia. She is healthy and will bear healthy sons. Our monarchy will modernize and the most famous German painting workshop created the effigy of your future queen. Another similar Lucretia by Cranach dated '1532' is in Vienna (oil on panel, 37.5 x 24.5 cm, Academy of Fine Arts, GG 557). It comes from the collection of an Austrian diplomat and art collector, Anton Franz de Paula Graf Lamberg-Sprinzenstein (1740-1822), who spent six years in Naples where he collected over 500 ancient Greek vases. In 1818, after retiring from the diplomatic service, he bequeathed to the Academy of Vienna his entire painting collection, including works by Titian and Rembrandt. We cannot exclude the possibility that this painting comes from the collection of Queen Bona Sforza, whose collections were moved to Naples after her death in Bari in 1557. In all mentioned paintings, the model's face resembles the effigy of Catherine of Saxe-Lauenburg from her tomb in Uppsala Cathedral, as well as effigies of her only son Eric XIV by the Flemish painter Domenicus Verwilt. The Duchess of Saxony Barbara Jagiellon was depicted as Lucretia and the majority of Gustav's potential wives - Hedwig Jagiellon, Anna of Pomerania and Sophia of Mecklenburg-Schwerin were depicted as nude Venus in Cranach's paintings. The Queen of Sweden followed the same fashion of mythological disguise in her portraits. 
Portrait of Catherine of Saxe-Lauenburg (1513-1535), Queen of Sweden as Lucretia against the idealized view of Turku Castle by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1530, Finnish National Gallery in Helsinki.
Miniature portrait of Catherine of Saxe-Lauenburg (1513-1535), Queen of Sweden as Lucretia by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1530-1535, Private collection.
Portrait of Catherine of Saxe-Lauenburg (1513-1535), Queen of Sweden as Lucretia by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1532, Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.
Portraits of Catherine Telegdi, Voivodess of Transylvania by wokshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder and Venetian painters
On March 17, 1534 died Stephen VIII Bathory (born 1477), Voivode of Transylvania leaving his 42 years-old wife Catherine Telegdi (1492-1547) with the youngest of her children, including Stephen, future king of Poland, born in 1533, Christopher, born in 1530, and most probably the youngest daughter Elizabeth, later wife of Lajos Pekry de Petrovina, in the turbulent period following the Ottoman invasion of Hungary.
Catherine was a daughter of royal treasurer Stephen Telegdi (or Thelegdy de Telegd) and his wife Margit Bebek de Pelsőcz. She married Stephen of the Somlyó branch of the Bathory family before October 13, 1516. They had four sons and four daughters and their last child, Stephen was born on September 27, 1533 just few months before his father's death. His parents ordered to built a small church in honor of the Virgin Mary at the time of his birth. Catherine resided in the Bathorys' castle at Somlyó, also known as Szilágysomlyó (now Șimleu Silvaniei in Romania) managing her deceased husband's estates on behalf of minor children. In 1536 she signed an agreement with János Statileo, Latinized as Statilius (d. 1542), Bishop of Transylvania (in 1521 King Louis II sent him to Venice), according to which the named widow's estates in Daróczi, Gyresi (Gyrüsi) and Gyengi (Gyérgyi) in Szathmár county, will be returned to her. Later Tamás Nádasdy (1498-1562), Ban of Croatia-Slavonia and his older brother Andrew VII Bathory (d. 1563) took charge of Christopher's education, while Pál Várday (1483-1549), Archbishop of Esztergom was entrusted with custody of Stephen, who in the 1540s was also educated at the court of Ferdinand I in Vienna. On November 1, 1534 George Martinuzzi (Frater Georgius), a Croatian nobleman and Pauline monk, born in Kamičak in the Republic of Venice, was made Bishop of nearby great fortress Varadinum (now Oradea), one of the most important in the Kingdom of Hungary. The cathedral in Varadinum was the burial place of kings, including Saint Ladislaus I of Hungary, Queen Mary of Anjou and Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg. He was also appointed treasurer, one of the country's most important officials, by King John Zapolya, when previous treasurer and governor of Hungary Alvise Gritti, natural son of Andrea Gritti, Doge of Venice, was murdered in September 1534. Before entering the service of King of Hungary in 1527, Martinuzzi was most probably Abbot of the Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa. He was the "author of marriage" (author matrimonii) of Princess Isabella Jagiellon (according to letter of Queen Bona from 1542, in which she asks him to take care of her daughter), organized together with Jan Amor Tarnowski, voivode of Kraków. After he returned to Hungary in 1527, he was appointed abbot of the Pauline monastery in Sajólád, which had recently received grants from the Zapolyas. On September 16, 1539 Catherine Telegdi's daughter Anna Bathory, mother of the "Blood Countess" Elizabeth Bathory, married Kasper Dragfi of Béltek. Single woman with small children amidst ongoing war undoubtedly wanted to get married or at least find a protector and the most powerful man who could help her was Bishop of Varadinum. If Queen Bona and Tarnowski family in nearby Poland-Lithuania and king Ferdinand I could commission their effigies in Cranach's workshop and in Venice, the same could the voivodess of Transylvania and Martinuzzi. Madonna and Child with grapes by Lucas Cranach the Elder, which was before 1932 in the collection of Julius Drey in Munich (panel, 50 x 33.5 cm), is inscribed in upper right corner with artist's insignia and dated "1534". The same woman was also depicted as Venus with Cupid stealing honey, which was in the Bryan Gallery of Christian Art in New York in 1853 (oil on panel, 48.9 x 33 cm, Sotheby's New York, January 12, 1995, lot 151) and as Charity, according to inscription in upper left corner (CHARITAS), in a painting in the National Gallery in London (oil on panel, 56.3 x 36.2 cm, inv. NG2925), which was once in the collection of Sir George Webbe Dasent (1817-1896), a British translator who was appointed secretary to Thomas Cartwright on a diplomatic post in Stockholm, Sweden. Charity or love (Latin Caritas), "the mother of all virtues", according to Hilary of Arles (Hilarius), refers to "love of God", although the image refers more to maternity and effigies of Roman goddess of motherhood Latona. The woman was also depicted in a portrait which was attributed to Palma Vecchio, Giovanni Cariani and currently to Bernardino Licinio in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice (oil on canvas, 47 x 45 cm, inv. 305). She wears a black dress of a widow and a black headdress or a toque, called balzo, embroidered with gold. This painting, like the effigy of Jan Janusz Kościelecki by Giovanni Cariani, was transferred from the Contarini collection in Venice (bequeathed by Girolamo Contarini) in 1838. It might be a modello to a series of portraits or a gift to the Venetian Serenissima. Probably in the 19th century this effigy was repainted and the characteristic features of the woman were changed to more "classical" features, these changes were recently removed. Cariani used her effigy in his Judith with the head of Holofernes from a private collection in England, sold in Cologne in 2020 (oil on panel, 96.5 x 78 cm, Lempertz, May 30, 2020, lot 2008). She holds one arm on a plinth on which the words "For liberating the country" (PRO LIBERANDA / PATRIA) are written. Behind her head we see the green foliage of a laurel symbolizing the victory of the biblical heroine. This painting is variably dated between 1517 and 1523, although it is possible that it was created after the Battle of Mohács in 1526, when Catherine's husband supported John Zapolya's claim to the kingship of Hungary against the Habsburgs and Turks conquered a large part of the country. In this context, the Latin inscription would have an important political significance. In a painting attributed to Palma Vecchio, although also close to the style of Giovanni Cariani, from the collection of Queen Christina of Sweden in Rome, today in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge (oil on canvas, 118.1 x 208.9 cm, inv. 109), she is represented as Venus in a landscape with Cupid handing her an arrow aimed at her heart. The city behind her with a fortress atop a hill match perfectly the layout of Varadinum. Cariani is sometimes considered a pupil of Palma Vecchio, as many of his works show Palma's influence and have also been attributed to him. A more simplified copy of this effigy, in the style of Bernardino Licinio, comes from the collection of Princess Labadini in Milan (oil on canvas, 112 x 165 cm, Lempertz in Cologne, Auction 1175, June 5, 2021, lot 2019). The painting in Cambridge is usually dated to around 1523-1524. Shortly after the painter created another portrait of this woman, usually dated to around 1524-1526, now in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (oil on panel, 75.9 x 59.7 cm, inv. 197 B), showing her with naked breast. This painting was purchased in 1884/85 from the painter and art dealer Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919). There are several copies of this effigy, some of which are attributed to Palma, such as the version from the Manfrin collection in Venice (oil on canvas, 78.7 x 61.6 cm, Christie's New York, June 9, 2010, lot 241), which is however closer to Cariani's works. In a copy from a private collection in France (oil on canvas, 79 x 62 cm), which is closer to the style of Bernardino Licinio, the color of the woman's hair has been changed from blond to red. She was also depicted as Saint Catherine in a painting of Sacra Conversazione with Madonna and Child and a holy bishop, attributed to Palma Vecchio (oil on panel, 53.7 x 80.7 cm, Sotheby's London, December 6, 2012, lot 161). This painting was probably acquired by Archibald Campbell Douglas Dick (d. 1927), Pitkerro House, Dundee, in the early 20th century. A similar compostion with Saints Jerome and Helena at Pinacoteca dell'Accademia dei Concordi in Rovigo is attributed to workshop of Palma (compare Fototeca Zeri, Numero scheda: 41606) and generally dated to the 2nd decade of the 16th century. The bishop holding the palm branch, a symbol of martyrdom, could be a portrait of George Martinuzzi. Very similar effigy by Palma Vecchio shows her younger and wearing a green dress, a symbol of her fertility. She is probably opening a jewellery box, a symbol of femininity, beauty and wealth. This painting, today in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (oil on panel, 50 x 40.5 cm, inv. GG 66), was in the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria and was recorded in the Theatrum Pictorium (number 196). Before 1636, this painting or a copy of it was probably in the collection of a Venetian art dealer and collector, Bartolomeo della Nave, who owned a painting described as "A woman half a figure very fair with a box in her hand p 3 x 2 1/2 idem [Palma]". A study drawing for this or a similar painting, attributed to the circle of Palma Vecchio, was auctioned in New York in 2002 (black chalk on paper, 20 x 18.7 cm, Christie's, June 5, 2002, lot 675). Since the time of King Matthias Corvinus (1443-1490), who married Beatrice of Naples (1457-1508), the links between Hungary and Italy in terms of artistic patronage were important, although they can be traced back much earlier. In the Museo Nicolaiano in Bari there is a silver reliquary of Saint Nicholas in the form of a Gothic church from 1344, founded by Elizabeth of Poland (1305-1380), Queen of Hungary, adorned with her coat of arms. The reliquary is attributed to Pietro di Simone Gallico from Siena. In 1502, Angelo Gabrieli, a Venetian patrician, recorded the triumphant progress through northern Italy of Anne of Foix-Candale (1484-1506), the bride of Vladislaus II Jagiellon, King of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, who entered Padua on her way to Venice. The presence of German communities in Transylvania facilitated economic relations with Germany. In the 16th century, Hungary and Transylvania exported livestock to Germany and Venice and imported luxury goods from both countries (compare "The Sixteenth Century", edited by Euan K. Cameron, p. 27 and "Hungary Between Two Empires 1526-1711" by Géza Pálffy, p. 76). Between the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th century, the Hungarian sovereign had entrusted the administration of the salt mines as well as the mint of Sibiu to Matteo Baldi, resident in Sibiu in Transylvania, while between 1439 and 1448, a certain Papia Manin from Florence took care of the collection of taxes on behalf of the King of Hungary. Many other Italians had lived in Hungary and Transylvania since the Middle Ages. In 1520, Vincenzo Italus residing in Brașov bought cattle from the Moldavian Drăghici, while a year later in 1521, Michele Italus was present in the same city in Transylvania. In 1535, a certain Giovanni Dylansy Italus maintained relations between Brașov and Wallachia. In the 16th century, there were master glassmakers in Transylvania, almost certainly from Venice, active in the glassworks near Braşov, such as Alessandro Morosini (confirmed between 1573-1574), who was commissioned by Stephen Bathory, Catherine's son, to produce glass in collaboration with local craftsmen, according to Italian models. There were also Florentine cloth makers and dyers, such as Stefano di Pietro, active in the city of Sibiu at the end of the 16th century, as well as architects (after "Italici in Transilvania tra XIV e XVI secolo" by Andrea Fara, p. 338, 339, 347-348). No painter is mentioned, indicating that the majority of the paintings were imported from Italy, since the hypothesis that the Italians living in Hungary and Transylvania forgot that their homeland was famous for the most splendid Renaissance painters would be unfounded. Given the number of her effigies, the woman in the paintings described must have been an important figure in Europe in the first half of the 16th century. However, no documents preserve the name of this "Venetian beauty", which is another indication that she was neither Venetian nor German (regarding Cranach's paintings), but "an oriental beauty". There is also no evidence that she was a courtesan, as is generally believed for such effigies. In all mentioned portraits woman's face bears a great resemblance to effigies of Catherine Telegdi's son Stephen Bathory, elected monarach of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. 
Study drawing for a portrait of Catherine Telegdi (1492-1547), Voivodess of Transylvania by circle of Palma Vecchio, ca. 1516-1528, Private collection.
Portrait of Catherine Telegdi (1492-1547), Voivodess of Transylvania in a green dress by Palma Vecchio, ca. 1516-1528, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Catherine Telegdi (1492-1547), Voivodess of Transylvania from the Theatrum Pictorium (196) by Lucas Vorsterman the Elder after Palma Vecchio, 1660, Princely Court Library in Waldeck.
Sacra Conversazione with a portrait of Catherine Telegdi (1492-1547), Voivodess of Transylvania as Saint Catherine by workshop of Palma Vecchio, after 1516, Private collection.
Portrait of Catherine Telegdi (1492-1547), Voivodess of Transylvania as Venus and Cupid against the idealized view of Varadinum by Palma Vecchio or Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1523-1534, Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Portrait of Catherine Telegdi (1492-1547), Voivodess of Transylvania nude (Venus) by Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1523-1534, Private collection.
Portrait of Catherine Telegdi (1492-1547), Voivodess of Transylvania with a breast uncovered by Palma Vecchio, ca. 1524-1526, Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.
Portrait of Catherine Telegdi (1492-1547), Voivodess of Transylvania with a breast uncovered by Giovanni Cariani, after 1524, Private collection.
Portrait of Catherine Telegdi (1492-1547), Voivodess of Transylvania with a breast uncovered by Bernardino Licinio, after 1524, Private collection.
Portrait of Catherine Telegdi (1492-1547), Voivodess of Transylvania as Judith with the Head of Holofernes by Giovanni Cariani, after 1526, Private collection.
Portrait of Catherine Telegdi (1492-1547), Voivodess of Transylvania as Madonna and Child with grapes by wokshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1534, Private collection.
Portrait of Catherine Telegdi (1492-1547), Voivodess of Transylvania as Venus with Cupid stealing honey by wokshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1534, Private collection.
Portrait of Catherine Telegdi (1492-1547), Voivodess of Transylvania as Caritas by wokshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1534, National Gallery in London.
Portrait of Catherine Telegdi (1492-1547), Voivodess of Transylvania in a black balzo by Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1534, Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice.
Portraits of Catherine de' Medici by Giovanni Cariani
"The Queen became all-powerful, and took all seriousness from her husband and other dignitaries, so that she plays a role similar to the Queen regent in France", wrote from Kraków on March 10, 1532 Ercole Daissoli, the secretary of Hieronim Łaski, about Bona Sforza, Queen of Poland (after "Królowa Bona ..." by Władysław Pociecha, p. 132).
Around that time another eminent woman of the Renaissance, Catherine de' Medici, future Queen of France was engaged to Henry, duke of Orleans. Orphaned at birth, she was brought from Florence to Rome by her father's uncle Pope Leo X. The next Pope and Catherine's uncle Clement VII, allowed her to return to Florence and to reside in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi. The Pope entered into an alliance with France, Venice, Florence and England to limit the influence of Emperor Charles V in Italy, but the French defeat in the battle of Pavia exposed the Papal States to imperial revenge, which culminated in the sack of Rome in 1527. The defeat suffered by Clement VII in Rome also led to riots in Florence. In return for his help in retaking the city the Pope promised Charles V that he would be crowned emperor. On the occasion of Emperor's coronation in Bologna in 1530 a medal was struck to model by Giovanni Bernardi. Catherine returned to the papal court in Rome, where Clement VII attempted to arrange an advantageous marriage for her. He managed to combine two important marriages: that of Catherine with the son of the king of France and that of Alessandro, nicknamed il Moro (appointed Duke of Florence) with Margaret of Austria, the illegitimate daughter of Charles V. Thirteen-year-old Catherine began to learn French. Venetian ambassador, Antonio Soriano, described her physical appearance at that time: "she is small of stature, and thin, and without delicate features, but having the protruding eyes peculiar to the Medici family". On 23 October 1533 Catherine arrived in Marseille, where she married the younger son of the French king. The unexpected death of Clement VII on 25 September 1534, almost a year after the wedding, affected the alliance between the papacy and France. Pope Paul III, whose election was backed by Emperor Charles V, broke the alliance and refused to pay the enormous dowry promised to Catherine. King Francis I of France, Catherine's father-in-law, was later attributed the bitter affirmation: "I received the girl stark naked" (J'ai reçu la fille toute nue). The portrait of a lady called "Violante", identified as Allegory of Virginity and attributed to Palma Vecchio and Giovanni Cariani is known from several versions. One was in the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria and was recorded in the Theatrum Pictorium (number 185). This painting was most probably cut and might be tantamount to the painting in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest (oil on canvas, 64.5 x 60 cm, inv. 84). Other are in Galleria Estense in Modena (oil on canvas, 89.5 x 65 cm, inv. R.C.G.E. 409), centred around the collection of the d'Este family, rulers of Modena, Ferrara and Reggio (confirmed in the d'Este collections since 1770) and in private collection in Barcelona (oil on canvas, 74.5 x 59 cm), possibly from the Spanish royal collection. The woman was also depicted in similar pose wearing a black mourning dress in another paining in Budapest (oil on canvas, 93.5 x 76 cm, inv. 109). The majority of these paintings are now attributed to Cariani, who, due to similarities with Palma Vecchio's style, probably cooperated with him or was his student. "Violante" has also been represented as the work of I. Palma Senior in Theatrum Pictorium, although neither of these paintings is signed and there is no evidence that the painting in the Habsburg collection was signed by Palma. The portrait in a black dress in Budapest is attributed to the Venetian painter and dated to around 1540, while other paintings are considered to date from the 1510s, although none of the copies are also dated. A good copy that was in a private collection in the early 20th century is considered to have been created between around 1520 and 1540 (compare Fototeca Zeri, Numero scheda 39748). Facial features and hand gesture of the woman are almost identical with another effigy in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, the portrait of young Catherine de' Medici, bearing later inscription in French: CATERINE DE MEDICIS REINE DE FRANCE in lower part and [...] ROINE MERE ("The Queen Mother") in upper part (oil on panel, 31.3 x 23 cm, inv. 58.4). The omnipresent V in these portraits is therefore reference to the powerful Emperor Charles V, whose actions had great impact on the life of Catherine. A painting by Italian painter, possibly Pier Francesco Foschi, from private collection in Switzerland is very similar to the portrait with inscription in Budapest (oil on panel, 20 x 18 cm, Darnley Fine Art in London, as "European School, Portrait of a Lady, Mid 16th Century"). She wears a golden pendant with monogram of her husband H, future Henry II of France. A similar gold pendant is found in a series of portraits of Catherine by Corneille de Lyon and his circle, such as the painting from the Czartoryski collection in Gołuchów, which was lost during the Second World War (oil on panel, 22 x 18 cm). This painting was made in several copies, the best of which are in Polesden Lacey in England (inv. NT 1246458), at the Palace of Versailles (inv. MV 3182, formerly identified as representing Marguerite de France) and at the Musée Condé in Chantilly (inv. PE 248, formerly assumed to represent Claude de France according to the inscription on the reverse, then Marie d'Acigny). Another version of this portrait from the Medici collection in Florence is in the Uffizi Gallery (inv. 1890 / 2257). It was previously attributed to Corneille de Lyon, then to the French school and today to Santi di Tito (1536-1603), who, according to the payment documents of March 9, 1585 and July 15, 1586, painted it more than 40 years after the original painting was completed, so he must have based it on earlier effigies. A similar effigy of the future Queen of France from the Lubomirski collection is in the National Art Gallery in Lviv (oil on panel, 57.8 x 43.8, inv. Ж-1974). It is attributed to the Italian school of the 17th century and bears the inscription in the upper part: ‣ CATERINA ‣ MEDICI. The style of this painting, however, indicates Flemish influences and it closely resembles works attributed to Bartholomeus Pons, also known as the Master of the Dinteville Allegory because of his best-known painting, the portrait of Gaucher de Dinteville, lord of Vanlay, and his brothers represented as "Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh" (Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 50.70), painted in 1537. In 1909 in the collection of Prince Kazimierz Lubomirski in Kraków there was a Portrait of Catherine de' Medici (oil on canvas, 89 x 71 cm), attributed to "The School of Paul Veronese (1528-1588)" (after "Katalog wystawy obrazów malarzy dawnych i współczesnych urządzonej staraniem Andrzejowej Księżny Lubomirskiej" by Mieczysław Treter, item 69, p. 17). The distribution of these paintings and the number of copies also suggest that this woman was an important personality in Europe in the first half of the 16th century. Three portraits from the earliest period of the famous French queen's life can be found in Budapest, Hungary, others also outside France. Like Queen Bona, Catherine de' Medici is today best known for her portraits from the later period of her life, but before 1559 she was not a widow and like other Italian women she had undoubtedly lightened her hair. 
Portrait of Catherine de' Medici (1519-1589) by Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1532-1534, Galleria Estense in Modena.
Portrait of Catherine de' Medici (1519-1589) by Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1532-1534, Private collection.
Portrait of Catherine de' Medici (1519-1589) by Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1532-1534, Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.
Portrait of Catherine de' Medici (1519-1589) by Giovanni Cariani or workshop, ca. 1532-1534, Private collection. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Catherine de' Medici (1519-1589) from the Theatrum Pictorium (185) by Jan van Troyen, 1673, Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava.
Portrait of Catherine de' Medici (1519-1589) in mourning by Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1534, Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.
Portrait of Catherine de' Medici (1519-1589) by Italian painter, possibly Pier Francesco Foschi, ca. 1533-1540, Private collection.
Portrait of Catherine de' Medici (1519-1589) by Italian painter (?), ca. 1533-1540, Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.
Portrait of Catherine de' Medici (1519-1589) by Corneille de Lyon or circle, ca. 1540, Gołuchów Castle, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Catherine de' Medici (1519-1589) by Bartholomeus Pons, ca. 1540, Lviv National Art Gallery.
Portrait of Stefan Loitz by Barthel Bruyn the Elder
In 1528 and 1539, two members of the Loitz merchant and banking family, Michael II (1501-1561) and Simon I (1502-1567), sons of Hans II (ca. 1470-1539) and Anna Glienicke (1480-1551), moved from Szczecin in the Duchy of Pomerania to Gdańsk in Polish Prussia, the main port of Sarmatia, after marrying into members of the Feldstete (Feldstedt) family. The Loitz (also Loitze, Loytz, Loytze, Lois, Loisius, Lojsen, Lewsze or Łozica in Polish), sometimes called the "Fuggers of the North" because of their wealth, were originally from Greifswald. They started their business as fishmongers and tried to dominate the salt trade in Central Europe. Hans Loitz II also became mayor of Szczecin and developed Loitz's business internationally. He established numerous contacts with merchants in Sweden, Transylvania, France and Central European countries and even on the Iberian Peninsula. He managed to develop the company into a group with an attached bank, whose debtors were the Dukes of Pomerania, Elector of Brandenburg Joachim II and the King of Poland. The Loitz Bank made large profits by financing wars. During the Livonian War (1558-1583), for example, they set up a fleet of privateer ships in Gdańsk for Poland. Michael II's wife, Cordula Feldstedt, was the great-granddaughter of Lucas Watzenrode the Elder (1400-1462), the maternal grandfather of Nicolaus Copernicus and the Sarmatian astronomer, as Philip Melanchthon called him in 1541, criticizing his "absurd claims" (Sed quidam putant esse egregium κατόρθωμα rem tam absurdam ornare, sicut ille Sarmaticus Astronomus, qui movet terram et figit Solem. Profecto sapientes gubernatores deberent ingeniorum petulantiam cohercere, after Corpus Reformatorum, Volume IV, Epistolarum Lib. VIII 1541, No. 2391), was involved in different family relationships with Michael II. In 1536, Michael, representing Copernicus, appeared before the Council of Gdańsk as curator of the heirs of the deceased Reinhold Feldstete. In a document dated September 15, 1540, preserved in the Vatican archives, Copernicus spoke in favour of appointing Michael's son Johann Loitz (Jan Lewsze), a cleric from Włocławek, as coadjutor (assistant) of his Warmian canonry. Interestingly, Hans II is remembered as great opponent of the Reformation.
Hans II's third son Stefan (Steffen, Stephan, 1507-1584) tried to take over the Lüneburg salt trade. Nevertheless, the Lüneburg salt merchants managed to defend themselves against these attempts. However, the Loitzes managed to monopolize the salt trade on the Odra and in the port of Gdańsk, which was vigorously defended if necessary by a gunboat in the port. Another important activity was the trade in Pomeranian grain, which they exported mainly to Western Europe. Although the decline and bankruptcy of the House of Loitz is sometimes attributed primarily to the refusal of King Stephen Batory to pay the debts of his predecessor Sigismund II Augustus, it was preceded by several other unfavourable factors, such as the increase in the Sound customs duties in 1567 by Denmark, the general economic crisis, the trade deficit with Silesia, and the death in 1571 of Joachim II of Brandenburg, who also had heavy debts to the Loitz family. From 1537 onwards, the Loitzes acted as financial representatives of the Elector of Brandenburg, and in 1544 they officially held the position of bankers and suppliers to the court. The debtors of the Loitzes also included Duke John Albert I of Mecklenburg (1525-1576) and the sons of Sophia Jagiellon (1464-1512): Albert of Prussia (1490-1568) and William of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1498-1563), Archbishop of Riga. They also granted numerous loans to the King of Denmark. Almost all of these rulers ignored the Loitzes' demands for repayment in the same way. Their fall ruined many creditors, landowners and wealthy people of Szczecin, so much so that the family moved to Polish Prussia. Their splendid late Gothic house in Szczecin, known as the Loitzenhaus, built between 1539 and 1547 and decorated with the relief The Conversion of Saul by the workshop of Hans Schenck, was taken over by the Dukes of Pomerania. In addition to the salt trade and banking, the family was also engaged in a lucrative trade and import of works of art, mainly from the Netherlands and Germany, and financed the artistic ventures of the King of Poland and the courts of Szczecin, Berlin and Królewiec (Königsberg). Research suggests that they were extensively involved in the import of alabaster reliefs from the Netherlands, and it is possible that the Gdańsk bankers may have acted as intermediaries in bringing an alabaster altar from the Habsburg Netherlands to the church in Uchanie on behalf of Primate Jakub Uchański (1502-1581). Hans II established commercial contacts with Dutch merchants as early as 1495. Later, the company's representative in Antwerp was Melchior Adeler from Wrocław. The purchase of the famous series of tapestries History of the First Parents, based on the cartoons of Michiel Coxie (made between 1549 and 1550), by King Sigismund Augustus, was to be financed by a loan obtained from the Loitz family (after "Wewnętrzne światło ..." by Aleksandra Lipińska, p. 96, 97). The family credited the king several times with large sums for the needs of the Polish state and for the king's private needs, such as 60,000 thalers for the purchase of jewelry, which Sigismund Augustus was particularly fond of. The loan was repaid by deliveries of salt from the royal salt mines. The Loitz family also had a royal crown set with emeralds made for Sigismund Augustus. In 1572, they granted the king a huge loan of 300,000 thalers. In a letter dated February 22, 1546, the painter Hans Krell names one of the Loitzes as an intermediary in the transfer of portraits of European sovereigns commissioned by Duke Albert of Prussia to Saxony (perhaps the portraits commissioned by the Duke for his cousin Sigismund Augustus and brought to Vilnius by Piotr Wojanowski in February 1547). A few years later, after 1555, Krell made a portrait of Maurice (1521-1553), Elector of Saxony, which was sent to the sculptor Antonis de Seron (van Zerroen) in Antwerp as a model for the statue of the Elector in a monument in Freiberg Cathedral, built between 1559 and 1563, after a design by the Italian painters Gabriele and Benedetto Thola from Brescia, which shows how international artistic endeavours were at that time. The Loitzes are also credited with the settlement of Dutch Mennonites in the Vistula lowlands in the second half of the 16th century. Hans IV (1529-1579), Simon and Stefan owned Nowy Dwór Gdański (Tiegenhof) as collateral for a loan to the Polish king. In 1562, with the help of Hans IV' wife Esther von Baasen (Baysen, Bażyńska), they persuaded the Dutch Mennonites to settle there (after "A Homeland for Strangers …" by Peter James Klassen p. 28). The aforementioned Stefan Loitz even became secretary to King Sigismund Augustus and was ennobled in Sarmatia with his own coat of arms. Together with his younger brother Hans III (1510-1575) and mother, he ran the Szczecin business. In 1557, that is, at the age of fifty, he married the widow Beata von Dessel (1529-1568), heiress to the rich salt mines in Lüneburg. The Lüneburg salt, which Stefan was able to sell in large quantities, was characterised by very good quality and was competitive with French salt. The Loitz family received distribution privileges for Lüneburg salt from the Elector of Brandenburg, Emperor and King Sigismund Augustus. In exchange for a loan of 30,000 złoty, the latter granted Stefan the privilege of building a saltworks in Toruń, located on the Vistula, and also entrusted him with the management of the salt chambers (warehouses) in Toruń and Bydgoszcz (after "Dzieje Bydgoszczy do roku 1806" by Franciszek Mincer, p. 128). Stefan was a member of the Maritime Commission, the first Polish admiralty existing in the years 1568-1572. The 16th-century inventories, mainly made before 1575, which were in the Gdańsk State Archives before World War II, as well as the inventories in the Lüneburg City Archives, list the clothing, jewellery and silverware belonging to the Loitz family. From his marriage to Beata von Dassel, a daughter was born, also named Beata (1562-1616). On October 27, 1568, the father bought his six-year-old daughter a bracelet, and on March 29, 1570, he also bought a small spinning wheel as a useful toy. In 1591 she married Hartwig von Witzendorff (1555-1628), and her dowry included many valuable objects, including four small enamelled gold chains from France, a gold bracelet from Paris and a silver belt from Nuremberg. Hans Loitz also purchased silver tableware in Nuremberg, for example in January 1569 two large drinking vessels, two lidded vessels, a small jug and other vessels from the jeweller Pancratius. He brought this gilded silverware, worth 375 florins, to the royal court in Lublin (Dies hat Juncker Hans mit sich an den koniglichen hoff gegen Lublin genommenn). In 1572, Stefan Loitz owned 57 gold rings, most of them set with sapphires, emeralds and other precious stones. Another 38 gold rings were sewn onto velvet as clothing jewelry (after "Danziger und Lüneburger Inventare der Kaufmannsfamilie Loitz ..." by Bettina Schröder‑Bornkampf, p. 254-255, 270-272). Sigismund Augustus' banker clearly shared the monarch's passion for jewellery. The portraits of the "Fuggers of the North" were undoubtedly as splendid as their Augsburg counterparts. However, the only surviving portrait is that of Michael II and his son Hans IV, kneeling in splendid armour, as donors, in an epitaph from 1561 in St. Mary's Church in Gdańsk. The portraits of the royal bankers were undoubtedly also in Polish collections. In the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków there is a fine portrait of a man holding gloves and a small red book, attributed to Barthel Bruyn the Elder (1493-1555), a German Renaissance painter active in Cologne (oil on panel, 47.5 x 33.8 cm, inv. MNK XII-236, inscription: ANNO DNI. 1537. / ÆTATIS SVE . 30 :). Barthel was probably the son of a painter Bruyn, who was working in Haarlem in 1490. He received his training from his brother-in-law Jan Joest van Calcar (died 1519), during which time he became friends with the painter Joos van Cleve, who had a lasting influence on his painting style. Bruyn may have worked with Jan Joest in Haarlem and Werden before moving to Cologne in 1512. In addition to his religious works, Bruyn was also a good portrait painter. Although his models are considered to be the inhabitants of Cologne and the surrounding area, he also painted the portrait of Cardinal Bernardo Clesio (1484-1539), Bishop of Trent, one of the major political figures of the early 16th century, preserved in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (inv. GG 977). The portrait of Clesio is considered to have been made in 1531, while he was in Cologne for the election of Ferdinand I as Roman King. In 1538 Bruyn painted the portraits of Anne of Cleves (1515-1557), her brother William (1516-1592) and sister Amalia (1517-1586). Like Joos van Cleve, who created the altar of St. Reinhold for the Brotherhood of St. Reinhold in Gdańsk (National Museum in Warsaw, inv. M.Ob.2190 MNW), Barthel undoubtedly also created works intended for export. Several of his works have been preserved in Poland, some of which may have reached Sarmatia as early as the 16th century. The most remarkable is the Resurrection of Christ, from around 1534, now in Wawel Castle (oil on panel, 142 x 78.5 cm, inv. ZKWawel 7115), which comes from the collection of Count Leon Piniński (1857-1938) in Lviv. This painting may have been the central panel of a triptych. Also at the Wawel are two wings of the triptych, attributed to Bruyn, depicting Saints Peter and Bartholomew with a male and female donor (oil on panel, 80.9 x 26.4 cm and 80.7 x 26.4 cm, inv. ZKWawel 94 and ZKWawel 95), acquired from the Miączyński-Dzieduszycki Museum in Lviv in 1931. At the National Museum in Warsaw are two more wings of the triptych with the Annunciation (tempera and oil on panel, 67 x 32.5 cm, inv. M.Ob.69 MNW, formerly 102) and Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene (tempera and oil on panel, 67.5 x 32 cm, inv. M.Ob.61 MNW, formerly 103), acquired in 1871 from the Lam collection in Warsaw. The original altarpieces were probably dismantled and partially destroyed during the wars. The Kraków "Portrait of a Man" was housed in the 19th century in the so-called Gothic House in Puławy, built between 1801 and 1809 for Princess Izabela Czartoryska (1745-1835) to house her collection of art and important Polish memorabilia. Princess Czartoryska had acquired them from various collections in the former territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The 1828 catalogue of this collection (Poczet pamiątek zachowanych w Domu Gotyckim w Puławach) lists Bruyn's painting under the number 290 as "A portrait painted in oil on wood of an unknown person, with the inscription: Anno D. 1537. ætatis suæ 30. And this proves that it is not Rej, as was believed" (Portret malowany olejno, na drzewie, nieznajomej osoby, z napisem: Anno D. 1537. ætatis suæ 30. I to dowodzi, że nie jest to Rej, jak mniemano, p. 30). The painting was probably offered or sold to Czartoryska as an effigy of the Polish poet Mikołaj Rej (1505-1569), however the poet was 32 years old in 1537 and the man in the portrait was 30 years old at that time, just like a wealthy merchant and banker Stefan Loitz, born in 1507, who could potentially be engaged in importing Bruyn's works to Sarmatia. 
Portrait of the merchant and banker Stefan Loitz (1507-1584), aged 30, by Barthel Bruyn the Elder, 1537, Czartoryski Museum in Kraków.
The Resurrection of Christ by Barthel Bruyn the Elder, ca. 1534, Wawel Royal Castle.
Portraits of Isabella Jagiellon and John Sigismund Zapolya by Jacopino del Conte and Tintoretto
Just few months after her arrival to Hungary, on July 7, 1540 in Buda Isabella Jagiellon gave birth to her only son John Sigismund Zapolya. 15 days after his birth, his father died suddenly on July 22, 1540 and the infant John Sigismund was elected king by a Hungarian noble assembly in Buda and Isabella as his regent. The bishop of Oradea, George Martinuzzi (Frater Georgius), took over the guardianship. John Sigismund claim to the throne was challenged by Ferdinand I of Austria. Under the pretext of wanting to protect John's interests, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent had his troops invade central Hungary in 1541 and occupy Buda.
After the Hungarian royal court had to leave Buda, Queen Isabella settled in Lipova and then from the spring of 1542 to the summer of 1551 in the former episcopal palace in Alba Iulia in Transylvania. Isabella was young, noted for her beauty, and scolded for her expensive tastes. She began reconstruction of the former bishop's palace in Alba Iulia in the Renaissance style. This decade was a period of unceasing hostilities and fierce disputes with Martinuzzi. Isabella kept a regular correspondence with her Italian relatives including her third cousin, Ercole II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara and her close advisor was Giovanni Battista Castaldo, an Italian mercenary leader (condottiere), First Marquis of Cassano, Imperial general and commander in the service of Emperor Charles V and his younger brother, Archduke Ferdinand I. Castaldo was a patron of arts and his preserved effigies were created by the best artists connected with the Spanish court - Titian (portrait in private collection), Antonis Mor (portrait in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum) and Leone Leoni (bust in the Church of San Bartolomeo in Nocera Inferiore and a medal in the Wallace Collection). A portrait of Castaldo, made after Titian's original between 1545 and 1560, is in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Kassel (oil on panel, 45.6 x 35.1 cm, inv. SM 1.1.939), where several portraits of the Jagiellons, identified by me, are located. Like the portraits of the Jagiellons, the painting comes from the old landgravial collections. This portrait of Castaldo is close to the style of the Flemish painter Gillis Claeissens (1526-1605) and the inscription in the upper right corner confirms the identity of the model (le seigneür • Joan • Bapt). Among the closest stylistically, we can mention two portraits of nobles in armor, one from the collection of Mentmore Towers (The Weiss Gallery in 2018), the other sold to the Groeningemuseum in Bruges in 2021. In July 1551, facing superior forces, Isabella surrendered and she agreed to give up Transylvania in exchange for Silesian duchies (Opole, Racibórz, Ziębice, Ząbkowice Śląskie) and other territories offered by Ferdinand. The Silesian duchies turned out to be ruined after the earlier rule of the Hohenzollerns, to whom Ferdinand handed them over for 20 years in exchange for a loan. There was not even a residence that could accommodate Isabella's court. She departed towards Poland where she lived with her family for the next five years. To provide her with income, her brother granted her Krzepice and Sanok, while her mother gave her Wieluń. She returned to Transylvania in 1556 with her son. Isabella surrounded herself with foreigners - primarily Italians and Poles. Her secretary was Paolo Savorgnano of Cividale del Friuli and personal physician Giorgio Biandrata, who specialized in gynecology. In 1539 Biandrata published a medical treatise on gynecology entitled Gynaeceorum ex Aristotele et Bonaciolo a Georgio Blandrata medico Subalpino noviter excerpta de fecundatione, gravitate, partu et puerperio, a compilation taken from the writings of Aristotle and from Enneas muliebris by Ludovico Bonaccioli, dedicated to Queen Bona Sforza and her daughter, Isabella Jagiellon. In 1563 John Sigismund Zapolya made him his personal physician and councilor. Biandrata was a Unitarian and one of the co-founders of the Unitarian Churches in Poland and Transylvania. Besides Castaldo and Biandrata, several other Italians played a role in strengthening the cultural and economic ties between the peninsula and Transylvania. Among them was Captain Giovanni Andrea Gromo (1518 - after 1570) from Bergamo, who arrived on May 1, 1564 and resided there until April 6, 1565. The Jesuit Massimo Milanesi (1529-1588), secretary to Bishop Piotr Myszkowski (ca. 1505-1591), was among Biandrata's collaborators in the 1580s. He was sent to Transylvania from Poland in 1582, to build Jesuit colleges there. Marcello Squarcialupi (ca. 1538-1599), originally from Piombino, an Italian physician, astronomer and Protestant, settled in 1578 in Wrocław in Silesia and then in Transylvania, becoming Stephen Bathory's physician between 1571-1586 (compare "I rapporti tra il Granducato di Toscana e il Principato di Transilvania ..." by Gianluca Masi, p. 28-31, 33-34). In 1549, Antonio da Venezia transported various goods from Braşov in Transylvania to Wallachia for a sum of 240 florins and in 1563 John Sigismund Zapolya granted safe conduct to Pietro Francesco Perusini from Milan. Many Italian architects were active at that time in Transylvania. The sources mention Martino di Spazio, active in Timişoara in 1552 and Alessandro da Urbino, called to Transylvania in 1552, Andrea di Trevisano in 1554, Francesco da Pozzo from Milan, also in 1554, Antonio da Spazio and Alessandro Cavallini, Cesare Baldigara in Satu Mare in 1559, Filippo Pigafetta, Domenico da Bologna in Gherla, Antonio di Bufalo and Paolo da Mirandola in Alba Iulia in 1561 (after "Italici in Transilvania tra XIV e XVI secolo" by Andrea Fara, p. 347-350). The lack of painters indicates that the majority of the paintings were imported, since the hypothesis that the Italians present in Transylvania forgot this important part of the activity of their compatriots would be unfounded. According to "The Art of Love: an Imitation of Ovid, De Arte Amandi" by William King, published in London in 1709 (page XXI), "Isabella Queen of Hungary, about the year 1540, shewed to Petrus Angelus Barcæus [Pier Angelio Bargeo], when he was at Belgrade, a silver pen with this inscription, Ovidii Nasonis Calamus; denoting that it had belonged to Ovid. This had not long before been found amongst some old ruins, and the esteemed it as a venerable piece of antiquity" (also in: "The Original Works of William King", published in 1776, p. 114). This fragment give some impression of the quality of patronage and collection of Isabella. Portrait of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest was painted in the style of Andrea Mantegna, an Italian painter and a student of Roman archeology born in Isola di Carturo in the Venetian Republic, who probably never visited Hungary. A portrait of Matthias' son, John Corvinus, in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich is attributed to Baldassare Estense, a painter who worked at the court of the Dukes of Este in Ferrara from 1471 to 1504 and who probably also never visited Hungary. Similar is the case of medal with bust of Queen Beatrice d'Aragona of Naples, Matthias's third wife in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, created in the style of Giovanni Cristoforo Romano, a sculptor born in Rome who later worked as medallist for the courts of Ferrara and Mantua. After Isabella's death on September 15, 1559 John Sigismund took control of the country. He spoke and wrote in eight languages: Hungarian, Polish, Italian, Latin, Greek, Romanian, German and Turkish. He was a passionate lover of books, as well as music and dance and could play a number of musical instruments. Despite his slim build he adored hunting and made use of the spear on such occasions. He converted from Catholicism to Lutheranism in 1562 and from Lutheranism to Calvinism in 1564. Around five years later, he became the only Unitarian monarch in history and in 1568 he proclaimed freedom of religion in Turda. In the Treaty of Speyer of 1570 between John Sigismund and the Emperor, Transylvania was recognized as an independent Principality under vassalage to the Ottomans and John Sigismund renounced his royal title. After John Sigismund's death on March 14, 1571, his uncle Sigismund II Augustus, King of Poland, and his aunts inherited a portion of his treasures. Papal nuncio Vincenzo dal Portico reported from Warsaw to Rome on August 15, 1571 about the enormous value of the inheritance valued by some at 500,000 thalers, which the king denied, claiming that it was worth only 80,000 thalers. Polish legation returning from Alba Iulia at the beginning of August 1571 brought only some of the valuables to Warsaw, including a great number of gold and silver objects and jewellery, including "1 crown with which the queen was crowned; 1 golden scepter; 1 golden apple" (1 corona, qua regina coronata est; 1 sceptrum aureum; 1 pomum aureum), "4 large, ancient and old-fashioned vases" (4 magnae, antiquae et vetustae amphorae), but also some paintings like "the golden altar, in which is the image of the Blessed Mary, valued at one hundred and forty-eight Hungarian florins" (altare aureum, in quo effigies Beatae Mariae, aestimatum centum quadraginta octo item Ungaricorum) or "portrait of Gastaldi - 4 fl. in the currency" (item Gastaldi effigies - 4 fl. in moneta), perhaps the effigy of Giacomo Gastaldi (ca. 1500-1566), an Italian astronomer and cartographer, who created maps of Poland and Hungary or Giovanni Battista Castaldo. "The image of Castaldi in gilt silver frame" (Imago Castaldi ex argento inaurato fuso), possibly even the same effigy by Titian sold by the Dickinson Gallery, was included in the list of items inherited by the king and his sisters. Among the inheritance, there was also an effigy of Queen Bona, mentioned in the letter of Queen of Sweden Catherine Jagiellon to her sister Sophia, dated August 22, 1572 in Stegeborg. "The remains of the legacy of the infanta, which will soon be here, is worth 70 to 80 thousand thalers" (vi resta il legato, della infanta, che sara presto qua che e di valore di 70 in 80 millia tallari) added dal Portico in his message about the inheritance of Intanta Anna Jagiellon (after Katarzyna Gołąbek, "Spadek po Janie Zygmuncie Zápolyi w skarbcu Zygmunta Augusta"). The painting of Madonna and Child with Saint John and angels in the National Museum in Warsaw, attributed to Jacopino del Conte, was purchased in 1939 from F. Godebski (oil on panel, 145 x 101 cm, inv. M.Ob.639 MNW). The effigy of the Virgin is identical with portrait of Isabella Jagiellon in the Samek Art Museum. The painting was therefore commissioned shortly after the birth of Isabella's son in 1540. Both paintings were painted on wood panel and are stylistically very close to Florentine Mannerist painters Pontormo, Bronzino or Francesco Salviati. In 1909 in the Przeworsk collection of Prince Andrzej Lubomirski, who also owned Marco Basaiti's Portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus, there was a painting (oil on wood, 53.5 x 39 cm) attributed to 16th century Florentine school, "maybe Jacopo Carrucci called Jacopo da Pontormo (1494-1557)", depicting Madonna and Child (after "Katalog wystawy obrazów malarzy dawnych i współczesnych urządzonej staraniem Andrzejowej Księżny Lubomirskiej" by Mieczysław Treter, item 34, p. 11). Among the few depictions of the Queen of Hungary and Croatia known before this article, the most interesting are probably those included in the Süleymanname ("Book of Suleiman"), an illustration of the life and achievements of Sultan Suleiman I the Magnificent (1494-1566), now preserved in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul and probably made around 1555. One of the miniatures decorated with gold depicts Isabella with her son John Sigismund before the Sultan in Buda on August 29, 1541. In the miniature, the members of the young John Sigismund's entourage are identical in number to that of Isabella's advisors, also mentioned by name in other historical sources. The miniature is unique in Ottoman art, as there is no other example of a female sovereign in conversation with the Sultan. Some interpreters consider the possibility that such an honour for Isabella was intended as a tribute to Suleiman's wife, Roxelana, claimed to be "a sister of King Sigismund". Another exceptional element of this representation is that the queen and her son are depicted in the usual manner of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus (after "A magyar történelem oszmán-török ábrázolásokban" by Géza Fehér, p. 86). In the National Gallery in London there is a portrait of approximately ten years old boy (oil on panel, 129 x 61 cm, NG649), also attributed to Jacopino del Conte, in a rich princely costume similar to that visible in a portrait of 19 years old Archduke Ferdinand (1529-1595), governor of Bohemia, son of Anna Jagellonica and Ferdinand I, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, painted by Jakob Seisenegger in 1548. It was also painted on wooden panel. According to Gallery's description, "although full-length portraits were common in Venice and its states, where pictures were normally painted on canvas, they were rare in Florence where painting on wooden panels persisted longer", it is therefore possible that it was created by a Florentine painter active or trained in Venice, like Salviati who created a portrait of Isabella's brother king Sigismund II Augustus (Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte). The portrait of a boy in London was initially attributed to Pontormo, Bronzino or Salviati and was purchased in Paris in 1860 from Edmond Beaucousin. It was formerly in the collection of the Duke of Brunswick, while in 1556 when Isabella returned with her son to Transylvania, her mother Bona departed through Venice to Bari in southern Italy, Isabella's younger sister Sophia Jagiellon, married Duke Henry V and departed to Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, taking a large dowry and undoubtedly portraits of the members of the royal family. A copy of this painting, very Venetian in style, probably dating from the 19th century is in a private collection in the United States (oil on canvas, 134.6 x 59.7 cm, Thomaston Place Auction Galleries in Thomaston, Maine, August 24, 2024, lot 2330). The same boy, albeit a little older, was also depicted in a painting which was before 1917 in Wojciech Kolasiński's collection in Warsaw, included in the catalogue of his collection sold in Berlin (oil on canvas (?), 76 x 55 cm, "Sammlung des verstorbenen herrn A. von Kolasinski - Warschau", Volume 2, item 102). It was painted against a green background and attributed to Jacopo Pontormo. The boy has an order on his chest, similar to the cross of the Knights Hospitaller (Knights of Malta), enemies of the Ottomans, like the cross visible on the coat of the 12-year-old Ranuccio Farnese (1530-1565), who was created prior titular of the Venice Priory of the Order in 1540, in his portrait by Titian, or to the cross of the Order of the Golden Spur, which was frequently awarded by Hungarian monarchs, like in 1522, when István Bárdi was made a knight of the golden spur by king Louis II in presence of several high ranked noble gentlemen. The style is also close to that of Jacopino del Conte, as in the Portrait of a man, three-quarter length, before a green curtain from the Palazzo Capponi in Florence (Dorotheum in Vienna, June 9, 2020, lot 21), although blurred brushstrokes visible in an old photo may suggest that it was a copy by the Venetian painter. The same boy can be identified in another painting by del Conte, which is probably in a private collection (canvas, 18 x 13.5 cm). This small painting was attributed to Jacopino by Federico Zeri (1921-1998) in April 1980 (Fototeca Zeri, Numero scheda 15689). He was finally depicted as a grown-up man in a painting by Jacopo Tintoretto, which was later in the collection of the Spanish Ambassador in Rome and later Viceroy of Naples, Don Gaspar Méndez de Haro, 7th Marquis of Carpio, as his initials D.G.H. are inscribed on the reverse of the canvas with a ducal crown (oil on canvas, 108 x 77 cm, Sotheby's London, July 6, 2011, lot 58). The painting was later in the collection of Prince Brancaccio in Rome and was sold at an auction in London in 2011. According to Catalogue Note (Sotheby's): "The unusual hat with its ornate brooch was not commonly seen on Venetian sitters of this period and has led some to suggest that the sitter was a visitor to Venice rather than a native of the city". If John Sigismund's uncle Sigismund Augustus, commissioned his effigies in Tintoretto's workshop in Venice, the same could John Sigismund. Another contender for the Hungarian crown, Ferdinand of Austria, also commissioned his effigies abroad, like a portrait by Lucas Cranach the Elder in Güstrow Palace, dated '1548' or a portrait by Titian from Spanish royal collection, created in mid-16th century, both most probably basing on some preparatory, study drawings and not seeing the model. In all three portraits the boy/man bears great resemblance to effigies of John Sigismund's paternal aunt, Barbara Zapolya, Queen of Poland, and his mother by Cranach and his workshop. 
Portrait of Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559), Queen of Hungary as Madonna and Child with Saint John and angels by Jacopino del Conte, ca. 1540, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of Giovanni Battista Castaldo (1493-1563) by Gillis Claeissens after Titian, ca. 1545-1560, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Kassel.
Portrait of John Sigismund Zapolya (1540-1571), King of Hungary as a child by Jacopino del Conte, ca. 1550, National Gallery in London.
Portrait of John Sigismund Zapolya (1540-1571), King of Hungary as a child by unknown painter after Jacopino del Conte, 19th century (?) after original from about 1550, Private collection.
Portrait of John Sigismund Zapolya (1540-1571), King of Hungary, as a boy, from the Kolasiński collection by Jacopino del Conte or follower, ca. 1556, Private collection. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of John Sigismund Zapolya (1540-1571), King of Hungary, as a boy by Jacopino del Conte, ca. 1556, Private collection. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of John Sigismund Zapolya (1540-1571), King of Hungary by Tintoretto, 1560s, Private collection.
Portraits of Hurrem Sultan and her daughter Mihrimah by Titian and workshop
"May Allah grant Your Royal Majesty long life and make one day a thousand days. The humbled one conveys: When I received your letter filled with love, I was so happy and glad that it is difficult to express it in words. [...] Along with this letter of sympathy, so as not to be empty words, we send two pairs of shirts and trousers with belts, six handkerchiefs and hand and face towels. We ask you to accept and enjoy them, even though the clothes sent are not worthy of you. God willing, next time I'll make them more ornate. In conclusion: may your God grant you long life, and may your state endure forever. Haseki Sultan", is a letter of 1549 (956) from Hurrem Sultan (ca. 1504-1558), the chief consort and legal wife of the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, to elected monarch of Poland-Lithuania Sigismund II Augustus (Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw, regest KDT, nr 103). A gift in the form of underwear is an expression of special intimacy between the sultana and the king, who wore shirts made by his sisters (according to documents from 1545 and September 1547).
Hurrem, "the joyful one" in Persian, is known to Europeans as Roxelana - from Roxolania, Ptolemy's name for Ruthenia (especially Ukraine), then part of Poland-Lithuania. According to Samuel Twardowski's "Important legation" (Przeważna legacya iaśnie oświeconego książęcia Krzysztopha Zbaraskiego ...), published in 1633 in Kraków, she was a daughter of Ukrainian Orthodox priest from Rohatyn and she was taken prisoner by the Tatars (z Rochatyna popa była córa, / Oddana niewolnicą do szaraju). She conquered the heart of the sultan, who in 1526 conquered Buda, the capital of Hungary, ending the rule of the Jagiellons in this part of Europe. Twardowski claim that the captive reportedly resorted to witchcraft: "And thus he will make her free / And allow her to his private rooms and his bed; But it was not enough for cunning Ruthenian girl / Using an old Karaite woman for this, / Through stealth toss and hot spells / She put the venom in Soliman's bones, / That the old man's love revived". Breaking the Ottoman tradition, he married Roxelana around 1533, making her his legal wife, and she was the first imperial consort to receive the title Haseki Sultan. In response to the criticism of Suleiman's subjects that he took "a sordid slave" (niewolnice podłej) as his wife, according to Twardowski, her husband claimed that she was "from the Polish country, from the royal blood comes and genus" and that she was a sister of king Sigismund (Że ją siostrą Soliman królewską nazywa [...] Ztąd Zygmunta naszego szwagrem swym mianował). It is tempting to believe that Queen Bona, who was managing Rohatyn from 1534/1535 as part of the royal domain, was behind all this and that these two women prevented further invasion of Central Europe by the Ottoman Empire. "War not to the detriment of the kingdom, but rather for defense" (Woyna nie ku skazie królestwa, ale raczey ku obronie) was the official state doctrine of "The Realm of Venus, goddess of love" - Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth under the rule of elected Queen Anna Jagiellon, daughter of Bona Sforza, though within the Kingdom itself there were men desirous of breaking it. It was published in 1594 in Kraków in Stanisław Sarnicki's "Statutes and records of Crown privileges" (Statuta y metrika przywileiow Koronnych) under an effigy of Jan Zamoyski, Great Hetman of the Crown. Hurrem Sultan had four sons named Mehmed (1521), Selim (1524), Bayezid (1525) and Cihangir (1531) and a daughter Mihrimah Sultan (1522). There was also a son Abdullah, but he died at the age of 3. As a sultana (Italian word for wife or female relative of a sultan), Roxelana exerted a very strong influence on the state policy and she supported peaceful relations with Poland-Lithuania. Apart from Sigismund Augustus (letters of 1548 and 1549), she also corresponded with his sister Isabella, Queen of Hungary (1543) and his mother Queen Bona. Jan Kierdej alias Said Beg, who was captured by the Turks during the siege of his family castle in Pomoriany in Red Ruthenia in 1498, when he was eight, traveled to Poland three times as an Ottoman envoy (1531, 1538 and 1543). When in January 1543, Kierdej came with the embassy from the sultan to Sigismund the Old, he also brought the sultana's words to Queen Bona. Both women wanted to postpone or prevent the marriage of Sigismund Augustus with archduchess Elizabeth of Austria. The Queen of Poland, known for her outstanding artistic taste, acquired works of art and jewels in many places, including Turkey (after "Klejnoty w Polsce ..." by Ewa Letkiewicz, p. 57). The direct contacts of Roxelana with the rulers of the Venetian republic are not documented, but it is in Venice that most of her fictitious or faithful liknesses were created. It can be assumed that a large part of this "production" of portraits was intended for the Polish-Lithuanian market. Many Venetians lived in Poland-Lithuania and in Turkey and many Poles were undoubtedly interested in the life of the "Ruthenian Sultana". Roxelana's son Sultan Selim II (1524-1574), known as Selim "the blond" due to his fair complexion and blond hair, took as concubine Nurbanu Sultan (Cecilia Venier Baffo), a member of a well-known Venetian patrician family, and legally married her in about 1571. Ten letters written by Nurbanu between 1578 and 1583 to several ambassadors and to the Doge preserved in Venice. According to Vasari the Venetian painter Titian, although he never visited Istanbul, was commissioned by Suleiman the Magnificent to paint his wife Roxelana (Sultana Rossa) and their daughter Mihrimah (Cameria) (after "Images on the Page ..." by Sanda Miller, p. 84). Titian's portrait of Cameria and her mother was also recorded by Ridolfi. He and his famous workshop also painted the sultan and copies of these effigies are in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and in private collection. To create the paintings, Titian had to use drawings or miniatures sent from Turkey. After World War II, only one known painted image of Queen Bona Sforza, created during her lifetime or close to it, has survived in the former territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It is a miniature from a cycle depicting the Jagiellon family (today in the Czartoryski Museum), made by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger (1515-1586) in Wittenberg, Germany in about 1553 basing on a drawing or another miniature sent from Poland-Lithuania. Interestingly, also two effigies of Ottoman Sultanas survived, one is a portrait traditionally identified as Roxelana in the Lviv Historical Museum in Ukraine and the other is a likeness of her daughter Mihrimah in the Masovian Museum in Płock in Poland (inscription: CAMARIA · SOLIMA / · IMP · / · TVR · FILIA / · ROSTANIS · BASSAE · / · VXOR · 1541, upper left). Both were created in the 16th century and come from historical collections of the former Commonwealth. The portrait in Lviv is small painting on wood (38 x 26 cm) and comes from the collection of the Ossolineum, which received it in 1837 from Stanisław Wronowski. The effigy of Mihrimah in Płock was also painted on wood (93 x 69.7 cm) and comes from the collection of the Ślizień family deposited by them with the Radziwills in Zegrze near Warsaw during World War I. Before World War II in the Red Salon of the Zamoyski Palace in Warsaw there was a portrait of the "Turkish Sultana", burnt in 1939 along with all the furnishings of the palace (after "Ars Auro Prior" by Juliusz Chrościcki, p. 285). Such portraits are also documented in Poland-Lithuania much earlier. The 1633 inventory of Radziwill Castle in Lubcha in Belarus (Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw, 1/354/0/26/45) lists "A painting of a lady with the inscription Favorita del gran turcho" (36). The inscription in Italian indicates that the painting was most likely made in Italy. The inventory of paintings from the collection of princess Louise Charlotte Radziwill (1667-1695), drawn up in 1671, lists the following depictions of Turkish women, some of which may be by Titian: "Turkini in a turban plays the viola" (295), "A young Turkish woman with a feather" (315), "A young woman from Turkey" (316), "Turkini in a turban and in sables, a woman by her side" (418) (after "Inwentarz galerii obrazów Radziwiłłów z XVII w." by Teresa Sulerzyska). Some effigies previously considered to represent Catherine Cornaro are now identified as portraits of Roxelana, like the painting in Florence with attributes of Saint Catherine of Alexandria - breaking wheel and halo (Uffizi Gallery, oil on canvas, 102.5 x 72 cm, inv. 1890, 909). It entered the Gallery in 1773 with the attribution to Veronese, but later the Latin inscription Titiani opus - 1542 was found on the back. A very similar portrait inscribed in French ROSSA FEMME DE SOLIMAN EMPEREUR DES TURCS ("Rosa, Consort of Suleiman, Emperor of the Turks") is in the Royal Collection at Kensington Palace (inv. RCIN 406152). Her costume is also distinctly Ottoman. Another version of this painting was before 1866 in the Manfrin collection in Venice and Samuelle Levi Pollaco created an etching of the painting with inscription: CATTERINA CORNARO REGINA DI CIPRO. This painting is considered to represent "A young Turkish woman" (Giovane turca, compare "Caterina Cornaro: Last Queen of Cyprus and Daughter of Venice", ed. Candida Syndikus, Sabine Rogge, p. 54). Her outfit is slightly different, and we can see three pyramids in the background, most probably the three main pyramids at Giza in Egypt, at that time a province of the Ottoman Empire (Egypt was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1517). Eastern Orthodox Monastery of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, built by order of Byzantine emperor Justinian I at the site where Moses is supposed to have seen the burning bush, sacred to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, is also in Egypt (Sinai Peninsula). Roxelana was a daughter of an Orthodox priest, hence this monastery was undoubtedly of particular importance to her throughout the Ottoman Empire. A reduced copy of this effigy attributed to studio of Titian was sold as "Portrait of Caterina Cornaro" (oil on paper, laid down on canvas, laid down on panel, 41.9 x 28.8 cm, Christie's London, July 9, 2021, lot 214). Other bust-length version of this portrait by follower of Titian is in Knole House, Kent (oil on panel, 55.4 x 42.6 cm, inv. NT 129882). Although the Knole painting is probably based on an original by Titian and is described as "in the manner of Titian", its style is closer to the French school, particularly that of François Clouet (ca. 1510-1572), so it is possible that Clouet and his workshop copied a lost painting by Titian from a French royal or aristocratic collection. The painter used the same face in his famous Venus with a mirror, today in the National Gallery of Art in Washington (oil on canvas, 124.5 x 105.5 cm, inv. 1937.1.34). This painting remained in the possession of the artist until his death, where it might have inspired visitors to commission similar paintings for themselves, or it might have served as a model for members of the workshop to reproduce. It is also possible that he wanted to have an effigy of this beautiful woman, one of his best clients. The painting is usually dated to about 1555, however, it it possible that it was painted much earlier, because "Titian's style and pictorial technique were never uniform and could vary from one work to another, as well as from one decade to another", as noted by Peter Humfrey in the Gallery's Entry for the painting (March 21, 2019). The 1971 X-ray reveals that Titian reused a canvas that once depicted two three-quarter figures standing side by side, possibly work not accepted by a client, and he rotated the canvas 90 degrees. Fern Rusk Shapley compared the double portrait with the so-called Allegory of Alfonso d'Avalos from around 1532 (Louvre in Paris). The portrait of Alfonso d'Avalos with a page, once owned by King John III Sobieski and King Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski (J. Paul Getty Museum, inventory number 2003.486), is dated to about 1533. Giorgio Tagliaferro suggested that the double portrait was started by the young Paris Bordone while he was an assistant in Titian's studio (probably around 1516 for two years). In the mirror held by a cupid, she doesn't seem to see herself, but someone who is looking at her, most likely a man, her husband. Another cupid crowns her head with a wreath. This work is considered the finest surviving version of a composition executed in many variants by Titian and his workshop, some of the best of which are in the State Hermitage Museum, acquired in 1814 from the collection of Empress Josephine in Malmaison near Paris (oil on canvas, 130 x 105 cm, inv. ГЭ-1524), and in the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden (oil on canvas, 115 x 100 cm, inv. Gal.-Nr. 178). The way the fabric in the background was painted brings the copy in the Hermitage closer to Paris Bordone and his workshop. There is also a good copy in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne (oil on canvas, 117.5 x 101 cm, inv. Dep. 0332), which probably comes from the collection of Basil Feilding (ca. 1608-1675), 2nd Earl of Denbigh, who owned such a painting between 1643-1649. The Habsburgs of Prague and Vienna also owned a copy of this painting, as it was listed in the Theatrum Pictorium (number 93). A version which was owned by the king of Spain (lost) was copied by Peter Paul Rubens (Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, oil on canvas, 137 x 111 cm, inv. 350 (1957.5)). A good version of this painting, probably from the 19th century, is also in the National Museum in Warsaw, which houses many paintings from the old Sarmatian collections (oil on panel, 120 x 99 cm, inv. M.Ob.1940 MNW). Although this painting is considered a much later copy, it bears strong similarities to works attributed to Lambert Sustris, a Dutch painter active in Rome (around 1530-1535) and Venice (1535-1548), such as his "Venus" in the Louvre (INV 1978; MR 1129). The same woman, in similar pose and costume to the work in Florence was depicted in a painting attributed to workshop of Titian, today in the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida (oil on canvas, 99.5 x 77.5 cm, inv. SN58). It comes from the Riccardi collection in Florence, sold to Lucien Bonaparte (1775-1840), younger brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, exactly like the "Portrait of the Duchess Sforza" (Portrait of Queen Bona Sforza) by Titian. Therfore both portraits - of the Queen of Poland and the Sultana of the Ottoman Empire were most probably created at the same time in Venice and sent to Florence. She is holding a little pet, most probably a mink or a weasel, a talisman for fertility. The flower in her décolletage might indicate, that she is a bride or newly wed woman. Another version of this painting, depicting the woman in a pink-purple dress, was in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna before 1907 (oil on canvas, 90.5 x 55.9 cm). It came from the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria and was listed in the Theatrum Pictorium (number 94), just after the copy of Titian's "Venus with a Mirror". She was also depicted in another portrait by Titian (National Gallery of Art, Washington, oil on canvas, 97.8 x 73.8 cm, 1939.1.292), wearing a similar green dress, a color being symbolic of fertility. She cradles an apple in her hands, which in art often connotes female sexuality. This painting was probably owned by Michel Particelli d'Hémery (1596-1650) in Paris, France. The Franco-Ottoman Alliance, one of the longest-lasting and most important foreign alliances of France, was formed in 1536 between the King of France Francis I and the Sultan Suleiman I. Beyond doubt, the French king had likenesses of the sultan and his influential wife. In the painting held at the Centre of Visual Arts and Research (CVAR) in Nicosia, Cyprus (oil on canvas, 107 x 86.3 cm, inv. PNT-00501), the hairstyle and the colour of the costume have been changed, as if to show the woman's beautiful clothes. This portrait was sold in 1996 under the title "Portrait of a lady (Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus?)" and "After Titian". The style of this painting is close to that of Lambert Sustris. Numerous variants and copies of this portrait exist. In a similar portrait from private collection in Veneto (oil on canvas, 101 x 82 cm, Dorotheum in Vienna, October 17, 2017, lot 233) her Ottoman dress is pink, a symbol of marriage, and she is preparing her bridal wreath (similar to that visible on her head in the Washington version). The style of this painting is particularly close to Giovanni Cariani. As Cariani died in 1547, the original portraits must have been painted before that year. It would be rather unusual if a Christian noblewoman from Venice would be dressed in Ottoman attire for her wedding. Therefore, through these portraits, the "Ruthenian girl" wanted to announce to the world that she is not a concubine, but the legal wife of the Sultan. A good signed version of this portrait by Titian (TITANVS / FECIT, upper right), showing the sitter in an even more expensive gold-embroidered dress, is at Apsley House in London. Together with the so-called "Titian's Mistress" (inv. WM.1620-1948), it was originally in the Spanish royal collection (recorded as being on display in the Alcázar Palace in Madrid in 1666). It is possible that a copy of "Titian's Mistress", described as "A naked person in a red coat", was in the Radziwill collection in 1671 (item 863/43, compare "Inwentarz galerii obrazów Radziwiłłów z XVII w." by Teresa Sulerzyska). Probably a preparatory drawing (modello) for the Apsley portrait, or a ricordo (a small copy after completion of the work), made by a member of Titian's workshop, probably sent to Istanbul, is in the Louvre in Paris (INV 4712, Recto, considered a work by a follower of Paolo Veronese). After 1543 a follower of Titian, most probably Alessandro Varotari (1588-1649), known as Il Padovanino, copied other version of this painting with model holding a vase (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, oil on canvas, 99.5 x 87 cm, inv. Gal.-Nr. 173). This painting is also attributed to Bernardino Licinio. The portrait identified as Roxelana from the collection of Sir Richard Worsley in Appuldurcumbe House, Isle of Wight (1804, as by "Gentile Bellino") by follower of Titian depicts her holding a vase (oil on canvas, 110.5 x 92 cm, Sotheby's London, October 26, 2022, lot 82). Together with Latin inscription on the column "all is vanity" (OMNIA VANITAS) it might symbolize a great loss. On November 7, 1543 the eldest son of Hurrem Sultan, Prince Mehmed, died in Manisa, probably of smallpox. The sultana most probably knew Latin, as the Roman Catholic community was present in Rohatyn since the Middle Ages. Her large turban and face resemble the Lviv portrait. The style of this painting is also close to Giovanni Cariani. Another version of this composition, borrowing the pose from bridal portraits, is in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo (oil on canvas, 111 x 94 cm, inv. 58AC00827). It is attributed to the school of Giovanni Antonio de' Sacchis (ca. 1484-1539), Il Pordenone, and dated between 1540 and 1560. The page holds a tray on which there are jewels and a crown, while on the mirror, instead of a reflection, there is an inscription: OM / NIA / VANI / TAS. Smoke emerges from the vase, like a soul flying to the sky. Similar to the Lviv likeness, also the effigy of Mihrimah (Cameria) in Płock has a counterpart made by workshop of Titian, today in the Courtauld Gallery in London, a copy of a lost original by Titian (oil on canvas, 99.3 x 71.5 cm, inv. P.1978.PG.463). It comes from the collection of Count Antoine Seilern (1901-1978), an Anglo-Austrian art collector and art historian. Like her mother, she was depicted with a spiked wheel, used to identify Saint Catherine of Alexandria. A study for this portrait by Titian or his workshop is in the Albertina in Vienna (paper, 38.5 x 23.5 cm, inv. 1492). The portrait of Cameria in the Musée Fabre in Montpellier (oil on canvas, 72 x 59 cm, inv. 65.2.1) was created by Sofonisba Anguissola (signature: PINXIT SOPHONISBE ANGUSSOLA VIRGO CRE. XIII SUCC). Like Queen Bona, who successfully ruled in the world dominated by men, the "Ruthenian girl" was well aware of the power of the image and conveyed the splendor of her reign through paintings created by the Venetian workshop of Titian. 
Portrait of Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, ca. 1504-1558) as a bride by workshop of Titian, ca. 1533 or after, John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota.
Portrait of Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, ca. 1504-1558) as a bride by Titian or workshop, ca. 1533 or after, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, ca. 1504-1558) as a bride from the Theatrum Pictorium (94) by Lucas Vorsterman the Younger after Titian, 1660, Princely Court Library in Waldeck.
Portrait of Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, ca. 1504-1558) as a bride holding an apple by Titian, ca. 1533 or after, National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Portrait of Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, ca. 1504-1558) holding an apple by Lambert Sustris, ca. 1533 or after, Centre of Visual Arts and Research in Nicosia.
Portrait of Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, ca. 1504-1558) as a bride holding her bridal wreath by Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1533, Private collection.
Study drawing for portrait of Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, ca. 1504-1558) as a bride holding her bridal wreath by follower of Titian, ca. 1533 or after, Louvre Museum in Paris.
Portrait of Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, ca. 1504-1558) as a bride holding her bridal wreath by Titian, ca. 1533 or after, Apsley House in London.
Portrait of Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, ca. 1504-1558) holding a vase by follower of Titian, probably Alessandro Varotari or Bernardino Licinio, after 1543, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.
Portrait of Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, ca. 1504-1558) as Venus with a mirror by Titian, ca. 1533 or after, National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Portrait of Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, ca. 1504-1558) as Venus with a mirror by workshop of Paris Bordone, ca. 1533 or after, The State Hermitage Museum.
Portrait of Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, ca. 1504-1558) as Venus with a mirror by workshop of Titian, ca. 1533 or after, Gemäldegalerie in Dresden.
Portrait of Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, ca. 1504-1558) as Venus with a mirror by Lambert Sustris or follower, after 1533 (19th century?), National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, ca. 1504-1558) as Venus with a mirror by Peter Paul Rubens after Titian, ca. 1606-1611, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.
Portrait of Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, ca. 1504-1558) as Venus with a mirror from the Theatrum Pictorium (93) by Lucas Vorsterman the Younger after Titian, 1660, Princely Court Library in Waldeck.
Portrait of Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, ca. 1504-1558) with pyramids by Titian or workshop, ca. 1542, Private collection. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, ca. 1504-1558) as Saint Catherine of Alexandria by workshop of Titian, 1542, Uffizi Gallery.
Portrait of Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, ca. 1504-1558) by workshop of Titian, ca. 1542, Private collection.
Portrait of Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, ca. 1504-1558) by circle of François Clouet, ca. 1542, Knole House.
Portrait of Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, ca. 1504-1558) holding a vase by follower of Titian or Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1543, Private collection.
Portrait of Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, ca. 1504-1558) with a page and a mirror by the school of Il Pordenone, ca. 1543, Accademia Carrara in Bergamo.
Preparatory drawing for a portrait of Mihrimah Sultan (Cameria, 1522-1578) by Titian or workshop, after 1541, Albertina in Vienna.
Portrait of Mihrimah Sultan (Cameria, 1522-1578) as Saint Catherine of Alexandria by workshop of Titian, after 1541, Courtauld Gallery in London.
Portrait of Mihrimah Sultan (Cameria, 1522-1578) by unknown painter after Titian, after 1541, Masovian Museum in Płock.
Portrait of Mihrimah Sultan (Cameria, 1522-1578) by Sofonisba Anguissola, second half of the 16th century, Musée Fabre in Montpellier.
Portrait of royal courtier Jan Krzysztoporski by Bernardino Licinio
The interpretation of classical architecture by Venetian architect Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), known as Palladianism, revived by early 18th century British architects, become the dominant architectural style until the end of the century. The work of the architect and his effigies become highly demanded goods.
That is why an owner of a portrait of an unkown nobleman by Bernardino Licinio, possibly a painter, decided to turn it into a portrait of the famous architect. He added an inscription in Latin (ANDREAS. PALADIO. A.) and a set-square and a compass in sitter's right hand to make his "forgery" even more probable. The portrait, today in Kensington Palace, was acquired in 1762 by king George III from Joseph Smith, British Consul in Venice (oil on canvas, 100.5 x 82.5 cm, inv. RCIN 402789). Wooden attributes of a simple architect contrast sharply with opulent costume of the sitter, crimson doublet of Venetian silk, gold rings with precious stones and a coat lined with expensive Eastern fur. Also the man depicted is more Eastern type than an Italian. Such expensive, usually metal instrument, as compass is clearly exposed in the portraits of architects by Lorenzo Lotto, while in Licinio's portrait is barely visible. The little finger is a proof that the attributes were added later, as its appearance is anatomically impossible to hold a set-square and a compass. According to original inscription (ANNOR. XXIII. M.DXLI) the sitter was 23 in 1541, exactly as Jan Krzysztoporski (1518-1585), a nobleman of Nowina coat of arms from central Poland. Between 1537-1539 he studied in Lutheran Wittenberg, under the direction of Philip Melanchthon, recommended to him by "the father of Polish democracy" Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski. Then he went for further studies to Padua (entred as loannes Christophorinus), where on May 4, 1540, he was elected a counselor of the Polish nation. In January 1541, he welcomed in Treviso, close to Venice, the Chancellor Jan Ocieski (1501-1563) on his way to Rome. After returning to Poland, he was admitted to the royal court on 2 July 1545 and in 1551 he was made the royal secretary. He was an envoy of king Sigismund Augustus to Pope Julius III in 1551, to Joachim II Hector, Elector of Brandenburg in 1552 and to Isabella Jagiellon, Queen of Hungary in 1553. As a follower of Calvinism, he founded a congregation of this religion in his estate in Bogdanów, near Piotrków Trybunalski. He also had a large library in his brick fortified manor in Wola Krzysztoporska, which he built, destroyed during subsequent wars. 
Portrait of royal courtier Jan Krzysztoporski (1518-1585) by Bernardino Licinio, 1541, Kensington Palace.
Portraits of Jan Krzysztoporski, Jan Turobińczyk and Wandula von Schaumberg by Hans Mielich
Around 1536, a German painter Hans Mielich (also Milich, Muelich or Müelich), born in Munich, went to Regensburg, where he worked under the influence of Albrecht Altdorfer and the Danube School. He stayed there till 1540, when he returned to Munich. At that time, from 1539 to 1541, Regensburg was a place of meetings between representatives of the various Christian communities and debates between Catholics and Protestants, climaxing in the Regensburg Colloquy, also known as Diet of Regensburg (1541). Among the people vividly interested in the debates were Jan Łaski (Johannes a Lasco, 1499-1560), a Polish Calvinist reformer, later involved in translation project of the Radziwill Bible, who studied in Mainz in the winter of 1539/40, and Wandula von Schaumberg (1482-1545), the Princess-abbess of the Imperial Obermünster Abbey in Regensburg from 1536, who had a seat and vote in the Imperial Diet. In 1536 Mielich created a painting of Crucifixion of Christ with his monogram, date and coat of arms of the von Schaumberg family, today in the Landesmuseum in Hannover, most probably commissioned by Wandula.
A portrait of a wealthy old woman in a black dress, white cap and a wimple by Hans Mielich in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya in Barcelona, deposit of the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection, comes from the collection of a mysterious Count J. S. Tryszkiewicz in his French castle of Birre (oil on panel, 71 x 53.5 cm, inv. 295 (1957.1)). No such person and castle are confirmed in sources, however Count Jan Tyszkiewicz, who died in Paris on June 9, 1901, was owner of the Birzai Castle in Lithuania and a son of renowned art collector, Michał Tyszkiewicz. Both the family as well as the castle were known differently in different languages of the multicultural nation, hence the mistake is justified. Before the Tyszkiewicz family, Birzai Castle was the main seat of the Calvinist branch of the Radziwill family. According to inscription in German, the woman in the painting was 57 in 1539 (MEINES ALTERS IM . 57 . IAR . / 1539 / HM), exactly as Wandula von Schaumberg, who like the Radziwills was the Imperial Princess. In 1541 the artist went to Rome, probably at the instigation of Duke William IV of Bavaria. He remained in Italy till at least 1543 and after his return, on 11 July 1543 he was admitted to the Munich painters' guild. Hans was a court painter of the next Duke, Albert V of Bavaria and his wife Anna of Austria (1528-1590), daughter of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547) and younger sister of Elizabeth of Austria (1526-1545), first wife of Sigismund II Augustus. Albert and Anna were married on July 4, 1546 in Regensburg. On his way to Rome, Mielich most probably stopped in Padua, where in 1541 Andreas Hertwig (1513-1575), a member of patrician family from Wrocław, obtained the degree of doctor of both laws at the age of 28. Hertwig brought from Italy an impressive collection of law books and an Italian wife - Polixena de Corona from Padua (also Faustina in some sources). He definitely also bought from Italy his portrait painted in 1541, today in the National Museum in Wrocław, attributed to Mielich or a follower (oil and tempera on panel, 87 x 62 cm, inv. MNWr VIII-3157, inscription: ANDREAS HERTWIGK · I · V · DOCTOR / ÆTATIS SVÆ XXVIII ANNO MDXLI). Blurred lines in this painting, in comparison with other paintings by Mielich, could be the influence of Venetian painting or the effect of the interference of an assistant, perhaps Italian. After the death of his first wife, Andreas married Lukretia Boner, née Huber, owner of the splendid Wojnowice Castle near Raciborz, which was rebuilt by her first husband Jakob Boner, brother of the royal banker of Sigismund I and Bona Sforza. On December 10, 1540 Jan Ocieski of the Jastrzębiec coat of arms (1501-1563), secretary of king Sigismund I set off on a diplomatic mission from Kraków. It is possible that he was accompanied by Jan Turobińczyk (Joannes Turobinus, 1511-1575), an expert on Cicero and Ovid, who after studies in Kraków in 1538 became the secretary of the bishop of Płock and other secretary of the king, Jakub Buczacki, and for two years he moved to the bishop's court in Pułtusk. When Buczacki died on May 6, 1541, he lost his protector and moved to Kraków, where he decided to continue his studies. Jan was later ordained a priest in about 1545, he lectured on Roman law and he was elected rector of the Kraków Academy in 1561. A portrait of a man holding gloves in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg is very similar to the portrait of Andreas Hertwig in Wrocław (oil on panel, 67.2 x 49.5 cm, inv. Gm1945). According to inscription on the back, the man depicted is also Andreas Hertwig, hence the portrait is attributed to so-called Master of the Andreas Hertwig Portrait. Facial features, however, do not match and according to original inscription in Latin the man was 30 on May 8, 1541 (M D XXXXI / D VIII MAI / AETATIS XXX), exactly as Jan Turobińczyk when the news of the death of his protector could reach him in Italy and when he could decide to change his life and return to studies. Another similar portrait to the effigy of Andreas Hertwig in Wrocław is in private collection (oil on panel, 70 x 50.8 cm, Christie's New York, Auction 2135, January 28, 2009, lot 49). The young man in a rich costume was depicted against a green background. According to inscription in Latin he was 25 on November 22, 1543 (M. D. XLIII. DE. XX. NOVEMBE / .AETATIS. XXV), exactly as Jan Krzysztoporski, who around that time was still in Italy. His facial features are similar to the portrait by Bernardino Licinio created just two years earlier, in 1541 (Kensington Palace). The difference in eye color is probably due to technique and style of painting. Rings on his finger are almost identical on both paintings and coat of arms on the signet ring visible on the portrait from 1543 is very similar to Nowina coat of arms as shown in the 15th century Armorial de l'Europe et de la Toison d'or (Bibliothèque nationale de France). The letters on the signet can be read as IK (Ioannes Krzysztoporski). Also notable is the physical resemblance of the men in these three portraits, as well as their poses, which probably results from a particular way of representing the models, fashionable appearance. However, the dates on the original inscriptions indicate that they were different people. It was in Munich, between 1552 and 1555, that Mielich created one of his most important works, the Jewel Book (Kleinodienbuch) of Anna of Austria, Duchess of Bavaria, now in the Bavarian State Library (BSB-Hss Cod.icon. 429). This picture inventory contains original-size images of 71 pieces of jewellery belonging to the Duchess and other members of the family. One of the few jewels described in this inventory is the gold pendant with Nereus and Doris (symbolizing the fertility of the ocean), two rubies, two sapphires, an emerald and a pearl, as well as birds and a squirrel on the reverse painted in enamel, donated by the younger sister of Duchess Anna - Catherine of Austria (1533-1572), Queen of Poland in 1553, probably shortly after her coronation (15 Das Kleinat 53 / Der Königin Katarina von poln auf die ..., p. 33r, 33v). In 1556 Mielich made magnificent full-length portraits of Duchess Anna and her husband Albert V, which were sent to her family, now preserved in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (inv. GG 3847, GG 3846). Similar portraits were probably also sent to Sarmatia. At that time, artists from friendly courts in Europe travelled to different places, such as a Polish singer who was paid 4 florins for a performance in 1570 at the court of Albert V in Munich, so it is possible that Mielich also travelled to Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia or at least accepted commissions from Munich after 1553. At the beginning of the 17th century, the court painter of the Polish-Lithuanian Vasas was Christian Melich, who, according to some sources, came from Antwerp. This, however, does not exclude the possibility that he was a relative of Hans Mielich. He created one of the oldest views of Warsaw, now in Munich, most probably from the dowry of Anna Catherine Constance Vasa. 
Portrait of Princess-abbess Wandula von Schaumberg (1482-1545), aged 57, from the Radziwill Castle in Birzai by Hans Mielich, 1539, Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya.
Portrait of Andreas Hertwig (1513-1575), aged 28 by Hans Mielich or circle, 1541, National Museum in Wrocław.
Portrait of Jan Turobińczyk (1511-1575), aged 30 by Hans Mielich, 1541, Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.
Portrait of Jan Krzysztoporski (1518-1585), aged 25 by Hans Mielich, 1543, Private collection.
Gold pendant with Nereus and Doris from the Jewel Book of the Anna of Austria (1528-1590), Duchess of Bavaria, offered by Catherine of Austria (1533-1572), Queen of Poland in 1553 by Hans Mielich, 1553-1555, Bavarian State Library in Munich.
Reverse of gold pendant with Nereus and Doris from the Jewel Book of the Anna of Austria (1528-1590), Duchess of Bavaria, offered by Catherine of Austria (1533-1572), Queen of Poland in 1553 by Hans Mielich, 1553-1555, Bavarian State Library in Munich.
Portrait of Sigismund Augustus in armour by Giovanni Cariani
"Come poor people with joy and drink without charge the water that Bona, Queen of Poland provided" (Pauperes sitientes venite cum laetitia et sine argento. Bibite aquas, quas Bona regina Poloniae preparavit) is the Latin inscription on one of the two cisterns which is still near the Bari Cathedral, the other, of which there are no traces today, was located in the area of the Church of San Domenico and only the inscription is known (Bona regina Poloniae preparavit piscinas. Pauperes sitientes venite cum laetitia et sine argento). The queen was a great benefactress to this archiepiscopal city and, among other timely gifts, increased the number of public fountains. From Poland she directed many interventions in her duchy to improve the life and the prosperity of the inhabitants, building canals, wells, aided churches with donations.
Bona also tried to expand her possessions in Italy. In 1536 she bought the city of Capurso and in 1542 she also bought the county of Noia and Triggiano. To reach the amount necessary for the purchase of the county (68,000 ducats) she imposed new taxes, and on this occasion the municipality of Bari complained that Modugno near Bari is "praised and loved more than this city (Bari) from Y.M. (Your Majesty)" (laudata e amata più di questa città (Bari) dalla M.V. (maestà vostra)). The queen cared very much about her hereditary principalities of Bari and Rossano and wanted her son to inherit them. Among the many Italians at the Polish-Lithuanian royal court, many came from Bari. In the 1530s and 1540s, there were two physicians from Bari at the court - Giacomo Zofo (Jacobus Zophus Bariensis), who was called Sacrae Mtis phisicus in 1537, and Giacomo Ferdinando da Bari (Jacobus Ferdinandus Bariensis), who published two treatises in Kraków (De foelici connubio serenissimi Ungariae regis Joannis et S. Isabellae Poloniae regis filiae, 1539 and De regimine a peste praeservativo tractatus, 1543). In 1537 there were also Scipio Scholaris Barensis Italus, royal secretary and provost of Sandomierz, Cleofa, sub-cantor of the Cathedral of St. Nicholas in Bari (Cleophas Succantor Ecclac S. Nicolai, Barensis) who was the brother of Sigismondo, the royal chef, Teodoro de Capittelis and Sabino de Saracenis. On Bona's recommendation, in 1545, the lawyer Vincenzo Massilla (or Massilio, 1499-1580) developed the Bari code of customary law (Commentarii super consuetudinibus praeclarae civitatis Bari) written in Kraków during the years of residence at the Polish court and completed in Padua, first published in 1550 by Giacomo Fabriano and then by Bernardino Basa in Venice in 1596. Massilla was a well-known jurist and become advisor of the queen. In 1538 he held the position of governor of Rossano and moved to Kraków as auditor general for the feudal states held by Bona Sforza in southern Italy. She also sought permission to appoint the bishops of Bari and Rossano, but the pope refused. In 1543 Queen Bona returned to her plan of the sale of the Duchy of Rossano and for this purpose the representative of the city of Rossano - Felice Brillo (Britio) came to Poland. Few years later, on August 30, 1549, Luigi Zifando from Bari (Siphandus Loisius hortulanus Italus Barensis) was admitted as the royal gardener. Several people from Modugno near Bari were in service of the queen and later of her son Sigismund Augustus, like Girolamo Cornale, who died in Warsaw, and priests Vito Pascale and mentioned Scipione Scolaro or Scolare (Scholaris). When in Poland, in 1550, Pascale built himself a palace in Modugno (Palazzo Pascale-Scarli), the architecture of which is attributed to the influence of the Florentine architect Bartolomeo Berecci working in Poland. The court of Bona's son Sigismund Augustus in Vilnius was also dominated by Italians, like two singers of the queen, Erasmo and Silvester, incisor gemmarum Jacopo Caraglio, pharmacist Floro Carbosto, locksmith - Domenico, builders - Gasparus and Martinus, sculptor Bartholomeo, musician Sebaldus, harper Franciscus, caretaker of the Italian royal stallions Marino, goldsmiths: Antonio, Vincentino, Christoforus and Bartholomeo, tailor Pietro and the bricklayer Benedictus. The king favored the Italian style in his attire, and he usually wear a short Italian caftan of black silk or a German one of black cloth from Vicenza over the shirt. The most expensive part of his outfit was a sable cap, a germak coat made of black damask, lined with dormouse fur, and an Italian, gilded, sword, "a gift from Bari". Among the expensive furnishings of his three-room apartment in the new Vilnius Castle were Venetian mirrors - one of them in precious frames decorated with pearls and silver. Venetian glass was delivered to the court by Vilnius merchants, Morsztyn and Łojek (after "Zygmunt August: Wielki Książę Litwy do roku 1548" by Ludwik Kolankowski, p. 329, 332). In the Parmeggiani Gallery in Reggio Emilia (Musei Civici) there is a "Portrait of a warrior", attributed to Giovanni Cariani, who died in Venice in 1547 (oil on canvas, 95 x 77 cm, inventory number 76). It comes from the collection of Luigi Francesco Giovanni Parmeggiani (1860-1945), an Italian anarchist, forger, art dealer and collector, who before inaugurating his gallery in 1928 in his hometown, lived mainly in Brussels, London and Paris. The young man is holding his hand on a helmet. His expensive suit of armour indicates that he is a member of the aristocracy, a knight, and the landscape behind him undoubtedly represents his castle. Only one tower is visible and a church to the right. This layout and shape of the towers correspond with the Bari Castle (Castello Normanno-Svevo, Ciastello) and Bari Cathedral (Arciuescouato) as seen from the "Royal Gate" (Porta Reale) and depicted in an early 18th century print by Michele Luigi Muzio (structures C, A and H). The man's face is very reminiscent of the images of the young Sigismund Augustus, who at that time was considered as a successor of his mother in the Duchy of Bari. The paintings of the Venetian school are among the most valuable linked to Bari or the region - Saint Peter the Martyr from the Santa Maria la Nova Church in Monopoli by Giovanni Bellini, Throning Madonna and Child with Saint Henry of Uppsala and Saint Anthony of Padua by Paris Bordone or the Virgin and Child with Saint Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Ursula with a donor from Ardizzone family from the Bari Cathedral by Paolo Veronese (Pinacoteca metropolitana di Bari). 
Portrait of Sigismund II Augustus in armour against the view of the castle in Bari by Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1543, Parmeggiani Gallery in Reggio Emilia.
Portrait of Barbara Radziwill, Elizabeth of Austria and Sigismund Augustus as Flora, Juno and Jupiter by Paris Bordone
Ovid in Fasti V relates the story of Juno, queen of the gods, who annoyed with her husband Jupiter for producing Minerva from his own head by the stroke of Vulcan's axe, complained to Flora, goddess of fertility and blossoming plants. Flora, gave her secretly a flower, by only touching which women immediately became mothers. It was by this means that Juno gave birth to the god Mars. The Renaissance represented Flora under two aspects, Flora Primavera, embodiment of genuine marital love, and Flora Meretrix, prostitute and courtesan whom Hercules won for a night in a wager.
Because Hercules' mother was mortal, Jupiter put him to the breast of his wife, knowing that Hercules would acquire immortality through her milk and according to the myth the droplets of milk crystallized to form the Milky Way. As Juno Lucina (Juno the light-bringer) she watched over pregnancy, childbirth, and mothers and as Juno Regina (Juno the Queen) she was the patron goddess of Rome and the Roman Empire. The great popularity of Ovid's works in Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia, poetically called Sarmatia, left its mark on the character of the decorations of many buildings across the country, including royal residences, which were undoubtedly filled with many Ovidian motifs. Those created after the Deluge, in the 1680s, preserved in the Wilanów Palace and the Lubomirski bathing pavilion in Warsaw (based on the engravings by Abraham van Diepenbeeck). "In the 16th century, Ovid's links with Sarmatia gave rise to the legend that he had lived in Poland, had learned to speak the Polish language, and had died and been buried near the Black Sea, that is, within the borders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was claimed that Ovid was the first Polish poet, and his 'naturalisation' and the 'discovery of his grave' shaped the consciousness of the ruling classes and the elites of the Commonwealth" (after "Ovidius inter Sarmatas" by Barbara Hryszko, p. 453, 455). His famous "Metamorphoses" dealt with the transformation of human beings into other entities and the deification of the descendants of Venus, goddess of love. Latin works of Andrzej Krzycki (Andreas Cricius, 1482-1537), secretary to Queen Bona, were openly inspired by the Ovid's oeuvre and Piotr Wężyk Widawski in his paraphrase of a fragment of "Metamorphoses" entitled "Philomela [...] Under the image of the goddess Venus" (Philomela. Morale. To iest S. Ksiąg rozmáitych Autorow wykład obycżáyny. Pod Obraz Boginiey Wenery), published in Kraków in 1586, "wrote not only that Ovid was very popular and widely known in Poland but also expressed his belief that Ovid had come to Poland, where he had learned the Polish language and had become a Pole". In the painting by Paris Bordone in the Hermitage Museum (oil on canvas, 108 x 129 cm, inventory number ГЭ-163), Flora receives flowers and herbs from Cupid, the god of desire and erotic love and son of Mars and Venus. Cupid is also crowning the head of Juno with a wreath. The queen of the gods is taking the herbs from the hand of Flora, hoping she was unnoticed by her husband Jupiter Dolichenus, the "oriental" king of the gods holding an axe, who stands behind her. The painting comes from the collection of Sir Robert Walpole at Houghton Hall, sold to Empress Catherine II of Russia in 1779. "The daughter of the King of Rome is approaching, your bride" (propinquat Romani Regis filia, sponsa tibi), praised Elizabeth of Austria (1526-1545) in a poem "To Sigismund the Second Augustus, King of Poland" (AD SIGISMVNDVM SECVNDVM AVGVSTVM POLONORVM REGEM) the poet Klemens Janicki (1516-1543), included in his Epitalamii serenissimo regi Poloniae Domino Sigismundo Augusto ... and published in 1543 in Kraków in the printing house of Helena Unglerowa (Cracouiae, apud viduam Floriani. An. 1543.). He also adds ambiguous words: "Let virtue be rewarded and evil punished. Let there be no disorder, born only to destroy the glory of Venus, the love of the womb" (Sint sua virtvti præmia pæna malis. Sit nullo tibi turba loco, quæ perdere tantum Nata merum est: Veneris gloria: ventris amor). Janicki, the "poet laureate" (poeta laureato), during his stay in Venice in the years 1538-1540, found himself among the humanists grouped around Cardinal Bembo and where he became friends with two future eminent theorists of the art, Daniele Barbaro and Lodovico Dolce, to whom he later dedicated some epigrams (compare "Sebastiano Serlio a sztuka polska ..." by Jerzy Kowalczyk, p. 288). King Sigismund Augustus' courtier, the Spanish poet Pedro Ruiz de Moros (d. 1571), further praised the royal couple in his De apparatu nuptiarum ..., published in Kraków in 1543: "Queen of the Austrian nation, of the noble royal blood, ethereal Jupiter of favorable winds, affirms joy, and a chamber to enjoy through the years, a royal chamber of the royal husband Sigismund" (Regina, Austriacum genus, alto a sanguine Regu, Iuppiter etherea quam longum vescier aura, Annuat, & thalamo multos gaudere per annos, Regali thalamo, SISMVNDO Rege marito). The message of the painting is clear, thanks to the mistress the queen is fertile. The protagonists are therfore "oriental" king Sigismund Augustus as Jupiter, his first wife queen Elizabeth of Austria, daughter of King of the Romans as Juno, and Sigismund Augustus' mistress Barbara Radziwill as Flora. 
Portrait of Barbara Radziwill, Elizabeth of Austria and Sigismund Augustus as Flora, Juno and Jupiter by Paris Bordone, 1543-1551, The State Hermitage Museum.
Portraits of Barbara Radziwill and her mother as Venus Pudica by Vincent Sellaer and circle of Michiel Coxie
Before 1550, King Sigismund Augustus ordered fabrics from the best weaving workshops in Brussels. The preserved tapestries of this rich collection, now housed in the Wawel Royal Castle and other museums, depict biblical stories, a lush world of exotic plants and animals, the monogram of the king SA in a rich Renaissance setting and the coats of arms of Poland and Lithuania. The designs for the figurative tapestries were created by the Flemish painter Michiel Coxie (1499-1592), "much celebrated among the Flemish craftsmen" (molto fra gli artefici fiamminghi celebrato), according to Giorgio Vasari. Nicknamed the Flemish Raphael, Coxie was the court painter to Emperor Charles V and his son King Philip II of Spain, although he probably never visited Spain. He frequently drew inspiration or copied Italian masters such as Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian or Sebastiano del Piombo, but also from classical Antiquity. His Moral Fall of Humanity (Abduction of human wives by the sons of the gods) with a naked woman in the center of the composition, produced by the workshop of Jan de Kempeneer between 1548 and 1553 (Royal Castle in Warsaw, ZKW/511), is the best example.
Coxie was also a renowned portrait painter. He created the effigy of Christina of Denmark (Allen Memorial Art Museum, inventory number 1953.270) and his self-portrait as Saint George, wearing the same armor as Emperor Charles V during the Battle of Mühlberg in 1548 in a painting by Titian (Prado Museum, P00410, noticed by Roel Renmans, Flickr, February 23, 2015), in the left wing of the triptych of Saint George (Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, 373). He probably also created a copy of the mentioned equestrian portrait of the Emperor by Titian. In the National Museum in Warsaw there is an intriguing painting of a naked woman, created by Michiel Coxie's entourage, perhaps his workshop (oil on panel, 60 x 49 cm, M.Ob.2158 MNW, formerly 2007 Tc/71). It was purchased in 1971 from Stanisława Kozłowska ("Acquisitions du départment d'art étranger 1970-1981" by Jan Białostocki, p. 101, item 93). The style of this work is the same as the portrait of Queen Barbara Radziwill as Madonna with sleeping Child sold in 2020 (oil on panel, 95 x 76 cm, Sotheby's London, September 23, 2020, lot 33). The face is also the same, as if the painter used the same set of study drawings to create both works. It is said to represent the penitent Saint Mary Magdalene, because in some copies the woman was depicted with the typical attribute of this saint - an alabaster box of ointment (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art). The painting was aquired before 1979. Some copies are attributed to Bernaert de Ryckere (private collection, 70 x 50 cm) or, more idealized, to Florentine school (private collection, 62 x 52 cm). The version in the Louvre, acquired from unknown collection in Nice in 1946 (oil on panel, 73 x 55 cm, RF 1946 9), is attributed to Flemish painter. The female figure in paintings is interpreted differently as Mary Magdalene, Bathsheba, Lucretia or Cleopatra. In some cases this is supported by the corresponding attributes, but in other cases the figure appears without other explanatory objects. Researchers generally attribute the works to Frans Floris, Michiel Coxie or Vincent Sellaer and their workshops. It is possible that the original was made by an Italian or more precisely Venetian painter, because Flemish painters copied or were inspired by their works. A copy of the Allegory of Love (Naked woman and a man with mirrors) by workshop of Titian (original in National Gallery of Art, Washington), identified as disguised portraits of Alfonso I d'Este and Laura Dianti or Federico Gonzaga and Isabella Boschetti, sold in 1992, is attributed to Michiel Coxie (Dorotheum Vienna, March 18, 1992, lot 64). A very similar mirror composition was sold in Berlin in 2020 (oil on panel, 45.5 x 32 cm, Galerie Bassenge, November 26, 2020, lot 6003). But the woman's face is different. She is also much older than the woman in the Warsaw painting. There are no attributes, which is why the image is interpreted as a representation of Venus - an aging Venus in the posture of the chaste Venus Pudica. This would ultimately mean that the work could be interpreted as a hidden allegory of vanity. It is difficult to determine today which version might be original, but assuming that both painters created copies of the same composition, we would have to conclude that the paintings depict mother and daughter. The younger woman in the Warsaw painting looks at her mother, who in turn looks at the viewer. Therefore, the older woman is the mother of Queen Barbara and the she resembles the effigies of Barbara Kolanka (d. 1550) by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Such depictions were popular in the mid-16th century and frequently a general resemblance and context are enough to determine the model, as in the case of the portrait of Diane de Poitiers (1499-1566), favorite of King Henry II of France as half-naked Pax, goddess of peace (Allegory of Peace), by School of Fontainebleau (Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence). Other examples include several "disguised" nude portraits by Agnolo Bronzino, such as the portrait of Cosimo I de' Medici (1519-1574), Grand Duke of Tuscany as Orpheus (Philadelphia Museum of Art), portrait of Andrea Doria (1466-1560) as Neptune (Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan), Descent of Christ into Limbo with several contemporary portraits (Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence) and portrait of sixteen-year-old cardinal Giovanni de' Medici the Younger (1543-1562) as Saint John the Baptist (Galleria Borghese in Rome). Since the 17th century, many paintings from the Radziwill collection have been transferred to Berlin by different means. The inventory of paintings from the collection of Princess Louise Charlotte Radziwill (1667-1695), who lived in Berlin, Königsberg and Heidelberg, drawn up in 1671, lists numerous representations of this type, such as a large panel with a naked woman (794) and several effigies of Saint Mary Magdalene (357, 369, 531, 792, 855, 867) (after "Inwentarz galerii obrazów Radziwiłłów z XVII w." by Teresa Sulerzyska). In the context of known comments about Barbara Radziwill and her mother, while likely exaggerated, these effigies also appear accurate. Stanisław Orzechowski, wrote that Sigismund Augustus "wants to seek his strength and courage from his wife in the service of Venus" and stated, among other things, that Barbara "had a mother about whom people always said bad things because of her lechery, her immodesty, poisoning and witchcraft" and the royal courtier Stanisław Bojanowski added that Barbara "continued to rouging her face to deceive us until [her] last breath", even when it was clear that the illness could not be cured (after "Nieprzyzwoite małżeństwo" by Anna Odrzywolska, p. 69). 
Portrait of Barbara Kolanka as Venus Pudica by Vincent Sellaer, ca. 1545-1550, Private collection.
Portrait of Barbara Radziwill as Venus Pudica by circle of Michiel Coxie, ca. 1545-1550, National Museum in Warsaw.
Judgment of Paris with portraits of Hedwig Jagiellon and members of her family by workshop Lucas Cranach the Elder or Lucas Cranach the Younger
On February 15, 1545 the double wedding was celebrated with great splendor in Berlin. Princess Sophie of Legnica (1525-1546), the daughter of Frederick II (1480-1547), Duke of Legnica, Brzeg, and Wołów, and his second wife, Sophia of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1485-1537), married John George of Brandenburg (1525-1598), son of Magdalena of Saxony (1507-1534) and Joachim II Hector (1505-1571), Elector of Brandenburg, while the sister of John George, Barbara (1527-1595), married George (1523-1586), brother of Sophie of Legnica. The marriage cemented the alliance of the Silesian Piasts and the Hohenzollerns concluded on October 18, 1537 in Legnica with the betrothal of the princely children.
The two brides, Sophie (granddaughter of Sophia Jagiellon, Margravine of Brandenburg-Ansbach) and Barbara (granddaughter of Barbara Jagiellon, Duchess of Saxony), and the incumbent Electress of Brandenburg - Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) were related. Hedwig was the second wife of Joachim II Hector and they had six children - their first son, Sigismund (1538-1566), future Bishop of Magdeburg and Halberstadt, was named after Hedwig's father. After Joachim II introduced the evangelical faith in the electorate, the electress continued to be Catholic. At the beginning of 1551 (according to other sources in autumn of 1549), Joachim II and Hedwig traveled to the forest of Schorfheide near Berlin for a boar hunt. The electoral couple lived at Grimnitz hunting lodge. On January 7, 1551, when they went for a walk on the upper floor in the morning, the rotten floor collapsed beneath them and Hedwig fell into the room below. She allegedly refused medical treatment out of modesty. Although the electress recovered, her pelvis, feet and hips were so badly injured that she had to use crutches for the rest of her life. Joachim, who hung between two beams, on which he leaned with his hands and arms, was saved from falling by a servant. He became disgusted with his crippled wife, and he took concubines. The electress reconciled with her husband nine years later, in 1560, when the celebration of the silver wedding coincided with the marriage of their second daughter, Hedwig (1540-1602), to Julius of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1528-1589), stepson of Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575), Duchess of Brunswick. Instead of Christian compassion, mean people were spreading rumors about God's punishment, because the electress was Catholic and foreigner, not speaking German (at least at the beginning). The elector's younger brother, Margrave Hans von Küstrin (1513-1571), a staunch Lutheran, even claimed that this terrible accident happened after two images of the Virgin Mary made of gold or silver from the Treasury of Berlin Cathedral (possibly Ruthenian or Byzantine icons of the Virgin Hodegetria) were brought to Hedwig and she and her court ladies fell down with the images. He described the accident in a letter to Andrzej I Górka (1500-1551), castellan of Poznań, which was in the Archives of the Prussian Royal Family in Berlin (after "Jagiellonki polskie w XVI wieku", Volume 3, p. 282). He also added that "the floor was not rotten or damaged anywhere, not even where it had collapsed" and that "two or three days before the accident, a great light appeared in the sky above the Grimnitz house" (Es ist aber sonsten der Boden an diesem gebew an keinem ort verstockt, verfault und schadhafft gewesen, auch an den enden nicht do er eingangen. Item ein zwen oder drey tage zuvor, ehe denn diese Ding gescheen, bey der nacht, hatt sich ueber dem hause Grimnitz, so weit sich allein desselben Vmbkreiss erstreckt, ein grosser luchter glanz um Himmell erhoben). According to other legend, it was not an accident but an attempt on the life of the elector prepared by Hedwig's lover, a Polish nobleman, guest of the princely couple. He had maliciously sawed the floorboards in order to eliminate his rival. Seized with remorse after an unexpected result of his action, he becomes a hermit (after "Allgemeine Encyklopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste" from 1871, Volume 1, Issue 91, p. 352). In Grimnitz, Joachim II met the beautiful wife of the gun and bell foundry master, who was therefore known as the "beautiful foundrywoman" (Die Schöne Gießerin), Anna Dieterich née Sydow, and made her his mistress. Her husband, Michael Dieterich, who died in 1561, was the last manager of the electoral foundry in Grimnitz. Anna Sydow lived for many years in the Grunewald hunting lodge, which Joachim built in 1542-1543, and bore him two children. The affair with her allegedly started after the accident, although there is no clear evidence for this, so they could meet much earlier. Very little is known about Hedwig's life. As a Polish-Lithuanian, woman and Catholic she was not highly esteemed in Brandenburg's historiography. She accompanied her husband to the Imperial Diets - in 1541 in Regensburg, and in 1547 in Augsburg. She corresponded with her half-sister Isabella, Queen of Hungary and her half-brother Sigismund Augustus. In a letter dated Warsaw, September 17, 1571 (today at the Wawel Royal Castle), written in ink with particles of gold, Sigismund Augustus called her the "Infanta of the Kingdom of Poland, Marchioness of Brandenburg" (Illvstrissimæ Principi dominæ Heduigi, Dei gratia Infanti Regni Poloniæ Marchionisæ Brandemburgensi ...). In her last known portrait she is very obese, little more than her husband, probably because of the difficulty in walking. It was created in 1562 by Italian painter Giovanni Battista Perini (Parine) as a counterpart to the portrait of Joachim II (Berlin City Museum, VII 60/642x), however, it is known from a later copy made in 1620 by Heinrich Bollandt (Berlin Palace, Berliner Schloss, oil on panel, 103 x 76 cm, inv. GK I 1088, inscription: V G G / Hedewig aus Königklichen Stamb Polen ...), which was lost during World War II. As for the brides of the 1545 double wedding, Sophie of Legnica died a few days after the birth of her son Joachim Frederick (1546-1608), his father's successor as Elector of Brandenburg. Barbara become the Duchess of Brzeg in 1547. She bore her husband seven children, five daughters ad two sons, and when George II died in 1586, after forty-one years of marriage, he left the Duchy of Brzeg to his wife as her dower with the full sovereignty over this land until her own death. George II's fascination with the Italianate court of the Jagiellons is reflected in the architecture of the "Silesian Wawel" - the Piast Castle in Brzeg. Arcaded courtyard of the castle was built between 1547 and 1560 by Giovanni Battista de Pario and his son Francesco, while the main gate was adorned with effigies of Silesian Piasts. Sculptors Andreas Walther and Jakob Warter created busts of George II's ancestors and the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Poland that crown the gate - although George II was a vassal of the Habsburgs, he opposed their absolutist policy in Silesia. They also carved the full-length effigies of the Duke and his wife above the portal (1551-1553). The tapestries that George and Barbara commissioned between 1567 and 1586 resemble the famous Jagiellonian tapestries (Wawel Arrases) and indicate that in the field of arts and patronage almost everything in Brzeg was like in Kraków. In the Grunewald hunting lodge in Berlin there is a large painting by workshop Lucas Cranach the Elder or Lucas Cranach the Younger, depicting the Judgment of Paris (oil on panel, 209.5 x 107.2 cm, GK I 1185). It is similar to allegorical portraits of Dukes of Legnica-Brzeg, Ziębice-Oleśnica and Lubin in the scene of the Judgement of Paris from the 1520s, identified by me, however, it was created much later - dated variably between 1540-1545. The painting is one of four panels, which belonged to Elector Joachim II and were in 1793 in the Berlin Palace. The woman in the center of the composition is the goddess Venus, the most beautiful of the goddesses that Paris will judge. She looks at the viewer. This is undoubtedly a "disguised portrait" of a woman, who, most likely, commissioned this painting. She knows perfectly well who will win this contest, however, she puts her hand on the armour of a man portrayed as Paris as if to say stop, you should follow your heart and choose someone else. The old man behind her represents Mercury, a messenger of the gods. He raises his staff with which he strikes Paris on the chest, warning him of female seduction with a loud cry and urging him to make a careful decision. Cupid, god of affection and desire, points his arrow at the young woman near Mercury. Venus in this painting has the features of Electress Hedwig Jagiellon, as in the painting by Hans Krell in the same collection or in many paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his workshop. Consequently Mercury is Duke Frederick II of Legnica-Brzeg, who in earlier painings was depicted as Paris, the second goddess is his daughter Sophie of Legnica and Paris is her husband John George of Brandenburg - his features match his effigy by Lucas Cranach the Younger in Dresden (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, inventory number 1949). The third goddess is Barbara of Brandenburg, John George's sister and future Duchess of Brzeg. This painting is therefore a commemoration of the double marriage and alliance with the Piasts of Silesia. Similar Judgement of Paris by follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder was also in Berlin (oil on panel, 50.5 x 34 cm, private collection before 2009), however, only Hedwig is identifiable on the right. Other people are different. Paris looks at Venus-Hedwig and another woman holds her hand on his arm and points to his heart, while Cupid points his arrow to her heart. So this is most likely Hedwig's husband Elector Joachim II and his new mistress and the painting was commissioned to sanction this new relationship. The third woman in the scene is most likely Sophie of Legnica, as a very similar effigy can be seen in another large panel from the mentioned series from the Berlin Palace. She is holding the shoes of Bathsheba in the scene of Bathsheba at the bath (oil on panel, 208 x 106 cm, GK I 1186), similar to the painting by Cranach from 1526, most likely from Hedwig's dowry, depicting her father Sigismund I, his wife Bona and mistress Katarzyna Telniczanka in the same scene (Gemäldegalerie in Berlin). Bathsheba could be therefore a portrait of Joachim's mistress - Anna Sydow, while he was portrayed as the biblical King David. Barbara of Brandenburg was also depicted in other painting by Cranach. Lucretia from the collection of Hans Grisebach in Berlin, attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder or his son Cranach the Younger, has her features, similar to the painting from the Berlin Palace and her statue from the Brzeg Castle. It was inspired by the iconic image of Bona Sforza, Queen of Poland created a decade earlier, which was praised by Andrzej Krzycki (1482-1537), Archbishop of Gniezno in his epigram "On Lucretia depicted more lasciviously" (In Lucretiam lascivius depictam). Also in the field of portraiture, the dukes of Legnica-Brzeg inspired strongly by the Polish royal court. Protestantism opposed such "lasciviousness", so most likely in the second half of the 16th century, as the style indicates, she was dressed. This overpaint (dress) was removed after 1974. 
Judgment of Paris with portraits of Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573), Sophie of Legnica (1525-1546), Barbara of Brandenburg (1527-1595), Frederick II of Legnica-Brzeg (1480-1547) and John George of Brandenburg (1525-1598) by workshop Lucas Cranach the Elder or Lucas Cranach the Younger, ca. 1545, Grunewald hunting lodge.
Judgment of Paris with portraits of Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) and members of her family by follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1545-1550, Private collection.
Bathsheba at the bath with portraits of Sophie of Legnica (1525-1546), Joachim II Hector (1505-1571) and, most probably, Anna Sydow by workshop Lucas Cranach the Elder or Lucas Cranach the Younger, ca. 1545-1550, Grunewald hunting lodge.
Portrait of Barbara of Brandenburg (1527-1595), Duchess of Brzeg as Lucretia by workshop Lucas Cranach the Elder or Lucas Cranach the Younger, ca. 1545-1550, Private collection.
Portrait of Electress Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573) by Heinrich Bollandt after Giovanni Battista Perini, 1620 after original from 1562, Berlin Palace, lost during World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Stanisław Orzechowski by Giovanni Cariani
"My homeland is Ruthenia, located on the Tyras River, which the inhabitants of the coastal area call the Dniester, at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, the range of which separates Sarmatia from Hungary", begins his autobiography Stanisław Orzechowski or Stanislaus Orichovius (1513-1566), a nobleman of Oksza coat of arms. He wrote these words in 1564 at the request of Giovanni Francesco Commendone (1523-1584), Venetian bishop and papal legate to Poland (letter of December 10, 1564 from Radymno). In a letter of August 15, 1549 from Przemyśl (Datae Premisliae, oppido Russiae, die Assumptionis beatae Virginis, anno Christi Dei nostri 1549) to Paolo Ramusio (Paulus Rhamnusius), secretary of the Council of Ten in Venice, he adds that "my country, harsh and uncouth, which has always worshiped Mars, but has only recently begun to worship Minerva. For Ruthenia previously did not differ much in lineage and customs from the Scythians with whom it borders, however, having relations with the Greeks, from whom it adopted the confession and faith, it abandoned its Scythian harshness and savagery, and now it is gentle, calm and fertile, it is very fond of Latin and Greek literature" (after "Orichoviana ..." by Józef Korzeniowski, Volume 1, pp. 281, 587).
Educated at the universities of Kraków (1526), Vienna (1527), Wittenberg (1529), Padua (1532), Bologna (1540) and continuing his studies in Rome and Venice, Orzechowski was a typical representative of Polish-Lithuanian diversity. He was born on November 11, 1513, in Przemyśl or nearby Orzechowce. Stanisław was very proud of his Ruthenian origins and described himself as gente Roxolani, natione vero Poloni (of Ruthenian/Roxolanian origin, Polish nationality), however, he wrote mainly in Latin. On July 5, 1525, at the age of 12, he was ordained a Catholic priest and became a canon of Przemyśl. In 1543, shortly after return to Poland, he was excommunicated by Bishop Stanisław Tarło for having many incompatible benefices and for his absence at the diocesan synod. A few years later, in 1547, the new bishop of Przemyśl, Jan Dziaduski, accused Orzechowski, who had offspring with his concubine Anna Zaparcianka (Anuchna z Brzozowa), of maintaining a scandalous life. In 1550 Stanisław arranged a wedding for a Catholic priest Marcin Krowicki and Magdalena Pobiedzińska in Urzejowice. A year later, in 1551, he himself married in Lścin with a 16-year-old noblewoman, Magdalena Chełmska, for which Bishop Dziaduski excommunicated Orzechowski. He corresponded frequently with King Sigismund Augusus, Nicolaus "the Black" Radziwill, Jan Amor Tarnowski and his son Jan Krzysztof, Piotr Kmita, Jakub Uchański and wrote letters to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (letters dated May 1, 1549 and January 15, 1566 from Przemyśl), Pope Julius III (letter dated May 11, 1551 from Przemyśl) and King Ferdinand (letter dated September 7, 1553 from Kraków). Orzechowski's speech at the funeral of King Sigismund I was published in Kraków in 1548 (Funebris oratio: habita a Stanislao Orichovio ...) and then in the same year in Venice with coat of arms of Queen Bona Sforza on the title page (Stanilai Orichouii Rhuteni Ornata et copiosa oratio ...), printed by Paolo Ramusio and republished in 1559 also in Venice, in the collection Orationes clarorum virorum. In a letter from Venice of 1548, Ramusio asked Orzechowski to send him his other works through Bona's secretary, Vitto Paschalis (Reverendi Domini Vitti Paschalis Serenissimae Reginae Bonae a secretis). No effigy of Orzechowski made during his lifetime is known. The portrait published in Starożytności Galicyjskie in Lviv in 1840 (lithography by Teofil Żychowicz) depicts a man in mid-17th century costume, thus almost a century after his death (1566). In 2022 a portrait of a bearded man holding his right hand on a helmet and left hand on a sword, attributed to circle of Titian, was sold in Paris (oil on canvas, 94 x 75 cm, Hotel Drouot, June 17, 2022, lot 18). The painting comes from the collection of Achille Chiesa in Milan (sold at American Art Galleries in New York, 22-23 November 1927, lot 117, as Portrait of a Warrior) and already in 1927 it was not in a very good state of preservation. At the top right-hand corner is the name of the personage the portrait represents, but unfortunately no longer legible. His face was slightly altered during the restoration, however, the style of the portrait, particularly the way the hands were painted, allows the painting to be attributed to Giovanni Cariani (d. 1547), also known as Giovanni Busi or Il Cariani, active in Venice and Bergamo near Milan. According to the Latin dates visible on some old reproductions, the man was 32 years old in 1545 (ÆTAT SVÆ ANNO / XXXII / MD.XLV), exactly like Stanisław Orzechowski, who a year earlier, in 1544, published in Kraków his two important works - the "Baptism of the Ruthenians. Bull on not rebaptizing Ruthenians" (Baptismus Ruthenorum. Bulla de non rebaptisandis Ruthenis) and Ad Sigismundum Poloniae Regem Turcica Secunda calling for solidarity from Christian Europe against the Ottoman Empire. In 1545, Orzechowski was accused of beating to death a subject of bishop Dziaduski from Przysieczna and the nobleman in the painting has a pose as if ready to defend himself by any means. His helmet, although generally resembling some Renaissance burgonets, is very unusual, and the closest analogy can be found with the helmets discovered in Scythian burial mounds (compare "The Scythians 700–300 BC" by E.V. Cernenko). The man holds it because it was probably found near his place of origin, it is therefore a precious memento of the ancient inhabitants of this land and an important symbol. 
Portrait of Stanisław Orzechowski (1513-1566), aged 32 by Giovanni Cariani, 1545, Private collection.
Portrait of Stanisław Karnkowski by Jacopo Tintoretto
Stanisław Karnkowski of Junosza coat of arms was born on May 10, 1520 in Karnkowo near Włocławek, as a son of Tadeusz vel Dadźbog, heir of Karnków and Elżbieta Olszewska from Kanigów. As a young man, he left his family home and went to his uncle, the bishop of Włocławek, Jan Karnkowski (1472-1537). It was him who owes Karnkowski his early education.
In 1539 he began studies at the Kraków Academy. After graduating, in 1545, he went to Italy for further education - first to Perugia, and then to Padua, where he completed his studies with a doctorate utriusque iuris. He also studied in Wittenberg, where he became acquainted with the teachings of Luther. After returning from studies in 1550, he became the secretary of the bishop of Chełmno and then of Jan Drohojowski, bishop of Włocławek. In 1555 he became the secretary of King Sigismund Augustus, from 1558 he was the Grand Referendary of the Crown and in 1563 he became the Grand Secretary, and later Bishop of Kuyavia from 1567, Archbishop of Gniezno and Primate of Poland from 1581. He served as regent of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Interrex) in 1586-1587, after death of king Stephen Bathory. Karnkowski amassed one of the wealthiest Polish libraries in the late 16th and early 17th century, comprising according to some estimates 322 books, some of which he acquired during his studies abroad, like Consilia Ludouici Romani by Lodovico Pontano, published in 1545 (Archdiocese Archives in Gniezno). The portrait of young man in a black costume buttoned to a high collar and holding his right forearm on a column-base, was first recorded in the Great Cabinet at Kensington Palace in 1720 as Titian. It is now thought to be Tintoretto's earliest dated work. According to inscription in Latin on a column-base the man was 25 years old in 1545 (AN XXV / 1545), exactly as Stanisław Karnkowski, when he began his studies in Italy. He resemble greatly Karnkowski from his portrait when bishop of Włocławek, created between 1567-1570 by unknown painter (Higher Seminary in Włocławek), and as Primate of Poland in green cassock (Archbishop's Palace in Gniezno), painted in 1600 by Monogrammist I.S. In private collection in Switzerland, there is reduced copy of this effigy also attributed to Jacopo Tintoretto. 
Portrait of Stanisław Karnkowski (1520-1603), aged 25 by Jacopo Tintoretto, 1545, Kensington Palace.
Portrait of Stanisław Karnkowski (1520-1603), aged 25 by Jacopo Tintoretto, ca. 1545, Private collection.
Portraits of Stanisław Spytek Tarnowski by Tintoretto
"Stanislaus Count of Tarnów, a man of the most perfect gifts of mind, body and fortune, born in the first noble family, having traveled through Hungary, Moesia, Macedonia, Greece, Syria, Judea, Arabia, Egypt, Italy, and Germany as a youth, and having received the insignia of the holy service from the Pontiff and the Emperor and the excellent honors from Christian and Turkish princes, he returned home and he was decorated with the highest honors by King Sigismund" (Stanislao Comiti a Tarnow viri animi corporis et fortunae dotibus absolutissimo, qui primaria ortus familia, adolescens Hungaria, Moesia, Macedonia, Graecia, Syria, Judaea, Arabia, Aegypto, Italia, Germania peragratis, ac utriusque sanctae militiae insignis a Pontifice et Imperatore acceptis praeclarisque honorariis Principibus tam Christianis quam Turcicis onustus domum rediens, a rego Sigismundo summis honoribus est exornatus) is a fragment of a Latin inscription, which was in the upper part of the tomb monument of Stanisław Spytek Tarnowski (1514-1568), voivode of Sandomierz in the church in Chroberz between Kraków and Kielce.
This magnificent monument, considered one of the best in Poland, was founded in 1569 by Stanisław's wife, Barbara Drzewicka (Barbara de Drzewicza), niece of primate Maciej Drzewicki (1467-1535). The inscription in lower part commemorates the foundation and informs that Stanisław lived 53 years and nearly seven months and died in the castle in Krzeszów nad Sanem on April 6, 1568, third hour of the following night (Vixit annos LIII menses fere septem obyt in arce Krzessow [...] MDLXVIII sexta aprilis hora tertia noctis seqventis). The deceased was portrayed in the fashionable "Sansovino pose", sleeping above the sarcophagus in richly decorated renaissance armour. Behind the figure of the voivode, the center of the arcade is filled with a cartouche with his coats of arms including the cross of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre and the attributes of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, commemorating his pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai. On both sides of the arcade there are panoplies (armours, breatplates, helmets, pistols, lances, kettledrums), and above them niches with sculptures of St. Michael the Archangel and Samson tearing the lion's mouth. The latter statue is the most unusual among many sculptures in this monument and it is also identified with Benaiah, son of Jehoiada, captain of King David's guard, who supported Solomon and became commander of his army (after "Nagrobki w Chrobrzu ..." by Witold Kieszkowski, p. 123). His Roman costume with anatomical armour (lorica musculata) of a centurion, also make him close to Hercules slaying the Nemean lion. The monument is attributed to the most eminent sculptor of the Polish Renaissance - Jan Michałowicz of Urzędów or his workshop. Stanisław was a son of Jan Spytek Tarnowski and Barbara Szydłowiecka, niece of Krzysztof, Great Chancellor of the Crown. In the 1530s, perhaps together with his father, he undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In 1537, he was appointed the Sword-bearer of the Crown, starost of Sieradz and the castellan of Zawichost in 1547. He became the Great Treasurer of the Crown in 1555 and in 1561 voivode of Sandomierz. Before 1538 he married Barbara and they have seven children - six daughters and one son. Around 1552, he bought Chroberz and Kozubów for 70,000 florins from the Tęczyński family and founded the church in Chroberz. The rich medieval castles of Chroberz and Krzeszów, which he undoubtedly rebuilt in Renaissance style, like all similar magnates of the time, were both destroyed. In 2017, during the 7th Beijing International Art Biennale at the National Art Museum of China, a "Commander in ancient armour" by Jacopo Tintoretto (oil on canvas, 220 x 120 cm) from a private collection was exhibited. Earlier, in 2015, it was also part of the "Images of a Genius. The Face of Leonardo" exhibition at Huashan Creative Park in Taipei, Taiwan. At that time the arrangement of his left foot was modified by the restorers. The man wears rich Roman-style armour, the heroic anatomical cuirass, designed to mimic an idealized male human physique, and caligae sandals. His golden cassis helmet is decorated with rich reliefs. His sword however is not a typical gladius of a Roman soldier, it is more of an oriental saber, so he is more of an Eastern warrior, like the Sarmatians, the legendary invaders of Slavic lands in antiquity and the alleged ancestors of nobles of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This portrait is dated 1545 in the catalogues and according to the Latin inscription the model was 31 years old when it was painted (ÆTATIS SVÆ / AÑ XXXI), exactly like Stanisław Spytek Tarnowski, who according to some sources was born in October 1514 (after "Hetman Jan Tarnowski ..." by Włodzimierz Dworzaczek, p. 375). As a pilgrim to the Holy Land, like many other pilgrims from Poland-Lithuania, he undoubtedly embarked on a ship in Venice. It is possible that he visited the city in 1545, but it is more likely that he commissioned his portrait in the Republic of Venice based on study drawings sent from Poland. The same man was also depicted in another portrait by Tintoretto, bust-length, in a black coat lined with fur (oil on canvas, 50.2 x 35 cm). It was sold in 2002 (Christie's New York, January 25, 2002, lot 27) and comes from the collection of Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski (1770-1861) in Paris. The collections of the Czartoryski family, dispersed after the insurrection of 1830, were secretly taken to Paris, where Adam's wife, Zofia Anna Sapieha, purchased the Hôtel Lambert in 1843. He also figures in another portrait by Tintoretto, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (oil on canvas, 73 x 65 cm, GG 11). This painting is dated around 1547/1548 and is identifiable in the Imperial collection in Vienna in 1816. After the Partitions of Poland (1772-1795), when Vienna became the new capital for nobles in southern Poland, many moved their art collections there. It is also possible that the portrait was sent to Vienna already in the 16th century - in 1547 Stanisław Spytek become the castellan of Zawichost near Sandomierz and his relative, Jan Amor Tarnowski (1488-1561), obtained from the emperor the title of count related to the possession in southern Poland. Despite huge losses to Polish art collections due to wars, invasions and the subsequent impoverishment of the country, some works by Venetian painters, including Tintoretto, survived destruction, confiscations and evacuations. One such painting is Narcissus by Tintoretto from around 1560, acquired in 2017 by the National Museum in Wrocław from a private collector. In the 19th century it was a property of Otto Hausner (1827-1890) in Lviv. Although the Galician art collector could acquire this painting during his travels in Western Europe and especially in Italy, he more likely bought it in Poland or Ukraine. Lviv, capital of the Ruthenian Voivodeship, was an important economic center of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, with significant Italian influences and community, and wealthy nobles and patricians frequently commissioned and purchased such paintings from abroad. When it comes to portraiture, secular art and European Old Masters, many art historians want to see pre-19th century Poland as an artistic desert, but surviving inventories and other documents from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries prove that this was not the case. 
Portrait of Stanisław Spytek Tarnowski (1514-1568), aged 31, in ancient armour by Tintoretto, 1545, Private collection.
Portrait of Stanisław Spytek Tarnowski (1514-1568) from the Czartoryski collection by Tintoretto, ca. 1545, Private collection.
Portrait of Stanisław Spytek Tarnowski (1514-1568) by Tintoretto, 1547/1548, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Narcissus from Hausner collection in Lviv by Tintoretto, ca. 1560, National Museum in Wrocław.
Portraits of Erazm Kretkowski by Lucas Cranach the Younger and Giovanni Cariani
"Here lies Kretkowski, where fate has led you, When you explored all the lands and all the seas around you, Without tiring your limbs with toil, You traversed the swift Ganges and the icy waves of Borysthenes [Dniester River], The Tagus and the Rhine, the two-armed Istria And the seven twin gates of the Nile. Now you will see the great Olympus And the ethereal houses, where, mingled with the gods, you laugh At the cares and hopes and lamentations of men" (HIC TE CRETCOVI MORS ET TVA FATA MANEBANT / CVM TERRAS OMNES ET CVM MARIA OMNIA CIRCVM / LVSTRARES NVLLO DEFESSVS MEMBRA LABORE / TE RAPIDVS GANGES GELIDÆQ. BORISTENSIS VNDÆ / TE TAGVS ET RHÆNVS TE RIPA BINOMINIS ISTRI / ET SEPTAGEMINI NOVERVNT OSTIA NILI / NVNC CONCESSISTI MAGNVM VISVRVS OLYMPVM / ÆTHEREASQ. DOMOS VBI DIIS IMMISTVS INANES / ET CVRAS ET SPES HOMINVM LAMENTAQ. RIDES.), reads the so-called Epitaphium Cretcovii in the Basilica of St. Anthony in Padua - Latin epitaph written by poet Jan Kochanowski and dedicated to Erazm Kretkowski (1508-1558). It is one of the first known poetic texts of the poet who, in the spring of 1558, traveled for the third time to Italy.
Kretkowski, castellan of Gniezno, died in Padua in the Republic of Venice on May 16, 1558 at the age of 50, according to the first part of the inscription on his epitaph (ANN. ÆTAT. SVÆ QVINQVAG. OBIIT PATAV. DIE MAII XVI M D L VIII), at the beginning of another longer journey. His beautiful epitaph with bronze bust was probably made by Francesco Segala (ca. 1535-1592), a sculptor active in Venice and Padua, who served the court of Guglielmo Gonzaga in Mantua, or Agostino Zoppo (d. 1572), active in Padua and Venice. It was created before 1560 and probably founded by his cousin, Jerzy Rokitnicki. His bust depicts a relatively young man, around 30 or 40 years old, so it was based on an earlier effigy, miniature, drawing, portrait or less likely a statue also by a Venetian artist, for in 1538, at the age 30 years old, Kretkowski was a Polish-Lithuanian envoy to the Ottoman Empire and he undoubtedly visited Venice. In 1538 he also became castellan of Brześć Kujawski and his hairstyle is typical of the late 1530s - e.g. portrait of a young groom from the Rava family by Lucas Cranach the Elder, dated '1539' (Museu de Arte de São Paulo). Besides being a traveler and an explorer, as mentioned in his epitaph, Erazm, son of Mikołaj Kretkowski, voivode of Inowrocław, and Anna Pampowska, daughter of Ambroży, voivode of Sieradz, was like his father a courtier at the royal court of Sigismund I and Bona Sforza. In 1534 he was engaged to Queen Bona's lady-in-waiting, Zuzanna Myszkowska, daughter of Marcin, castellan of Wieluń. However, the prenuptial agreement was broken by the bride's parents and Kretkowski remained unmarried until the end of his life. Thanks to the support of Queen Bona, Kretkowski received lucrative offices and dignities from the king. In 1545 he was nominated for the voivode of Brześć Kujawski, however, this nomination was annulled, and from 1546 he was the starost of Pyzdry. He was the superior of Greater Poland customs (1547) and from 1551 he held the office of castellan of Gniezno. Soon, however, Kretkowski found himself in opposition to Queen Bona, because with a group of magnates he supported the marriage of the young king Sigismund Augustus with his mistress Barbara Radziwill (after "Pomnik Erazma Kretkowskiego ..." by Jerzy Kowalczyk, p. 56). In 1551 he was one of the commissioners for the Congress of Głogów to meet the commissioners of King Ferdinand of Austria and in 1555, together with Jan Drohojowski, Bishop of Włocławek, he was sent to Henry V, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, regarding his marriage to Princess Sophia Jagiellon. He therefore had good relations and connections in Germany. It is not known exactly when he visited India, Egypt or Istria in the Venetian Republic, however, he must have started his journey by boarding a ship in Venice. In the National Museum in Warsaw there is a portrait of a bearded man in a grey-black coat, attributed to Lucas Cranach the Younger (oil on panel, 64.5 x 49 cm, M.Ob.836). It comes from the collection of Carl Daniel Friedrich Bach (1756-1829), a German painter, draftsman and art teacher, who bequeathed the painting to the Silesian Society for Patriotic Culture in Wrocław. After 1945 the painting was moved to Warsaw from the Nazi German Art Repository in Kamenz (Kamieniec Ząbkowicki) and earlier it was in the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts in Wrocław (inventory number 1284). It is not known where and how Bach acquired the painting, but from 1780 he was a painter in the service of Count Józef Maksymilian Ossoliński, a wealthy landowner, politician and historian, in Warsaw. In 1784 he accompanied Count Jan Potocki, an explorer, historian, novelist and diplomat, on his journey to the Netherlands, France and Italy and between 1786-1792, at Potocki's expense, he studied, initially in Rome and later in Portici. He stayed in Paris, Venice, Vienna and Berlin. According to the Latin inscription in the upper left corner of the painting, the man in the portrait was 38 years old in 1546, when the painting was created (1546 / ANNO ÆTATIS SVÆ. XXXVIII), exactly like Kretkowski when he became the starost of Pyzdry. He celebrated important events in his life with portraiture, as evidenced by the prototype of his bronze bust. However, in such a portrait for private use or for his family or close friends, he does not need to recall that he was a nobleman of the Dołęga coat of arms and starost of Pyzdry, as in the epitaph for the general public. The reminder of the date of creation and his age was sufficient. The man in the portrait closely resembles the features depicted in his bust. A study drawing to this or another portrait of the starost of Pyzdry is in the Museum of Fine Arts in Reims (distemper on paper, 36.5 x 24.7 cm, 795.1.276). It was acquired in 1752 by the City of Reims, together with a set of other study drawings by Cranach and his studio, including the effigy of Philip I, Duke of Pomerania from around 1541 (795.1.266). The man has the same expression on his lips, although his beard is shorter. The same man, with a longer beard and wearing a black cap was depicted in another painting, which was sold in 2012 in Boston (oil on canvas, 75.5 x 63.5 cm, sold at Bonhams Skinner, May 18, 2012, lot 202), as by Italian school. The painting was purchased from Harris & Holt Antiques, West Yorkshire in England and was previously attributed to Titian or his circle. The style of the painting is closest to that of Giovanni Busi il Cariani, who died in Venice in 1547. The man wears a similar grey-black coat, as in painting by Cranach, but in this version it is lined with expensive fur. Although it is likely that Kretkowski visited both workshops, in Wittenberg and Venice, it is more likely that, like Queen Bona, he was painted by a member of the workshop sent to Poland to prepare study drawings. 
Preparatory drawing for a portrait of Erazm Kretkowski (1508-1558), starost of Pyzdry by Lucas Cranach the Younger or workshop, ca. 1546, Museum of Fine Arts in Reims.
Portrait of Erazm Kretkowski (1508-1558), starost of Pyzdry, aged 38 by Lucas Cranach the Younger, 1546, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of Erazm Kretkowski (1508-1558), starost of Pyzdry by Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1546, Private collection.
Bronze bust of Erazm Kretkowski (1508-1558), castellan of Gniezno by Francesco Segala, before 1560, Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua.
The Crucifixion from the high altar of Wawel Cathedral by Pietro degli Ingannati
Based on a thorough analysis of the style, historical and cultural context, researcher Paweł Pencakowski attributed the painting on the main altar of Wawel Cathedral, now in Bodzentyn (oil on panel, 520 x 270 cm), to the Venetian painter Pietro degli Ingannati, who was active from the early 1520s and whose last known dated work was created in 1548. However, Ingannati's presence in Sarmatia is not confirmed in the sources, as are all the other works he created for clients from Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia. The painting was believed to have been created by a Venetian painter active at the court of Kraków, but the royal accounts mention the payments sent to Venice for its creation.
The initiator of the new altar in Wawel Cathedral, replacing the old one with medieval forms, was probably Samuel Maciejowski (1499-1550), who became Bishop of Kraków in April 1546. In 1547 he also received the great seal of the Chancellor of the Crown. Maciejowski, who began his career in 1518 as a notary to King Sigismund I and studied between 1522 and 1530 in Padua and Bologna, probably suggested this new foundation to the almost eighty-year-old king. The new bishop was a humanist, well-versed in Latin and Greek. On his initiative, a residence was built in Prądnik Biały (now part of Kraków) in 1547, where he gathered scientists and poets. Considered an opponent of Queen Bona and her courtiers, he gathered around him prominent figures of the time such as Stanisław Orzechowski, Benedykt Koźmińczyk, Łukasz Górnicki, the Spaniard Pedro Ruiz de Moros, and the Englishman Philip. Bishop Maciejowski spoke out in favor of the validity of the secret marriage of Sigismund Augustus, Bona's son, with his mistress Barbara Radziwill. The high altar (12.3 x 6.15 m) was probably designed by Giovanni Cini (d. 1565), a Sienese sculptor, who is also most likely the author of the structure's intricate floral decorations. The authorship of the sculptures, including two statues of Saints Stanislaus the Bishop and Wenceslaus (150 cm high), is attributed to the workshop of the Venetian sculptor Giovanni Maria Mosca, known as Padovano. The statues could also have been imported from abroad or executed by a sculptor trained in Germany (compare "Renesansowy ołtarz główny Bodzentynie", p. 108-109, 112-118, 139-141, 149). In the upper part, the coat of arms of King Sigismund I - a white eagle with the monogram S on its chest - was placed (on the left) accompanied by the coat of arms of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (on the right), later replaced by the coat of arms of Nałęcz of Bishop Piotr Gembicki (1585-1657). In July 1546, Stanisław Świątnicki, servant of the chapter dean Stanisław Borek, received 200 florins from the king for the construction of the cathedral altar, a sum he was to transfer to his lord. Shortly thereafter, a painting for the altar was also commissioned. Sigismund I asked his wife, Queen Bona Sforza, to commission a suitable painting for the new altarpiece through her agents in Venice. On August 9, Queen Bona received from the royal court treasury the sum of 159 florins, previously transferred to Venice by her agent, for paintings for the cathedral (In manus S. Reginalis Mtis pro imaginibus ad eccl. Cathedralem Crac. fl. 159/7, quos factor S. M. Reginalis Veneciis exposuit). The surviving accounts also mention other payments for the altar, mainly to Stanisław Borek (1474-1556), dean of the Kraków chapter from 1540 and supervisor of the work. Borek studied in Kraków, Bologna, and Rome. He was secretary to King Sigismund I the Old, a diplomat, and an envoy in the service of Bona (he traveled several times to Italy, as well as to Emperor Charles V, in the matter of the Duchy of Bari). On December 17, 1546, 200 florins were transferred to the queen as payment for the painter Peter the Italian, who was not in Poland, as it was necessary to act through such high-ranking intermediaries (Petro Italo pictori in manus S. Reginalis Mtis a labore et pictura imaginum ad altare maius in eccl. cathedrali Crac. fl. 200). The painting representing "The Crucifixion" is signed and dated: PETRVS VENETVS 1547, which confirms that Peter the Venetian (the Latin Petrus Venetus can be considered a translation of the name: Pietro Veneziano or Pietro da Venezia) executed it in 1547. It was probably delivered to Kraków in the spring of 1547. The altar, however, probably remained unfinished before the coronation of Queen Barbara Radziwill (December 7, 1550). The composition of the painting is consistent with the Venetian school, with a vibrant and rich use of colors (blue, orange, green and pink). However, the scene, rather dense, does not strictly adhere to the canons of classical Italian painting. Although well painted, the painting cannot be considered a masterpiece. Ingannati, whose works were inspired by those of Giovanni Bellini, Francesco Bissolo, and Palma il Vecchio, was a painter of much smaller, finely painted compositions. The painter, probably aged nearly 60, was undoubtedly helped by assistants. It is not known why he was chosen as the author of the painting. Given my findings regarding the portraits of Queen Bona, it is particularly interesting why Titian, Giovanni Cariani or Bernardino Licinio, who were authors of large altarpieces, did not receive the commission. Bishop Maciejowski's hostile attitude toward the queen may shed light on this point. The queen likely chose less experienced and less eminent painter for this commission, so the bishop, in constant conflict with her and the chapter, was not credited with the splendid artwork commissioned for his main temple. Moreover, the painters may have been commissioned to work for other clients, such as Titian, summoned by the emperor to Augsburg in 1547. This magnificent altar, crafted by Italian masters, served for nearly 100 years in Wawel Cathedral. In 1649, on the orders of Bishop Piotr Gembicki, it was dismantled and transported to the collegiate church in Kielce. Between 1726 and 1728, it was transferred to the church of St. Stanislaus in Bodzentyn, where it remains today. The painting by Pietro degli Ingannati is one of the oldest, largest and most important works of art commissioned in Venice that preserved in Poland. 
The Crucifixion from the high altar of Wawel Cathedral (between 1550 and 1649) by workshop of Pietro degli Ingannati, 1547, Church of St. Stanislaus in Bodzentyn.
Portrait of Barbara Radziwill in a blue dress, known as La Bella by Titian
In May 1543 22-year-old king Sigismund Augustus married his 16-year-old cousin Elizabeth of Austria. During the entry into Kraków for her coronation, the lords and knights of the Kingdom were dressed in all sorts of costumes including Italian, French and Venetian. The young Queen died just two years later failing to produce an heir to the throne. Sigismund Augustus commissioned for her a magnificent marble tomb monument from Paduan sculptor trainded in Venice, Giovanni Maria Mosca called Padovano. The king was hoping that his mistress, Barbara Radziwill, whom he intended to marry, would give him a child.
Portrait of a lady in a blue dress by Titian, known as La Bella is very similar to effigies of Barbara Radziwill, especially her portrait in Washington (National Gallery of Art, inv. 1939.1.230). The painting, now kept in the Pitti Palace, came to Florence in 1631 as part of the inheritance of Vittoria della Rovere (oil on canvas, 89 x 75.5 cm, inv. Palatina 18 / 1912). It is first mentioned in the della Rovere collection in the inventory of the Ducal Palace of Pesaro in 1623/24, where the painting appears without a frame. The gold buckles on her dress in the form of decorative bows, although painted less diligently, are almost identical. Her garments are epitome of the 16th century luxury - a dress of Venetian velvet dyed with costly indigo blue, embroidered with gold thread and lined with sables, of which Poland-Lithuania was one of the leading exporters at that time. She holds her thick gold chain and pointing at weasel pelt, a zibellino, also known as flea-fur or fur tippet, on her hand, a popular accessory for brides as a talisman for fertility. Contemporary bestiaries indicate that the female weasel conceived through the ear and gave birth through the mouth. "This 'miraculous' method of conception was thought to parallel the Annunciation of Christ, who was conceived when God's angel whispered into the ear of the Virgin Mary" (after "Sexy weasels in Renaissance art" by Chelsea Nichols). Inclusion of the zibellino represents the hope that the woman would be blessed with good fertility and bore many healthy children to her husband. This symbolism excludes the possibility that the portrait represents a Venetian courtesan ("woman wearing the blue dress"), secretly painted by Titian for Francesco Maria I della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, who was already married and had three daughters and two sons, in about 1535. As early as 1545 Pope Paul III wanted to marry his granddaughter Vittoria Farnese to widowed Sigismund Augustus, whom however wed in secret his mistress sometime between 1545 and 1547 (according to some sources they were married since 25 November 1545). Vittoria finally married on 29 June 1547, Guidobaldo II della Rovere, Duke of Urbino (son of Francesco Maria), who at this time was in the service of the Republic of Venice. It is highly probable that the Duke or Vittoria received a portrait of the royal mistress, which was later transferred to Florence. A copy of the portrait by Titan's workshop, most probably by Lambert Sustris, painted with cheaper pigments without highly expensive ultramarine, is a proof that as in case of portraits of Empress Isabella of Portugal the sitter was not in the painter's atelier and the portrait was one of a series. The painting come from a private collection in the United States (oil on canvas, laid on panel, 99 x 75 cm, Christie's in New York, Auction 19994, October 14, 2021, lot 73). There were also mistakes and inadequacies, her gold buckles were repleaced with simple red ribbons. Comparison with portraits of Empress Isabella confirms that Titian loved proportions and classical beauty. Just by making the eyes slightly bigger and more visible and harmonizing their features, he achieved what his clients expected of him, to be beautiful in their portraits, close to the gods from their Greek and Roman statues, it was renaissance. One of the oldest copies of "La Bella" comes from a German collection, stamped Staatliches Lindenau MUSEUM Altenburg on the back (oil on paper mounted on canvas, 37 x 29 cm, Le Floc'h in Paris, October 8, 2023, lot 8). This painting was sold with attribution to the "Venetian school circa 1600" and as by a "follower of Titian", however its style indicates a Flemish painter and it is close to the works of Gortzius Geldorp (1553-1618), who copied Titian's "Violante" (or "La Bella Gatta", Dorotheum in Vienna, April 19, 2016, lot 122, monogrammed top left: GG. F.), the original of which is now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (inv. GG 65). Geldorp also created portraits of Queen Constance of Austria (1588-1631) as Berenice (1605) and a portrait of Sigismund Charles Radziwill (1591-1642) in 1619, according to my identification. Since his stay in Pesaro is not confirmed, it can be assumed that he probably copied a painting from Titian's workshop from the collection of his patron Carlo d'Aragona Tagliavia (1530-1599), governor of Milan between 1583 and 1592, or a copy of this painting was commissioned from him from Poland-Lithuania around 1605. The miniature by unknown miniaturist Krause, probably an amateur, from the late 18th or early 19th century in the Royal Castle in Warsaw, indicate that a version of the painting was also in Poland, possibly in the collection of king Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski. The style of the model's costume and hairstyle is also very intriguing. It is difficult to find close similarities. The closest is the dress and hairstyle of a lady from a portrait attributed to Paris Bordone in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (inv. GG 16). The cut of the outfit is very similar as is the hairstyle inspired by ancient Roman and Greek statues. The Vienna painting is considered to belong to a later phase of Venetian painting and dated to around 1550. It is also worth noting great similarities with the costume and hairstyle of Lucrezia Panciatichi from her portrait by Bronzino (Uffizi Gallery in Florence, inv. 1890 n. 736), which is dated to around 1541-1545. Also comparable is the hairstyle of Barbara Radziwill from her portrait in the guise of the Roman goddess Flora by Bordone, now in the Hermitage Museum (inv. ГЭ-163), also identified by me. Another striking fact about this costume and hairstyle is that a similar one can be seen in a painting by a German painter. It is attributed to a follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder and comes from a private collection in Germany (panel, 76 x 54 cm, Van Ham Art Auctions in Cologne, April 19-21, 2007, lot 1725). This "Italian woman" was depicted as the biblical heroine Saint Jael with her attributes, which is also confirmed by the inscription on the wall at the bottom right: IAEL. According to the Bible (Book of Judges), Jael, the wife of the Kenite Heber, killed an enemy of the people of Israel, the Canaanite general Sisera, with a tent peg and a hammer. Cranach's workshop copied the paintings of Italian painters, as evidenced by the portrait of the Venetian scholar and poet Pietro Bembo (1470-1547). The portrait of Bembo, wearing the habit of a Knight of Malta, was probably made before 1537 (he was made a cardinal in 1538). The resemblance of the poet to his other effigies is great, moreover the identity is confirmed by the inscription in the upper edge: PETRI BEMBI, the style is also clearly that of Cranach and confirmed by the artist's insignia above the model's left shoulder. Since the visit of the future cardinal to Cranach's workshop in Lutheran Wittenberg is very unlikely, the painter must have been inspired by other effigies of Bembo. While Jael's costume is clearly Italian in style, the landscape behind her with its tall medieval towers is more northerly, typical not only for Germany, but also for Poland and Lithuania (although due to wartime destruction this is no longer so evident today) and generally for Central Europe. One of the oldest and most beautiful representations of the biblical Jael in European painting is the portrait of the Jewish lady with the attributes of Jael, created around 1502 by the Venetian painter Bartolomeo Veneto, today in a private collection in Milan (cf. "Bartolomeo Veneto: l'opera completa" by Laura Pagnotta, p. 216). This painting was signed by the author on a small cartellino, while the inscription on the woman's gold bracelet reads SFO[R]ZA DE LA EBRA, that is, "Strength of the Jews". In this context, the portrait by a follower of Cranach could also portray an Italian Jewish woman, however this diversity - Italian costume, German painter and Jewish heroine - speaks more in favor of multicultural Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia, as to the origin of the concept of this painting. Similar to Bartolomeo Veneto's work, this painting also has an important additional meaning, but unlike the work by the Venetian master, it lacks individuality and appears rather to be a copy of a lost original by Cranach. Considering all these facts, it is more likely that this painting was also part of the Jagiellonian propaganda, in this case intended to convince the Jewish community of Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia and Europe, that Sigismund Augustus' beloved is a virtuous and courageous woman. From 1545 the young king Sigismund Augustus spared no money for his mistress. Jewish and Florentine merchants Abraham Czech, Simone Lippi and Gaspare Gucci (or Guzzi) were delivering to the royal court enormous quantities of expensive fabrics and furs. Between 1544-1546, the young king emloyed many new jewelers at his court in Kraków and Vilnius, like Antonio Gatti from Venice, Vincenzo Palumbo (Vincentius Palumba), Bartolo Battista, Italian Christophorus, Giovanni Evangelista from Florence, Hannus (Hans) Gunthe, German Erazm Prettner and Hannus Czigan, Franciszek and Stanisław Merlicz, Stanisław Wojt - Gostyński, Marcin Sibenburg from Transilvania, etc. Not to mention Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio, who in about 1550 created a cameo with Barbara's divinely beautiful profile. In just one year, 1545, the king bought as many as 15 gold rings with precious stones from Vilnius and Kraków goldsmiths. The sovereign literally scattered gold among the members of the Radziwill family and financed, among other things, the modernization of the "manor of Mr. Nicolaus Radzywil of Vilnius" (dworu pana Mikolaya Radzywila wilnowczika), Barbara's brother, which is documented in the Grand Ducal accounts (after "Obraz Bitwa pod Orszą ..." by Marek A. Janicki, p. 205). Barbara's gifts to Sigismund Augustus were also splendid. A letter from around 1547, preserved in the Central Archives of the Historical Archives in Warsaw (AGAD 1/354/0/3/29), confirms that she gave him a unique piece of jewelry, a ring with an integrated watch (Poszylam v. k. m. svemu m. panu pyersczyenczyne snacz phygure zegarowe), probably created in Vilnius. Similar valuable objects began to appear in Western Europe more than a decade later. The king threw lavish balls and feasts, so much so that the priest Stanisław Górski, a staunch Habsburg supporter, complained in a letter to Jan Dantyszek dated March 15, 1544 from Piotrków, that "the young King lives the most extravagantly in Lithuania, spending 1000 florins per week" (after "Zbiór pamiętników historycznych o dawnej Polszcze ..." by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Volume 4, p. 30). In 1547 Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli, a painter from Lombardy, created a painting of Adoration of the Magi for the Certosa Sancta Maria Schola Dei in Parma, today in the Galleria nazionale di Parma (inventory number GN145). A man depicted as one of the Magi has a costume clearly inspired by the costume of a Polish-Lithuanian nobleman. His oriental sabre and colors - crimson and white, the national colors of Poland, also indicate that it is a man from Poland-Lithuania, most likely inspired by the increased presence of their envoys in artistic circles in Italy at that time. According to sources Barbara was a beauty, hence the title in Italian, La Bella, is fully deserved. "The composition of her body and face made her so beautiful that people out of jealousy disparaged her innocence", she was "gloriously wonderful, like a second Helen [Helen of Troy]" as was written in a panegyric, she had white alabaster skin, "sweet eyes, gentleness of speech, slowness of movements". 
Portrait of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) in a blue dress, known as La Bella by Titian, ca. 1545-1547, Pitti Palace in Florence.
Portrait of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551), known as La Bella by workshop of Titian, most probably by Lambert Sustris, ca. 1545-1547, Private collection.
Portrait of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551), known as La Bella, by Gortzius Geldorp after Titian, ca. 1605, Private collection.
Portrait of a lady in Italian costume, probably Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551), as Jael by follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1545-1547, Private collection.
Portrait of Barbara Radziwill as Venus by Titian or workshop
"Love is at odds at the beginning and the end: the beginning is sweet, but the end is bitter. Venus comes with sweetness but leaves with sadness" (Principio et fine amor dissidet: Principium dulce est, at finis amoris amarus. Lacta venire Venus, tristis abire solet), says an anonymous Latin poem about the loves and marriage of King Sigismund Augustus (after "Dzieje starożytne Narodu Litewskiego" by Teodor Narbutt, Volume 9, p. 22-23, 233), written at the time and quoting Ovid, the national poet of the 16th century Sarmatia. In the same source, we find a beautiful description of the charming garden in Vilnius, adorned with fragrant trees, flowers and a stream, "almost a corner of paradise" (prope Paradisi acmulus), belonging to Barbara Kolanka (d. 1550), mother of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551). This wealthy woman lived in a magnificent palace, right next to the Lower Castle, located on the Neris (Vilija) River, above which stood the medieval Upper Castle on Gediminas' Hill.
In his poem about the portrait of the king (In Sigismundi Augusti regis effigiem) and the unification of the Lithuanian nation with the Polish nation (Gens vis iungatur genti lituana polonae), the Spanish poet Pedro Ruiz de Moros also refers to the goddess of love. Venus and Thetis went to see the splendid portrait of the king and compared the ruler to their sons Aeneas and Achilles (Hanc Venus atque Thetis pictam ut videre tabellam, Illa suum Aenean, haec putat Aeaciden), but ultimately concluded that he was superior to them: "O pious king, forgive the goddesses; You are greater than Aeneas, you are greater than Achilles" (o rex pie, parce deabus; Maior es Aenea, maior es Aeacide). The poet also commemorated in a poem the one who was dearer to the king than anything on earth (Cui fuit in terris carius ante nihil), his second wife Barbara, Queen of the Sarmatians (Barbara, Sauromatum regina), born into the powerful Lithuanian house of Radvila/Radziwill (potenti De Radivilorum nobilis orta domo), the one who pleased Augustus and was worthy to touch the sacred bed (Augusto placui; sacrum tetigisse cubile) - Barbarae Reginae Epitaphia (compare "Petri Rozyii Maurei Alcagnicensis Carmina ...", ed. Bronisław Kruczkiewicz, part II, p. 18, 34, poems XXIV, 11). The magnificent jewels with representation of the goddess of love, including a diamond clasp with Venus and Vulcan, as well as a jewel: Mars cum Venere et cupidine (Mars with Venus and Cupid), mentioned in the 1599 inventory of the state treasury, most likely come from the collection of King Sigismund Augustus (after "Klejnoty w Polsce: czasy ostatnich Jagiellonów i Wazów" by Ewa Letkiewicz, p. 240). Before World War II, the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden housed a magnificent painting attributed to a follower of Titian, depicting Venus and a lute player (oil on canvas, 142 x 208 cm, inv. Gal.-Nr. 177). In 1939, the painting was listed in the Reich Chancellery, formerly the Radziwill Palace, in Berlin. It was therefore probably destroyed during the bombing of this building during the war. It was considered a school replica of Titian's painting in Madrid ("Catalogue of the pictures in the Royal Gallery at Dresden", p. 28, item 177), however the composition most closely resembles the painting in New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 36.29), which, according to my identification, is a portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572), Barbara Radziwill's successor as Queen of Poland. The New York painting is considered a work by Titian and his workshop, dating from the end of his artistic career. The author of the concept for this and other royal nudes from this period was most likely the king's jeweler Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio, creator of numerous erotic engravings and prints depicting naked Olympian gods. Caraglio, born in Verona in the Republic of Venice, is notably the author of Venus and Cupid (Di Venere e amore), signed: · CARALIVS · / · FE ·, Jupiter surprises the nymph Antiope (Giove in Satiro), signed with the monogram IC, Venus and Adonis (Parla Venere sopra Adoni morto), Jupiter as a Satyr and Diana (la Dea Diana col Dio Pan) and homoerotic scene of Apollo and Hyacinth (Apollo di Hyacintho), as recounted by Ovid in his Metamorphoses, as well as the ambiguous scene of Jupiter transformed into a shepherd (Giove in pastore), also inscribed as depicting Apollo and Hyacinth (Jupiter and Mnemosyne?), some of which were based on original drawings by Perino del Vaga and Rosso Fiorentino. Interestingly, the print Jupiter surprising the nymph Antiope (Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, copper engraving on paper, 21.1 x 13.5 cm, inv. 6749) probably inspired Gustave Courbet's famous painting The Origin of the World (Musée d'Orsay, inv. RF 1995 10). The medal from about 1539 or 1543 depicting the Veronese musician and canon of Vilnius, Alessandro Pesenti, musician and organist in the service of Bona Sforza, is attributed to Caraglio. The Dresden painting was not an exact copy; on the contrary, its style indicated that it had been created before the New York version. More importantly, the Dresden and New York paintings do not depict the same woman. It appears that the painter borrowed an earlier composition for the New York painting but depicted a different model. The shape of the body is different, as well as the face. While in the New York painting, the model is blond and her face is reminiscent of that of Catherine of Austria, according to her portrait at Voigtsberg Castle, also considered a work of Titian, the woman in the Dresden painting has a slightly longer nose and darker hair, as shown in old color reproductions of the painting. She bears a strong resemblance to Barbara Radziwill, particularly close when it comes to facial features is her portrait by Lambert Sustris in Chatsworth House (inv. PA 725), identified and attributed by me. Assuming that Barbara served as the model for the Dresden Venus and Catherine for the one in New York, we can easily understand why two such similar paintings were created and using different models. While Barbara was considered the monarch's great love, Catherine was abandoned by her husband soon after the wedding and tried to reconcile with him. Barbara Giżanka (ca. 1550-1589), mistress of Sigismund Augustus, considered one of his most important favourites, is said to have greatly resembled Barbara Radziwill. Thus, by making herself look like Barbara, Catherine tried to get closer to her husband. The 1912 English-language catalogue of the Dresden Gallery states that the Venus was "acquired in 1731 through Leplat", that is, a French Huguenot baron Raymond Leplat or Le Plat (1664-1742), who acted as agent for Augustus II the Strong (1670-1733), King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, in Paris and Rome, also traveling to the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, and Bohemia. According to the German catalogue of 1859 ("Die Königliche Gemälde-Gallerie zu Dresden" by Wilhelm Schäfer, p. 44), the painting was one of the oldest art treasures of the Dresden court, as it was originally housed in the Kunstkammer, and from there, at the request of the gallery's first director, Leplat, came to the Gallery in 1731. In the inventory of 1722, the painting was mentioned as "Copy of Titian. Philip II, King of Spain, and Signora Laura" (Tizian Cop. Phillippus II., König von Spanien, und Signora Laura), so it was considered a portrait of the King of Spain as a lute player and his mistress Laura as Venus. This old tradition, according to which the woman depicted, the goddess of love, was a royal mistress, perfectly fits the figure of Barbara Radziwill. One of the oldest and most beautiful copies of the Dresden Venus, now preserved at the Museum of Fine Arts in Bordeaux, is also known under the title of The Mistress of Philip II (oil on canvas, 140 x 200 cm, inv. Bx E 550). It is considered a 17th century copy and was donated to the museum by Lodi-Martin Duffour-Dubergier (1797-1860). The identification as mistress of the Catholic King of Spain had already been rejected in the mentioned catalogue of 1859 and no such mistress of Philip, i.e. Lady Laura, is known. Another old copy, in miniature, is in the Polish Museum in Rapperswil (watercolor and gouache on ivory, 10.7 x 17.3 cm). This small painting was created by the Polish painter Wincenty de Lesseur (1745-1813) in Dresden in 1793 (signed left in the center: W. Lesseur / à Dresde 1793). It comes from the Tarnowski collection in Dzików, evacuated to Canada during the Second World War. It is not known why the painter copied this painting, as the owners of the miniature, Waleria Tarnowska née Stroynowska (1782-1849) and her husband Jan Feliks Tarnowski (1777-1842), were not particularly fond of Titian and preferred Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Correggio (after "Zbiory sztuki Jana Feliksa i Walerii Tarnowskich ..." by Kazimiera Grottowa, p. 50). In 1797, Lesseur also copied for the Tarnowskis the portrait of Henryk Lubomirski (1777-1850) as Genius of Fame, painted in Paris by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun around 1787. The original of the portrait by Vigée Le Brun was in the Lubomirski Palace in Warsaw until 1816 and later in the Przeworsk Palace from where it was evacuated to France during the Second World War (purchased by Gemäldegalerie in Berlin from the Galerie Heim in Paris in 1974, inv. 74.4). Venus, crowned by Cupid, holds a flute. The music at the court of Sigismund Augustus was of a very high standard and accompanied many ceremonies and events, such as the entry into Kraków of the king's first wife, Elizabeth of Austria, on May 4, 1543, accompanied, among others, by sixty-two trumpeters and four brass instruments. The information on the nationalities of the instrumentalists in the Polish suites, especially the trumpeters, is interesting. The suite of Sigismund Augustus' chamberlain included two Muscovites, that of the Bishop of Płock, Samuel Maciejowski, six Tatars, and that of Hetman Jan Tarnowski, two Hungarian trumpeters. Opaliński had in his retinue a musician dressed in Turkish style and in the retinue of Voivode Kościelecki, three musicians "were dressed like Prussian women" (after "O muzykach, muzyce i jej funkcji ..." by Renata Król-Mazur, p. 41). Finally, a castle is depicted on the hill to the left of the Dresden painting. Although its shape is general and the painter has depicted the mountains of the "Far North" in the background, it evokes the castle depicted in the portrait of Barbara Kolanka as Saint Barbara, painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder around 1530 (Sammlung Würth). This castle is reminiscent of the Upper Castle in Vilnius; the entire scene therefore takes place in a garden near the Lithuanian capital. 
Portrait of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) as Venus with the lute player by Titian or workshop, ca. 1545-1551, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, lost during World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) as Venus with the lute player by follower of Titian, after 1545 (17th century?), Museum of Fine Arts in Bordeaux.
Miniature portrait of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) as Venus with the lute player by Wincenty de Lesseur, 1793, Polish Museum in Rapperswil.
Erotic print with Jupiter surprising the nymph Antiope by Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio, second quarter of the 16th century, Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.
Portrait of Barbara Radziwill in French costume and portrait of Anna d'Este by Niccolò dell'Abbate
On June 15, 1545, Elisabeth of Austria, first wife of Sigismund II Augustus, died. The king, however, continued his affair with his mistress Barbara Radziwill, whom he had met in 1543. Already in September 1546 rumors were circulating in Kraków that Sigismund Augustus was going to marry "a private woman of the worst opinion". To prevent this and to strengthen the pro-Turkish alliance (the eldest daughter of Bona, Isabella Jagiellon, was established by Sultan Suleiman as a regent of Hungary on behalf of her infant son), it was decided to marry Sigismund Augustus to Anna d'Este (1531-1607), daughter of the Duke of Ferrara and related to the French ruling house. The plan to marry Princess of Ferrara received the support of the powerful Farnese family. The French King Henry II also supported this idea. It was probably at this time that the young monarch received the French Order of Saint Michael, because his coat of arms and the inscription SIGISMVNDVS / AVG. REX.POLONIAE are included in the book of knights of this order made in Italy between 1550-1555 (Insignia ... XV. Insignia equitum Gallici ordinis Sancti Michaelis, Bavarian State Library in Munich, BSB Cod.icon. 280, p. 16r (0039)), together with those of the Duke of Ferrara (p. 114r (0235)).
Sigismund Augustus sent his courtier Stanisław Lasota (died 1561) to inquire about the possibilities of a possible marriage with one of the foreign princesses. Lasota went to England, where he began to negotiate the hand of Mary Tudor (1516-1558), daughter of Henry VIII. In France, he suggested to the royal court the idea of Sigismund Augustus marrying Princess Margaret of Valois (1523-1574). In October 1547, the marriage of the King of Poland to Princess Christina of Denmark (1521-1590), regent of Lorraine, was considered almost certain in Paris. The Habsburgs attempted to marry Sigismund Augustus to Anne of Lorraine (1522-1568), widow of René of Chalon (1519-1544), Prince of Orange, and Albert of Prussia to his daughter Anna Sophia (1527-1591). The marriage with the Lutheran princess of Prussia was also favoured by Queen Bona and on January 2, 1547, her courtier Tomasz Sobocki (ca. 1508-1547) sent a letter to the Duke in which he informed him of this fact. He stressed, however, that the matter was shrouded in secrecy and that is why the queen "used his hand to write the letter" (after "Polski słownik biograficzny ...", Volume 39, p. 559). Many portraits of brides and their families were sent to Poland-Lithuania at that time. The brides in turn and their families were undoubtedly interested in the young Polish king, his family and his famous mistress. Special envoys carried correspondence and effigies. The Ferrara envoy asked the secretary of Duke Ferrara to send less important letters for the queen by royal mail, while confidential correspondence was to continue to go privately through Carlo Foresta, who was also responsible for bringing the portrait of Princess Anna d'Este from Venice. From Kraków it was transported to Vilnius by the Grand Marshal of Lithuania, Nicolaus "the Black" Radziwill, who was sent by Sigismund Augustus with Jan Domanowski, provost of Vilnius, on an embassy to king's father Sigismund I. He was asked to do so by Giovanni Andrea Valentino, court physician to Queen Bona (after "Odrodzenie i reformacja w Polsce", Volumes 5-8, p. 81). Sigismund Augustus delayed and found excuses, for example, while the portrait of Anna of Ferrara had already been made and sent to Vilnius, he wanted to see the portraits of all the members of the d'Este family. This evasive answer of Sigismund Augustus, brought to Kraków on February 8, 1546 by Valentino's envoy, caused some consternation, of which the court physician informed the secretary of the Duke Bartolomeo Prospero on February 9. A few days later, on February 13, an envoy of the Duke of Ferrara arrived in Kraków with a portrait of Anna and letters from Duke Ercole. The Duke was concerned about the news received from Rome that the Pope was negotiating with the Polish-Lithuanian court about the marriage of his granddaughter. It is not known through whose efforts Sigismund Augustus also received a portrait of Charles V's daughter, Infanta Maria of Spain (1528-1603), possibly made by Antonis Mor, which worried the Ferrarese ambassador. It is not known whether this was at the king's request or whether someone from the king's entourage, probably a Habsburg supporter, had done it on his own initiative. Nothing more is known about the portrait of Lucrezia Borgia's granddaughter - Princess Anna d'Este, and most people would probably imagine it to be similar to her effigies, when she was Duchess of Guise and Duchess of Nemours, painted by French painters. In the Louvre Museum in Paris there is a painting of a nude woman (oil on canvas, 92 x 70 cm, RF 2016 4), identified as Queen Artemisia II of Caria preparing to drink the ashes of her husband Mausolus (also identified as Sophonisba or Pandora), attributed to a Modenese painter Niccolò dell'Abbate (died 1571), who moved to France in 1552. Probably before settling in France, Niccolò painted the portrait of the Duke of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio Ercole II d'Este, Anna's father, wearing the collar of the Order of Saint Michael (Christie's Paris, Auction 5601, June 23, 2010, lot 36). The order was sent to him by King Francis I of France (1494-1547). The woman looks at the viewer in a meaningful way, preparing to open the container. In this context, it can be seen as a portrait of a potential bride, who, through this "disguise", wanted to emphasize that she would be a loyal and devoted wife and a good queen like Artemisia. The woman bears a striking resemblance to later effigies of Anna d'Este, such as the portraits by circle of François Clouet from about 1563 (Palace of Versailles, inv. MV 3212 and Ashmolean Museum, inv. 16048) or a portrait by Léonard Limousin (British Museum, WB.24). The plaque with the portrait of Margaret of Valois (1523-1574), considered as the potential wife of Sigismund Augustus, made by Jean de Court in 1555 (The Wallace Collection, inv. C589), depicts the daughter of King Francis I of France as the Roman goddess Minerva. Disguised portraits were still popular in France at that time as well. The painting comes from the collection of Count Bassi, sold in Milan in 1898, so it is possible that it is a copy of a painting sent to Vilnius in 1546 or that it returned to the country of origin in the 18th or 19th century after the destruction of the Realm of Venus in central Europe. In the end, the young Polish king had to withdraw from all offers because of his marriage to Barbara Radziwill. The copyist of the letter to the Duke of Ferrara commented on the royal response with the note: "I have already married, I have married a pious whore" (jużem ci się ożenił, pojąłem ci nabożną kurwę, after "Zygmunt August" by Stanisław Cynarski, p. 49). In order not to lose such valuable allies as the King of France and the Duke of Ferrara, Sigismund Augustus had to convince them, as well as public opinion, to his wife. The miniature of a lady in a pink Italian dress from the 1540s, said to be Bona Sforza d'Aragona (gouache on paper, 15.6 x 11.7, inv. VI. 55), which was in the Czartoryski collection before World War II, cannot represent Bona because the woman is much younger and the features are different. It is however very similar to the effigies of Barbara Radziwill, in particular her portrait in a white dress (National Gallery of Art in Washington, inv. 1939.1.230), which I have identified. The traditional identification of the miniature with Queen Bona has already been challenged in the 1929 catalogue of the Czartoryski Museum ("Muzeum Książąt Czartoryskich w Krakowie ..." by Stefan Saturnin Komornicki, p. 32, item 156), although this does not mean that it is entirely erroneous. In the National Museum in Warsaw there is a copy of this miniature made around 1830 (Min.517 MNW), where the original is considered to be the work of a Flemish painter. The author who brought together the influences of these two schools of European painting (Italian and Flemish) was Jan Steven van Calcar (Giovanni da Calcar in Italian or Ioannes Stephanus Calcarensis in Latin), who died in 1546 or 1547. Born in the district of Cleves, and therefore considered a Flemish or Dutch painter, he probably received his initial training in his hometown, but worked almost all his life in Italy, including Venice (according to known sources). As in the case of the portrait of Anna d'Este mentioned above, several elements of this miniature have a symbolic meaning, such as the pink color generally associated with betrothal, the veil on the head and the pearls, a symbol of chastity. The woman holds her right hand on her womb. The style of this miniature, as well as the style of the woman's costume, recall another miniature from the same period depicting a lady with a pearl necklace, now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (watercolour on parchment, 8.6 cm, inv. 1890, 9005). This "older" woman bears a striking resemblance to Queen Bona, Duchess of Bari and Rossano by her own right, based on her well-known effigies - a cameo by Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio (Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 17.190.869), a full-length portrait (Royal Castle in Warsaw, ZKW 60) or a miniature with the Latin inscription: BONA SFORTIA ARAGONIA REGINA / POLLONIAE (Czartoryski Museum, MNK XII-141). In the 1890 inventory of the Uffizi Gallery, the miniature is listed after a miniature of a lady (inv. 1890, 9004), painted by Lavinia Fontana, active in Bologna and Rome, which may represent Isabella Ruini or Clelia Farnese (died 1613), mistress of Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici (1549-1609), or another Roman lady. Both miniatures undoubtedly come from the Medici collection, and Cardinal Ferdinando had many effigies of Polish-Lithuanian monarchs in his famous Roman villa (Villa Medici, according to Maciej Rywocki). The features of the lady in the Czartoryski miniature, on the other hand, are very similar to those seen in a portrait of a lady holding a chalice and a book, now in the National Museum in Warsaw (oil on panel, 68.5 x 55.5 cm, M.Ob.1264). Before 1942 the painting was in the collection of the art dealer Victor Modrzewski in Amsterdam, and therefore most likely comes from a collection of Polish-Lithuanian magnates. The latter painting is attributed to circle of Master of the Female Half-Lengths, a Flemish or French court master painter who frequently depicted ladies in guise of their patron saints and who also worked for other European courts (e.g. portrait of Isabella of Portugal in Lisbon - Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, inv. 2172 Pint). The woman is dressed according to French fashion, very similar to the outfit in the portrait of Catherine de' Medici, Queen of France from about 1547 in the Uffizi (Inv. 1890 / 2448). She is holding a prayer book and a chalice, an attribute of Saint Barbara, who was considered to provide protection against sudden and violent death (the scene on the chalice shows a man killing other man) and patron saint of pregnant women (together with Saint Margaret of Antioch). Even before she became the king's mistress, Barbara Radziwill was a very wealthy woman. Before her marriage to Stanislovas Gostautas (died 1542), she received from her father as a dowry a large amount of silverware such as sixteen large silver bowls with smaller dishes and bowls, spoons, cups, goblets and candlesticks, jewelry, including "ten pearl collars" or "three pearl caps", dresses of golden cloth, two beige dresses, one of satin and one of velvet, three dresses of red damask and one of white damask and others, eight golden caps, "a golden chomlija, a red beret with gold, made of Venetian velvet", a golden cloth duvet, ten carpets (or tapestries), carriages and coaches, including a golden carriage, and twenty-four horses (compare "Pisma historyczne" by Michał Baliński, Volumes 1-4, p. 10-21). The painting is generally identified as depicting Saint Mary Magdalene, however, Saint Barbara on the title page of "Inscription on the tomb of the noble Queen Barbara Radziwill" (Napis nad grobem zacney Krolowey Barbary Radziwiłowny), published in Kraków in 1558, also more closely resembles the effigies traditionally identified as Saint Mary Magdalene. At that time, the king used Flemish and French merchants and artists for his famous commission for tapestries in Flanders. It is confirmed that in the 1550s and 1560s, the king's confidant Jan Kostka (1529-1581), castellan of Gdańsk, acted as an intermediary between the royal court and artists active in Flanders. For example, in May 1564, the king ordered him to send the Flemish weaver Roderigo Dermoyen to Flanders for tapestries. Before 1561, tapestries were made in Gdańsk for Kostka by Remigius Delator (de Latour in French), who also supplied tapestries to the Swedish court. They could also act as intermediaries with Flemish painters. All the mentioned paintings of Barbara and her mother-in-law, Queen Bona, are most likely workshop copies of a larger commission for state portraits. 
Portrait of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) in French costume by circle of Master of the Female Half-Lengths, ca. 1546-1547, National Museum in Warsaw.
Miniature portrait of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) by circle of Jan van Calcar, ca. 1546-1547, Czartoryski Museum, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Miniature portrait of Bona Sforza d'Aragona (1494-1557) by Jan van Calcar, ca. 1546, Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Portrait of Anna d'Este (1531-1607) as Artemisia by Niccolò dell'Abbate, ca. 1546, Louvre Museum in Paris.
Portrait of Zofia Firlejowa as Venus by workshop of Giovanni Cariani
In 1546 or at the beginning of 1547, Jan Firlej (1521-1574) of Lewart coat of arms, later Grand Marshal of the Crown, voivode of Kraków and the head of the Calvinist camp, married the incredibly wealthy Zofia Bonerówna, daughter of royal banker Seweryn Boner (1486-1549), receiving a huge dowry of 47,000 florins and the Boner property near Ogrodzieniec Castle. Jan was the eldest son of Piotr Firlej (d. 1553), voivode of Ruthenia from 1545 and a trusted adviser of Queen Bona Sforza and King Sigismund Augustus, and Katarzyna Tęczyńska. Concluded on the initiative of his father, who used the money from Jan's wife's dowry to pay off his debts, this marriage turned out to be very beneficial from the point of view of the family's interests.
Piotr was a patron of arts, he extended his Janowiec Castle and built a Renaissance palace in Lubartów. At his expense a beautiful tombstone was created in about 1553 by Giovanni Maria Mosca, called il Padovano in the Dominican church in Lublin. In his great estates in Dąbrowica, a village a mile from Lublin, he had a magnificent palace, whose stairs carved in marble were admired by poet Jan Kochanowski. Zofia's parents were also renowned patrons of arts. Bronze tomb sculpture of Seweryn and his wife Zofia née Bethman was created between 1532-1538 by Hans Vischer in Nuremberg and transported to Kraków. Between 1530-1547 Seweryn rebuilt and extended Ogrodzieniec Castle, transforming the medieval stronghold into a Renaissance castle - it was called "little Wawel". The Boners furnished it with beautiful furniture, tapestries and other most valuable items imported from abroad. In 1655, the castle was partially burnt down by the Swedish army, which was stationed there for almost two years, ruining a large part of the buildings. Similar to the royal court, many such items were also commissioned or acquired in Venice. In 1546 a Venetian Aloisio received a fur coat and several dozen thalers for the total amount of 78 zlotys 10 groszy for various instruments which he brought from Venice to Kraków on the king's order. As the Governor of the royal estates Zofia's father Seweryn, who kept the books of accounts for the court, brokered many such purchases. In 1553 two Jews from Kazimierz, Jonasz, the elder of the Kazimierz community, and Izak, the son of the second senior of this community and royal supplier Izrael Niger, took part in a trade mission sent by the king to Vienna and Venice to purchase goods for the royal court, receiving an advance payment of 840 Hungarian florins in gold. A few months later (April 11, 1553) Izak Izraelowicz Niger (Schwarz) was sent back to Venice in order to purchase wedding gifts for the third wife of Sigismund Augustus, Catherine of Austria, receiving 400 Hungarian florins in gold (after "Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego", Issues 153-160, p. 7). Inhabitants of the royal city of Kraków were connoisseurs of art and had important collections of paintings and portraits. In 1540 Katarzyna, widow of Paul Kaufman, a merchant of Kraków, residing in the convent of St. Andrew, left her portraits in her last will to the convent (Omes imagines suas dat, donat se defuncta, Conventui huic s. Andrere, ad Ecclesiam et etiam sororibus monialibus) and in 1542 in the list of paintings of the late Melchior Czyżowski, Vice-Procurator of the Kraków Castle (Viceprocuratori Castri Cracoviensis), there were two of his portraits (Duæ imagines Dni Melchioris C ...), a painting of Herodias (Tabula pieta, Herodiadis), possibly by workshop of Cranach, the woman taken in adultery (Figura de muliere deprehensa in adulterio), possibly by Venetian painter, the twelve labors of Hercules (Duodecem labores Herculis), a view of Venice (Cortena in qua depicta est Venetia), a painting of Judith and Herodias, painted on both sides (Tabula Judith et Herodiadis, ex utraque parte depicta), painting of Thisbe and another of Judith (Figura Thisbe, Fig. Judith), Nativity of Christ (Nativitatis Christi) and Mary Magdalene (Mariæ Magdalenæ), most likely by Venetian school, and other religious paintings. Over half a century later, in about 1607, other representative of the family, Hieronim Czyżowski, recorded in books of the Polish Nation 15 years earlier, in 1592, ordered a painting by the Venetian painter Pietro Malombra with his portrait as donor (Resurrection of Knight Piotrawin by Saint Stanislaus) for the altar of the Polish Nation in the Basilica of Saint Anthony in Padua. In the Scottish National Gallery there is a preparatory study for this painting (inventory number RSA 221), in which however the donor is not present in the composition, indicating that his portrait was added later, possibly based on a drawing sent from Poland. Bonerówna married Jan Firlej shortly before or after his return from diplomatic mission at the court of Ferdinand I of Austria and most likely to the court of Ferrara. She bore him two daughters Jadwiga and Zofia and four sons Mikołaj, Andrzej, Jan and Piotr. Zofia died in or after 1563 and Jan married secondly Zofia Dzikówna (died after 1566) and later Barbara Mniszech (died 1580). The couple probably had another daughter, Elżbieta, however, she died at the young age in 1580. Her tombstone behind the main altar of the church in Bejsce near Kraków was founded by her brother Mikołaj Firlej (d. 1600), voivode of Kraków, who has a magnificent burial chapel in the same church, modeled on the Sigismund Chapel. This monument to the Polish virgin, according to Latin inscription (ELIZABETHAE / IOAN(NIS) FIRLEII A DAMBROWICA PALAT(INI) ET CAPIT(ANEI) CRACOVIEN(SIS) / ATQVE MARSALCI REGNI F(ILIAE) / VIRGINI NATALIB(VS) ILLVSTRI. FORMA INSIGNI AETATE FLORE(N)TI / VITA PVDICISSIMAE [...] NICOL(AVS) FIRLEIVS A DAMBROWICA IO(ANNES) F(IRLEIVS) - CASTELL(ANVS) BIECEN(SIS) / SORORI INCOMPARABILI E DOLORIS ET AMORIS FRATERNI / MOERENS POS(VIT) / OBIIT AN(N)O D(OMI)NI : M.D.LXXX), is considered a rarity and attributed to workshop of Girolamo Canavesi. She was depicted sleeping, half-recumbent, in a pose reminiscent of the Birth of Venus, a Roman fresco from the House of Venus in Pompeii, created in the 1st century AD, or Venus from cassone with scenes of the Battle of Greeks and Amazons before the walls of Troy by workshop of Paolo Uccello, painted in about 1460 (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven). Elżbieta's tombstone is crowned with coat of arms of the Firlejs - Lewart, a rampant leopard. In 2014 an unframed painting of recumbent Venus and Cupid by workshop of Giovanni Cariani (d. 1547) was sold in London (oil on canvas, 102 x 172.2 cm, Bonhams, 9 July 2014, lot 35). Cupid points his arrow at the heart of the lying woman, symbolizing love. In the right corner of the canvas, on the tree, there is a shield with coat of arms showing a rampant leopard on red background, very similar to the one visible in the monument to Elżbieta Firlejówna in Bejsce, as well as many other depictions of coat of arms of the Firlej family. In the background, there is a gothic cathedral, very similar to view of St. Stephen's Cathedral in the Panorama of Vienna (Vienna, Citta Capitale dell' Austria), created by Italian engraver in about 1618 (Wien Museum, inventory number 34786). The painting recall the erotic plaques from cupboard-cabinet by Peter Flötner or Wenzel Jamnitzer from the Zamoyski Estate in Warsaw (lost during World War II). The cabinet was adorned with 26 bronze plaques with nude lying female figures. It was most probably created in Augsburg or in Nuremberg and could come from a royal or a magnate commission. Flötner created several exquisite items for Sigismund I in the 1530s, including silver altar for the Sigismund Chapel and casket of Hedwig Jagiellon (Saint Petersburg). If this painting of Jan Firlej's wife as Venus was painted by Cariani's workshop shortly before the artist's death, this would explain why Firlej decided to order his portrait from young Jacopo Tintoretto in 1547 (Kröller-Müller Museum). A manuscript in the Ossolineum (number 2232) from the 1650s, lists a great number of jewels, furniture, paintings, books, clothes, fabrics with Lewart coat of arms and relics from Firlej estates in Dąbrowica, Ogrodzieniec and Bejsce. It also includes many imported goods and portraits, like "foreign fans", "pictures of deceased ancestors and many various arts, very expensive and elaborate", "great Persian and home-made rugs", "two paintings: one in French costume, the other in Polish, and the third started, in French style", "many old pictures from Ogrodziniec and Dąbrowica, one with a dwarf with a great son; costly, pious pictures on copper, many on canvas", "costly glass, buried in a cellar in Dąbrowica from the enemy, Jarosz Kossowski dug it", most likely Venetian glass saved during the Deluge (1655-1660), "the Bonarowski chalice, three gold stamps, folded into one, by elaborate work", most probably from dowry of Zofia Bonerówna, "various foreign spectacles of copper, foreign jetons" and other items. 
Portrait of Zofia Firlejowa née Bonerówna (d. 1563) as Venus and Cupid with Lewart coat of arms by workshop of Giovanni Cariani, 1546-1547, Private collection.
Portrait of Jan Firlej by Jacopo Tintoretto
Thanks to his father's efforts, Jan Firlej (1521-1574) received an education at the highest level. He studied at the University of Leipzig for two years, then continued his education at the University of Padua for the next two years. From there with his relative count Stanisław Gabriel Tęczyński (1514-1561), chamberlain of Sandomierz, and Stanisław Czerny, starost of Dobczyce, he went to the Holy Land, visited Egypt and Palestine. They set off on a journey from Venice in the second half of 1541 - on June 16 that year he participated in the solemn procession in Venice, as the Lord of Dąbrowica (dominus de Dambrouicza) among the group of pilgrims of Jerusalem (peregrinorum Hierosolimitanorum). He also traveled to Rome. Around 1543, he returned to Poland, and in 1545, he entered the service of King Sigismund I. In the same year, he was sent on a mission to Emperor Charles V at the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire in Worms. According to Stanisław Hozjusz (Hosius, Op. I, 459) in 1547, as an envoy, he participated in diplomatic activities at the court of Ferdinand I of Austria, possibly concernig the king's marriage with Barbara Radziwill or the plans to marry him to Anna d'Este (1531-1607), daughter of the Duke of Ferrara.
In January 1546, Giovanni Andrea Valentino (de Valentinis) the court physician of Sigismund the Old and Queen Bona, was sent from Kraków with a confidential mission to Sigismund Augustus residing in Lithuania, concerning the marriage with Anna d'Este. Around that time, a separate letter was sent by the envoy of Duke of Ferrara, Antonio Valentino, staying in Poland from August 30, 1545 to September 1546, to Bartolomeo Prospero, the secretary of Duke Ercole II, to speed up the delivery of the bride's portrait. "He recommended that the parcel be exported to Venice not by royal mail, but by a private route in the hands of Carlo Foresta, one of the agents of Gaspare Gucci from Florence, a merchant in Kraków" (after "Działalność Włochów w Polsce w I połowie XVI wieku" by Danuta Quirini-Popławska, p. 87). It possible that the portrait mentioned in the letter was created in Venice, as Dukes of Ferrara also commissioned ther effigies there, e.g. portrait of Alfonso II d'Este (1533-1597) by Titian or workshop in Arolsen Castle, identified by me. In 1909 in the collection of Prince Andrzej Lubomirski in Przeworsk there was a small painting (oil on tin plate, 26 x 35 cm) attributed to 16th century Venetian school depicting "Madonna and Child surrounded by people who, according to tradition, represent the family of princes d'Este; the golden-haired woman depicts probably the famous Eleonora d'Este" (after "Katalog wystawy obrazów malarzy dawnych i współczesnych urządzonej staraniem Andrzejowej Księżny Lubomirskiej" by Mieczysław Treter, item 36, p. 11). In 1547 a painter Pietro Veneziano (Petrus Venetus), created a painting to the main altar of the Wawel Cathedral and Titian was summoned to paint Charles V and others in Augsburg. The painting in the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo attributed to Jacopo Tintoretto, shows a wealty nobleman in a black coat lined with tremendously expensive lynx fur. His proud pose and gloves also indicate his position. This painting was acquired by Helene Kröller-Müller in 1921 and earlier it was in the collection of Count of Balbi in Venice and possibly in the Giustinian-Lolin collection in Venice. According to inscription in lower left corner, the man was 26 years of age in 1547 (ANN·XXVI·MEN·VI·/·MD·XL·VII·), exactly as Jan Firlej, when he was sent on a mission to Austria and possibly to Venice and Ferrara. 
Portrait of Jan Firlej (1521-1574) aged 26 by Jacopo Tintoretto, 1547, Kröller-Müller Museum.
Portrait of Nicolaus "the Red" Radziwill by workshop of Giovanni Cariani
In 1547 Nicolaus III Radziwill (1512-1584), Great Royal Deputy Cup-bearer of Lithuania, the son of Grand Hetman of Lithuania George "Hercules" Radziwill and Barbara Kolanka, received the title of Prince of the Roman Empire in Birzai and Dubingiai from the Emperor Charles V. He received it together with his cousin Nicolaus (1515-1565), then the Grand Marshal of Lithuania, who become the Prince in Nesvizh and Olyka. In order not to confuse him with his namesake, the cousins were given the nicknames on account of the color of their hair. Nicolaus III is best known as "the Red" and his cousin as "the Black".
About the same year king Sigismund II Augustus married secretly Nicolaus' younger sister Barbara, thinking she was pregnant. Nicolaus "the Red" was henceforth brother-in-law and confidant of the king. Sigismund Augustus, famous for his lavish lifestyle and generous spending on gifts for his mistress and future wife, also financially supported her brother. The Grand Ducal accounts confirm the amount spent on the modernization of Nicholaus's residence in Vilnius (Anno Domini 1546, die XXIIII decembris Vilnae [...] ex tesauro maiestatis suae et in aedificia Vilnensia aularum muratorum, domus Radziwilonis, testudinis subterranei seu porticus et aliorum testudinum circa arcem reformatorum et restauratorum ac noviter edificatorum). Before November 13, 1546, the sums were paid for the construction of three gilded balls for the roof of Radziwill Palace, which means that construction was almost complete by then (after "Obraz Bitwa pod Orszą ..." by Marek A. Janicki, p. 205). Thanks to the king's protection he became a Lithuanian Master of the Hunt in 1545 and from 1550 he was a voivode of Trakai. Nicolaus was a famous military leader, he participated in the war with Muscovy between 1534-1537, including in the siege of Starodub in 1535. The portrait of a member of the Radziwill family, said to be John Radziwill (d. 1522), nicknamed "the Bearded", father of Nicolaus "the Black", in the National Art Museum of Belarus in Minsk, comes from the gallery of portraits in the Radziwill castle in Nesvizh. Due to the style of the costume and technique, this work is generally dated to the beginning of the 17th century. It is, however, stylistically very close to another portrait from the same collection, the portrait of of Prince Nicolaus II Radziwill (1470-1521) by Giovanni Cariani, created in about 1520. The sitter's face was created in Cariani's style, most probably by the master himself, the rest, less elaborate, was undoubtedly completed by painter's pupil. Cariani, though he worked often in Bergamo near Milan, died in Venice. The date of the artist's death is not known, his last presence is documented on November 26, 1547 in the will of his daughter Pierina, making his death coincide in the following year. The man's pose and sash is very similar to the effigy of Nicolaus III Radziwill in the Hermitage Museum (ОР-45840) signed in Polish/Latin: "Nicolaus Prince in Birzai, Voivode of Vilnius, Chancellor and Hetman / Evangelical, called the Red" (Mikołay Xże na Birżach, Wda Wilenski, Kanclerz y Hetman / Evangelik, cognomento Rufus), from the first half of the 17th century. The man is holding a military baton. His black armor is almost identical with the black armor of Nicolaus III Radziwill in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. This armor, created by an Italian workshop in about 1545, was offered to Ferdinand II (1529-1595), Archduke of Further Austria, son of Anna Jagellonica, in 1580 by Nicolaus himself. The sword swinging from his belt is similar to golden rapier of Archduke Maximilian, the eldest son of Anna Jagellonica, created by Antonio Piccinino in Milan and by Spanish workshop in about 1550 (Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna). The man bears finally a resemblance to the effigy of Nicolaus' mother Barbara Kolanka by Cranach (Wartburg-Stiftung in Eisenach) and his sister Barbara-La Bella by Titian (Pitti Palace in Florence). 
Portrait of Nicolaus "the Red" Radziwill (1512-1584) by workshop of Giovanni Cariani, ca. 1547, National Art Museum of Belarus in Minsk.
Portraits of members of the Radziwill family by Giampietro Silvio and Paris Bordone
John Radziwill (1516-1551), together with his elder brother Nicolaus "the Black" Radziwill (1515-1565), grew up at the court of King Sigismund the Old. As a royal courtier, equipped with letters of recommendation from King Sigismund I and Queen Bona, he traveled to Italy in 1542 - he certainly visited Ferrara, Padua and Venice. Both during the trip to Italy and on the way back, he stopped in Vienna at the court of Ferdinand, king of Bohemia and Hungary. He returned to Kraków in September 1542. It was probably during this trip that John became acquainted with the Reformation and returned to the country as a Lutheran (after "Archiva temporum testes ..." by Grzegorz Bujak, Tomasz Nowicki, Piotr Siwicki, p. 218).
He was the first Radziwill to die in the Evangelical faith, as evidenced by the funeral speeches by Wenceslaus Agrippa and Philip Melanchthon - Oratio Fvnebris de Illvstrissimi Principis et Domini Domini Iohannis Radzivili ..., published in Wittenberg in 1553. In 1544, he became a the Great Carver of Lithuania (krajczy, incisor Lithuaniae). He was also the starost of Tykocin. He corresponded with Duke Albert of Prussia, as several letters from the Duke to John dating from 1546 have preserved. On December 24, 1547, thanks to the efforts of his elder brother, he received the title of Prince of the Holy Roman Empire and that year he probably married Elżbieta Herburt from Felsztyn. He died childless on September 27, 1551. It was most likely John, Barbara's cousin and confidant of the young king, who facilitated their meeting (after "Przeglad polski ..." by Stanisław Koźmian, Volumes 9-12, p. 7). He participated in splendid feasts and masquerades in Vilnius, during which "only sluts or widows known of prostitution and philandering, before all other respectable women, are welcomed. Each one, because riches are only valued in our country, considers herself quite honest when she travels in a magnificent carriage drawn by many horses, or when she is decked out in gold, scarlet [fabrics] and pearls, and presents herself to people's eyes in all the market squares and crossroads", lamented Calvinist theologian Andrzej Wolan (Andreas Volanus), royal secretary (text published in 1569). During one of these parties, John Radziwill became obsessed with a woman and left his wife (after "Najsłynniejsze miłości królów polskich" by Jerzy Besala, p. 111-114). "Augustus fell in love with Barbara Radziwill, a woman of a famous family in Lithuania [...] who always paid more attention to other matters than fame [i.e. good opinion]. Having lost her virginity with many, the king, deceived by them, glorifying form and body and easy debauchery, was first led to her" - wrote the secretary of the papal nuncio, Antonio Maria Graziani (Gratiani). They probably knew each other since childhood, as Sigismund Augustus often spent time in Lithuania with his parents and the Radziwill manor was adjacent to the Grand Ducal Castle in Vilnius. Perhaps the next meeting took place in Hieraniony (Gieranony) in Belarus in October 1543. Shortly after the death of Sigismund Augustus' first wife, many people were talking about a possible marriage. Soon, very unpleasant comments began to circulate about the king's favorite. Canon Stanisław Górski (d. 1572), secretary of Queen Bona between 1535-1548, counted thirty-eight of her lovers, called her "a great whore" (wiborna kurwa) or magna meretrix and claimed that she did not show any grief over the loss of her first husband, nor did she wear widow's mourning. Stanisław Orzechowski (1513-1566), canon of Przemyśl, an opponent of celibacy, wrote in 1548 that: "When she grew up and was given to her previous husband, she conducted herself in such a way that she either equaled or surpassed her mother in disgrace, and was marked by many blemishes of lust and immodesty". He also wrote that "There are people here and there who were rolling around lasciviously with this Thaïs [a repentant courtesan]". Later, even her cousin Nicolaus "the Black" spoke unfavorably about her: "After all, she was married to Gostautas, and in this house ex usu et natura crescebat illa diabolica symulatio [diabolical simulation grew out of practice and nature]," and that she "indulged in devilish practices out of necessity and nature." Such rumors were likely fueled by Queen Bona, as marrying a subject was not favored in the majority of highly hierarchical countries of the Western Europe, including her native Italy (in Poland-Lithuania the monarch was elected and there were no hereditary titles apart from those granted by the emperor thus seeking supporters). She expressed her concerns in a letter to the mayor of Gdańsk, Johann von Werden (1495-1554). Many renowned authors were involved in this campaign to disgrace the king's mistress, it is therefore difficult today to determine to what extent this was true. Barbara's brother, Nicolaus "the Red", and her cousin Nicolaus "the Black", after consulting her mother Barbara Kolanka, asked the king to stop visiting their house because his relations with Barbara brought shame to the entire family. Shortly after, the king secretly married his mistress. When Barbara became queen, her brother Nicolaus "the Red" was the superior of the guard surrounding the queen in Lithuania. The king sent him numerous letters (kept in the Imperial Library in St. Petersburg). Sigismund Augustus was afraid of Barbara being poisoned. There are detailed warnings about how the queen should drink and who should prepare her drink and he prefers that men, not women, give her a drink. The queen would also like to comply in everything with her husband's wishes. Once she asks what clothes to wear to greet him. The king replies that she should wear "a black dress of Italian fabric" (after "Biblioteka warszawska", Volume 4, p. 631). In the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, there is a portrait of a man holding a letter (oil on canvas, 82 x 66 cm, GG 1537). The painting comes from the the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria and was recorded in the Theatrum Pictorium (number 54), before two paintings depicting Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski and King Sigismund I (numbers 56, 57), identified by me. According to an inscription in the Theatrum Pictorium, the original painting was painted by Titian (I. Titian p.), while the canvas in Vienna is signed by another Venetian painter Giampietro Silvio (1495-1552), indicating that the signature was probably not known before. The portrait is clearly inspired by some effigies of Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon by Lucas Cranach and studio and the man resembles a Protestant preacher. However, his black coat of shiny silk and rich ring on his finger indicate that he is more of an aristocrat. According to the mentioned signature of the painter on the right above his shoulder, the painting was made in 1542 (Jo.pe.S. 1542), when John Radziwill visited the Republic of Venice and Vienna. The same man was depicted in another painting by Silvio, today in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (oil on canvas, 102 x 144 cm, inventory number 196). The painting was purchased in 1815 in Paris from the Giustiniani collection by Frederick William III (1770-1840), King of Prussia, with nearly 160 other works and transferred to Berlin. The collection was transferred to Paris in 1807 from Rome, where it was kept in the Giustiniani Palace built at the beginning of the 17th century and probably corresponds to the painting mentioned in the inventory of the collection of 1638 with attribution to Giorgione. The man wears a red coat of a starost or similar to the crimson żupan of the Polish-Lithuanian nobility, it was thus created after 1544. The scene depicts Christ and the Adulteress (The Adulteress Brought before Christ), illustrating the passage from the New Testament in which a group of scribes and Pharisees confront Jesus, interrupting his teaching. They bring in a woman, accusing her of committing adultery. They tell Jesus that the punishment for someone like her should be stoning, as prescribed by the Mosaic law. He declares that the one who is without sin is the one who should cast the first stone at her. The effigy of the adulteress is believed to be a disguised portrait of a famous and "magnificent courtesan" (somtuosa meretrize) Julia Lombardo, who owned such a painting before her death in 1542 in Venice. It is not known how the painting arrived in Rome in the collection of the Genoese banker Vincenzo Giustiniani (1564-1637). Most likely, it was sent to the Eternal City shortly after its creation. The woman resembles the effigy of Queen Barbara by the workshop of Paris Bordone at Knole House, Kent (NT 129951) and other portraits of the queen, while the face of Christ closely resembles the effigy of the brother of Barbara, Nicolaus "the Red", by workshop of Giovanni Cariani at the National Art Museum of Belarus in Minsk. He has dark hair because Christ could not have red hair, according to the known iconography. Another version of this painting can be found in Vilnius. It comes from the collection of Dr Pranas Kiznis exhibited at the Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania (oil on canvas, 118 x 163). The collection includes the portrait of Pope Leo X by Jacopino del Conte and Susanna and the Elders by Palma il Giovane. The precise provenance is not specified, however, even if the painting was acquired in Italy, where it was most likely also created, this does not exclude the identification of the same protagonists as disguised portraits of Barbara Radziwill and her brother. This painting had important political significance and therefore may have been intended for family or friends in Italy. Very little is known about Silvio, who died in Venice in 1551, probably born on Venetian territory around 1495 and who signed some of his works Joannes Petrus Silvius Venetus, thus defining himself as a Venetian. Perhaps his stay in Poland-Lithuania is yet to be discovered. A reduced version of the composition, closer to the Berlin painting, was in a private collection in England (oil on canvas, 43 x 75.5 cm, Sotheby's London, April 24, 2007, lot 216). It has been attributed to a follower of Rocco Marconi (d. 1529), a Venetian painter who frequently painted similar scenes. The number of copies (versions) of this painting also indicates that it is a religious scene with disguised portraits and additional meaning Such representations in the scene of Christ and the Adulteress were popular in 16th-century Europe, especially in this context of well known "adultery". Georg Vischer's painting from the Electoral Gallery in Munich (Alte Pinakothek, inventory number 1411), dated 1637, is most likely a copy of a lost original by Albrecht Dürer from around 1520. Dürer represented himself as Christ and the adulterous woman bears the features of a mistress of Alfonso d'Este (1476-1534), Duke of Ferrara (a relative of Queen Bona Sforza) - Laura Dianti (d. 1573), called Eustochia. Laura was frequently depicted in many biblical disguises, like Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist (Uffizi Gallery in Florence and Musée Fesch in Ajaccio), Saint Mary Magdalene (private collection), Salome (private collection), all by Titian and followers and also in the scene of Jesus preaching to Laura Dianti and her great-grandson Alfonso III d'Este, Duke of Modena and Reggio by circle of Sante Peranda (Château de Chenonceau). Similar to the Berlin painting where John Radziwill was depicted in the upper left corner as a donor, such effigy is also in the painting by Vischer (a man in a green cap looking at the viewer). In 1642, in a dispute with the d'Este family, lawyers of the Holy See even referred to the way Duke Francesco I's grandmother was depicted in a portrait from many years ago (a painting of Laura depicted like an exotic courtesan by Titian). The lack of regalia and the free convention of an "indecent" woman were, in their opinion, proof that the ruler was born out of wedlock (after "Prawna ochrona królewskich wizerunków" by Jacek Żukowski). This is why many "indecent" effigies were destroyed during the Counter-Reformation, including very probably the original by Dürer. Another similar scene with portraits is in the Schloss Johannisburg in Aschaffenburg (inventory number 6246). It comes from the Zweibrücken gallery and may have once been in Halle Cathedral, remodeled around 1520 by Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg (1490-1545). In this painting, attributed to workshop or circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder (possibly Hans Abel), Albert was depicted in the guise of Christ and his concubine Elisabeth (Leys) Schütz (d. 1527) as the adulteress. The cardinal was also frequently depicted in other religious disguises, such as Saint Jerome, Saint Erasmus and Saint Martin and his concubine as Saint Ursula. The same woman and man were also depicted together in another painting. This portrait is attributed to Paris Bordone, but its style reveals great similarities with certain works of Giovanni Cariani, such as the mentioned effigy of Nicolaus "the Red" in Minsk. Bordone probably copied a painting by Cariani and was inspired by his style. The painting is now in the Nivaagaard Museum in Nivå, Denmark (oil on canvas, 84.5 x 71 cm, 0009NMK) and was purchased on September 11, 1906 from Lesser, London by Danish businessman Johannes Hage (1842-1923). The dress of a young woman is very similar to that seen in a Portrait of a Young Woman by Bordone in the National Gallery, London, dated around 1545 (NG674), in a Portrait of a Lady from the Pitti Palace in Florence, dated between 1545 and 1555 (Palatina 109, 1912) or Women at their Toilet from around 1545 in the National Galleries Scotland (NG 10). The woman holds her hand on her womb as if to say that she remains chaste and the rumors are false. The man standing behind her resemble her and he is holding his hands on her arms in supportive gesture, he is obviously her brother. The same man is depicted in another painting by Bordone in which his pose and features also resemble those of his cousin John Radziwill from a painting by Silvio in Berlin. He is holding a letter and the painting can be compared to the portrait of the royal jeweler Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio at the Wawel Royal Castle dating between 1547 and 1553. This painting comes from the collection of Graf von Galen at Haus Assen in Lippborg in northern Germany. Since the early 17th century, the Radziwill family had significant connections and properties in Germany. It was sold in 2004 in London (oil on canvas, 92.4 x 74 cm, Sotheby's, July 08, 2004, lot 300). Among the paintings belonging to the "Victorious King" John III Sobieski (1629-1696), which could come from earlier royal collections and mentioned in the inventory of the Wilanów Palace from 1696, we find "A painting of mulieris in adulterio a Iudaeis deprehensae [a woman caught in adultery by the Jews] in gilded and carved frames" (Obraz mulieris in adulterio a Iudaeis deprehensae wramach złocistych rzniętych, No. 70). In addition to an expensive frame, this painting hung in a representative interior of the King's Antechamber, next to "A painting of Christ the Lord with the Pharisees [Christ among the doctors] in a gilded frame by Raphael" (Obraz Chrystusa Pana z Farazeuszami wramach złocistych Rafaela, No. 69). The inventory of paintings from the collection of Princess Louise Charlotte Radziwill (1667-1695), that survived the Deluge (1655-1660), drawn up in 1671, in addition to portraits of Queen Barbara and her husband, lists the following portraits of members of the family: Nicolaus Radziwił Dux in Ołyka et Nieśwież Palatinus Vilnen. (10), Joanes Radziwil Dux in Muszniki Archicamer. M.D.L. (15), Joanes Radziwił Dux in Olika et Nieśwież Etatis Sue 35 (17), Nicolaus Radziwił Dux Birzarum et Dubincorum, Palaitinus Vilnen. Gnalis Dux Exercitum M.D.L. (21) and many other unspecified portraits like "A person in black costume in German style, yellow hair" (271). The inventory also includes paintings such as "Lucifer with devils, painting on a sheet metal" (579/12) and "Devils [in different] postures on a panel" (584/17). 
Portrait of John Radziwill (1516-1551) holding a letter by Giampietro Silvio, 1542, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of John Radziwill (1516-1551) from the Theatrum Pictorium (54) by Jan van Troyen, 1660, Princely Court Library in Waldeck.
Christ and the Adulteress with portraits of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551), her brother Nicolaus "the Red" Radziwill (1512-1584) and cousin John Radziwill (1516-1551) by Giampietro Silvio, ca. 1545-1547, Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.
Christ and the Adulteress with portraits of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) and her brother Nicolaus "the Red" Radziwill (1512-1584) by Giampietro Silvio, ca. 1545-1547, Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania in Vilnius.
Christ and the Adulteress with portraits of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) and her brother Nicolaus "the Red" Radziwill (1512-1584) by Giampietro Silvio, ca. 1545-1547, Private collection.
Portrait of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) and her brother Nicolaus "the Red" Radziwill (1512-1584) by Paris Bordone, ca. 1545-1547, Nivaagaard Museum in Nivå.
Portrait of Nicolaus "the Red" Radziwill (1512-1584) holding a letter by Paris Bordone, ca. 1550, Private collection.
Portraits of pregnant Barbara Radziwill
In a letter of November 26, 1547, Stanisław Andrejewicz Dowojno (d. 1566) reported to king Sigismund Augustus about miscarriage of Barbara Radziwill, whom he wed secretly sometime in 1547. Having a large number of mistresses before, during and after being married, the king remained childless. At some time the parliament was willing to legitimize and acknowledge as his successor any male heir who might be born to him. The king's mistress was undoubtedly assisted by the best Italian doctors as well as local midwives and most likely by old Lithuanian ladies "well versed in the art of magic".
In a letter dated March 5, 1551 (or 1550, Dat w Krakowie V. Martii Anno Domini M. D. L. Regni numeri XXII.) to Barbara's brother Nicolaus "the Red" Radziwill, King Sigismund Augustus mentions "so that your Lordship may find a woman who would be in arte incantamentorum bene versata et perita [well versed and skilled in the art of spells], and therefore in this regard we accept with the greatest gratitude your Lordship's help, but we already have such a woman here, so there is no need for you to send her here" (Yakosz nam Twa M. pyszal, ysz za naszym do T. M. pyssanyem, y baczącz tesz tego bycz nyemalą potrzebę, wielkąsz pilnoscz Twa M. do tego przylozycz raczil, abysz W. M. mogl dostacz iakiey baby, ctoraby in arte incantamentorum bene versata et perita bela: a tak takową Twey M. w tey mierze pilnoscz barzo wdzięcznye od Twey M. przymuiemy. Alie yusz tesz thu takową babę mamy: przeto yusz nyeiesth potrzeba, abysz thu Twa M. babę iaką szlacz myal; y ieszlysz yą T. M. yusz poszlal, tedi tę babę T. M. roskasz nazad wroczycz, bo iey yusz nyepotrzeba, after "Jagiellonki polskie w XVI. wieku ..." by Aleksander Przezdziecki, Volume 1, p. 382). Such old ladies (baba in Polish) are mentioned in other letters from 1551 and one of them was also imprisoned by order of the king in Sieradz Castle, and later in Brest, because she had close relations with Queen Bona and was suspected of poisoning Barbara (after "Encyklopedia powszechna", 1860, Volume 2, p. 869). The portrait of a lady with a servant by Jan van Calcar from the collection of Prince Leon Sapieha, sold in 1904 in Paris (panel, 97 x 72 cm, "Catalogue des tableaux anciens [...] composant la collection de M. le prince Sapieha", June 25, 1904, National Library of France, FRBNF36523528, item 17), was said to depict pregnant Barbara Radziwill (possibly lost during World War II). It shows a woman in red dress in Italian style with emerald pendant on her chest, accompanied by a midwife. The bill of a royal embroiderer, who charged the treasury for "a robe of red velvet" that he embroidered in 1549 for Queen Barbara with pearls and gold thread for 100 florins, confirms that similar dresses were in her possesion. A somewhat similar composition with a servant or midwife, showing a nobleman, his wife and son and a dog, painted by Giovanni Antonio Fasolo and dated "1558", is in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (inv. 1937.9). Besides the woman's resemblance to other effigies of Barbara, particularly the famous miniature by Lucas Cranach the Younger or workshop (Czartoryski Museum, inv. MNK XII-540), the title of the painting also indicates that it is chronologically correct: "Portrait of the young princess Barbara Radziwill" (Portrait de la jeune princesse Barbe Radziwill), thus created before her coronation in 1550, as well as other elements such as "her red hair" (not apparent in the black and white photo of the portrait), "decorated with a pearl tiara" (la chevelure rousse nattée, ornée d'un diadème de perles), which also correspond to known descriptions of the king's mistress and her status. The painter Jan Stephan van Calcar is considered to have died around 1546 or 1547, so the painting must have been created shortly before his death, probably in Naples. Calacar's painting was sold with two other splendid portraits of the period. One of them, now kept in the National Museum in Warsaw (inv. 128165), is the portrait of Henry VIII of England, attributed to Hans Holbein the Younger in the catalog (item 54). The other is a portrait identified to represent Vittoria Colonna (1492-1547), Marchioness of Pescara, painted by the Venetian painter active in Rome Sebastiano del Piombo (item 77), now in the National Art Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona (oil on panel, 96 x 72.5 cm, inv. 064984-000). The collection also included a painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder and workshop - The Infant Christ as Redeemer (oil on panel, 39.1 x 25.4 cm, Christie's London, Auction 10391, December 8, 2015, lot 7), attributed to Lucas Cranach the Younger in the catalog (item 26), signed with the artist's insignia and dated 15[.]3 or 15[.]5 (poorly preserved). Other paintings sold at auction and the names of the painters are typical of Polish-Lithuanian art collections: Man and Woman Bathing by Francesco Albani (item 3), Maternity and Abraham's stop by Jacopo Bassano (items 4 and 5), The Virgin and Child with Saint John from the school of Giovanni Bellini (9), Portrait of a man in a black velvet doublet holding a letter from the school of Bronzino (16), Portrait of a man in black velvet costume lined with fur, attributed to Gonzales Coques (22), Portrait of a gentleman by Gonzales Coques (23), "Let this cup be taken away from me ..." (Matthew 26:39), Venetian school, 17th century (48), Young man wearing a fur cap, his hand resting on an armchair, school of Rembrandt (82), Cupid sitting on the golden bowl, school of Peter Paul Rubens (89), Sleeping Venus, after Titian (106). The owner of the paintings, Prince Leon Kazimierz Sapieha (1851-1904), is not mentioned in the sources as a collector, who acquired them in different collections or auctions abroad, which indicates that the majority of the paintings were family heirlooms, evacuated from Partitioned Poland-Lithuania during the January Uprising (1863-1864). They probably come from the Sapieha Palace in Vysokaye, Belarus (Wysokie Litewskie in Polish), built between 1816-1820 by Leon Kazimierz's grandmother, Pelagia Róza Sapieżyna née Potocka (1775-1846), a renowned patron, several portraits of whom were made by Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun. The last lord of Vysokaye from the Sapieha family was Pelagia's son, Franciszek Ksawery Sapieha (1807-1882), who left permanently for Biarritz in 1863. The portrait by Calcar is very similar in comosition to the portrait known as effigy of Sidonia von Borcke (Sidonia the Sorceress, 1548-1620), attributed to workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder. This portrait was before World War II in the Von Borcke Palace in Starogard (panel, 65 x 42 cm, destroyed), owned by a wealthy Pomeranian family of Slavic origin, along the effigy of Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575) and her husband. According to Heinrich Gustav Schwalenberg (d. 1719), the painting came from the collection of the Dukes of Pomerania, donated by Boguslaus XIV (1580-1637), the last Duke of Pomerania. The model's costume is German in style and similar to the costume of a wife of Barnim XI of Pomerania (relative of King Sigismund Augustus) - Anna of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1502-1568) from about 1545 (drawing from the so-called "Book of effigies" of Duke Philip II of Pomerania) or a costume of Agnes von Hayn from her 1543 portrait, both by Cranach or his workshop, the person depicted cannot therefore be Sidonia, born in 1548. Similar costumes can also be seen in several paintings by Master H.B. with Griffin Head, an artist who was probably trained in the studio of Lucas Cranach the Elder and was certainly active in the elder master's ambit in the 1540s and 1550s. In the National Museum in Szczecin (inv. MNS/Szt/1167) there is a copy of Starogard painting. It was painted at the end of the 18th century and was located in the Strzmiele Palace, seat of the von Borcke family. According to legend, the portrait depicts the most famous member of the family in her youth and old age, hence the inscription in German (Sidonia von Borcken gestalt in ihrer Jugend wie ihrem Alter, lower right). The woman in the painting is holding a chalice, an allusion to her patron saint, Barbara, as in a triptych by Cranach from 1506 in Dresden (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Gal.-Nr. 1906 B, the hand is almost identical). In this portrait the family resemblance to the portraits of Barbara's mother - Barbara Kolanka (died 1550) by Cranach and his workshop, in particular her portrait as Lucretia (Alte Pinakothek in Munich, inv. 691), identified by me, is clearly visible. Title page of "Inscription on the tomb of the noble Queen Barbara Radziwill" (Napis nad grobem zacney Krolowey Barbary Radziwiłowny), a dirge (song of mourning) praising the king's beloved wife, published in Kraków in 1558, is decorated with a beautiful woodcut depicting Saint Barbara with the towers of the castle in the background. Both paintings, by Calcar and by workshop of Cranach, were undoubtedly then a part of Jagiellonian propaganda to legitimize the royal mistress as the Queen of Poland. 
Portrait of pregnant Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) with a midwife by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1546-1547, Von Borcke Palace in Starogard, most probably destroyed during World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of pregnant Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) with a midwife by Jan van Calcar or circle, ca. 1546-1547, collection of Prince Leon Sapieha, sold in 1904 in Paris, possibly lost during World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Vittoria Colonna (1492-1547), Marchioness of Pescara from the Sapieha collection by Sebastiano del Piombo, ca. 1520-1525, National Art Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona.
The Infant Christ as Redeemer from the Sapieha collection by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder or Lucas Cranach the Younger, 1530s or 1550s, Private collection.
Portrait of Barbara Radziwill by Moretto da Brescia or Jan van Calcar
The portrait of unkown lady in white in the National Gallery of Art in Washington (oil on canvas, 106.4 x 87.6 cm, 1939.1.230), attributed to Moretto da Brescia, a painter from the Republic of Venice who may have apprenticed with Titian, can be compared with a portrait by Jan Stephan van Calcar, a pupil of Titian, from the Sapieha collection in Paris. The latter painting, most probably lost during World War II, was said to depict pregnant second wife of Sigismund Augustus, Barbara Radziwill. Both face features as well as costume style and details are very much alike. The sitter's dress in Moretto's painting is also very similar to that visible in a miniature of a lady with a pearl necklace, wich can be identified as effigy of Bona Sforza d'Aragona, Queen of Poland, from the second half of the 1540s (Uffizi, Inv. 1890, 9005). This painting was originally attributed to Moretto's assistant, Luca Mombello.
The biographies of both painters are not well documented, but there are notable influences from Titian in their work. Their workplace is frequently reconstructed from the location of the surviving signed paintings. Alessandro Bonvicino (ca. 1498-1554), better known as Moretto da Brescia, may have been Titian's apprentice in Venice and modelled his early portraits on the Venetian style, while the work of Jan Steven van Calcar (ca. 1499-1546/7) in Venice is confirmed by Vasari (he entered Titian's school in 1536). It cannot be ruled out that they received their commissions from the same source. The famous tapestries of Sigismund Augustus, part of which are preserved in Wawel Castle in Kraków, are a perfect example of the fact that such large commissions from the King of Poland could not have been carried out by a single workshop. Although the initial design (cartoon) for the fabrics created in Flanders was usually made by one or two artists, such as the central scenes by Michiel Coxie (1499-1592) and Cornelis Floris de Vriendt (1514-1575), the work was executed by different workshops. It is assumed that the tapestries were created by eight workshops (six identifiable masters and two anonymous), who left their signatures on some of the fabrics (cf. "Ze studiów nad znakami tkackimi w kolekcji arrasów Zygmunta Augusta" by Magdalena Piwocka, p. 141). The portrait of Sigismund Augustus in the Prado (inv. P000262), attributed to Giovanni Battista Moroni, who trained with Moretto in Brescia, where he was the principal assistant in the workshop in the 1540s, was listed in the 1794 inventory of the Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid as a pendant to the portrait of the king's third wife, Catherine of Austria (inv. P000487), attributed to Titian, both identified by me. However, in the mentioned inventory of the Buen Retiro, both paintings were considered works by Titian (Otra [pintura] de Tiziano, numbers 383, 402). The bill of a royal embroiderer of Sigismund Augustus, who charged the treasury for "a robe of white tabinet" that he embroidered in 1549 for Queen Barbara "with a wide row of goldcloth and green velvet" for 15 florins, confirms that similar dresses were in her possesion. The Queen's taylor was an Italian Francesco, who was admitted to her service in Vilnius on 2 May 1548 with annual salary of gr. 30 fl. 30. In May 1543 during entry to Kraków for coronation of Elizabeth of Austria, the lords and knights of the Kingdom were dressed in all sorts of costumes, including Italian, French and Spanish, while the young king Sigismund Augustus was dressed in German style, probably as a courtesy for Elizabeth. The inventory of dowry of Sigismund Augustus' sister Catherine Jagiellon from 1562 includes 13 French and Spanish robes. The painting in Washington comes from the collection of Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi (1878-1955) in Rome and Florence, who also owned the portrait of Sigismund Augustus by Francesco Salviati (Mint Museum of Art, 39.1) and portraits of the king and his third wife by Tintoretto or Titian (Uffizi Gallery and National Museum of Serbia), sold in 1936 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. Earlier, the portrait was in the Rocca collection in Como near Milan (after "Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools: XV-XVI century" by Fern Rusk Shapley, p. 92). Nothing more is known about this provenance, but in Como there was the famous Museo Gioviano with an important collection of portraits of many contemporary personalities, assembled by Paolo Giovio (Paulus Jovius, 1483-1552), bishop of Nocera de' Pagani. The bishop received and commissioned many reliable effigies of European monarchs and since in his writings he praised Sarmatia, the city of Kraków, King Sigismund I, his daughter Isabella, Hieronim Łaski and Jan Amor Tarnowski (comapre "L'immagine della Polonia in Italia ..." by Andrea Ceccherelli, p. 329, 331), he must have had many portraits related to Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia. In 2024, on the occasion of the temporary exhibition at the Santa Giulia Museum in Brescia, it was suggested that Washington portrait depicts Eleonora Gonzaga di Sabbioneta (d. 1545), who married Count Girolamo Martinengo di Padernello (1519-1570), captain of the Serenissima, in a sumptuous ceremony at the Doge's Palace in Venice on February 4, 1543. In January 1543, the Martinengo family summoned Moretto to their palace and entrusted him with the task of depicting Gerolamo. They wanted the painter to make two large canvases (approximately 120 x 87 cm) to be placed side by side. Portrait of a Man, previously attributed to Girolamo Romanino and now to Moretto, held at the Lechi Museum (oil on canvas, 83.8 x 67.8 cm, inv. MLM27) is identified as this particular portrait of Count Girolamo and is said to have been cut at a later date. The Washington portrait, although not of corresponding composition, is believed to be the counterpart depicting Eleonora. On the occasion of his marriage to Eleonora, Girolamo also commissioned a cycle of splendid frescoes in his Palazzo Martinengo di Padernello Salvadego in Brescia (La Sala delle Dame) depicting eight Martinengo ladies seated on a balustrade against a landscape background, painted by Moretto between 1543-1546 - the description given by the rector Girolamo Contarini on the occasion of the wedding speaks of six ladies - vi sono retrate dal naturale 6 gentildone bresane belle (letter of February 7, 1543). The painter undoubtedly depicted the Count's wife among the ladies, but none of them resemble the woman in Washington portrait, and their dresses are less sumptuous. If the new Countess Martinengo was indeed depicted in a dress fit for a queen, she would undoubtedly be depicted in the same way on the fresco in her palace. A portrait of Queen Barbara (item 19) is mentioned among the Italian paintings in the collection of Prince Boguslaus Radziwill (1620-1669) in 1657 (Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw - AGAD, 1/354/0/26/79.2). The inventory of paintings in the Radziwill collection from 1671 lists two portraits of "Barbara Radziwill, Queen of Poland" (Barbara Radziwiłówna królowa polska, items 79/9 and 115/14) as well as a portrait of "A lady in a white dress, with jewels, a crown on her head" (Dama w szacie białej, w klejnociech, korona na głowie, item 71/1, after "Inwentarz galerii obrazów Radziwiłłów z XVII w." by Teresa Sulerzyska). 
Portrait of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) in white by Moretto da Brescia or Jan van Calcar, ca. 1546-1548, National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Portraits of Sigismund II Augustus by Jan van Calcar or Moretto da Brescia
Sometime in 1547, in spite of his mother's disapproval and nobility's animosity, Sigismund Augustus, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania secretly wed his mistress Barbara Radziwill, a Lithuanian noblewoman whom he met in 1543.
The portrait attributed to Jan van Calcar (oil on canvas, 125.5 x 92 cm, sold at Dorotheum in Vienna, April 14, 2005, lot 12), shows a young man (Sigismund Augustus was 26 in 1546). He stands against ancient buildings similar to a reconstruction of the Mausoleum of Emperor Augustus in Rome published in 1575 (the king born on 1 August was named after the first Roman Emperor Gaius Octavius Augustus) and the king's castrum doloris in Rome in 1572 or obelisk visible in the portrait of royal jeweller Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio from about 1553. The painting comes from the collection of John Rushout, 2nd Baron Northwick (1770-1859), an avid collector of works of art, antiques and coins, most likely acquired in Italy in 1790. In the "Catalogue of the pictures, works of art, &c. at Northwick Park" from 1864, it was listed with attribution to Parmigianino as "Portrait of Cosmo de Medici" (No. 34). The presumed author Jan van Calcar, a pupil of Titian in Venice, moved to Naples in about 1543, where he died before 1550. Sigismund's mother Bona Sforza was a granddaughter of Alfonso II, King of Naples and from 1524 she was a Duchess of nearby Bari and Rossano. According to the accounts of Sigismund Augustus by a courtier Stanisław Wlossek from 1545 to 1548, the king had "robes lined with lynx, short Italian", robes of black velvet and stockings of "black ermestno silk", black suede shoes, etc. The register of his clothes from 1572 includes Italian, German and Persian robes valued at 5351 zlotys. The portrait could be a pendant to a portrait of Barbara Radziwill in similar dimensions attributed to Moretto da Brescia (National Gallery of Art, 1939.1.230), which could also be attributed to Calcar, just as previously the portrait of the man described here was attributed to Moretto da Brescia, and inversely. The man is holding in his right hand a red carnation flower, a symbol of passion, love, affection and betrothal. The same sitter is also depicted in the portrait in Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum, oil on canvas, 86.5 x 59 cm, inventory number GG 79), signed by Calcar (. eapolis f. / Stephanus / Calcarius), and in the painting attributed to Francesco Salviati, who stayed for a brief time in Venice, in the Mint Museum (oil on panel, 109.2 x 82.9 cm, 39.1). According to the inscription, the Vienna painting was painted in Naples and was evidenced in the Imperial Gallery in 1772, so it was probably a gift to the Habsburgs. While the painting by Salviati comes from the collection of Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi (1878-1955) in Rome and Florence, who also owned the mentioned portrait of the king's second wife Barbara Radziwill and portraits of Sigismund Augustus and his third wife by Tintoretto or Titian (Uffizi Gallery and National Museum of Serbia), sold to Samuel Henry Kress on 1 Septemeber 1939. Gold medal of Sigismund II Augustus on the occasion of birthday anniversary and coronation with bust and coat of arms of the young king was made by less known medalier Domenico Veneziano (Dominicus Venetus, Dominic of Venice) in 1548 - inscription "Sigismund Augustus, King of Poland, Grand Duke of Lithuania, aged 29" (SIGIS[mundus] AVG[ustus] REX POLO[niae] MG[magnus] DVX LIT[huaniae] AET[atis] S[uae] XXIX), today in the Ossolineum in Wrocław (inventory number G 1611). He signed his work on the reverse around the Polish Eagle: "Domenico Veneziano made [me] in the year of Our Lord 1548" (ANO D[omini] NRI[nostri] M.D.XLVIII. DOMINICVS VENETVS FECIT.). 
Portrait of Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) by Jan van Calcar or Moretto da Brescia, ca. 1546-1548, Private collection.
Portrait of Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) with gloves by Jan van Calcar, 1540s, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) with gloves, attributed to Francesco Salviati, 1540s, Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte.
Disguised portraits of Barbara Radziwill and Tullia d'Aragona by Moretto da Brescia and workshop
Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551), mistress and future wife of King Sigismund Augustus, owned one of the most beautiful clothes in Renaissance Europe. In addition to the national fashion, as confirmed by the miniatures of Lucas Cranach the Younger and his circle (Czartoryski Museum, inv. MNK XII-540 and MNK IV-V-1433), she undoubtedly dressed in the Italian style, preferred by her husband, in the French and Spanish styles like the sisters of Sigismund Augustus (such dressed are mentioned in the dowry of Catherine Jagiellon from 1562) and German style. In a letter written on August 25, 1548 to Barbara's brother Nicholaus "the Red" (1512-1584), Sigismund Augustus asks for Barbara to welcome him in Radom "in a black dress of Italian fabric" (Tedy niechaj Jej K. M. w szacie czarnej z sukna włoskiego i także też w płachtach nie miąższych jakoby rańtuchach jechać i nas witać tamże raczyła, after "Monografja historyczna miasta Radomia" by Jan Luboński, p. 18).
In addition to money, usually 100-200 florins, Barbara often presented valuable fabrics to her ladies-in-waiting who were getting married. Such gifts came to Katarzyna Komorowska (May 12, 1549), Anna Gnojeńska (June 18, 1549), Anna Podlodowska (April 20, 1550), Barbara Kobylińska and Anna Sienieńska (November 9, 1550). The latter received 200 florins in cash and various fabrics, including 20 ells of white damask, undoubtedly intended for a wedding outfit. After Barbara's death, no clothing or other items of the queen were distributed to her female court, as was the case after the death of the king's first wife, Elizabeth of Austria (1526-1545). Sigismund Augustus kept them for himself in his personal treasury until the end of his life. Some of Barbara's clothes remained in the custody of Stanisław Gzowski, who in 1550 was employed as a separate official (or servant) in the queen's treasury (in servicium thesauri Maiestatis Reginalis). The severance payments of Barbara's court were truly royal and covered by the royal treasury. The Lithuanian treasury paid 2,521 florins in cash for the female court (curia feminei sexus) and male servants (curia masculinum), in addition to various payments in kind. Several of her courtiers were included in the king's court after Barbara's death, such as the Queen's Ruthenian Notary (notarius Ruthenicus Maiestatis Reginalis) Yan Nikolayevich Hayka (Jan Mikołajewicz Hajko), the queen's physician Piotr from Poznań, and the queen's tailor, the Italian Francesco. The same happened to the late queen's pages (cubiculares minores) Marcin Chocimowski, Szczęsny (Feliks) Chodorowski, Łukasz Jaktorowski, Stanisław Jundziłło, Jan Karp (Carpio), Jan Przeczen, Jan Radzanowski, Jan Rupniowski and Prince Maksymilian Vyshnevetsky. Barbara's favourite, the dwarf Okuliński, also remained with the king. Her women's court turned out to be unnecessary, so the matrons and other ladies were dismissed from service. First, three matrons received their severance pay: Barbara Słupecka née Firlej, Katarzyna Chocimowska and Katarzyna Łagiewnicka. The chief lady-in-waiting, who was Słupecka, received 200 florins in cash and 20 ells of velvet and satin. The ladies of the court, whose group consisted of eight girls, were also richly endowed: Eufemia Chocimowska, Dorota Cybulska, Czarnocka, Katarzyna Czuryłówna, Katarzyna Łaganowska (Laganka), Zofia Łaska, Skotnicka and Zofia Świdzińska. Each of them received 200 florins and a large set of various fabrics for clothing, including 20 ells of velvet, 20 ells of damask, 10 ells of gold cloth, 81/2 ells of ermestno (armezyn) silk. In addition, each lady-in-waiting received a golden cap (peplum aureum) and a ring with a precious stone (anulum cum lapillo). The Queen's personal maids (ancillae in servitio privato) each received 100 florins and 20 ells of damask, 2 ells of lace and 1 ell of Cologne linen, gold bonnets and rings with precious stones. Four maids (ancillae in conclavi) also received a generous severance pay. Eudocja, probably Barbara's most trusted maid, received 100 florins and 20 ells of damask. Miss Krzeczowska received 40 florins and 20 ells of damask and 2 ells of lace, Miss Rylska received 20 florins and 7 ells of stamet wool fabric and 2 ells of velvet. The same severance pay as Rylska was also paid to the dwarf Kaśka, who, of the queen's two female dwarves (the other was Zośka), remained in the court service until the end of the court's activity (after "Pogrzeb Barbary Radziwiłłówny i odprawa jej królewskiego dworu (1551)" by Agnieszka Marchwińska, p. 108-112). This gives an impression of the splendor and wealth of the court of the king's second wife, which, as in other European countries, must have found a suitable reflection in the portraits. Ladies gifted with rich fabrics, from which fashionable dresses were made, like the queen and ladies of other European courts, certainly took appropriate care to commemorate their appearance. The Museum in Nysa houses a portrait of a lady in a black French-style dress and a velvet coat lined with expensive lynx fur, attributed to the Italian school (oil on canvas, 74 x 53.5 cm). Due to the richness of the woman's attire, the colour of her coat and the attribute of the palm branch, the image is considered to represent Saint Barbara. The pearls in her hair indicate her wealth and status and could refer to female suffering (compare "Mistrzowie sztuki Europejskiej. Sacrum Rzeczywistości - ze zbiorów Muzeum Powiatowego w Nysie" by Robert Kołakowski, p. 13, 16, 23). In addition to the palm branch, the woman also holds a fragment of breaking wheel in her hands. The saint is therefore not Barbara, but Catherine of Alexandria, a Christian virgin who was martyred around the age of 18. According to her hagiography, Saint Catherine was both a princess and a renowned scholar. She is the patron saint of unmarried women and venerated in the Orthodox and Catholic Churches. In this respect, the painting can be compared to the portrait of Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana, 1504-1558) in Ottoman costume, with a broken wheel and halo, painted by Titian's workshop in 1542 (Uffizi Gallery in Florence, inv. 1890, 909). Through the Mystical Marriage, Saint Catherine united herself spiritually and consecrated herself to Christ. Barbara's coronation celebrations, organized with the utmost discretion, were planned for "Saint Catherine's Day", that is, November 25, 1550. However, the sudden deterioration of her health delayed the coronation by two weeks (December 7, 1550). Before this date, the work of gilding and painting the new altar of Wawel Cathedral, with a central painting created in Venice in 1547 by Pietro degli Ingannati, had undoubtedly been completed (after "Renesansowy ołtarz główny Bodzentynie" by Paweł Pencakowski, p. 117). The facial features of a woman, although less idealised, are very similar to the face of "The Lady in White" by Alessandro Bonvicino (d. 1554), better known as Moretto da Brescia in the National Art Gallery in Washington (inv. 1939.1.230), which according to my identification is a portrait of Barbara Radziwill. Her face and hairstyle also resemble the adulterous woman in Giampietro Silvio's painting in the Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania in Vilnius and a copy in a private collection, which are also disguised portraits of Sigismund Augustus' second wife. The painting comes from the collection of Count Heinrich Pohl in Kałków near Otmuchów. The Pohl family owned the Kałków estate from around 1830. The collection was most likely created by Alfred Pohl and his sister Marie is also mentioned in pre-war literature as the owner of the paintings. The collection included more than twenty paintings by Silesian, Italian, Flemish and German artists. The earlier history of this painting is unknown, however, the nearby town of Otmuchów was the seat of Bishop Charles Ferdinand Vasa (1613-1655), great-grandson of Sigismund I and Bona Sforza, as well as Bishop Francis Louis of Palatinate-Neuburg (1664-1732), son of Philip William of Neuburg (1615-1690), who before marrying Francis Louis' mother had married the great-granddaughter of Sigismund I and Bona - Anna Catherine Constance Vasa (1619-1651). The style of this portrait is very similar to that of a painting in a private collection in Switzerland, which depicts a woman as Saint Agnes. The pose and costume of the woman are also similar, as if the two paintings were counterparts. The painting in Switzerland is attributed to Moretto da Brescia. Two copies of "Saint Agnes" are known, one that was probably in the Maffei collection in Brescia in 1760, is attributed to Francesco Prata da Caravaggio (Wannenes in Genoa, Auction 282, March 3, 2016, lot 103). The other, attributed to the circle of Moretto da Brescia, but closer to the style of Paris Bordone, is also in a private collection (Christie's London, Auction 7822, December 5, 1997, lot 258). Saint Agnes of Rome, a fourth-century virgin martyr, is the patron saint of chastity and of virgins and victims of sexual abuse. Agnes, born into Roman nobility, as the young girl had taken a vow of chastity to Jesus. Her high-ranking suitors, scorned by her staunch devotion to religious purity, sought to persecute her for her beliefs. The prefect Sempronius sentenced Agnes to be dragged naked through the streets to a brothel. She was martyred on January 21, 304, at the age of 12 or 13. The pose of the woman depicted as Saint Agnes recalls another similar painting attributed to Moretto da Brescia - Salome, now preserved in the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo in Brescia (inv. 81), which, like the paintings of Saint Agnes, is dated around 1540. In the painting of Salome, the model's face is more elongated, but in this work, the woman's lips are parted. It comes from the collection of Count Teodoro Lechi (1778-1866) in Brescia and depicts her dressed in expensive clothes and rich fur, holding a golden scepter in her left hand. The woman rests on a marble slab on which is inscribed QVAE SACRV[M] IOANIS / CAPVT SALTANDO / OBTINVIT, which means "She who obtained the head of Saint John by dancing". The background depicts laurels, symbol of poets and victory. Since the beginning of the 19th century, this painting has been considered a disguised portrait of Tullia d'Aragona (d. 1556), an Italian poet, writer and philosopher, born in Rome (around 1501, 1505 or 1510), who travelled through Venice, Ferrara, Siena and Florence. It was reproduced under the title Tullia d'Aragona / Dal quadro di Bonvicini detto il Moretto in the first volume of complete biographies published by Antonio Locatelli (1786-1848) in 1837 (Iconografia italiana degli uomini e delle donne celebri ..., Volume 1, p. 380). Tullia is considered a courtesan and one of the best writers, poets and philosophers of her time. She was the daughter of the Ferrarese courtesan Giulia Campana and, most likely, of Cardinal Luigi d'Aragona (1474-1519), grandson of Ferdinand I, King of Naples and as such a relative of Queen Bona Sforza. Around 1526, she became involved with Filippo Strozzi, a Florentine banking magnate and Penelope d'Aragona, born in 1535, is considered her daughter (or sister). In 1543, she married Silvestro Guicciardi in Siena and in October 1548, she returned to Rome. The disguise as Saint Agnes of Rome is perfectly suited to the courtesan and poetess born in Rome. Moretto or his workshop depicted the same woman in a painting of a half-naked Venus with Cupid, now in a private collection in Milan, formerly in the Tempini collection in Brescia (oil on canvas, 118 x 210 cm, Fototeca Zeri, Numero scheda: 42311). This is most likely the same painting mentioned in 1820 in the Fenaroli collection in Brescia (Quadro per traverso rappresentante una Venere con Amorino al naturale del Moretto). The two columns with the curtains tied around them are thought to be a reference to the emblem and motto of Emperor Charles V - Plus oultre ("further beyond") in French, so the woman depicted in the painting was perhaps challenging the male domination and power of the emperor over Italy. Perhaps another portrait by Moretto, evacuated to France after the November Uprising (1830-1831), inspired the image of Barbara Radziwill by Józef Szymon Kurowski (1809-1851), who was active in Paris since 1832. This highly idealized portrait resembles the Washington painting (notably the details of the costume, the ruff and the necklace) and was published in 1835-1836 in Paris in La Pologne historique, littéraire, monumentale et pittoresque ... by Leonard Chodźko (Barbe Radziwiłł, Branche sculp/t., Kurovski pinx/t., Volume 1, p. 92/93). Many portraits in this publication are based on authentic effigies, such as the image of Jan Amor Tarnowski (Jean Tarnowski, 1488-1561, Volume 2, p. 16/17). Bonvicino, who created realistic effigies of Saint Lawrence Justinian (Lorenzo Giustiniani, 1381-1456) almost a century after his death (paintings in the Provincial House of the Society of Jesus in Gallarate and in the Diocesan Museum in Brescia), probably drew inspiration from other effigies of Sigismund Augustus' beloved to create her portraits. Interestingly, the portrait of the king by Paris Bordone from the Château de Gourdon (Christie's Paris, auction 1000, March 31, 2011, lot 487), identified by me, was previously attributed to a follower of Moretto da Brescia, indicating that the two painters could cooperate or copy the portraits commissioned by the Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian court. One of the few paintings by Bonvicino, apart from the described portrait in Nysa, that has survived in Poland, is now in the National Museum in Warsaw (inv. 130253 MNW). It was purchased in 1948 from a private collection and depicts a woman in an allegorical disguise. The painting in Nysa was clearly painted by the same painter as Venus in Milan, which is particularly evident in the rendering of the fabrics in both paintings (especially the crimson coat and the green curtains). Very similar rendering of crimson velvet fabrics are found in the small horizontal painting, now in the National Museum in Warsaw. It comes from a private collection in Kraków and represents the Adoration of the Magi (oil on panel, 56 x 80 cm, inv. 186925 MNW). The work is attributed to Francesco Bassano the Younger (1549-1592), but its style is closer to works attributed to Moretto, such as The Holy Family in a Landscape, probably from the Lutomirski collection in Milan (Sotheby's New York, January 30, 2021, lot 513). The turbans were painted in a similar manner in Moretto's Entombment of 1554, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 12.61) or a painting from the Roman collection of the Swedish sculptor Johan Niclas Byström (1783-1848), now in Stockholm (Nationalmuseum, inv. NM 118). The central figure of Saint Caspar is almost identical to the effigy of a Polish nobleman (Ein Polnischer Adliger) in the Bavarian State Library in Munich (Kostüme der Männer und Frauen in Augsburg und Nürnberg, Deutschland, Europa, Orient und Afrika, p. 34r, BSB Cod.icon. 341). It is interesting to note that Ottoman costumes and turbans were also popular in Sarmatia at that time. In May 1543, Turkish and Tatar costumes were among the costumes in which the Sarmatian participants in the solemn entry of Elizabeth of Austria into Kraków were dressed. The members of the Radziwills' private army were dressed in Polish style, accompanied by six Tatars in yellow satin and four black men to lead the horses. To meet his wife after her arrival in Sarmatia, Sigismund Augustus rode on horseback, dressed in black Neapolitan clothes, accompanied by 100 gentlemen and courtiers dressed in the same way, among whom were his cousin Duke Albert of Prussia, the castellan of Kraków Jan Amor Tarnowski with his son, the castellan of Poznań Andrzej Górka, the Grand Chancellor of the Crown Paweł Wolski, the Radziwills and other dignitaries (after "Zygmunt August" by Stanisław Cynarski, p. 35, 53). 
Portrait of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) as Saint Catherine of Alexandria by Moretto da Brescia and workshop, ca. 1545-1551, Museum in Nysa.
Portrait of Tullia d'Aragona (d. 1556) as Saint Agnes of Rome by Moretto da Brescia, 1540s, Private collection.
Portrait of Tullia d'Aragona (d. 1556) as Venus and Cupid by Moretto da Brescia and workshop, 1540s, Private collection.
Adoration of the Magi with men in Sarmatian costumes by workshop of Moretto da Brescia, 1540s, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portraits of Sigismund Augustus and royal jeweller Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio by Paris Bordone and workshop
In 1972 the portrait of royal jeweller Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio was offered to the Wawel Royal Castle in Kraków by Julian Godlewski (inv. ZKnW-PZS 5882). After 1795, when Poland lost its independence, the castle, which was consumed by destructive fire in 1702 and ransacked several times by different invaders, was converted into barracks and a military hospital and almost no traces of the former royal splendor have been preserved in it. Before 1664 the painting was probably in the Muselli collection in Verona.
Caraglio was born in Verona in the Venetian Republic around 1500 or 1505. He was active in his hometown, as well as in Rome and Venice. In Italy he was known mainly as a copper engraver and medalist. He came to Kraków around 1538 as a recognized artist. After arriving at the Jagiellonian court, he probably parted with graphic art and devoted himself exclusively to goldsmithing and jewellery, making mainly gems with images of members of the royal family. In recognition of his merits, Sigismund Augustus ennobled him in 1552. Caraglio was also a citizen of the capital city of Kraków, and together with his wife, Katarzyna, born there, he lived in a house he bought outside the city walls - in Czarna Wieś. He had a son Ludwik and a daughter Katarzyna. During his long stay in Poland, the artist certainly made many trips to Italy. This is evidenced, among other things, by Vasari's fairly good knowledge of his life and work. We learn about one of his trips to Italy - probably on business - from the accounts prepared by Justus Decius. The bill from April 1553, apart from listing the expenses for the ores by Caraglio, contains inter alia, the entry referring to him: pro viatico itineris in Italiam (provision for a journey to Italy) (after "Caraglio w Polsce" by Jerzy Wojciechowski, p. 29). The portrait of Caraglio was in the 17th century attributed to Titian and later to Bordone, who lived in Venice from October 1552 and earlier in Milan between 1548-1552. Caraglio receives or humbly offers a medallion with king's effigy (probably made by himself) to the Polish Royal Eagle with monogram SA of Sigismund Augustus on his chest. The eagle is standing on a gold helmet among other works and utensils necessary to the goldsmith. In 1552 Caraglio went to Vilnius to make a gilded shield for the king encircled with golden roses with a cross in red enamel and three other silver shields decorated with an ornament of eagles' heads (Exposita pro ornandis scutis S.M.R. per Ioannem Iacobum Caralium Italum 1553), together with three other goldsmiths Gaspare da Castiglione, Grzegorz of Stradom and Łukasz Susski. In the background there is an obelisk and Roman amphitheatre, identified as symbol of Verona - Arena di Verona. According to the inscription in Latin on the base of the column, he was 47 years of age (ATATIS / SVAE / ANN[O] / ХХХХ / VII) at the time when the painting was created, however his face seems to be much younger. Based on this inscription, it is generally believed that the painting was painted between 1547-1553, possibly during his confirmed stay in Italy in 1553, however, it cannot be ruled out that it was based on a drawing or miniature sent from Poland. Caraglio probably gave this portrait to his sister Margherita, who lived in Verona. In the vicinity of Parma, in the town of Sancti Buseti, the artist bought a house with land and vineyards. Caraglio intended to leave the court of Sigismund Augustus in his old age and return to Italy. However, he did not fulfill his intentions, he died in Kraków around August 26, 1565 and was buried in the Carmelite Church of the Visitation, which was largely destroyed during the Deluge (1655-1660). He bequeathed the house in Verona to Elisabetta, his sister's granddaughter. The artist's wife, Katarzyna, remarried to an Italian shoemaker, Scipio de Grandis. The same man as in the Wawel painting was depicted in the work sold in Vienna in 2012 (oil on canvas, 61.5 x 53 cm, Dorotheum, December 13, 2012, lot 12). He wears similar costume, there is a similar column behind him and the fabric in the background and the style of whole painting is very close to Paris Bordone and his workshop, comparable to portrait of a man in the Louvre, identified as effigy of Thomas Stahel, which is dated "1540". The portrait was sold in Austria, while Caraglio travelled to nearby Slovakia in 1557, where he stayed at the court of Olbracht Łaski (1536-1604), a Polish nobleman, alchemist and courtier, in Kežmarok. At the age of twelve, Łaski was sent to the court of Emperor Charles V, who recommended him to his brother Ferdinand of Austria. He returned to Poland in 1551 and in 1553 he went to Vienna, where he became the secretary of Catherine of Austria, who became the third wife of King Sigismund Augustus. In 1556 he visited Poland again, where he met the rich widow Katarzyna Seredy née Buczyńska. Their wedding took place in 1558 in Kežmarok. It is possible that either Łaski or the Habsburgs received a portrait of the famous jeweller of the Polish king. Caraglio undoubtedly also acted as an intermediary in commissions for effigies of his patron king Sigismund Augustus. In 2011 a small portrait of a bearded man from the collection of Château de Gourdon near Nice in southern France was sold at auction in Paris (oil on canvas, 39.8 x 31.5 cm, Christie's, March 30, 2011, lot 487). It was initally attributed to follower of Moretto da Brescia, and later to Paris Bordone, and dated to the 1550s. Its previous provenance is not known. Collections of the medieval Gourdon Castle were spared during the French Revolution. Extanded by the Lombards in the 17th century, the castle was bequeathed by Jean Paul II de Lombard to his nephew the Marquis de Villeneuve-Bargemon, whose heirs sold the residence in 1918 to an American, Miss Noris, who opened a museum in 1938. Occupied during the Second World War by the Germans, then restored by Countess Zalewska, it was later acquired by French businessman Laurent Negro (1929-1996). It is therefore possible that the painting was sent from Venice to France already in the 16th century or brought from Poland by Countess Zalewska or her ancestors. Bordone painted a second, slightly larger version of this portrait (oil on canvas, 57.2 x 41.9 cm) which was in the collection of Marquess of Ailesbury in England and later with the Hallsborough Gallery in London. "The dress of both figures is understated but clearly luxurious, and conveys the sitters' importance without the need for opulence" (after Sphinx Fine Art catalogue entry). The man's facial features, red beard and dark hair correspond perfectly with other other effigies of king Sigismund Augustus by Bordone, Moretto da Brescia or Jan van Calcar, Francesco Salviati and Tintoretto, identified by me. Like in the case of portrait of Anna of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1502-1568), wife of Barnim XI of Pomerania by Lucas Cranach the Elder and portrait of John III Sobieski with the Order of the Holy Spirit by Prosper Henricus Lankrink, the artist may not have seen the model at all, but with detailed drawings with descriptions of colors and fabrics, he was able to produce a work with a great deal of craftsmanship and resemblance. 
Portrait of Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572), from the Château de Gourdon, by Paris Bordone, 1547-1553, Private collection.
Portrait of Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572), from the Ailesbury collection, by Paris Bordone, 1547-1553, Private collection.
Portrait of royal jeweller Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio (1500/1505-1565) by workshop of Paris Bordone, 1547-1553, Private collection.
Portraits of Barbara Radziwill and Sigismund Augustus by Lambert Sustris and circle of Titian
"I saw, in a word, so many jewels that I had never expected to find gathered in one place, and with which the Venetian and papal jewels, which I also saw, cannot be compared", admiringly describes the enormous collection of jewels of King Sigismund Augustus in 1560, Berardo Bongiovanni (d. 1574), Bishop of Camerino (1537-1574) and Apostolic Nuncio to Poland (1560-1563).
The nuncio adds that the king was "extremely fond of jewels" and that "he has a table in his room from wall to wall, on which stand sixteen boxes, two spans long, one and a half wide, filled with jewels. Four of them, worth 200,000 scudos, were sent to him by his mother from Naples. The king himself bought four others for 550,000 gold scudi, among which is a ruby of Charles V, worth 80,000 gold scudi, and his diamond medal the size of Agnus Dei, having on one side an eagle with the coat of arms of Spain, on the other two columns with the inscription plus ultra. Besides these, a multitude of rubies, sharp and square emeralds. The remaining eight contained ancient jewels, among others a cap full of rubies, emeralds and diamonds worth 300,000 gold scudi. [...] In addition to the silver used by the king and queen, there is in the treasury 15,000 pounds of gilded silver, which no one uses. There are clocks as big as a man with figures, organs and other instruments, a globe with all the heavenly signs, basins, vessels with all kinds of animals of the earth and the sea. Moreover, gilded bowls, which are given by bishops, voivodes, castellans, starosts and other officials when they are appointed by the king. [...] They then showed me the clothes for twenty pages, with gold chains, each worth 800 Hungarian ducats, and many other rare and valuable things, which would be too long to enumerate" (after "Relacye nuncyuszów apostolskich ..." by Erazm Rykaczewski, Volume 1, p. 99-100). This great wealth and splendor of jewelry and costumes, no doubt, as in Italy or Spain, was reflected in the portraits. The king presented many magnificent jewels to his beloved wife Barbara, who was depicted in costumes adorned with these jewels. Sigismund Augustus's second wife was particularly fond of pearls, as evidenced by portraits of her wearing a crown and a headdress (or rather a hood or a sort of balaclava) entirely embroidered with pearls, such as an 18th-century painting in the National Museum in Warsaw (inv. MP 4774 MNW). The king ordered his agents to acquire the most magnificent pearls, primarily on the Dutch market, where they were brought by ships from India. According to Marian Rosco-Bogdanowicz (1862-1955), chamberlain to Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, between 1914 and 1916, one of the curators at the British Museum in London discovered correspondence from Queen Elizabeth I of England, in which she ordered her agents in Poland to purchase Barbara's pearls for her (after "Królewskie kariery warszawianek" by Stanisław Szenic, p. 42-43). Two portraits of Barbara Radziwill are mentioned in the 1671 inventory of Princess Louise Charlotte Radziwill (1667-1695) (items 79 and 115, after "Inwentarz galerii obrazów Radziwiłłów z XVII w." by Teresa Sulerzyska). The princess also owned the "Full-length marble statue of Queen Barbara" (after "Mitra i buława ..." by Tadeusz Bernatowicz, p. 137). Barbara was a great elegant woman of her time. In her letter from Kraków to her mother, Barbara Kolanka (dated July 4, 1549), she demanded a delivery of bielidło (white face powder) from Lithuania. She spent a lot of time on her toilet. Therefore, her contemporaries criticized her "lazy dressing" and lamented the fact that the king and dignitaries waited hours for her to "dawdle" (according to a letter from Nicolaus "the Black" to Nicolaus "the Red" from Kraków, dated July 4, 1549 and a letter from Stanisław Koszucki to Radziwill "the Red", dated August 14, 1549 from Kraków). "The sister is worse in anger than the old one [Bona Sforza], only she is stupid, so she cannot fuss like Bona; we hear nothing else from her, only the fury and stubbornness of a woman, and her customs are almost peasant [or Italian, according to the interpretation of the ambiguous word]", Radziwill the Black wrote angrily. Barbara's unpleasant and explosive temper, her "feminine sulkiness", her excessive love of clothes, combined with her lack of sense of time, her inability to get along with people - all this contributed to her unpopularity (after "Życiorysy historyczne, literackie i legendarne" by Zofia Stefanowska, Janusz Tazbir, Volume 1, p. 69). Her contemporaries were astonished that she, who had not given offspring to her husband, the last Jagiellon, "benefit from this grace that no queen of the Polish crown has ever benefited from so much from her husband" (after "Kobieta w dawnej Polsce" by Łucja Charewiczowa, p. 24, 27). In the 18th century, with the growing popularity of the story of Mary, Queen of Scots, the portrait of an unknown lady, so-called Carleton portrait in Chatsworth House (oil on canvas, 182.9 x 108 cm, inv. PA 725), was identified as her effigy due to similarity with a print by Hieronymus Cock from about 1556 and history of the Chatsworth House. Numerous prints and copies of this portrait were made. Today, however, researchers reject this identification. The painting has traditionally been attributed to Federico Zuccaro (or Zuccari), who was active in Venice between 1563 and 1565. It was formerly owned by Richard Boyle (1694-1753), Earl of Burlington, nephew of Lord Carleton, Secretary of State, who bequeathed the painting to his daughter, the Duchess of Devonshire (after "Concerning the Life and Portraiture of Mary Queen of Scots" by Pendleton Hogan, p. 6). Within the current attribution of the painting to the circle of the Spanish painter Alonso Sánchez Coello (ca. 1531-1588), it has been proposed that the sitter was Margaret of Parma (1522-1586), who left Italy in 1555 for the Habsburg Netherlands - temporary exhibition at the Oudenaarde Museum in 2024. Coello was active in Lisbon from 1552 to 1554, then in Valladolid in 1555, and later worked as court painter to Margaret's half-brother, King Philip II of Spain. Although the Duchess of Parma has been depicted in similar costumes, including a very similar red dress, it is difficult to establish a reliable facial resemblance. In her portrait in the British Royal Collection (inv. RCIN 404911), which was also on display at the Oudenaarde exhibition, we can clearly see the hallmark of the Habsburg dynasty – the protruding lower lip, indicating that Margaret was a daughter of Emperor Charles V. The model in the Chatsworth portrait does not have such a facial feature. The miniature version of the Chatsworth portrait within a painted oval, attributed to a 16th-century English painter (oil on panel, 19 x 17 cm, Roseberys London, April 13,2019, lot 256), although closer to works attributed to the Flemish painter Gonzales Coques (1614/18 - 1684), even more closely resembles the facial features associated with the queen of Poland than with Mary Stuart or Margaret of Parma. Coques frequently worked for clients from Sarmatia, according to my identifications and the auction catalogues of some historical Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian collections. The same applies to a version of the portrait, probably from the 19th century, made by the British painter and coming from the collection of Henry Huth at Wykehurst Place (oil on canvas, 76.2 x 63.4 cm, Bonhams London, April 23-30, 2025, lot 91), in which the facial features are also closer to the known effigies of Barbara Radziwill. Although Carleton portrait is frequently compared to Spanish portraits or, more generally, to paintings associated with Western Europe, the closest analogous image we can find not far from historical Sarmatia, in Czechia - the portrait of Bohunka of Rožmberk (1536-1557). This Czech noblewoman married the burgrave of the Kingdom of Bohemia, John IV Popel of Lobkowicz (1510-1570) in 1556, and most likely at that time or slightly before her portrait was painted (Lobkowicz Palace in Prague, inv. č. L 5185). Bohunka's portrait is similar not only in terms of the sitter's costume and pose, but also in that she is also holding a rose in her hand. The painting was probably created by the painter from the circle of Jakob Seisenegger (1505-1567). In another full-length portrait of Bohunka she is dressed in more German attire (Nelahozeves Castle, inv. č. L 4766), a costume well known from miniatures of Bona Sforza's daughters by Cranach the Younger. A dress similar to that in Carleton portrait can be seen in a portrait of Countess Palatine Helena of Simmern (1532-1579), painted in 1547 by Hans Besser (New Residence in Bamberg, inv. 3007, inscription: [...] IRES ALTERS 15 IAR ANNO 1547). The style of the painting is close to Titian's circle and Venetian portrait painting in general, as is the composition with a chair (Savonarola chair), a window and rich fabrics, Venetian velvet and gold cloth. The costume however, a mixture of French, Italian, Spanish and German patterns from the 1540s is not typical for Venice. Also the sitter is not a typical, a bit plump "Venetian beauty". In February 1548 a long battle begun to recognize Barbara as Sigismund Augustus' wife and crown her as Queen of Poland. Almost since her wedding in 1547 Barbara's health began to decline. Sigismund Augustus personally tended to his sick wife. He also possibly seek a help from the only possible ally - Edward VI of England, a boy king, who like Sigismund was crowned at the age of 10 and a son of Henry VIII, who broke with the Catholic Church to marry his mistress Anne Boleyn. In 1545 to cure his first wife Elizabeth of Austria from epilepsy, Sigismund wanted to obtain a coronation ring of the English king, that supposedly was to be an effective antidote. Four years later, in 1549, Jan Łaski (John à Lasco), a Polish Calvinist reformer, secretary to King Sigismund I and friend of the Radziwills (Barbara's brother converted to Calvinism in 1564) arrived in London to became Superintendent of the Strangers' Church. He undoubtedly mediate with the king of England in personal affairs of Sigismund Augustus and possilby brought to England a portrait of his wife. In 1572 the royal embroiderer charged the royal treasury for dresses he embroidered for Queen Barbara in 1549 including one, the most expensive, for which he charged 100 florins: "I embroidered a robe of red velvet, bodice, sleeves and three rows at the bottom with pearls and gold". Similar puffed sleeves at the shoulders are visible in portraits of Barbara by Moretto da Brescia (Washington), Jan van Calcar (Paris, lost) and by follower of Lucas Cranach the Younger (Czartoryski Museum, inv. MNK IV-V-1433). The octagonal tower in the portrait is very similar to the main landmark of the 16th century Vilnius, the medieval Cathedral Bell Tower, rebuilt in Renaissance style during the reign of Sigismund Augustus after 1544 (and later due to fires and invasions) and close to Barbara's residence, Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania. The woman is holding two roses, white and red - "white roses became symbols of purity, red roses of redeeming blood, and both colors, together with the green of their leaves, also represented the three cardinal virtues faith, hope, and love" (after "The Routledge Companion to Medieval Iconography" by Colum Hourihane, p. 459). The portrait and its copies were widespread in 16th-century Europe, and the sitter's elegance inspired several other portraits. The most notable is that of Queen Elizabeth I of England, depicted around 1580 in a similar costume and also holding two roses (Bonhams London, July 7, 2010, lot 53). Interestingly, the portrait of the queen of England was also repainted at an unknown date to make her resemble her adversary, Mary, Queen of Scots. Earlier, probably in the 1550s, Lucia Anguissola, Sofonisba's sister, had painted herself in an identical outfit (oil on copper, 20.5 x 16.5 cm, Wannenes Art Auctions in Genoa, Auction 235-236, November 29, 2017, lot 657). If not the style and the frame of this small effigy, it could be considered as another 18th century copy of Carleton portrait. It cannot be excluded that Lucia, like Sofonisba (self-portrait in costume of Catherine of Austria), created her own effigy in the costume of queen of Poland while working on a larger portrait of the queen. Probably around the same time, around 1550, another lady was also inspired by the costume in the Carleton portrait and its other 16th-century versions. Unlike the original, her dress is not red, but black (oil on panel, 27.9 x 24.8 cm, Hill Auction Gallery in Sunrise, Florida, August 31, 2022, LiveAuctioneers, lot 0215). The features of this blonde lady are reminiscent of Catherine of Austria, Barbara's successor as queen of Poland, the third wife of Sigismund Augustus, whom he married in 1553, especially the miniature portrait in the Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. GG 4703). The former Duchess of Mantua was renowned for her patronage and Italian connections. Shortly after their marriage, the king separated from Catherine and continued to do so until her return to her native Austria, which greatly upset her. In this context, we can assume that by imitating Barbara, particularly in her clothing, Catherine wanted to convince her husband not to abandon her. The black color of her dress could be a sign of mourning after the death of Queen Bona in 1557 or of Catherine's father, Emperor Ferdinand I, in 1564. The style of the painting is reminiscent of works attributed to Giuseppe Arcimboldo and his workshop, such as the portrait of Catherine's younger sister, Joanna of Austria (1547-1578) preserved in the Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. GG 4513), created between 1562 and 1565, or the double portrait of Catherine with her mother Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), who died a few years earlier, painted between 1551 and 1553 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. GG 8199). In the reduced versions of the portrait, the sitter wears a small diamond-set cross, while a very similar cross can be seen in the idealized portrait of Barbara by Józef Szymon Kurowski (1809-1851), published in 1835-1836 in Paris in La Pologne historique, littéraire, monumentale et pittoresque by Leonard Chodźko (Volume 1, p. 92/93). The most important necklace in Carleton portrait is a string of pearls around the sitter's neck, Queen Barbara's favorite gem. A smaller and well-painted version of the Carleton portrait is in the Cooper Gallery in Barnsley, England (oil on canvas, 63 x 51 cm, inv. CP/TR 245). This painting has been attributed to the circle of the Flemish painter Paul van Somer (ca. 1577-1621), but as in the Carleton portrait, influences from Titian's style are also visible. The possible author is therefore Lambert Sustris, whose Venus in the Louvre (INV 1978; MR 1129) is painted in a similar style. The style of Carleton portrait also resembles works by Sustris, particularly the full-length portrait of Veronika Vöhlin in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, painted in 1552 (inv. 9653). Also comparable is the portrait of Archduchess Anna of Austria (1549-1580), later Queen of Spain, painted around 1569-1570, both in terms of the style of the painting and the costume of the model (Dorotheum in Vienna, October 22, 2024, lot 32). The portrait of a man sitting by a window with "a Northern town beyond" is very similar to other effigies of Sigismund Augustus, while the landscape behind him is almost identical with that visible in the Carleton portrait. It is almost like if the king was sitting in the same chair in the room at the Vilnius Castle beside his beloved wife. This portrait comes from a private collection in London and was sold in 1997 with attribution to Jacopo Robusti, called Tintoretto (oil on canvas, 103.5 x 86.5 cm, Christie's London, April 18, 1997, live auction 5778, lot 159). In this likeness the monarch's nose is more hooked than in other portraits by Venetian painters identified by me, however in two woodcuts with the portrait of Sigismund Augustus, published in Kraków in 1570 in the "Statutes and privileges of the Crown translated from Latin into Polish" (Statuta y przywileie koronne z łacińskiego ięzyka na polskie przełożone) by Jan Herburt, his nose is different on both of them. The strange, rather unnatural appearance of his finger also indicates that the portrait is most likely a copy of another effigy or based solely on study drawings. The style of the portrait of a man with a long beard, now in Petworth House and Park (oil on canvas, 57 x 48 cm, inv. NT 485076), is very similar to that in the Cooper Gallery. It is attributed to Jacopo Tintoretto and was formerly called a self-portrait. Its dimensions are comparable, suggesting that the two paintings could potentially have originally been a pair. The portrait of the bearded man comes from the collection of the 3rd Earl of Egremont (1751-1837). The man bears a strong resemblance to the effigies of King Sigismund Augustus that I have identified, notably the portrait in armor by circle of Tintoretto (Sotheby's London, October 27, 2015, lot 419). It is difficult to establish any facial resemblance between the sitter for Carleton portrait and the known portraits of Mary Stuart and Margaret of Parma, while the sitter bears a striking resemblance to the best-known portrait of Queen Barbara Radziwill, a miniature made in Wittenberg by Lucas Cranach the Younger (Czartoryski Museum, oil on copper, 19.5 x 17.5 cm, inv. MNK XII-540). As in Cranach's miniature, we find the same shape of nose and lips and the same proportions. The miniature, along with several others depicting the last Jagiellons, known as the Jagiellon family, was purchased in London by Adolf Cichowski (1794-1854). 
Portrait of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) by Lambert Sustris, ca. 1549, Chatsworth House.
Portrait of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) by Lambert Sustris, ca. 1549, The Cooper Gallery in Barnsley.
Miniature portrait of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) by circle of Gonzales Coques, mid-17th century, Private collection.
Portrait of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) by British painter, early 19th century, Private collection.
Portrait of Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) by circle of Titian (Tintoretto?), ca. 1547-1549, Private collection.
Portrait of Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) by Lambert Sustris, ca. 1547-1549, Petworth House and Park.
Portrait of Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) by workshop of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, ca. 1557-1564, Private collection.
Self-portrait of Lucia Anguissola, 1550s, Private collection.
Miniature portrait of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) by Lucas Cranach the Younger or workshop, ca. 1553-1565, Czartoryski Museum.
Portraits of Barbara Radziwill by Flemish painters
"Catherine Mans [Karin Mansdotter] loved listening to Tęczyński's stories about the love of King Sigismund Augustus and the recently deceased Queen Barbara; during these stories, she often raised her tender gaze to King Eric. Tęczyński taught Princess Cecilia and the royal mistress several Spanish songs: their well-chosen voices, sometimes tender, sometimes lively, aroused joy and tenderness in their hearts," wrote Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz (1758-1841) in his semi-fictional novel "Jan z Tęczyna ...", published in Warsaw in 1825 (and again in Sanok in 1855, p. 192). It tells the love story of Jan Baptysta Tęczyński (1540-1563), a highly educated nobleman who travelled to many European countries, including France (1556-1560) and Spain (1559-1560), and Princess Cecilia of Sweden (1540-1627), half-sister of King Eric XIV of Sweden. This fragment shows that in the 16th century, educated Poles were propagators of foreign cultures, including Spanish, and that the person and story of Barbara Radziwill were a source of inspiration and interest for contemporaries.
The effigy, previously identified as Anne de Pisseleu, Duchesse d'Etampes (modern scholars today reject this identification), is very similar in facial features and costume style to the Carleton Portrait at Chatsworth and to the portrait of Barbara Radziwill by Moretto da Brescia in Washington (National Gallery of Art, inv. 1939.1.230), identified by me. It is known only through 19th century copies (mainly a lithograph from around 1830 by Zéphirin Félix Jean Marius Belliard, inscription at the bottom: Imp. Lith. de Delpech / LA DUCHESSE D'ETAMPE. / Tiré du Musée Royal de France., compare with the copy in the Biblioteca Nacional de España, IF/1339), as original from about 1550 (or 1549) from the French royal collection, most probably by a Flemish painter or François Clouet (d. 1572), is considered to be lost. In the Victoria and Albert Museum in London there is a copy from an engraving or an original painting, which imitates the style of the French official portraiture of the 16th century and was most likely also made in the 19th century (oil on panel, 23.5 x 17.8 cm, inv. 626-1882). Anne de Pisseleu, was a chief mistress of Francis I, king of France and a staunch Calvinist, who counseled Francis on toleration for Huguenots. Even after her deposition, following Francis' death in March 1547, she was one of the most influential and wealthy Protestants in France. It cannot be excluded, that Sigismund Augustus and the Radziwills approached her with their cause - coronation of Barbara as a queen and her recognition internationally, and that the copy of effigy of Barbara offered to her was after the French Revolution mistaken for her portrait. Around the year of 1548 or 1549, Sigismund Augustus commissioned in the Spanish Netherlands (Flanders) the first set of new tapestries for his residences (known as Jagiellonian tapestries or Wawel Arrasses). It is highly probable that as earlier his father in 1536, he also ordered some paintings there. Also the details of sitter's garments find its confirmation in the bill of the royal embroiderer who charged the royal treasury for garments he embroidered for Queen Barbara in 1549: "I embroidered a red velvet beret with pearls; I earned from it fl. 6" (after "Jagiellonki polskie w XVI wieku" by Alexander Przezdziecki, Volume 3, p. 327). The portrait of a lady in Spanish style costume, said to be Anne Boleyn, in the Condé Museum at the Château de Chantilly, made around 1550 (oil on panel, 26.8 x 19.4 cm, PE 564), is strikingly similar to the series of portraits of Sigismund Augustus' sister Sophia Jagellon (for example the painting in the Czartoryski Museum, inv. MNK XII-296). It is almost a counterpart to the portrait of Sophia, the costume is very similar and the portraits were probably created in the same workshop. It comes from the collection of Armand-François-Marie de Biencourt (1773-1854), owner of the Château d'Azay-le-Rideau. The likeness is largely idealized, like some portraits of Margaret of Parma after the original by Antonio Moro/Anthonis Mor, for example, a portrait which is a copy of the Berlin painting (Gemäldegalerie, 585B) and was until 2022 considered to be a representation of a "Lady of the Court" by François Clouet, according to the inscription on the frame (Bonhams London, September 14, 2022, lot 4). Nevertheless, the resemblance to Barbara's appearance is strong. Through his mother, Bona Sforza d'Aragona, Barbara's husband had rights to the Kingdom of Naples and the Duchy of Milan, both part of the Spanish Empire. The costume of a lady in the painting in the Condé Museum also resembles that of the Duchess of Parma, illegitimate daughter of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, according to the portraits mentioned, a fashion typical for the countries of the Spanish sphere of influence in the 1550s and 1560s. A comparable costume is also visible in the portraits of Elisabeth of Valois (1546-1568), Queen of Spain, according to her splendid portrait by the workshop of Antonis Mor, most probably from the French royal collection (Louvre Museum, INV 1721 ; MR 929) and its idealized version (Dorotheum in Vienna, October 25, 2023, lot 23). Interestingly, a version of this portrait from the collection of Antoni Jan Strzałecki (1844-1934) was considered to be a portrait of Sigismund Augustus' sister, Infanta Catherine Jagiellon (1526-1583), Queen of Sweden (National Museum in Warsaw, inv. MP 5270 MNW, formerly 47106). The painter (or workshop) for these idealized copies has not been established with certainty. Although most similar paintings are attributed to the circle of the French court painter François Clouet, the author often drew inspiration from originals by Anthonis Mor, a painter of the Spanish court active in Antwerp and Utrecht. The circle of the Master of the Female Half-Lengths, who painted idealized effigies of women in a similar style, is possible (Antwerp, Bruges, Ghent, Mechelen and the French court have been suggested as the location of his workshop). The painter copied effigies of important European female rulers and, in addition to the mentioned portraits of the Duchess of Parma and the Queen of Spain, he also copied a portrait of Elizabeth I (1533-1603), Queen of England and Ireland (Christie's Paris, Auction 21747, November 28, 2022, lot 324), derived from the Clopton portrait type and similar to the painting in the Uffizi Gallery (inv. 1890 / 316). The effigies of ladies in Spanish costume most similar to the Chantilly painting are the "Portrait of a Young Woman" in the Czartoryski Museum and the portrait identified as representing Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575) at Wolfenbüttel Castle (deposit of the Lower Saxony State Museum in Hanover, inv. KM 105), which is another indication that the sitter was connected to 16th-century Poland-Lithuania. Likewise the previous portrait, black robes are also included in the same bill of the royal embroiderer for 1549: "a robe of black teletta, I embroidered a bodice and sleeves with pearls; I earned from this robe fl. 40." or "I embroidered a robe of black velvet, two pearl rows at the bottom; I earned from it fl. 60." The portrait of a mysterious woman in the Picker Art Gallery in Hamilton (oil on panel, 32.4 x 24.8 cm, 2015.5.1), was undoubtedly painted by a Netherlandish master and is very close to the somewhat caricatured style of Joos van Cleve and his son Cornelis (e.g. the portraits of Henry VIII of England). The woman, however, is wearing an Italian costume from the 1540s, similar to that seen in the portrait of a woman with a book of music in the Getty Center, attributed to the Florentine painter Francesco Bacchiacca (inv. 78.PB.227). Besides the resemblance to other portraits of Barbara, whose husband was very fond of Italian fashion and whose tailor was Italian, this is another indicator that this is also her portrait. The jewel on her necklace also has a fitting symbolic meaning, the ruby is a symbol of both royalty and love, the sapphire a symbol of purity and the Kingdom of God and a pearl was a symbol of fidelity. The painting comes from the collection of Max Oberlander (1898-1956), who was born into a Jewish family that owned several factories in the textile industry near Upice in the Czech Republic. In the early 1930s, Oberlander lived in Vienna with his wife Suzanne, née Poznianski (1913-1944), who was born in Warsaw. 
Portrait of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) in a pearl beret, 1849 engraving after lost original by Flemish painter from about 1549, Private collection.
Portrait of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) in a pearl beret, 19th century after lost original by Flemish painter from about 1549, Victoria and Albert Museum.
Idealized portrait of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) in Spanish costume by circle of François Clouet or Flemish painter, ca. 1550, Musée Condé.
Idealized portrait of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) in Spanish costume by circle of François Clouet or Flemish painter, ca. 1550, Czartoryski Museum.
Portrait of Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) in Italian costume by Flemish painter, possibly Cornelis van Cleve, 1545-1550, Picker Art Gallery in Hamilton.
Idealized portrait of Elizabeth I (1533-1603), Queen of England and Ireland by circle of François Clouet or Flemish painter, after 1558, Private collection.
Portrait of Queen Bona Sforza by Lucas Cranach the Younger
Before his accession to the throne as a sole ruler Sigismund Augustus, through his cousin Duke Albert of Prussia, tries to obtain portraits of German princes painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder (after "Malarstwo polskie: Gotyk, renesans, wczesny manieryzm" by Michał Walicki, p. 36). Paintings were sent in February 1547 trough Piotr Wojanowski, tenant of Grudziądz and were hung in the royal gallery that was being created in Vilnius (after "Zygmunt August : Wielki Książę Litwy do roku 1548" by Ludwik Kolankowski, p. 329). The painting of Madonna and Child with two angels against the landscape by follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, was probably offered to the Corpus Christi Church in Kraków by king Sigismund II Augustus. The first mention of the painting dates back to 1571 and was later reported by the chronicler of the monastery, Stefan Ranotowicz (1617-1694) in his Casimiriae civitatis, urbi Cracoviensi confrontatae, origo. Ranotowicz states that "we have a German painting in the pallatium from the royal donation representing Beatae Mariae Virginis" (after "Madonna z Dzieciątkiem w krakowskim klasztorze kanoników regularnych ..." by Zbigniew Jakubowski, p. 130). Nicolaus "the Black" Radziwill, cousin of the king's second wife Barbara, had a German tapestry based on Cranach's painting and in 1535, a Pomeranian, Antoni Wida, probably a student of Cranach, resides in Kraków and in 1557 he is recorded as a court painter of Sigismund Augustus in Vilnius (partially after "Dwa nieznane obrazy Łukasza Cranacha Starszego" by Wanda Drecka, p. 625).
The woodcut by Lucas Cranach the Younger or his workshop with the portrait of King Sigismund II Augustus (Sigismundus Augustus II. von Gottes gnaden / König zu Polen / Grosfürste zu Littaw und Eblingen / zu Reuss. und Preuss etc., p. 19) was included in the "True Depictions of Several Most Honorable Princes and Lords ..." (Warhaffte Bildnis etlicher Hochlöblicher Fürsten vnd Herren ...) by Johannes Agricola (1494-1566), published by Gabriel Schnellboltz in Wittenberg in 1562, together with the portraits of Emperor Charles V (p. 11), Emperor Ferdinand I (p. 13), Mary of Hungary, governor of the Habsburg Netherlands (p. 15), King Christian II of Denmark (p. 17), Duke Philip I of Pomerania (p. 47) and his wife Mary of Saxony (p. 49), electors and dukes of Saxony and other German princes. Many of these woodcuts were based on paintings or study drawings by Cranach the Elder or his son and two of them, with portraits of Elector John Frederick I and his wife Sibylle of Cleves, are signed with the artist's mark - winged serpent (p. 25, 27, Saxon State and University Library in Dresden, Hist.Sax.A.233,misc.2). With great probability we can assume that there was also a similar portrait of Sigismund II Augustus, painted by Cranach. Like the Venetian painters, to meet the high demand for his works, Cranach developed a large workshop and "style of painting that depended on shortcut solutions and an extensive use of easily copied patterns and rote methods of producing decorative detail that could be successfully replicated by assistants". An epithet "the fastest painter" (pictor celerrimus), may still be read on his tomb in the city church in Weimar (after "German Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1350-1600", p. 77). Despite tremendous losses during many wars and invasions Cranach's name or paintings in his style appear in many books and inventories concerning historical collections of paintings in Poland-Lithuania. The register of paintings of Boguslaus Radziwill (1620-1669) from 1657 (AGAD 1/354/0/26/84), which he evacuated to Królewiec (Königsberg), lists several paintings by Cranach and very probably from his workshop. The inventory also lists a portrait of King Sigismund Augustus (Zigmunt August Krol) and a portrait of "a German in cuirass" (w Kirysie Osoba niemiecka), as well as "The face of the Electress of Saxony, on a board" (Twarz Kurfirsztowey Saskiey, nadesce), "Frederick, Elector of Saxony" (Fridericus Kurferszt Saski) and "John I, Elector of Saxony" (Joannis I Kurferszt Saski), i.e. the portraits of Frederick the Wise (1463-1525) and his brother John the Constant (1468-1532), very probably by Lucas Cranach the Elder or his workshop, and "Small paintings of the Grand Master" (Obrazikow małych Wielkiego Mistrza), therefore very probably portraits of Albert of Prussia (1490-1568), son of Sophia Jagiellon, also very probably by Cranach. Several portraits of queens Barbara Radziwill, Constance of Austria and Cecilia Renata of Austria are mentioned. The absence of portraits of Queen Bona, Anna Jagiellon and Anna of Austria indicates that they were forgotten and listed as effigies of "unknown" ladies or that they were hidden under biblical or mythological disguise. Portrait of an old woman by Lucas Cranach the Younger from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (oil on panel, 63.8 x 47 cm, inv. 11.3035) bears strong similarity with contemporary effigies of Sigismund Augustus' mother Queen Bona Sforza, especially the most famous miniature by Cranach the Younger (Czartoryski Museum, MNK XII-537). The Queen started to wear her distinctive outfit of a widowed elder lady in about 1548, after death of Sigismund I. The painting is signed with the artist's insignia (winged serpent, center right) and dated "1549" above. At the beginning of the 20th century it belonged to the collection of Adolph Thiem (1832-1923) in San Remo, Italy, so it cannot be ruled out that the German art collector acquired the painting by the German painter which he discovered in Italy. If the painting arrived in Italy around 1549, it was therefore sent there as a diplomatic gift, which makes the identification as Queen Bona even more accurate. As for eye color and features the comparison with portraits of Emperor Charles V, her portraits by Bernardino Licinio and portraits her daughter, proofs that different workshops differently interpreted royal effigies and as natural ultramarine (deep blue color) was an expensive pigment in the 16th century, cheaper pigments were used to make a copy (eye color). In a letter of 31 August 1538, Bona Sforza says about two portraits of her daughter Isabella, and complain that her features in the portrait that she has are not very accurate. A year after the portrait of the queen, Cranach the Younger produced a magnificent Portrait of a young man, signed with the artist's insignia (upper left) and dated "1550", today at Wawel Castle (oil on panel, 65 x 49.5 cm, ZKnW-PZS 3940). The painting comes from the Sapieha collection. The identity of the sitter has not been established, but the man's splendid costume indicates that he was an aristocrat, while a Latin inscription confirming his age in 1550 (ÆTATIS, XIX.), indicates that the German was probably not his mother tongue. Although the majority of art historians would probably opt to view the man as a German nobleman, such as Wolfgang of Brunswick-Grubenhagen (1531-1595), whose relatives were painted by Cranach and his followers, or Henry IX of Waldeck-Wildungen (1531-1577), both aged 19 in 1550, exactly like the model, however the provenance and language of inscription do not exclude a man from Poland-Lithuania. Interestingly, between 1550 and 1560 many Poles came to Wittenberg, where Lucas Cranach the Elder and his son had their workshops. Only in 1550 there were 9 of them in Luther's city, and next to them is the name of Lelio Sozzini (1525-1562), an Italian from Siena, famous reformer, who visited Poland twice - in 1551 and 1559 (compare "Archiwum do dziejów literatury i oświaty w Polsce", Volume 5, p. 77). Philip Melanchthon's students in 1550 included the lexicographer Jan Mączyński (ca. 1520-1587) and the nobleman Stanisław Warszewicki of the Kuszaba coat of arms (ca. 1530 - 1591), who later served as secretary to Sigismund Augustus (from 1556) and in 1567 became a Jesuit. In 1550, 14 years before his service, Captain Marcin Czuryłło (Czuryło), nobleman of the Korczak coat of arms, studied in Wittenberg, however, the most likely model for Wawel's portrait among Sarmatian students in Wittenberg in 1550 is Jakub Niemojewski (d. 1586), nobleman of Szeliga coat of arms, theologian and writer born between 1528 and 1532, who, after his return to Kuyavia, abandoned Lutheranism in favor of Calvinism. 
Portrait of Queen Bona Sforza (1494-1557) by Lucas Cranach the Younger, 1549, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Portrait of a man aged 19, probably Jakub Niemojewski (d. 1586), by Lucas Cranach the Younger, 1550, Wawel Royal Castle.
Miniatures of the Last Jagiellons by Lucas Cranach the Younger or workshop, ca. 1553-1565, Czartoryski Museum. More correct arrangement respecting the seniority of Sigismund I's daughters.
Woodcut with portrait of King Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) from the the "True Depictions of Several Most Honorable Princes and Lords ..." by Lucas Cranach the Younger or workshop, 1562, Saxon State and University Library in Dresden.
Portrait of Sigismund Augustus with a construction of a bridge in Warsaw by Tintoretto
"Sigismund Augustus built a wooden bridge over the Vistula River, 1150 feet long, which was almost unmatched in terms of both length and magnificence in the whole of Europe, causing universal admiration", states Georg Braun, in his work Theatri praecipuarum totius mundi urbium (Review of major cities around the world) published in Cologne in 1617.
In 1549, to facilitate communication with Grand Duchy of Lithuania, where Barbara resided, Sigismund Augustus decided to finance the construction of a permanent bridge in Warsaw. In 1549 he bought from Stanisław Jeżowski, a land writer from Warsaw, the hereditary privilege of transport across the Vistula River, giving him in return "two villages, a mill and a half of a second mill, 40 forest voloks and 200 florins." The portrait of a man with a "Northern landscape" beyond showing a construction of a wooden bridge in The National Gallery of Art in Washington, created by Jacopo Tintoretto, is very similar to other effigies of Sigismund Augustus. It was purchased in 1839 in Bologna by William Buchanan (oil on canvas, 110.5 x 88 cm, inv. 1943.7.10). The city of Bologna was famous for its university, architects and engineers, like Giacomo da Vignola (1507-1573), who began his career as an architect there and where in 1548 he built three locks or Sebastiano Serlio (1475-1554), an outstanding architect and theoretician of architecture, born in Bologna. In 1547 Queen Bona, wanted to involve Serlio, married to her lady-in-waiting Francesca Palladia, at her court. Since Serlio had already a position in France, he offered Bona his students. In a letter to Ercole d'Este, Bona asked for a builder who could build anything and in 1549 the Queen settled in Warsaw. From 1548 the court physician of the king was Piotr from Poznań, who received his doctorate in Bologna and in 1549, a Spaniard educated in Bologna, Pedro Ruiz de Moros (Piotr Roizjusz), became a courtier of Sigismund Augustus and a court legal advisor (iuris consultus), thanks to recommendation of his colleague from the studies in Bologna, royal secretary Marcin Kromer. From 4 June to 24 September 1547, master carpenter Maciej, called Mathias Molendinator, with his helpers, led the construction of a wooden bridge on brick supports covered with a shingle roof, which led through Vilnia River in Vilnius from the royal palace to the royal stables. It is uncertain if the construction was actually started in 1549 or the portrait was only one of a series of materials intended for propaganda purposes, confirming the creativity and innovation of the Jagiellonian state. It is possible that due to the problems to find a suitable engeneer to help with the costruction of the largest bridge of the 16th century Europe, that the project was postponed. Only after 19 years, on 25 June 1568, ten years after the start of the regular Polish post (Kraków - Venice), the tapping of the first pile was initiated. The bridge was opened to public on 5 April 1573, a few months after the death of its founder, accomplished by his sister Anna Jagiellon, who also built the Bridge Tower in 1582 to protect the construction. The 500 meters long bridge was the first permanent crossing over the Vistula River in Warsaw, the longest wooden crossing in Europe at that time and a technical novelty. It was made of oak wood and iron and equipped with a suspension system. The bridge was costructed by "Erasmus Cziotko, fabrikator pontis Varszoviensis" (Erazm z Zakroczymia), who according to some researchers was an Italian and his real name was Giotto, a surname carried by a family of Florentine builders. 
Portrait of Sigismund Augustus with a construction of a bridge in Warsaw by Tintoretto, ca. 1549, National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Portrait of Sigismund Augustus by Tintoretto or workshop, 1540s, Private collection.
Portraits of Sigismund Augustus in armour and in a black hat by Tintoretto
In early 1549, Barbara Radziwill arrived from Vilnius via the royal city of Radom (September 1548) to Nowy Korczyn near Kraków for her coronation and ceremonial entry into the city as the new queen. Eight times a year, large grain fairs were held in the city of Nowy Korczyn. The grain purchased there was floated down the Vistula to Gdańsk in large barges, similar to galleys, as visible in the View of Warsaw from about 1625 (Alte Pinakothek in Munich, inv. 10530).
Sigismund II Augustus and the lords of the kingdom came to greet Barbara in Korczyn. Although during royal journeys, efforts were made to ensure that the court was as numerous as possible, in order to give the monarch's journey the appropriate splendor, during his journey to Korczyn, the king was accompanied by only a few courtiers, which was probably intended to speed up the march and make the greeting of the spouses more intimate. The passage of the royal procession was a serious organizational undertaking. It was managed by a court official, called a quartermaster (oboźny). On February 12, 1549, Barbara set off on a journey to the capital. The river journey from or to Korczyn would be the easiest, however the sources does not confirm it. The accounts from 1535 inform nevertheless about boats owned by Sigismund I and his son Sigismund Augustus (after "Oswajanie śmierci pięknem" by Juliusz A. Chrościcki, p. 33). River transport, the fastest and often the safest, was very developed in Poland at that time. An important centre of river shipbuilding was the town of Jarosław in south-eastern Poland, where shipbuilding workshops were probably established in the 15th century. In some cities on the Vistula, especially in Mazovia, so-called "boat mills" were even built, placed on ships on the Vistula. For example, there were 7 such boat mills in the town of Wyszogród north of Warsaw in 1564 (after " Przemysł polski w XVI wieku" by Ignacy Baranowski p. 136). In 1420, the royal court of Jogaila of Lithuania crossed the Vistula near Niepołomice, where the Jagiellons' favourite hunting palace was located, on a ferry made of beams secured with iron clamps (after "Nie tylko szablą i piórem" by Bolesław Orłowski, p. 77). In the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, where there is also a portrait of Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) holding a zibellino, painted by Jacopo Tintoretto (inv. GG 48), identified by me, there is a "Portrait of a man in gold-decorated armor" (Bildnis eines Mannes in goldverziertem Harnisch), also by Tintoretto (oil on canvas, 115 x 99 cm, inv. GG 24). This painting is considered to depict a commander of the Venetian marine infantry in armor dating from around 1540 and is dated around 1555/1556. It comes from the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in Vienna (mentioned in 1659). In the background, through the window, we can see a galley and a small boat further away. The statue decorating the ship, visible in the painting, is clearly that of Saint Christopher, patron saint of travelers. So it is not a battleship, but a ship dedicated to the journey of an important person related to the man depicted in the painting who is waiting for this person's arrival. The Austrian Habsburgs were related to Sigismund Augustus through Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), two of his wives were her daughters, and portraits were often commissioned to be sent to relatives. One of the few effigies of Sigismund Augustus, depicted in similar armour, known before this article, and inscribed in the upper part SIGISMVNDVS. AVGVSTVS. REX. POLON., is also in the Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. GG 4697). Among the many precious objects that the Habsburgs collected in their Kunstkammer and Schatzkammer (chambers of art and curiosities), two were of exceptional importance: the 4th-century agate bowl (Achatschale), probably made in Constantinople, considered to be the legendary Holy Grail (inv. SK WS XIV 1), and the 243 cm long narwhal tusk (Ainkhürn), thought to be the horn of a unicorn (inv. SK WS XIV 2). They were first mentioned in a document from 1564, when the heirs of Emperor Ferdinand I declared these two pieces to be "inalienable heirlooms of the House of Austria". These pieces were considered so valuable that they were not to be personally owned by any member of the House of Habsburg. Interestingly, the narwhal tusk was a gift from King Sigismund II Augustus to his cousin's husband King Ferdinand I, given in 1540 (after "Schatzkammer: The Crown Jewels and the Ecclesiastical Treasure Chamber" by Hermann Fillitz, p. 22). Reinhold Heidenstein (1553-1620), secretary to King Stephen Bathory, in his Reinholdi Heidensteinii Secretarii Regii Rerum Polonicarum ..., published in Frankfurt am Main in 1672, mentions a series of "tapesties with unicorn" purchased by King Sigismund Auguste on credit from the Loitz family for the sum of one hundred thousand (Tapete quidem, cum unicornu quod a Laissis Augusto Regi in summam centum millium creditum ..., p. 62). Sigismund Augustus' third wife, Catherine of Austria (1533-1572), daughter of Anna Jagellonica and Ferdinand I, also brought many valuable objects to Austria, which came into her possession after 1553 (coronation as Queen of Poland) and before 1565, when she returned to her homeland. Unfortunately, these objects are difficult to identify today and some have probably been destroyed, such as 10 tapestries with the Polish and Lithuanian coats of arms, perhaps a gift from Sigismund Augustus (compare "Arrasy Zygmunta Augusta" by Mieczysław Gębarowicz, Tadeusz Mańkowski, p. 8). The portrait, which could be dated to 1550, although idealized, bears a resemblance to other effigies of the king by Tintoretto, identified by me, such as the portrait in a fur-trimmed coat (Hampel in Munich, April 11, 2013, lot 570). The painting bears an inscription ANOR XXX (year 30) on the base of the column, which indicates the age of the sitter. Sigismund Augustus has reached the age of 30 on August 1, 1550 and his beloved wife was crowned on December 7, 1550. The man depicted in the Vienna portrait has dark hair and eyebrows, and a red beard and moustache. Sigismund Augustus' mother, Bona Sforza, was described as a lovely light blonde, "when her eyelashes and eyebrows are completely black", so could the hair colour anomaly have been inherited from her? It may also have been a particular fashion at the royal court at that time, because Jan Herburt of Felsztyn (Joannes Herborth de Fulstin, 1508-1577), castellan of Sanok and starost of Przemyśl, was depicted with a red beard and eyebrows and grey hair in his portrait, now in the National Museum in Kraków (tempera on panel, 126.5 x 84.5 cm, inv. MNK I-51, earlier 7295). Jan, who had studied in Leuven in Flanders and Germany, became secretary to Sigismund Augustus after his return home. The portrait, could be dated between 1568-1577, when Herburt was castellan of Sanok. A copy, most likely by the same painter, is in the Lviv Art Gallery (Olesko Castle, inv. Ж-620). This copy is attributed to the painter Jakub Leszczyński and comes from the Church of St. Martin in Skelivka (Felsztyn before 1946), Ukraine, where in 1904 there was another portrait of Jan (later inscription at the bottom: Joannes Herburt / Castellanus Sanocensis ...), showing him without a beard and in contemporary French costume, and a counterpart portrait of his wife Katarzyna Drohojowska (Catharina de Drohojow ...) wearing a national costume. In the same church there is also a magnificent funerary monument of Jan's son Krzysztof, who died as a child, made in 1558 (after "Herburtowie fulsztyńscy i kościół parafialny w Fulsztynie" by Józef Watulewicz, p. 18-19, 37, 39, pic. 2, 11), probably by an Italian sculptor. According to some interpretations, the inscriptions under the mentioned portraits from Skelivka may be incorrect and the sitters should be identified as Marcin Herburt and his wife Barbara. Another very interesting aspect of the portraits of lord of Fulstin is the colour of the eyes. The paintings were undoubtedly painted by the same painter or his workshop, however in the Kraków painting Jan has light grey eyes and in the Olesko painting he has brown eyes. A reduced bust-length portrait version of the Vienna portrait, attributed to the circle of Tintoretto, was put at auction in London in 2015 (oil on canvas, 49.2 x 41.8 cm, Sotheby's, October 27, 2015, lot 419). The painting auctioned in 2017 in Florence appears to be another version of this portrait, painted by Tintoretto himself (oil on canvas, 49.5 x 41.5 cm, Pandolfini, Live Auction 203, May 16, 2017, lot 9). The same model is also depicted wearing a black hat in a portrait by Tintoretto from a private collection (oil on paper mounted on canvas, 30.8 x 27.3 cm, Christie's New York, January 28, 2009, lot 9), which was previously in the collection of William (1914-1998) and Eleanor (1911-2008) Wood Prince in Chicago. A copy of this painting, from the collection of Jean Baptiste Victor Loutrel (1821-1908), a French painter from Rouen, is in the Museum of Fine Arts of Rouen, France (oil on canvas, 48 x 38 cm, inv. 1891.2.57). The Rouen painting, which was painted by another painter, who did not belong to Tintoretto's circle, perfectly illustrates how the practice of copying portraits distorts facial features. The model has larger eyes, nose and forehead and the painter has represented him in a more natural way (bags under the eyes) while Tintoretto has rejuvenated and idealized the model. The style of this painting corresponds to that of Bernardino Licinio, who probably died in Venice before December 26, 1565, the date of his brother Zuan Baptista's will, in which he is not mentioned. It can be compared, for example, to Licinio's Portrait of the royal courtier Jan Krzysztoporski (1518-1585), painted in 1541 (Kensington Palace, inv. RCIN 402789), identified by me. Currently, most of the information we have about the court and patronage of the last male Jagiellon are fragmentary domestic sources and documents in foreign archives, mainly Italian. It was mainly the Deluge and other invasions that pushed Sarmatia back in many areas to the Middle Ages, so there is no reason to believe that the court of Sigismund Augustus and his patronage were in any way inferior to the courts in Paris, Madrid, London or Vienna. 
Portrait of Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) with a royal galley by Tintoretto, ca. 1550, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) in armor by Tintoretto, ca. 1550, Private collection (sold in Florence).
Portrait of Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) in armor by circle of Tintoretto, ca. 1550, Private collection (sold in London).
Portrait of Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) in a black hat by Tintoretto, ca. 1545-1550, Private collection.
Portrait of Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) in a black hat by Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1545-1550, Museum of Fine Arts of Rouen. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Jan Herburt of Felsztyn (1508-1577), castellan of Sanok and starost of Przemyśl by Jakub Leszczyński (?), ca. 1568-1577, Natonal Museum in Kraków.
Sigismund Augustus and Barbara Radziwill as Jupiter and Io by Paris Bordone
In Ovid's "Metamorphoses" Jupiter, King of the Gods noticed Io, a mortal woman and a priestess of his wife Juno, Queen of the Gods. He lusted after her and seduced her. The painting by Paris Bordone in Gothenburg shows the moment when the god discovers that his jealous wife is approaching and he raises his green cloak to hide his mistress (Museum of Art, oil on canvas, 136 x 117.5 cm, inv. GKM 0715). The myth fits perfectly the story of romance of Sigismund Augustus and his mistress Barbara Radziwill, a Lithuanian noblewoman whom he met in 1543, when he was married to Elizabeth of Austria (1526-1545), and whom he secretly married despite the disapproval of his mother, the powerful Queen Bona.
According to Vasari, Bordone created two versions of the composition. One for Cardinal Jean de Lorraine (1498-1550) in 1538, when he went to the court of Francis I of France at Fontainebleau, and the other "Jupiter and a nymph" for the King of Poland. Researchers pointed out that stylistically the canvas should be dated to the 1550s, therefore it cannot be the painting created for Cardinal de Lorraine. The painting was allegedly brought to Sweden by Louis Masreliez (1748-1810), a French painter, hence it cannot be excluded that it was taken to France by John Casimir Vasa, great-grandson of Bona, after his abdiction in 1668, that Masreliez acquired in Italy a copy of painting prepared for the Polish king, possibly a modello or a ricordo, or that it was captured by the Swedish army during the Deluge (1655-1660) and purchased by Masreliez in Sweden. The effigy of Io is not so "statuesque" as other effigies of the goddesses by Bordone, could be a courtesan, but could also be the royal mistress and can be compared with effigies of Barbara, while Jupiter with these of Sigismund Augustus. The painting should be then considered as a part of Jagiellonian propaganda to legitimize the royal mistress as the Queen of Poland. 
Sigismund Augustus and Barbara Radziwill as Jupiter and Io by Paris Bordone, 1550s, Gothenburg Museum of Art.
Sigismund Augustus in guise of Christ as The Light of the World by Paris Bordone
The particluar taste of queen Bona for paintings in guise of the Virgin Mary and her son as Jesus, biblical figures and saints is confirmed by her effigies by Francesco Bissolo and Lucas Cranach. Such portraits were popular throughout Europe since the Middle Ages.
Examples include the effigy of Agnès Sorel, mistress of King Charles VII of France, as Madonna Lactans by Jean Fouquet from the 1450s, Giulia Farnese, mistress of Pope Alexander VI as the Virgin Mary (la signora Giulia Farnese nel volto d'una Nostra Donna, according to Vasari) and his daughter Lucrezia Borgia as Saint Catherine by Pinturicchio from the 1490s, Mary of Burgundy in the guise of Mary Magdalene created in about 1500, Francis I of France as Saint John the Baptist by Jean Clouet from about 1518, Catherine of Austria, Queen of Portugal as Saint Catherine by Domingo Carvalho from about 1530, Albrecht Dürer's self-portraits as the Saviour or Leonardo's Salvator Mundi, possibly a self-portrait or effigies of his lover Salaì as Saint John the Baptist and numerous other. Marble tondos decorating Sigismund's Chapel at the Wawel Cathedral, created by Bartolommeo Berrecci between 1519-1533 as a funerary chapel for the last members of the Jagiellonian Dynasty, shows king Sigismund I the Old as biblical king Solomon and king David (or his banker Jan Boner). Scenes from the life of Christ and his likeness greatly fascinated contemporaries. Between 1558 and 1564, the Venetian painter Titian and his workshop created the large painting of the Last Supper for the Spanish King Philip II, now housed in El Escorial, near Madrid. The painting arrived in Spain in December 1565, but was not officially delivered to the monastery until 1574, where it was installed in the refectory. The second apostle from the right is believed to be a self-portrait of the elderly Titian (after "El marco de la Última Cena de Tiziano en El Escorial" by Jesús Jiménez-Peces, pp. 202-203), however, the apostle with his raised hands, sitting directly next to Christ, more closely resembles the painter's known effigies. This is even more evident in another version of this composition, from the collection of the Dukes of Alba, housed in the Liria Palace in Madrid (purchased in Italy in 1818). At one end of the table, we also see Emperor Charles V, Philip's father, and at the other, the famous painter Leonardo da Vinci. In the Escorial version, Federico II Gonzaga (1500-1540), Duke of Mantua, can also be identified as the apostle James the Great, on the left. The print published in Nicolas Gueudeville's "Le grand theatre historique, ou nouvelle histoire universelle" in Leiden in 1703 (Volume 4, p. 295/296, National Library of Poland, SD XVIII 3.12527 IV), after original from 1548, depict king Sigismund I the Old on his deathbed giving a blessing to his sucessor Sigismund Augustus having long hair. The original source of inspiration for this engraving is unknown. However, the faithfully reproduced costumes and the famous Jagiellonian tapestries indicate that the artist was familiar with the realities of the time and the country. Who knows, perhaps he was inspired by a painting made in Venice or elsewhere. In February 1556, Bona departed Poland to her native Italy trough Venice with treasures she had accumulated over 38 years loaded on 12 wagons, drawn by six horses. She udoubtedly took with her some religious paintings, portraits of members of the royal family and of her beloved son Augustus. She settled in Bari near Naples, inherited from her mother, where she arrived on 13 May 1556. Bona died just one year later on 19 November 1557, at the age of 63. She was poisoned by her courtier Gian Lorenzo Pappacoda, who falsified her last will and stole her treasures. The paining showing Christ as The Light of the World (Lux Mundi) in the the National Gallery in London (oil on canvas, 90.7 x 74.7 cm, inv. NG1845), bears a strong resemblance to known effigies of Sigismund Augustus in particular the best-known miniature by Cranach the Younger, made in Wittenberg after 1553 (Czartoryski Museum, inv. MNK XII-538). It was given to the National Gallery in 1901 by the heirs of the surgeon, who in turn was offered the painting by a member of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, formed when the Kingdom of Sicily merged with the Kingdom of Naples in 1816, in thanks for his kindness to a Sicilian lady in 1819. According to museum description "paintings of this type were kept in houses, especially in bedrooms", so has Bona had it at her deathbed in Bari? He holds a scroll inscribed: EGO. SVM. LVX. MŪD. meaning "I am the light of the world" (John 8:12, "I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life"), which, in the context of the disguised portrait of a monarch, could be interpreted as having an additional important political significance. This convention of historié portrait was undoubtedly well known to the Queen through portraits of Lorenzo de' Medici (1492-1519), Duke of Urbino by Venetian painters, depicted as Christ the Redeemer of the World (Salvator Mundi). The portrait of Federico II Gonzaga, probably by Titian, brought to Vilnius in June 1529, most likely also depicted the Duke of Mantua as the Saviour, since the queen ordered the court barber to kneel before it with hands folded in prayer (after "Królowa Bona ..." by Władysław Pociecha, Volume 3, p. 187). Some sacred images of Poland-Lithuania are also considered as effigies of the monarchs, like Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn in Vilnius, allegedly depicting Barbara Radziwill, mistress and later wife of Sigismund Augustus, or portrait of Queen Marie Casimire Sobieska (1641-1716) as Saint Barbara in the Bydgoszcz Cathedral. It is believed that the painting in Vilnius was commissioned as one of two paintings, one depicting Christ the Saviour (Salvator Mundi), and the other the Virgin Mary. Other versions and workshop copies of the painting in London are today in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, offered in 1908, legacy of Countess Maria Ricotti Caleppio, widow of the Ancona patrician Raimondo Ricotti who died in his villa in Rome (oil on canvas, 88 x 70 cm, inv. 58AC00074), in the Abbey of San Benedetto in Polirone near Mantua, possibly from the Gonzaga collection (oil on canvas, 98.5 x 80 cm), and in the Musée Rolin in Autun in France, transferred from the Louvre, most probably from the French royal collection (inv. H.V.34). Another reduced variant from a private collection was sold in New York (oil on canvas, 61 x 50.5 cm, Sotheby's, November 2, 2000, lot 68). It is therefore highly probable that effigies of the king of Poland in guise of the Saviour were sent to different royal and princely courts in Europe shortly after creation in Venetian workshop of Paris Bordone, to Rome, Mantua and France, among others. A good copy is also preserved in Venice, in the Gallerie dell'Accademia (oil on canvas, 97 x 75 cm, inv. 307). This painting, previously attributed to Rocco Marconi (d. 1529), comes from the Contarini collection in Venice. It is interesting to note that in the library of King Sigismund Augustus there was a book on the history of Venice, De magistratibus, et repub. Venetorum libri quinq., published in Basel in 1547. It was the work of the Venetian cardinal Gasparo Contarini (1483-1542), well known in Poland (after "Bibljoteka Zygmunta Augusta" by Kazimierz Hartleb, p. 113, 152), whose relative Ambrogio (1429-1499) visited Sarmatia in 1474 and 1477. A relatively similar composition, evidently depicting the same man, but with a different inscription on the scroll - PAX. VOBIS. ("Peace be with you"), painted by Bordone, belonged to Count Heinrich von Brühl (1700-1763), a statesman at the court of Saxony and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as confirmed by engravings by Philipp Andreas Kilian (1714-1759), made around 1754 (Kupferstich-Kabinett in Dresden, inv. B 101,4/39 and Museum of Art and History in Geneva, inv. E 2015-1192). The painter also used the same facial features in another Lux Mundi, now in the Ravenna Art Museum (oil on canvas, 85 x 57 cm, inv. QA0007). This painting comes from the Rasi collection in Ravenna and was probably previously in the Classe Abbey in Ravenna, where a painting by Paris Bordone depicting the Saviour is noted in 1798 (after "Di due quadri attribuiti a Paris Bordon" by Andrea Moschetti, L'arte, Volume 4, p. 281). In one of the side altars of the Church of the Assumption in Kraśnik there is painting of Salvator Mundi by workshop of Paris Bordone from the mid-16th century (oil on panel, 110 x 60 cm). It is possible that it was offered to the temple by Stanisław Gabriel Tęczyński (1514-1561) or his son Jan Baptysta Tęczyński (1540-1563), owners of Kraśnik, and that it was originally given to one of them by the king. The facial features of this Christ are also very characteristic and resemble those of another contemporary sovereign, King Francis I of France (1494-1547), in particular his portrait at the age of 24 in guise of Saint John the Baptist, with fair hair, dating from around 1518 (Louvre, inv. RF 2005 12, inscription: FRANCOYS. R. DE. FRANCE. / PREMIER. DE. CE. NOM. A. AGE. / DE. XXIIII. ANS.), the best-known portrait of this monarch by Jean Clouet (Louvre, INV 3256; B 1964) or the portrait by Titian (Louvre, INV 753; MR 505), with dark hair. The French monarch was frequently painted by Italian artists inspired by other effigies, such as Raphael, who, between 1516 and 1517, depicted Francis I as Charles the Great (748-814) and Pope Leo X (1475-1521) as Leo III (died 816) in the scene of the Coronation of Charlemagne (Raphael Rooms in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican). In 1538, according to Vasari, or in 1559, according to Federici, Bordone was invited to France by Francis II. After painting for the court, then in Augsburg for the Fugger family, he returned to Italy, where he settled permanently in Venice, where he died in 1571 (after "History of Painting" by Alfred Woltmann and Karl Woermann, Volume II, p. 626). Jan Baptysta Tęczyński also stayed in France between 1556 and 1560. In the former territories of Sarmatia, two other splendid portraits of Francis I have been preserved, both attributed to the workshop and circle of Joos van Cleve - one purchased in 1793 from Stanisław Kostka Potocki by King Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski (Royal Castle in Warsaw, inv. ZKW/2124/ab) and the other from the collection of Leon Piniński (Lviv National Art Gallery, inv. Ж-418). 
Portrait of King Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) in guise of Christ as The Light of the World by Paris Bordone, ca. 1548-1550, National Gallery, London.
Portrait of King Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) in guise of Christ as The Light of the World by Paris Bordone, ca. 1548-1550, Accademia Carrara in Bergamo.
Portrait of King Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) in guise of Christ as The Light of the World by workshop of Paris Bordone, ca. 1548-1550, Abbey of San Benedetto in Polirone.
Portrait of King Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) in guise of Christ as The Light of the World by workshop of Paris Bordone, ca. 1548-1550, Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of King Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) in guise of Christ the Saviour (Salvator Mundi) by workshop of Paris Bordone, ca. 1548-1550, Private collection.
Portrait of King Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) in guise of Christ as The Light of the World by Paris Bordone, ca. 1548-1550, Ravenna Art Museum.
Portrait of King Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) as the Saviour by Philipp Andreas Kilian after original by Paris Bordone, ca. 1754, Museum of Art and History in Geneva.
King Sigismund I the Old (1467-1548) on his deathbed from Nicolas Gueudeville's "Le grand theatre historique ...", 1703, National Library of Poland.
Portrait of King Francis I of France (1494-1547) as the Redeemer of the World (Salvator Mundi) by workshop of Paris Bordone, after 1538, Church of the Assumption in Kraśnik.
Portraits of Queen Barbara Radziwill by Cornelis van Cleve
In interwar Poland, attention was drawn to the similarity of the face of the Madonna of the Gate of Dawn, the prominent Christian icon of the Virgin Mary venerated in Vilnius, Lithuania, with the effigies of the noble Lithuanian lady Barbara Radziwill, who became Queen of Poland. This hypothesis was presented by Zbigniew Kuchowicz in his book "Images of unusual women of Old Poland in the 16th to 18th century" (Wizerunki niepospolitych niewiast staropolskich XVI-XVIII wieku), where he claimed that the fact of the similarity of the Madonna of Vilnius with the queen was noticed by Polish historians in Catholic circles. Juliusz Kłos, a professor at Vilnius University, wrote in a Vilnius guidebook that this painting could be classified as belonging to the Italian school of the mid-16th century, and he also saw a striking similarity of the face of the Virgin Mary with the portraits of Barbara Radziwill. The resemblance was also pointed out by priest Piotr Śledziewski, according to whom "the type of the Madonna of the Gate of Dawn is strikingly similar to the portrait of Queen Barbara Radziwill [...] The same nose, the same chin and mouth, the same eyes and eye edges, the same body structure". Ultimately, it was established that the painting was created not in the times when Barbara lived, but much later. However, this does not rule out the fact that its creator could have used one of the queen's portraits as an inspiration (after "Duchy Kresów Wschodnich" by Alicja Łukawska, p. 35).
The painting of Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn was probably painted in Vilnius in the 1620s by an unknown painter. Before the appearance of the chapel in 1671, this large painting (200 x 165 cm), painted on oak boards, hung in a small niche on the inside of the city gate. In the niche of the exterior wall of the gate, as a pair to the image of the Madonna, hung an image of Christ the Redeemer (Salvator Mundi), also painted on oak boards, now in the Church Heritage Museum in Vilnius (repainted in the 18th and late 19th centuries). The cult of the image of the Our Lady began after the disastrous Deluge, after 1655. According to some authors, the originals were works of the Flemish painter Maerten de Vos from the end of the 16th century, however, given the identification of the features of the Virgin, the original painting used to paint her face was made around the middle of the 16th century. The same face was used in another painting of the Madonna, now kept in the the convent of the Poor Clares in Kraków. This small painting was founded by Father Adam Opatowiusz (Opatowczyk or Opatovius, 1574-1647), canon of Kraków and seven times rector of the Academy of Kraków, doctor of philosophy (1598) and theology (1619), educated in Padua and Rome. He is depicted as a donor holding the Child's foot in the lower part of the painting, with Saint Francis of Assisi on the left, whose effigy, according to Michał Walicki, was inspired by the works of 13th-century Italian painters Margaritone d'Arezzo or Bonaventura Berlinghieri (after "Zloty widnokrąg", p. 107). The portrait of Opatowiusz with a Crucifix is also found in the same convent, so the effigy of Saint Francis was probably modeled on an imported medieval Italian painting. The image of the Virgin and sleeping Child of Opatowiusz is directly inspired by a painting now kept at the Royal château of Blois (oil on panel, 81.2 x 64.8 cm, inventory number 869.2.20, earlier IP 57). This painting, dated by experts to around 1550, comes from the collection of Pauline Fourès, née Marguerite-Pauline Bellisle, Madame de Ranchoup - the Countess of Ranchoup, as she liked to call her, lover of Napoleon Bonaparte, offered in 1869. It was originally attributed to Lambert Lombard and now to Cornelis van Cleve, who most likely painted the portrait of Queen Barbara in a red dress (Picker Art Gallery in Hamilton). Many copies of this painting exist. Good quality versions can be found at the Musée Magnin in Dijon (oil on panel, 81.5 x 66.6 cm, 1938E183) and at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (oil on panel, 80 x 65 cm, 653). The copy preserved in the church of Saint Elisabeth in Haren, near Brussels, was probably donated by the archdukes Albert (1559-1621) and Isabella (1566-1633), who financed the restoration of the church after the fire of 1600 (oil on panel, 82 x 69 cm). Two other versions from private collections were sold in 2012 (oil on panel, 84 x 70 cm, Bonhams London, December 5, 2012, lot 86) and in 2020 (oil on panel, 95 x 76 cm, Sotheby's London, September 23, 2020, lot 33). In the latter painting, attributed to follower of Cornelis van Cleve, a marble column was added to the background. The style of this painting is closest to the nude portrait of Queen Barbara kept in the National Museum in Warsaw (M.Ob.2158 MNW), attributed to circle of Michiel Coxie. The face of the Madonna surprisingly resembles the effigies of Barbara Radziwill by Paris Bordone (Nivaagaard Museum in Nivå) and Giampietro Silvio (Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania in Vilnius), identified by me. The Madonna of Opatowiusz also has a crown, just to underline her royal status. A similar Madonna can also be seen in a composition depicting the Adoration of the Magi by Cornelis van Cleve. Many such compositions were created by the painter and his workshop, but one of them, kept in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (oil on panel, 125.1 x 96.1 cm, GG 1703), is very specific. It was painted in the manner of Cornelis van Cleve and signed with monogram CAVB. Very young age of Saint Joseph, who was usually depicted as an old man, and great similarity of the effigy of the kneeling Saint Melchior, the oldest of the Magi, with the effigy of King Sigismund I in a similar scene by Joos van Cleve (Gemäldegalerie Berlin), as well as others portraits of the king, notably as a donor by workshop of Michel Sittow (private collection) and attributed to Hans von Kulmbach (Gołuchów Castle), indicate that it is more of a political allegory than a religious scene. Although the old king, who died in 1548, before Barbara's coronation, condemned in a few letters the marriage of his son to his mistress, it is generally considered that he treated his daughter-in-law well, which is why Queen Bona, who later claimed that the scandal contributed to her husband's death, may have been the instigator of the mentioned letters. The three men surrounding Madonna-Barbara should therefore be identified as her brother Nicolaus "the Red" as Saint Joseph and her cousin Nicolaus "the Black" as Saint Caspar and King Sigismund I, wearing the Order of the Golden Fleece, as Saint Melchior and it is comparable to the similar scene with the disguised portrait of Emperor Frederick III by Joos van Cleve (National Museum in Poznań and Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden). The painting was evidenced in the gallery in 1783, so it could be a gift from the Radziwills to the emperor to sanction the marriage of Sigismund Augustus. 
Portrait of Queen Barbara Radziwill as Madonna with sleeping Child by Cornelis van Cleve, ca. 1550, Royal château of Blois.
Portrait of Queen Barbara Radziwill as Madonna with sleeping Child by Cornelis van Cleve, ca. 1550, Musée Magnin in Dijon.
Portrait of Queen Barbara Radziwill as Madonna with sleeping Child by Cornelis van Cleve, ca. 1550, Private collection.
Portrait of Queen Barbara Radziwill as Madonna with sleeping Child by Cornelis van Cleve, ca. 1550, Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.
Portrait of Queen Barbara Radziwill as Madonna with sleeping Child by Cornelis van Cleve, ca. 1550, Church of Saint Elisabeth in Haren.
Portrait of Queen Barbara Radziwill as Madonna with sleeping Child by circle of Michiel Coxie, ca. 1550, Private collection.
Madonna with sleeping Child with Saint Francis of Assisi and Father Adam Opatowiusz by unknown painter, second quarter of the 17th century, Convent of the Poor Clares in Kraków.
Adoration of the Magi with portraits of Sigismund I, Barbara Radziwill, Nicolaus "the Black" and Nicolaus "the Red" Radziwill by Cornelis van Cleve, ca. 1550, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Anna Elizabeth Radziwill by Hans Krell
In 1550, Pyotr Petrovich Kishka (Piotr Piotrowicz Kiszka in Polish), starost of Lutsk and marshal of Volhynia, died, and after about a year of marriage, Anna Elizabeth Radziwill (1518-1558), the eldest daughter of George "Hercules" Radziwill (1480-1541), became a widow. This marriage was arranged by her brother Nicolaus "the Red" Radziwill (1512-1584). It was postponed several times for various reasons, but finally took place in February 1549. Anna Elizabeth's famous sister Barbara (1520/23-1551) did not attend the wedding herself, but sent her courtier Gabriel Tarło (died 1565). The marriage remained childless. In the same year (1550), Anna Elizabeth's mother, Barbara Kolanka (Kołówna) of Dalejów, probably also died, and on 7 December, her sister was crowned Queen of Poland at Wawel Cathedral.
The widow soon remarried for the second time, to the Ruthenian prince Semyon Olshansky (Holshansky), pantler of Lithuania. Like the first, the second marriage also remained childless. Prince Semyon died in 1556, as the last male member of the family, and the large fortune of the Olshansky princes was inherited by his six sisters. Anna Elizabeth died two years later. No contemporary effigy of Lady Kiszczyna, also known as Anna Alzbeta Yurievna Radzivil in Ruthenian, Ona Elžbieta Radvilaitė in Lithuanian or Anna (Hanna) Elżbieta Jurjewna Radziwiłłówna in Polish sources, is known. The effigy reproduced in 1758 in Icones familiae ducalis Radivilianae (ANNA ELISABETH PRINCEPS RADIVILIA / GEORGII. I. cognito VICTORIS Et BARBARÆ KOLANSKA De Daleow [...] Nata Anno Domini 1518. ✝ 1558., Vilnius University Library, LeyH IC-2), could not be a reliable portrait of Barbara Radziwill's sister, because the lady is dressed in a costume from the early 17th century. In 2023, a portrait of a lady by a follower of Lucas Cranach was sold in Paris (oil on panel, 45.5 x 38.5 cm, Artcurial, December 13, 2023, lot 14). The painting comes from private collections in France and Belgium (since the 1970s) and shows a red-haired lady in a black dress and hat, indicating that she is most likely a widow. Her rich jewellery indicates that she is probably a noble lady, while a large gold pendant decorated with pearls, which has a shape similar to that seen in the presumed portrait of Anna Elizabeth from the Icones familiae ducalis Radivilianae, shows an indistinct figure resembling Cupid bending his bow, so the lady probaly hopes for another marriage. According to the Latin inscription in the upper part of the painting, the woman was 32 years old in 1550 (AИИO DOM 1550 / SVE ETATIS 32), exactly as Anna Elizabeth, when she became a widow. It is interesting to note that the letter N in the Latin word anno (year) is written like the letter I in the classical Cyrillic alphabet, so the author of the inscription could be a Ruthenian who knew Latin. The woman in the painting bears a striking family resemblance to Anna Elizabeth's sister Barbara, according to her portrait miniatures in the Czartoryski Museum by Lucas Cranach the Younger or workshop and the court painter (MNK XII-540 and MNK IV-V-1433), as well as to the portrait of Anna Elizabeth's brother Nicolaus "the Red" by the workshop of Giovanni Cariani (National Art Museum of Belarus in Minsk). The effigy of Barbara, created by the court painter, is also close in its composition and its green background. It is probably the most faithful effigy of the queen, as it was created as part of a diptych depicting the two wives of King Sigismund II Augustus - the first Elizabeth of Austria and the second Barbara, for the king's personal use (oil on copper, 17,3 x 12 cm, each), probably shortly after her death (May 8, 1551). Unlike the other Jagiellonian effigies, including Cranach the Younger's miniature of Barbara, it was probably created by a painter active at the royal court at the time, rather than being ordered from abroad. Although here too the influences of Cranach's style are noticeable, the miniatures were not signed by his workshop and his hand is not so apparent. The most likely author of the two miniatures seems to be Antoni Wida (also Antonius de Wida, Anton Weide, Wied or Wide), considered a pupil of Cranach, who worked for the king (he was in Kraków in 1534 and 1535 and in Vilnius in 1553 and 1557). He probably came from a region near the Rhine in Germany, Weida in Thuringia or Kołobrzeg. Unfortunately no signed or confirmed work by this painter has been preserved. The painter was remunerated in royal manner. In 1545 he received 105 złoty for a painting depicting a bison hunt, the following year for a painting depicting a tournament, he received 16 kopa of Lithuanian groszy (1 kopa = 60 pieces), and shortly afterwards for another painting 55 złoty (after "Zygmunt August: Wielki Książę Litwy do roku 1548" by Ludwik Kolankowski, p. 329). Wida also worked for relatives of Sigismund Augustus in Pomerania, notably Duke Philip I of Pomerania (1515-1560), grandson of Anna Jagiellon (1476-1503). In the inventory of Philip's possessions, drawn up after his death in February 1560, there is a picture of his wife, Duchess Mary of Saxony (1515-1583), made by Antoni de Wida (after "Monatsblätter", Gesellschaft für Pommersche Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, Volumes 22-25, p. 44). He also made portraits of Barnim IX (1501-1573), Philip, Philip's sister Margaret (1511-1577) and Georgia of Pomerania (1531-1574). In 1542, Antoni is said to have made a large map of Moscow and in October 1553 he sent from Vilnius four portraits to Duke Albert of Prussia (1490-1568), cousin of Sigismund Augustus, for his gallery in Königsberg/Królewiec (he was paid 72 marks). It is confirmed in the documents that in August 1557 in Vilnius he painted two portraits of Polish-Lithuanian princesses Anna and Catherine Jagiellon, sisters of Sigismund II Augustus, for Duke Albert. He died in Gdańsk on January 21, 1558 (compare "Zespół pomorskich płyt kamiennych ..." by Maria Glińska, p. 346 and "Archiv für medaillen- und plaketten-kunde ...", 1921, Volumes 3-5, p. 3). The Paris portrait of Anna Elizabeth Radziwill is different in style from the mentioned miniature of Barbara and the closest analogies we can find in works attributed to another itinerant court artist, Hans Krell (died in Leipzig circa 1586), who created several portraits of Bohemian-Hungarian Jagiellons and to whom a large painting depicting the Battle of Orsha on September 8, 1514 (National Museum in Warsaw, MP 2475), is attributed. Krell also created portraits based on other effigies, without seeing the living model at the precise moment, as the full-length portrait of Emperor Ferdinand I (1503-1564), husband of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), from the Lobkowicz collection at Prague Castle is attributed to him. He created this portrait of the emperor around 1570 together with a similar portrait of Ladislav III Popel z Lobkowicz (1537-1609) from the same collection (inscription: ÆTAT. SVÆ XXXIII. ANNO M.D. LXX.), most likely as part of a series, six years after the emperor's death. Like Lord Lobkowicz, Ferdinand also has very slender and long legs, which was probably fashionable at the Prague court at that time. In 1567 Krell painted a similar portrait, identified as representing another Czech lord, Jaroslav z Pernštejna (1528-1560), signed and dated lower left: HK / 1567, thus created seven years after his death. Particularly comparable to the Paris portrait are the portrait of Mary of Austria (1505-1558), Queen of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, wife of Louis II Jagiellon (1506-1526), painted in 1524 (State Gallery of the New Residence in Bamberg, inv. 3564) and the portrait of Anna Sophia of Prussia (1527-1591), daughter of Albert of Prussia, painted between 1550 and 1555 (Königsberg Castle, oil on canvas , 73 x 53 cm, inv. GK I 8041, lost during the Second World War). In the portrait of Anna Sophia, who probably received her second name in honour of her grandmother Sophia Jagiellon (1464-1512), Margravine of Brandenburg-Ansbach, a very similar pose and costume can be seen. It was also painted on the green background (compare "Die Kunst am Hofe der Herzöge von Preußen" by Hermann Ehrenberg, p. 23). The Prussian princess, who became Duchess of Mecklenburg in 1555, named her youngest son Sigismund Augustus (1560-1600), in honour of the Polish king. It is therefore quite possible that around 1550 or later Krell travelled from Vilnius to Königsberg to paint Sigismund Augustus' relatives. 
Portrait of Anna Elizabeth Radziwill (1518-1558), aged 32, as a widow, by Hans Krell, 1550, Private collection.
Miniature portrait of Queen Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) by Antoni Wida (?), ca. 1551, Czartoryski Museum.
Miniature portrait of Queen Elizabeth of Austria (1526-1545) by Antoni Wida (?), ca. 1551, Czartoryski Museum.
Portrait of Anna Sophia of Prussia (1527-1591) by Hans Krell, ca. 1550-1555, Königsberg Castle, lost during World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portraits of Franciszek Krasiński and Piotr Dunin-Wolski by Lambert Sustris or workshop
Franciszek Krasiński, a nobleman of Ślepowron coat of arms, was born on April 10, 1525, probably in the village of Krasne in Masovia, north of Warsaw, in the family of Jan Andrzej Krasiński, Pantler of Ciechanów, and Katarzyna Mrokowska. He received his primary education at the Protestant gymnasium in Zgorzelec in Silesia (part of Bohemia), then studied under Philip Melanchthon at the University of Wittenberg, from where, on the advice of Bishop Mikołaj Dzierzgowski, he resigned. In 1541, he entered the University of Kraków, later went to Italy, where he studied at the University of Bologna, and on June 4, 1551, at the University of Rome, he became a doctor of both laws. After returning to Poland, he was most probaly ordained a priest and became a secretary of his distant relative, Primate Mikołaj Dzieżgowski, who helped him obtain several church benefits: the Kalisz archdeaconry and the canon of Łuck, Łowicz and Kraków. In 1560, Franciszek became the secretary of king Sigismund Augustus under the patronage of Primate Jan Przerębski. He performed diplomatic functions, in particular in Vienna, where he was an ambassador at the Imperial court between 1565-1568. He was later crown vice - chancellor between 1569-1574 and bishop of Kraków between 1572-1577. Being sick with tuberculosis, he often stayed in the castle of the Kraków Bishops in Bodzentyn. He died there on March 16, 1577 and according to his will, he was buried in the local church, where his marble tomb monument was created by Girolamo Canavesi's workshop in Kraków.
Facial features of a man wearing an elaborately embroidered doublet and a fur-trimmed black cape in a portrait attributed to Lambert Sustris are very similar to known effigies of Franciszek Krasiński, especially to his portrait by anonymous painter which was before World War II in the collection of Ludwika Czartoryska née Krasińska in Krasne, lost. Also the pose is very similar. The painting in Krasne was dated in upper right corner Ao 1576, however, it might possibly be a later addition as on this portrait he is much younger then on other known effigies (e.g. portrait in the Franciscan Monastery in Kraków from about 1572). The painting attributed to Sustris was sold in New York in 1989 and was painted on panel (oil on panel, 115.6 x 89.7 cm). According to inscription in Latin in lower right corner, the man was 25 years old in 1550 (.ET TATIS SVE../.ANNVS./.XXV./.P./MDL), exactly as Franciszek Krasiński, when he studied in Bologna and Rome. At the Colonna Gallery in Rome there is a portrait of a man holding gloves (oil on canvas, 88 x 65 cm, inventory number Fid. n. 1477), who also resemble greatly Franciszek Krasiński from the portrait in Krasne and described effigy attributed to Sustris. It was earlier attributed to Lorenzo Lotto, Nicolas Neufchatel or Dirck Barendsz (rejected attributions) and now to anonymous painter from the Southern Netherlands. Previous attributions and style of this painting match perfectly paintings by Sustris, a Dutch painter who worked in Titian's studio and incorporated Italian Renaissance elements in his work. The costume of the man and the style is also very similar to the painting dated 1550. The date when Krasiński was ordained a priest is unknown. He was a canon of Gniezno from 1556, however, like Copernicus or Jan Dantyszek, he might not have been ordained a priest. The sitter's costume and pose can be compared with effigies of Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1517-1586), a leading minister of the Spanish Habsburgs, who become a canon of Besançon and prothonotary Apostolic in 1529, when he was only 12 years old, later, in November 1538, aged only twenty-one, he was appointed bishop of Arras and took holy orders two years later (after "Les Granvelle et les anciens Pays-Bas" by Krista de Jonge, Gustaaf Janssens, p. 20). Granvelle also became the archbishop of Malines (1560) and a cardinal (1561), yet in majority of his portraits, like the one created by Frans Floris in about 1541, with blue eyes, by Titian in 1548, by Antonis Mor in 1549 and in about 1560, by Lambertus Suavius in 1556, all with dark eyes, there is no explicit reference to his priesthood. A number of preserved portraits of Polish-Lithuanian "princes of the Church" are official effigies dedicated to churches, where the patron was depicted in pontifical vestments. In private images, they could allow themselves, like Granvelle, to be depicted in less formal attire, more typical of a nobleman than a priest. According to Latin inscription at upper left, the man was 37 years old in 1562 (A° 1562 / AETATIS. 37), exacly as royal secretary Franciszek Krasiński. He could have ordered this likeness in Venice and then send it to Rome, although it is also possible that in 1562 he was in Italy. Another portrait attributed to Lambert Sustris or his workshop shows a bearded man in black costume with a black hat, holiding a book and seated in a chair. This painting was sold in London in 2005 (oil on canvas, 98.3 x 78 cm, Bonhams, July 6, 2005, lot 90). It bears inscription and date Roma Ano 1564 Etatis Mae 33 (Rome Year 1564 of My Age 33) above the man's head, as well as three other inscriptions in Greek (or Armenian), Hebrew and Italian. The inscription in Italian Non ognuno che mi dice signor / Signore entrata nel regno de cieli: / ma colui che fa la volunta del / padre mio che e ne' cieli (Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven) are verses of the seventh chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament, part of the Sermon on the Mount, on True and False Disciples. The age of a man match perfectly the age of Piotr Dunin-Wolski (1531-1590), the son of Paweł Dunin-Wolski, Great Crown Chancellor, and Dorota Wiewiecka of Jastrzębiec coat of arms, who after his initial studies at the Lubrański Academy in Poznań went to Bologna and Padua to complete his studies. In Bologna in 1554 he is mentioned as a student of Sebastiano Corrado (Sebastianus Corradus), professor of Greek and Latin, who translated Plato into Latin. He was a canon of Poznań since 1545 and after returning from Italy, he stayed at the court of king Sigismund Augustus, where he proved to be a man especially gifted in foreign languages and in diplomacy. He was threfore sent to Madrid in Spain in 1560 where he stayed for more than 10 years, trying to regain the so-called Neapolitan sums for the king. His stay in Rome in 1564 is not mentioned in the sources, however his letters from Barcelona of March 4 to cardinal Stanisław Hozjusz and from Madrid of September 23 to bishop Marcin Kromer might indicate such journey. He returned to Poland in 1573. He was a collector of antiquities and collected a large library, which he donated to the Kraków Academy (approx. 1000 volumes) and the library of the Płock Chapter (130 books). Dunin-Wolski died in Płock on August 20, 1590 and was buried in the cathedral church, where his tombstone has been preserved to this day as well as a portrait. This effigy, created after his death in the 17th or 18th century by a local painter, was undeniably copied from another effigy of the Bishop of Płock (since 1577), and it is astonishingly similar to the described painting by Sustris or his workshop. 
Portrait of Franciszek Krasiński (1525-1577), aged 25, in embroidered doublet by Lambert Sustris, 1550, Private collection.
Portrait of royal secretary Franciszek Krasiński (1525-1577), aged 37, holding gloves by Lambert Sustris, 1562, Colonna Gallery in Rome.
Portrait of canon Piotr Dunin-Wolski (1531-1590), aged 33 by Lambert Sustris or workshop, 1564, Private collection.
Portraits of Queen Barbara Radziwill and her father by workshop of Paris Bordone
"They say that Queen Bona, who previously cared little about divine things, is beginning to be attracted to innovations in religion. Because she is reading Italian books by a certain Bernardino Ochino, once a monk in Italy and the founder of the new Capuchin Congregation, but who changed his faith and now teaches in England. They assure that she would like to bring in a similar type of teachers, i.e. preachers. A strange change in this woman's mind! She was also reconciled with Queen Barbara. Through her envoy and her confessor, Franciszek Lismaninus of Corcyra [Francesco Lismanini of Corfu], Bona called Barbara her most beloved daughter-in-law, recommended herself and her daughters to her in the most flattering terms and sent small gifts. Many claim that she did it deceitfully, not for Barbara's sake, but to enslave the king her son, who is so attached to his wife that he hates those who persecute her with hatred, and that it was all the easier for her because she knew that Queen Barbara will not live long. Queen Bona's confessor himself, whom I mentioned above, solemnly assured me that this consent was real and a divine decree. And that is a noteworthy mind shift", reported in a letter of March 9, 1551, Doctor Johannes Lang, envoy of King Ferdinand I of Austria.
This letter illustrates not only the family relationships within the Jagiellonian dynasty around the mid-16th century, but also the popularity of Italian culture and new ideas and trends at the royal court. In an earlier letter dated January 4, 1551 from Świdnica (Swidniciae) to the king, Doctor Lang adds about religious reforms in Poland-Lithuania: "I have already written to Your Royal Majesty about a marriage concluded by a priest in Pinczów, a town fourteen miles away from Kraków. Now they tell me that a new liturgy has been introduced there after the expulsion of the monks; they sing the mass in Polish and condemn communion under one species in the Eucharist. Strange crowds of nobility come there, brazenly trampling on old church rites. As far as I can predict, I see that, despite the opposition of some men, Poland will forcibly obtain priestly marriage and communion under both kinds. There will be a strange change in church things there" (after "Jagiellonki polskie ..." by Aleksander Przezdziecki, Volume 5, pp. LXVIII-LXX). At Knole House, Kent, England, there is another portrait of an unknown lady, called Mary, Queen of Scots, three-quarter length (oil on canvas, 107 x 89 cm, NT 129951), similar to the so-called Carleton portrait at Chatsworth House. The young woman wears an ivory dress embroidered in gold with blue undersleeves. Her hair is decorated with pearls and red carnation flowers, symbols of love and passion. Due to earlier identification, the portrait is attributed to the French or Flemish school. In the 18th and 19th centuries the romantic legend and tragic death of the Queen of Scots contributed to this phenomenon and even the daughter of Mary's adversary - Sir Francis Walsingham (died 1590), Frances Walsingham (1567-1633), Lady Sidney became Mary, Queen of Scots. Possibly in the 19th century the inscription on the small trompe l'oeil label, or cartellino, visible in the upper left corner, in a fine portrait of Frances attributed to Robert Peake (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1954.75), was changed to Latin: MARIA REGINA SCOTIAE. Using new technology, restorers discovered the original lettering: "The Ladie Sidney daughter to Secretarye Walsingham" (after "Who's That Lady? ..." by Elise Effmann Clifford). Similar was the case with the portrait of Princess Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575) in Spanish costume (Czartoryski Museum, MNK XII-296) or portrait of Cardinal John Albert Vasa (1612-1634) by Venetian school (most probably Tommaso Dolabella, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw, Wil.1240), which, according to a later inscription depict Cardinal Andrew Bathory (1562-1599). The lady's features resemble those in the Carleton portrait and miniature of Queen Barbara by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger (Czartoryski Museum, MNK IV-V-1433), as well as other portraits of the queen. The style of this painting resembles the full-length effigy of Queen Barbara's father - George Radziwill (1480-1541), nicknamed "Hercules" in the National Art Museum of Belarus in Minsk (oil on canvas, 210 x 122 cm, inv. ЗЖ-140). It can be compared to the portraits of Sigismund Augustus in the guise of Christ as Light of the World produced by the workshop of Paris Bordone (Accademia Carrara in Bergamo and Abbey of San Benedetto in Polirone) as well as to the double portrait, attributed to Bordone (Nivaagaard Museum, 0009NMK) and portrait of a man in Paris (Louvre, INV 126; MR 74). According to the Latin inscription in the upper left corner, George Radziwill was painted in 1541 at the age of 55 (GEORGIVS RADZIWIL CASTELLANVS VILENSIS [...] AÑO DNI. M.D.XXXXI. ÆTATIS VERO SVÆ LV.). The inventory of paintings from the collection of Princess Louise Charlotte Radziwill (1667-1695), drawn up in 1671, lists some of the effigies that survived the Deluge (1655-1660). Among these portraits, many were made in 1550, such as Nicolaus Radziwil Cognomento, 2dus Dux in Gonidz Palatinus Vilne[n]sis Cancelarius M.D.L. (1), Georius Radziwił Castelanus Vilnens. Gnalis dux Exercitum M.D.L. (9), Joanes Radziwił Dux in Muszniki Archicamer. M.D.L. (15) and Nicolaus Radziwił Dux Birzarum et Dubincorum, Palaitinus Vilnen. Gnalis Dux Exercitum M.D.L. (21). The creation of such a gallery of ancestors and other family members was probably linked to the coronation of Queen Barbara on December 7, 1550. 
Portrait of Queen Barbara Radziwill by workshop of Paris Bordone, ca. 1549-1551, Knole House.
Portrait of George "Hercules" Radziwill, castellan of Vilnius by workshop of Paris Bordone, ca. 1549-1551, National Art Museum of Belarus in Minsk.
Portraits of Sophia Jagiellon in Spanish costume
Daughters of Bona Sforza d'Aragona, Queen of Poland, Grand Duchess of Lithuania and Duchess of Bari and Rossano by her own right were descendants of Alfonso V, King of Aragon, Sicily and Naples.
Contacts with Spain intensified after 1550. In 1550 and 1553, Gian Lorenzo Pappacoda (1541-1576), a courtier of Queen Bona, was sent to the emperor with unknown instructions given to him by the queen. In March 1554, he also went to London and Brussels. Pappacoda's task was to convince the emperor and king of Spain to intervene on Bona's behalf at the court of Sigismund Augustus in order to facilitate her leaving Poland, and to obtain for her the position of viceroy of Naples, vacant since 1553 after the death of Pedro Álvarez de Toledo y Zúñiga (after "Odrodzenie i reformacja w Polsce", Volume 44, p. 201). In a letter dated May 11, 1550 from Valladolid, Juan Alonso de Gámiz, secretary of Charles V, informed King Ferdinand I of the arrival of the "secretary of the King of Poland with letters and gifts" (secretario del rey de Polonia con letras y presentes para sus altezas), including six horses with velvet tacks richly embroidered with royal emblems (seys cavallos portantes concubiertas de terciopelo morado y la devisa del rey bordada), as well as sable, ermine and wolf pelts for the king and queen (after "Urkunden und Regesten ..." by Hans von Voltelini, p. L-LI). The letter dated December 31, 1560 from Vilnius (Datum Vilnae, ultima Decembris 1560) to Henry of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, husband of Sophia Jagiellon, is probably the earliest confirmed use of the Spanish title of infanta by Sophia's younger sisters, Anna and Catherine (Infantes Poloniae), who in an earlier letter to Henry dated October 18, 1559 from Przemyśl (Datum Premisliae, die XVIII. Octobris 1559) referred to themselves as Crown Princesses (Reginulae Poloniae). The document issued by King Henry of Valois on May 5, 1574 in Kraków refers to Sophia as "the Most Illustrious Princess Sophia, Infanta of the Kingdom of Poland, born of this same stock of Jagiellons" (Illustrissima Principe Domina Sophia Infante Regni Poloniae ex hac eadem Jagiellonum stirpe nata, after "Jagiellonki polskie w XVI. wieku: Korrespondencya polska ..." by Alexander Przezdziecki, Volume 3, p. 309-310, 334). In an undated letter in Italian, probably from around 1556 (or before 1565), Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) also calls Sophia "Infanta of Poland" (Principessa Sofia Infante di Polonia, Dochessa di Brunschwig). In 1551, Queen Bona proposed that the Gdańsk merchant Hans von Werden be used to suggest Gustav Vasa (1496-1560), the recently widowed King of Sweden, to marry one of her daughters. Bona reproached his son Sigismund Augustus for his indifference to the fate of his sisters, and he reciprocated. The Queen Mother did not want to marry one of her daughters to the Bavarian prince who was asking for the hand of one of the princesses, while the king indifferently accepted the efforts of an Italian prince and "a lord of a noble Roman family" (pan rzymskiej zacnej familiej), probably Marcantonio II Colonna (1535-1584), commander of the Spanish cavalry. In a letter dated January 21, 1554, the Austrian envoy, Bishop of Zagreb Pavao Gregorijanec (Paulus de Gregoryancz), reports that Queen Bona received very well Archduke Ferdinand (1529-1595), son of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), who accompanied his sister Catherine of Austria to Kraków, expecting that he was coming to ask for the hand of one of her daughters (after "Ostatnie lata Zygmunta Augusta i Anna Jagiellonka" by Józef Szujski, p. 299). The portrait of a blond lady in Spanish costume from the 1550s which exists in a number of copies, although idealized, bears a strong resemblance to the portrait of Sophia in French/German costume in Kassel by circle of Titian (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, inv. GK 496) and her miniature in German/Polish dress by Cranach (Czartoryski Museum, XII-544). At least two paintings are preserved in Poland (one in Kraków and the other in Warsaw) and another, identified as Sophia, is at Wolfenbüttel Castle (deposit of the Lower Saxony State Museum in Hanover, inv. KM 105, also similar to the very idealized portrait of Barbara Radziwill at the Musée Condé, known as "Anne Boleyn", inv. PE 564). With reference to the 1828 catalogue of the Czartoryski collection in Puławy, the Kraków painting was purchased (between 1789 and 1791) by Princess Izabela Czartoryska in Edinburgh as a portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots ("bought in Edinburgh", compare "Poczet pamiątek zachowanych w Domu Gotyckim w Puławach", item 456, p. 43), hence the inscription in French: MARIE STUART / REYNE D'ESCOSSE, added in about 1800 (Czartoryski Museum, oil on panel, 22 x 17 cm, MNK XII-296). Nevertheless, many similar inscriptions on the portraits from the Puławy collection are no longer considered credible today. They were clearly based on a general impression or general resemblance as in the case of the Portrait of a Man Holding Arrows, most likely Konrad von Lindnach (d. 1513), Landvogt in Aargau, previously identified as the effigy of William Tell, a folk hero of Switzerland, hence the inscription in French: GUILLAUME TELL (inv. V. 207) or the Portrait of a Man by a German painter (inv. XII-235), previously identified as Thomas More (1478-1535) and attributed to Hans Holbein the Younger, bearing the inscription: THOMAS MORUS / HOLBEIN. Similar costume and hairstyle are found in several portraits of members of the ruling house of Spain and Portugal made between 1550 and 1555, such as the portrait of the Infanta Maria of Austria (1528-1603), Regent of Spain by Antonis Mor, painted in 1551 (Prado Museum in Madrid, inv. P002110, signed and dated: Antonius Mor pinx. / Año 1551), the portrait of her sister the Infanta Joanna of Austria (1535-1573), Princess of Portugal, aged 17, thus painted around 1552 by Cristovão de Morais (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, inv. 1296, inscription: .AETATIS.SVE / .17.), the portrait of their close relative Catherine of Austria (1507-1578), Queen of Portugal by Antonis Mor from around 1552-1553 (Prado, inv. P002109) and portrait of Maria of Portugal (1521-1577), Duchess of Viseu, also by Mor, painted around 1550-1555 (Convent of Las Descalzas Reales in Madrid). Knowing the history of Franco-Spanish rivalries in the 16th century, it is very unlikely that Mary Stuart, who was Queen of France between 1559-1560 and lived in France from 1548, wanted to show her attachment to Spain through her costume. Moreover, it is difficult to indicate any resemblance of the model to well-known effigies of the Queen of Scots, such as the miniature attributed to François Clouet (Royal Collection, RCIN 401229). The identification with Anna van Egmont (1533-1558), wife of William the Silent, Prince of Orange, is also difficult to maintain (compare with her beautiful portrait attributed to Anthonis Mor and studio, Dorotheum in Vienna, October 25, 2023, lot 25). The 1696 inventory of the Wilanów Palace mentions under No. 296: "Painting on panel, Portrait of Reginae Scottorum, in black frames", which most probably depicted Mary Stuart. This painting, owned by King John III Sobieski, most likely came from older royal collections, which survived the destruction during the Deluge. As the Polish-Lithuanian monarchs owned portraits of the Queen of Scots, the monarchs or artitocrats of Scotland could receive or acquire a portrait of the Jagiellonian Princess-Infanta. Another possible hypothesis is that the painting was not acquired in Edinburgh, but in Poland, and that by claiming to have an authentic portrait of the famous Queen of Scots, the Czartoryskis wanted to raise the status of their collection. An almost exact copy of the Kraków painting, attributed to circle of Jean Clouet, was sold in Zurich in 2011 (oil on panel, 23.3 x 18.2 cm, Koller Auctions, April 1, 2011, lot 3012). The Warsaw version is slightly different and was purchased in 1972 from the Radziwill collection (National Museum in Warsaw, oil on panel, 24.5 x 19 cm, M.Ob.654). After marriage of Isabella Jagiellon in 1539, Sophia was the eldest daughter of Bona still unmarried. Three of Bona's younger daughters dressed identically, as evidenced by their miniatures by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger from about 1553 and inventory of dowry of the youngest Catherine includes many Spanish garments, like a black velvet coat with "53 Spanish buckles of 270 thalers worth", "buckles on (thirteen) French and Spanish robes", or "a robe of black velvet at the throat in Spanish style" with 198 buckles, etc. The fashion was udobtedly used in complex Jagiellonian politics. A portrait from the private collection in Sweden (oil on panel, 26 x 19 cm, Metropol Auktioner in Stockholm, January 26, 2015, nr 938 5124), possibly taken from Poland-Lithuania during the Deluge (1655-1660), and created by the same workshop, showns Sophia in similar Spanish/French costume. In the National Art Gallery in Lviv there is a portrait painted in the same style, apparently by the same painter (inv. Ж-277). It resembles the one traditionally identified as Mary Stuart (photogravure, after Henry Bone, published in 1902, National Portrait Gallery, NPG D41905). The painting comes from the Lubomirski collection and according to the inscription on the back it has been identified as possibly depicting the Queen of Scots: "Lubomirski Collection, probably portrait of Mary Stuart" (ZBIÓR LUBO/MIRSKICH / podobno: Portret Maryi Stuart). Many similar paintings are now attributed to the circle of French painter François Clouet (d. 1572) and are probably part of collections of idealized portraits of ladies of quality, so popular at that time and in the 17th century in Europe (also as a model for fashionable costumes). Since many of them are based on originals by Anthonis Mor, as in the case of the portraits of Anna van Egmont (paintings in the Royal Palace in Amsterdam and the Ducal Palace in Mantua), the authorship of a Flemish workshop is also possible. 
Portrait of Princess-Infanta Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575) in Spanish costume by circle of François Clouet or Flemish painter, ca. 1550-1556, Czartoryski Museum in Kraków.
Portrait of Princess-Infanta Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575) in Spanish costume by circle of François Clouet or Flemish painter, ca. 1550-1556, Private collection.
Portrait of Princess-Infanta Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575) in Spanish costume by circle of François Clouet or Flemish painter, ca. 1550-1556, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of Princess-Infanta Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575) in Spanish/French costume by circle of François Clouet or Flemish painter, ca. 1550-1556, Private collection.
Portraits of Sigismund Augustus and Catherine of Austria as Adam and Eve from the Paradise Bliss tapestry
"Adam and Eve, the parents of calamity, stood both painted according to true image and the word all over the tapestries woven with gold. And since those portraits of the first parents, in addition to the other things to be seen, were of admirable material and workmanship, I will show them like Cebetis, so that from thence the work itself of an excellent artist, as well as the genius of the best king, may be perceived [...]. In the first tapestry, at the head of the nuptial bed, we saw the bliss in the faces of our parents; in which, when they were happy, they were not ashamed to be naked. Moreover, the nakedness of both of them so moved the spirits, especially that of Eve's husband, that lascivious girls would smile at Adam as they entered. For when the man's womb was opened, the sex of a woman is fulfilled" (calamitatis parentes Adam et Eva ad effigiem veritatis stabant textu picti ambo per omnes Cortinas, auro praetextati. Et quoniam illae primorum parentum effigies praeter caeteras res visendas, admirabili fuerunt materia et opere, eas ad Cebetis instar demonstrabo, ut inde cum opus ipsum praeclari artificis, tum vero ingenium optimi regis pernoscatis [...]. In prima Cortina, ad caput genialis lecti, parentum nostrorum contextu expressa felicitatis cernebatur effigies; in qua felices illi cum essent, non erubescebant nudi. Porro utriusque nuditas ita commovebat animos, ut viri Evae, Adamo vero lascivae introingressae arriderent puellae. Aperta enim pube ille viri, haec foeminae sexum sinu ostendebant pleno), thus praises the veracity of effigies of the figures of Adam and Eve in the tapestry commissioned by king Sigismund II Augustus, Stanisław Orzechowski (1513-1566) in his "Nuptial Panegyric of Sigismund Augustus, King of Poland" (Panagyricus Nuptiarum Sigimundi Augusti Poloniae Regis), published in Kraków in 1553.
Orzechowski (Stanislao Orichovio Roxolano or Stanislaus Orichovius Ruthenus), a Ruthenian Catholic priest, born in or near Przemyśl, educated in Kraków, Vienna, Wittenberg, Padua, Bologna, Rome and Venice and married to a noblewoman Magdalena Chełmska, described the festivities and decorations of the Wawel Royal Castle in Kraków during king's wedding celebrated on July 30, 1553. The bride was a sister of Sigismund Augustus first wife and widow of the Duke of Mantua, Catherine of Austria, daughter of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547). Wedding chambers were adorned with tapestries from the series of the Story of Adam and Eve, created in Brussels by workshop of Jan de Kempeneer after cartoons by Michiel I Coxcie, most probably on this occasion, including the described Paradise Bliss. The author emphasizes that they were depicted naked, while both Eve and Adam's womb on this tapestry are today covered with vine branches. "A closer look at the technique of the fabric in these places reveals that the vine covering Eve's womb, and the other vine covering Adam's womb, are woven or embroidered separately and applied to the fabric itself", states Mieczysław Gębarowicz and Tadeusz Mańkowski in their publication from 1937 ("Arasy Zygmunta Agusta", p. 23). Vine branches were probably added in 1670 when the tapestry was transported to Jasna Góra Monastery for the wedding of king Michael Korybut Wiśniowiecki. Another intriguing aspect is the veracity of the images so underlined by Orzechowski. It is about the true image of the legendary first parents, a woman and a man or, most likely, the bride and groom? Adam's facial features are very reminiscent of images of king Sigismund Augustus, especially the portrait by Jan van Calcar against the Mausoleum of Empeor Augustus in Rome (private collection), while the face of Eve is very similar to that of Queen Catherine of Austria, depicted as Venus with the lute player by Titian (Metropolitan Museum of Art). These two effigies can be compared to the naked effigies of French monarchs from their tombs in the Basilica of Saint-Denis - tomb of Louis XII and Anne of Brittany (1515-1531), tomb of Francis I and Claude of France (1548-1570), and especially the tomb of Henry II and Catherine de' Medici (1560-1573), all inspired by Italian art. 
Portrait of King Sigismund Augustus (1520-1572) as Adam from the Paradise Bliss tapestry by workshop of Jan de Kempeneer after design by Michiel I Coxcie, ca. 1553, Wawel Royal Castle.
Portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) as Eve from the Paradise Bliss tapestry by workshop of Jan de Kempeneer after design by Michiel I Coxcie, ca. 1553, Wawel Royal Castle.
Tapestry with Paradise Bliss by workshop of Jan de Kempeneer after design by Michiel I Coxcie, ca. 1553, Wawel Royal Castle.
Portraits of Sophia Jagiellon and Catherine of Austria by Titian and workshop
"My heart moves me to tell of forms changed into new bodies" (In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas corpora), states Ovid in the opening lines of his "Metamorphoses" (Transformations). If gods could turn into humans, why humans (and especially royals) could not turn into gods? At least in paintings.
When in June 1553 Sigismund II Augustus married his distant cousin Catherine of Austria, widowed duchess of Mantua, his three younger sisters Sophia, Anna and Catherine were not married. At the same time Catherine's cousin, Philip of Spain (1527-1598), Duke of Milan from 1540, son of Emperor Charles V, was unmarried after death of his first wife Maria Manuela (1527-1545), Princess of Portugal. Philip undeniably received a portrait of his distant relative Princess Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575), the eldest of Bona Sforza's daughters, unmarried at that time. At the end of 1553 Philip's wedding to his second aunt, the Queen of England, Mary I (1516-1558), was announced. It turned out, however, that Philip was only a duke and there could be no marriage between the queen and someone of lower rank. Charles V solved the inconvenience by renouncing the Kingdom of Naples in favor of his son, so that he would be king. On July 25, 1554 Philip married the Queen of England. Painting of Salome with the head of John the Baptist by Titian in the Prado Museum in Madrid is dated to about 1550 (oil on canvas, 87 x 80 cm, inv. P000428). Many authors underline an erotic dimension of the scene. The work was inventoried as part of the royal collection in the Alcazar of Madrid between 1666 and 1734, possibly acquired from the collection of the 1st Marquess of Leganés, between 1652-1655, who probaly bought it at the auction of collection Charles I of England. According to other sources "Salome, by Titian, painted around 1550, appears in an early inventory of the Lerma collection. In 1623 Philip IV gave it to the Prince of Wales, later Charles of England" (after "Enciclopedia del Museo del Prado", Volume 3, p. 805). Titian's workshop created several replicas of this painting transforming Salome into a girl holding a tray of fruit, most probably representing Pomona, a goddess of fruitful abundance and the wife of the god Vertumnus (Voltumnus), the supreme god of the Etruscan pantheon. According to Ovid's "Metamorphoses" (XIV), Vertumnus, after several unsuccessful advances, tricked Pomona into talking to him by disguising himself as an old woman and gaining entry to her orchard. The best version of this painting, acquired in 1832 from the Abate Luigi Celotti collection in Florence, is today in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (oil on canvas, 106.2 x 84.8 cm, inv. 166). In both paintings the girl is wearing a rich jewelled tiara, so she is definitely a princess and the main fruit on her tray is a quince (or Cydonian apple), similar to that visible in watercolour paintings by Joris Hoefnagel from about 1595, one with Venus disarming Amor (National Gallery of Denmark), or less probably a lemon, a symbol of fidelity in love associated with Virgin Mary. A yellow lemon- or pear-shaped fruit, evocative of the female body, was sacred to Venus, herself often represented holding it in her right hand, as being the emblem of love, happiness, and faithfulness. "Both the Greeks and Romans used quince boughs and fruit to decorate the nuptial bedchamber. The fruit became an integral part of marriage ceremonies with the bride and groom partaking of honeyed quince. Eating the fruit was symbolic of consummating the marriage" (after Sandra Kynes' "Tree Magic: Connecting with the Spirit & Wisdom of Trees"). According to Columella (4 - ca. 70 AD), a prominent writer on agriculture in the Roman Empire, "Quinces not only yield pleasure, but health". "Romans would serve quince to their loved ones to encourage fidelity and those newly married would share a quince to ensure a happy marriage" (after Rachel Patterson's "A Kitchen Witch's World of Magical Food"). Around that time Titian's workshop created another version of this composition, which was before 1916 in the Volpi collection in Florence (oil on canvas, 104 x 81 cm, Fototeca Zeri, Numero scheda 39297, Archivio fotografico Davanzati 1039), hence both Pomonas were possibly initially in the Medici collection. The woman's face and pose is identical as in the Raczyński Herodias, which is the effigy of Queen Catherine of Austria. The face of the princess in the Prado painting bears great resemblance to effigies of Princess Sophia Jagiellon by Cranach and in Spanish costume by Flemish painter. Some of the copies of this Salome and Pomona were created by Titian's workshop, such as the Knebworth House copy, sold in 2003, the paintng sold in 2006 in Zurich (oil on canvas, 111 x 90.4 cm, Koller Auctions, A138, September 22, 2006, lot 3048) or a reduced version, sold in 2020 (oil on canvas, 46.5 x 36 cm, Bonhams London, October 21, 2020, lot 3), which also indicate that she was an important person. Princess Sophia's Habsburg relatives also owned a copy, which is considered lost, as the "Young Woman with a Bowl of Fruit" was listed in the imperial collections before the Swedish occupation. In another variant of Salome/Pomona by Titian's studio, the princess "metamorphoses" into another femme fatale - Pandora, now holding a rich jewelled box on her tray, like in later paintings by James Smetham (ca. 1865), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1871), John William Waterhouse (1896) or Odilon Redon (1910/1912). Pandora was to be created by Hephaestus (Vulcan) on the order of Zeus (Jupiter), as the first human woman, to whom each of the gods gave some special gifts - Athena (Minerva) gave her intelligence, talent and manners and Aphrodite (Venus), beauty of a goddess, and she was also given a box containing all the evils that could afflict humanity, with a warning never to open it. In modern times, Pandora and her vessel have become, among other things, a symbol of the seductive power of women. This painting, from the French royal collection, mentioned among the paintings of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans (1674-1723), who was regent of the kingdom of France from 1715 to 1723, is today in a private collection in Milan (oil on canvas, 116.5 x 94.5 cm, Fototeca Zeri, Numero scheda 42005). In the 19th and 20th centuries, many paintings returned to their place of origin, although this does not at all mean that the model was Italian (however, it is worth mentioning that through her mother, Princess Sophia was Italian). The fingers of her right hand, originally supporting larger tray in initial version (Salome) in this painting of Pandora, are eerily raised so that the girl is holding a heavy silver tray and a much heavier casket just by part of her hand. This is another proof that the painting was not taken from life, but based on study drawings sent from Poland-Lithuania, and it cannot be Titian's daughter posing for it, otherwise she would hurt herself holding these heavy objects like that. A version of a painting entitled "A Useless Moral Lesson" (allegorical subject of the loss of virginity and dangers of love) by Godfried Schalcken from 1690 (Mauritshuis) was sold in the United Kingdom in December 2020 as Pandora. Some copies of the painting by Titian's studio were sold as "Pandora's Box" (Manner of Guido Reni, 2014 and British School, 19th century, 2010) and Helena Tekla Lubomirska née Ossolińska (d. 1687), daughter of Chancellor Jerzy Ossoliński (1595-1650) was depicted in guise of Pandora, holding a bronze vase bearing the Lubomirski coat of arms - Szreniawa and inscription in Italian SPENTO E IE [IL] LUME / NON L'ADORE (the light is out, not the ardor), which is a paraphrase of a line from the poem Adone ("Adonis", 1623) by Giambattista Marino (attributed to Claude Callot and circle, National Museum and Wilanów Palace in Warsaw). Helena Tekla particularly liked different disguises in her effigies. In her portrait by Mignard, thus ordered and created in France, she is depicted as Flora, Roman goddess of flowers and spring (inscribed on verso: Capitane Lubomirski / par Nic. Mignard., National Museum in Warsaw, M.Ob.1253 MNW) and inventory of Wiśnicz Castle from 1661 lists "a portrait of Her Highness, in the guise of Saint Helena" and "a full-length portrait of Her Highness, in the guise of Diana with greyhounds". Wanda Drecka interprets this representation of the widowed Princess Lubomirska "as the guardian of all virtues or Pandora who gives everything" (after "Dwa portrety księżnej na Wiśniczu", p. 386). It was not just a 17th century invention and such representations were known much earlier (Pandora from the French royal collection was considered to be the portrait of Titian's daughter Lavinia), also in Poland-Lithuania where Italian influences were so strong in the 16th century. Unfortunately, in Poland-Lithuania, the losses of cultural heritage during the Deluge (1655-1660) and the subsequent invasions were so great that everything was forgotten. 
Portrait of Princess Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575) as Salome by Titian, 1550-1553, Prado Museum in Madrid.
Portrait of Princess Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575) as Pomona by workshop of Titian, 1550-1553, Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.
Portrait of Princess Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575) as Pomona by workshop of Titian, 1550-1553, Private collection.
Portrait of Princess Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575) as Pandora by workshop of Titian, 1550-1553, Private collection.
Portrait of Princess Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575) by follower of Titian, after 1553, Private collection.
Portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) as Pomona by workshop of Titian, 1553-1565, Private collection. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Allegorical portraits of Queen Catherine of Austria by workshop of Titian
Another version of the Pomona in Berlin by workshop of Titian was before 1970 in private collection in Vienna, Austria (oil on canvas, 102 x 82.5 cm, Sotheby's London, April 10, 2013, lot 94; Fototeca Zeri, Numero scheda 39299), however, her facial features are slightly different, the face is more elongated and the lower lip is more protruding, as in most of the portraits of Catherine of Austria's relatives in Vienna. Her features are very similar to Saint Catherine of Alexandria in the Prado (inv. P000447) and in the Raczyński Herodias. The same face and pose was copied in a painting of a nymph and a satyr which was before 1889 in James E. Scripps collection in Detroit (oil on canvas, 99 x 80.6 cm, Fototeca Zeri, Numero scheda 45033), attributed to follower of Titian, possibly by his student Girolamo Dente. The nymph playfully tugs at the ear of the satyr, who probably has the features of a court dwarf. Satyrs were nature deities and part of Bacchus's retinue. They were considered symbols of natural fertility or virility and were frequently portrayed chasing nymphs, symbolizing chastity.
A good copy, or rather a version of the composition attributed to Dente, since some elements of the composition have been modified, was in Riga, the capital of Latvia, which between 1582-1629 was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and later became part of the Swedish Empire. This painting was considered to represent Vertumnus and Pomona and was attributed to a 17th-century Venetian painter, but it was also considered a work by Titian in the collection of photographs of the Italian art historian Federico Zeri (1921-1998), where it was noted as belonging to the "Coll. Bul[b]ets / (Latvijas Banka)" around 1936, so before World War II (cf. Fototeca Zeri, Numero scheda 58454). In this version, the woman has a thicker face, so it is possible that she commissioned another, more favorable painting (i.e. version from the Scripps collection). Similar paintings were in royal and magnate collections in Poland-Lithuania. Inventory of the Kunstkammer of the Radziwill Castle in Lubcha from 1647 lists a painting of a "Naked lady with a satyr" offered by king John II Casimir Vasa and in 1633 a painting of "Diana with her maidens, the fauns laugh at" presented by his predecessor Ladislaus IV (after "Galerie obrazów i "Gabinety Sztuki" Radziwiłłów w XVII w." by Teresa Sulerzyska, p. 96). Inventory of paintings from the collection of princess Louise Charlotte Radziwill (1667-1695), drawn up in 1671, lists many nude and erotic paintings, some of which may be works by Titian: A half-naked lady in sables (297, possibly a copy of a Girl in a fur by Titian in Vienna), Naked woman sleeps and two men watch (351), A naked woman sleeps and a lute and a flask with a drink is beside her and a man watches (370), A filthy image, Cupids and many naked people (371), Bacchanalia (372), Adonis wrestle with Venus (374, possibly a copy of Venus and Adonis by Titian in Madrid), A lady in flowers (375) and A lady with flowers (419, possibly a copy of Flora by Titian in Florence), Two naked women, one combs herself (420), A woman lying holding a glass, a man in front of her and Cupid embracing her (430), Three nymphs and Cupid (431), Two pictures on silver plates, one of Cupid with Venus, and the other with lustitia (628-629), Venus between two Cupids. A special image (762, most likely a painting from Bernardino Luini's workshop in the Wilanów Palace or a copy), A woman, naked, covered herself with cotton cloth, on a large panel (794, possibly a copy of a portrait of Beatrice of Naples as Venus by Lorenzo Costa in Budapest), Susanna and two old men, a large painting on canvas (815), Picture: a naked lady is sleeping and a satyr is next to her, this painting was given by King John Casimir (820), Three nymphs and Cupid (826), A lady with satyr, filthy (842), A lady lying. Small painting, golden frames (843), Naked lady with a swan, stone painting (844, possibly Leda by Alessandro Turchi, a pupil of Carlo Cagliari in Venice), A naked person in a red coat (863, possibly a copy of "Titian's Mistress" in Apsley House) (after "Inwentarz galerii obrazów Radziwiłłów z XVII w." by Teresa Sulerzyska). The inventory also includes several paintings which could be identified as Lucretia or Salome by Cranach and this is only a part of splendid collections of the Radziwills that survived the Deluge (1655-1660). Carlo Ridolfi (1594-1658) in his work Le Maraviglie dell'arte ..., published in Venice in 1648, confirms that after his stay in Spain (around 1550), Titian travelled to Innsbruck "where he portrayed Ferdinand, King of the Romans, his wife Queen Maria [Anna Jagellonica] and seven most noble maidens, daughters of her majesty, on the same canvas, almost composing a heaven of earthly deities; and it is said that every time these princesses went to have their portrait painted, they brought a gem as a gift to the painter" (Passato poi in Inspruch, ritrasse Ferdinando re de' Romani, la regina Maria sua moglie, e sette nobilissime Citelle, figliuole di quella Maestà in una stessa tela, componendo quasi un Cielo di terrene Deità; e raccontasi, che ogni fiata che quelle Principesse andavano a ritrarsi, recavano una gemma in dono al Pittore, p. 166). The author most likely confused Queen Anna Jagellonica, wife of Ferdinand, with her daughter-in-law Maria of Spain (1528-1603), who travelled through the Republic of Venice to return to Spain in 1581, however, from this fragment we can assume that Titian painted Anna's daughters, most likely including Catherine, as Roman goddesses (Cielo di terrene Deità). "The Goddess Diana with the God Pan / That chaste breast, which perpetually / Had made itself a shelter of modesty / And fled the consortium of people / To avoid some illicit act" (la Dea Diana col Dio Pan / Quel casto petto, che perpetuamente / S'era di pudicitia albergo fatto / E fuggiva il consortio de la gente / Per non venir a qualche illecito atto) is the inscription in Italian under an erotic (even obscene by some standards) print with Jupiter transformed into Satyr and Diana from the series of 15 sheets depicting the Loves of the gods (Gli amori degli dei). The version in the National Gallery of Denmark (Statens Museum for Kunst) in Copenhagen is attributed to Jacopo Caraglio, court goldsmith and medallist of King Sigismund II Augustus (inv. KKSgb7584). Between 1527 and 1537 Caraglio was in Venice and from about 1539 in Poland-Lithuania, where he worked until his death on August 26, 1565. 
Portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) as Pomona by workshop of Titian, 1553-1565, Private collection.
Portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) as a nymph with a satyr by follower of Titian, possibly Girolamo Dente, 1553-1565, Private collection.
Portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) as a nymph with a satyr by follower of Titian, possibly Girolamo Dente, 1553-1565, Private collection in Riga before World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Erotic print with Jupiter transformed into Satyr and Diana by Jacopo Caraglio, second quarter of the 16th century, National Gallery of Denmark.
Portraits of Sophia Jagiellon by circle of Titian and portraits of Catherine of Austria by Giuseppe Arcimboldo
"Most Serene Princess, my dearest sister! I have received the gracious letter of Your Illustrious Ladyship and have learned with great joy of your good health; [...] I then ask a favor of Your Illustrious Ladyship; since it pleases God that I cannot enjoy your gracious company: do me a great favor by sending me your portrait and also that of your husband; I will keep them before me as a souvenir of you. If I can be of any use to you, I beg you to order it from me only, and you will find me always ready to do so. Finally, I commend myself to Your Grace. Given at Vilnius, April 23" (Serenissima Principessa signora et sorella mia carissima! Io ho receputa la amorevola letera di V. Ill. S. et con grante alegreza intesso la bona sanita di quella; [...] Poi io prego V. Ill. S. per una gratia; essento che a Dio cussi piace, che io non possa goder la sua amorevola compangina: che quella si denga a farme tanta gratia a mantarme il suo retrato et anchora quello di suo consorte; io tengero in vita mia per sua memoria. Se io in contar possa servir in qualla cosa, prego a commandar mi, che me trouera sempre pronta, cussi faro. Fin in ne la sua bona gratia me ricommando. Dat. in Vilno, alli 23 di aprillo, after "Jagiellonki polskie w XVI. wieku ..." by Aleksander Przezdziecki, p. 260, National Library of Poland, 68.338 A), wrote in Italian Catherine of Austria (1533-1572), Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania, to her sister-in-law Infanta Sophia Jagellon (1522-1575), Duchess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (Alla Serma Principessa Sofia Infante di Polonia, Dochessa di Brunschwig), probably shortly after her departure from Poland-Lithuania in 1556.
Sigismund Augustus' third wife, before marrying the king in 1553, was Duchess of Mantua and Montferrat (between 1549 and 1550) and after only four months as the wife of Francesco III Gonzaga (1533-1550), who drowned in Lake Como on February 21, 1550, she returned to Innsbruck. The Habsburgs pretended that the marriage had not been consummated to increase Catherine's chances of obtaining a better second marriage. The double portrait of the young widow with her mother Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), Queen of the Romans, Bohemia and Hungary, made at that time, i.e. between 1551 and 1553 (Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, oil on canvas, 140 x 130 cm, GG 8199), was probably intended to underline her connection to the Jagiellonian dynasty and to increase her chances of marrying her widowed relative, the King of Poland (the king's second wife, Barbara Radziwill, died on May 8, 1551). Anna died in 1547, before Catherine's marriage to the Duke of Mantua, when the Archduchess had no reason to display her attachment to her mother so ostentatiously. The parrot above her right shoulder in this painting is probably linked to the Annunciation, when the angel Gabriel announces to Mary her destiny to give birth to Jesus, and symbolizes purity and wealth (compare "Nature and Its Symbols ..." by Lucia Impelluso, p. 302). Very similar to this effigy of Catherine is her full-length portrait at Voigtsberg Castle (oil on canvas, 176 x 112 cm), attributed to Titian. This portrait, basing on a miniature in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (inv. GG 4703) in which she is titled as the wife of the Duke of Mantua, is generally dated to 1549, therefore around her marriage to Francesco, however taking into account that the counterpart of this portrait, i.e. the portrait of Francesco, is not known and that the double portrait with her mother was most likely made after 1550, the painting could be considered a possible betrothal effigy before the marriage with the King of Poland. The little dog suggests to the groom that she is faithful and the zibellino, which she holds in her hands, that she is fertile. It is interesting to note that at that time the Cremonese painter Sofonisba Anguissola created a portrait, considered her self-portrait, in the same costume and pose as the Duchess of Mantua and the Queen of Poland (private collection, oil on panel, 29 x 22 cm). It is quite possible that Sofonisba received a painting by Titian to copy, which would explain the overall titianesque character and colouring of Voigtsberg painting. The double portrait is similar to the Family portrait of Maximilian II, son of Anna Jagellonica, which is also in the Kunsthistorisches Museum (GG 3448). The Family portrait was made around 1553 or 1554, which indicates the young age of the youngest child, Archduke Ernest of Austria (1553-1595). However, since it is attributed to Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593), the possible date of creation is considered to be 1563, because at that time the artist moved from Milan to Vienna (according to the traditional approach, the painter and the model must have had the opportunity to meet in person when the portrait was created). If Arcimboldo or his workshop created the double portrait of Catherine and her mother, he must have done so in Milan, where he met the Duchess's father, Ferdinand I (on November 28, 1551 he was paid for painting the five banners of the King of Bohemia), so both paintings could be based on study drawings sent from Vienna or Innsbruck. Arcimboldo is also considered the author of the portrait of a daughter of Anna Jagellonica, now in the National Gallery of Ireland (oil on panel, 37 x 31 cm, NGI.902). This painting was purchased in Berlin in 1928 and Kurt Löcher considered it to be the effigy of Elizabeth of Austria (1526-1545), Queen of Poland, by Jakob Seisenegger (after "Nieznane portrety ostatnich Jagiellonów" by Janina Ruszczyc, p. 75). According to the catalog note of the National Gallery of Ireland, this is an effigy of Archduchess Anna (1528-1590), Duchess of Bavaria (from 1550). Nevertheless, while the resemblance of the woman to the effigies of Elizabeth and Anna is general, the resemblance to Catherine from her portrait at Voigtsberg Castle is striking, as if Arcimboldo and Titian (or Sofonisba) had used the same set of study drawings to create both effigies. This depiction can be compared to Catherine's bust-length portrait inscribed in the upper part CHATARINA.REGINA.POLONIE.ARCHI: / AVSTRIE. The style of these paintings is similar and both relate to the series of portraits of the daughters of Anna Jagellonica preserved in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, attributed to Arcimboldo, for example the portrait of Archduchess Joanna of Austria (1547-1578), future Grand Duchess of Tuscany (inv. GG 4513). As for the Duchess of Brunswick, very few portraits created during her lifetime (before this blog) were known. It is quite possible that her portrait for sister-in-law Catherine of Austria, former Duchess of Mantua, was commissioned from an Italian artist. The portrait of Sophia Jagiellon from the Von Borcke Palace in Starogard, which was lost during World War II, was most probably the only inscribed effigy showing her features the most accurately. It bears a strong resemblance to the features of a lady, painted by a Venetian painter from the circle of Titian, in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Kassel (oil on canvas, 120 x 96 cm, inv. GK 496). The portrait in Kassel is tentatively identified as effigy of Sophia's relative Archduchess Eleanor of Austria (1534-1594), Duchess of Mantua (daughter of Anna Jagellonica), and wife of Guglielmo Gonzaga, due to great similarity of garments and location, the Gonzagas of Mantua frequently commissioned their effigies in nearby Venice. However the face lacks an important feature, the notorious habsburg lip, allegedly stemming from Cymburgis of Masovia, a hallmark of prestige in the 16th century and inherited by Eleanor from her father, the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I. The sitter's costume and features are very similar to these visible in a miniature showing Sophia's mother Bona Sforza (in the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków, inv. MNK XII-141), who visited Venice in 1556, the year of Sophia's marriage with the 66-year-old Duke Henry V of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. It is highly possible that the painting was commissioned in Venice by Sophia's brother, king Sigismund II Augustus or her mother. In the same collection in Kassel, there are also two other portraits from the same period by Venetian painters, which are linked to Jagiellons, a portrait of Sophia's sister Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) and a portrait of a general, which according to Iryna Lavrovskaya, could be an effigy of influential cousin of Barbara Radziwill, Nicolaus "the Black" Radziwill (Heritage, N. 2, 1993. p. 82-84). A good copy of the Kassel painting is now in the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art (oil on canvas, 115.6 x 97.2 cm, inv. 43.19). Because of some obvious influences from Flemish painting, especially the colors and softness, it is attributed to Peter Paul Rubens, who worked in Mantua around 1600, but Lambert Sustris, a Dutch painter active mainly in Venice, and a pupil of Titian, can also be considered an author. Rubens in turn worked for the Polish-Lithuanian Vasas, descendants of Sophia's sister Catherine. The marriage of a 34-year-old princess with an old man was mocked in a painting, created by follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder and his son, preserved in the National Gallery in Prague (oil on panel, 44.7 x 49.8 cm, inv. DO 4323). The work was acquired in 1945 from the Nostitz picture collection in Prague (first probable record 1738, definite record 1818). The painter used earlier effigies of the Princess in the popular subject of the "grotesque marriage", dating back to antiquity when Plautus, a Roman comic poet from the 3rd century BC, cautioned elderly men against courting younger ladies. The inscription SMVST.A. on her bonnet should be therefore interpreted as a satirical anagram. Interestingly, the style of this painting resembles the mentioned works of Arcimboldo, so it is possible that he received a painting by Cranach to copy or that he created this composition based on Cranach's works. 
Portrait of Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575) in a black dress by circle of Titian, ca. 1553-1565, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Kassel.
Portrait of Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575) in black dress by circle of Titian, probably Lambert Sustris, or Peter Paul Rubens, ca. 1553-1565 or 1600s, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.
Ill-Matched Lovers, caricature of Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575) and her husband Henry V of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1489-1568) by Giuseppe Arcimboldo after Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1556, National Gallery in Prague.
Portrait of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), Queen of the Romans, Bohemia and Hungary and her daughter Archduchess Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) by workshop of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, ca. 1551-1553, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Archduchess Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) by circle of Titian or Sofonisba Anguissola, ca. 1553, Voigtsberg Castle.
Self-portrait of Sofonisba Anguissola, 1550s, Private collection.
Portrait of Archduchess Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, ca. 1553, National Gallery of Ireland.
Portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) by workshop of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, ca. 1554, whereabouts unknown.
Portraits of Zofia Tarnowska by Lambert Sustris and workshop of Titian
The Polish woman, one of the greatest muses and celebrities of 16th-century Europe? Why not, if 19th-century art historians could make a lesser-known lawyer's daughter, Saskia van Uylenburgh (1612-1642), one of the greatest celebrities of the 17th century? Apparently, every important art collector of the Baroque era was bound to own an effigy of the daughter of the mayor of Leeuwarden. Unlike Saskia, who, nota bene, through her uncle and brother-in-law, had connections with Poland, Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) was far more likely to become such a muse in her lifetime. Her father, the imperial count Jan Amor Tarnowski (1488-1561), who had connections in Portugal, Spain, Italy and at the imperial court, was one of the richest and most powerful men in the country. Through her mother, Zofia Szydłowiecka (1514-1551), she was the granddaughter of another prominent political figure, Chancellor Krzysztof Szydłowiecki (1466-1532), considered one of the greatest patrons of the arts in early 16th-century Poland.
On January 18, 1553 the Sejm began in Kraków, but the proceedings were suspended immediately, as most of the deputies and senators went to Tarnów for the wedding of the nineteen-year-old daughter of Voivode of Kraków. Zofia was marrying Constantine Vasily (1526-1608), son of Constantine, Prince of Ostroh and his wife Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska. The Spanish poet Pedro Ruiz de Moros (d. 1571) dedicated a short poem to Zofia and her husband entitled "Newly Wed" (Novae nuptae), stating: "I, the virgin of Tarnów, have been united to a worthy husband, and our offspring will be born of a noble lineage" (I digno coniuncta viro Tarnovia virgo, Et nostrum subole suffice nata genus, compare "Petri Rozyii Maurei Alcagnicensis Carmina ...", ed. Bronisław Kruczkiewicz, part II, p. 58, poem VIII). In 1550, the twenty-five-year-old Constantine Vasily received from King Sigismund II Augustus the office of marshal of Volhynia. A year later he participated in the fight against the Tatars, who burned down the town and the castle in Bratslav, and probably met the Grand Hetman, Jan Amor Tarnowski, who came to the city with Polish reinforcements. Since the groom was Orthodox and the bride Catholic, the couple was blessed by priests of both rites. The celebrations must have been very impressive since Tarnowski borrowed 10,000 Hungarian zlotys from Queen Bona for this occasion or the wedding of his son just two years later. Emericus Colosvarinus (Imre Kolozsvár) from Cluj-Napoca, wrote a special speech, entitled De Tarnoviensibus nuptiis oratio, published in Kraków (he also published a speech on the occasion of the third marriage of King Sigismund Augustus that year). Taking Zofia Tarnowska as his wife, Constantine Vasily became the son-in-law of the highest secular dignitary of the Kingdom of Poland, the largest landowner, and a renowned military commander and military theoretician. Immediately after the wedding, Constantine Vasily and his wife went to his castle in Dubno in Volhynia. A year later, in 1554, Zofia gave birth to a son in Tarnów, who was named Janusz. Zofia's younger brother, Jan Krzysztof Tarnowski (1537-1567), become formal successor of his father, just few months after birth, after death of his brother Jan Amor (1516-1537). At the age of eleven, he was sent to Augsburg with his tutor Jakub Niemieczkowski, canon of Tarnów, where during the Diet of Augsburg on 25 February 1548, he witnessed the grand ceremony of inauguration of Duke Maurice (1521-1553) as Elector of Saxony. That same year also Titian and Lambert Sustris arrived to Augsburg. In December that year the young Tarnowski went to Vienna to continue his education at the court of King Ferdinand I. A year later, in November 1549, his father Hetman Jan Tarnowski bought Roudnice nad Labem estate in Bohemia for him. Between 1550-1556 Jan Krzysztof built the Renaissance eastern wing with arcades of the Roudnice nad Labem Castle. In 1553 he set off on another educational journey, which, according to Stanisław Orzechowski, was to cost his father a huge sum of 100,000 zlotys. He visited Germany, Brussels, where he was introduced to Emperor Charles V, and London. Then he went to Basel and to Italy, where he met a poet Jan Kochanowski. In Rome, he was a guest of Pope Julius III and in Parma of the Farnese princes. On April 22, 1551, died Zofia Szydłowiecka and she was buried in the collegiate church in Opatów. The Flemish lawyer Petrus de Roeulcz (Petrus de Rotis) published a panegyric in Vienna praising the deceased and the Tarnowski family (Liber funerum domus Tharnoviae Petri à Rotis Belgae Cortraceni). A painting of a nude woman attributed to Lambert Sustris in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is very similar to the portrait of Princess Isabella Jagiellon (Venus of Urbino), created few years earlier (oil on canvas, 116 x 186 cm, inv. SK-A-3479). In 1854 the painting, as by Titian, was in the collection of Joseph Neeld (1789-1856) in Grittleton House, near Chippenham. As in Venus of Urbino, all alludes to the qualities of a bride and the purpose of the painting. The pose of the woman, although inspired by Titian's painting, find its source in ancient Roman sculpture (e.g. statue of a young Roman lady from the Flavian period in the Vatican Museums). This pose was repeated in tomb monument of Barbara Tarnowska née Tęczyńska (d. 1521), first wife of Jan Amor in the Tarnów Cathedral, most probably created by Giovanni Maria Padovano in 1536 or earlier, monument to Urszula Leżeńska in the Church in Brzeziny by Jan Michałowicz of Urzędów, created between 1563-1568, and in the tomb monument of Zofia Tarnowska, Princess of Ostroh, daughter of Jan Amor, also in the Tarnów Cathedral, sculpted by Wojciech Kuszczyc, a collaborator of Padovano, after 1570. The face of a young woman with protruding ears greatly resemble the effigy of Zofia Tarnowska, Princess of Ostroh, most likely a 19th century copy of an original from the late 1550s (Museum of the Ostroh Academy), and portrait of Zofia's brother (National Museum in Warsaw, inv. MP 5249 MNW), mother (portrait by Cranach's workshop in the guise of Judith from the William Delafield collection) and father (Prado Museum, inv. P000366). Jan Amor Tarnowski, a world man, who on July 4, 1518 sailed from Venice to Jerusalem, who on February 20, 1536 organized a grand wedding in Kraków for Krystyna Szydłowiecka, a younger sister of his second wife, who was getting married to Duke of Ziębice-Oleśnica and who on July 10, 1537 hosted at his castle in Tarnów the king and queen Bona, could be planning an international marriage for his only daughter. A copy of this painting by workshop or circle of Titian, from the Byström collection, possibly taken from Poland during the Deluge (1655-1660), is in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm (oil on canvas, 119 x 190 cm, inv. NM 95). Another copy is in the Borghese Gallery in Rome (oil on canvas, 118 x 180 cm, inv. 050), where there is also a portrait of Queen Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547) as Venus by Lucas Cranach the Elder. According to 1650 inventory of the Borghese collection it was one of a pair of similar paintings of Venus located in the same room (the small gallery, now room XI). The inventory of 1693 records them as two overdoor paintings in the same room (the sixth) as "a horizontal large painting of a naked woman on a bed with flowers on it with five other figures one that plays the cimbolo and the other that looks inside a chest" (un quadro bislongo grande una Donna Nuda sopra un letto con fiori sopra il letto con cinque altre figurine una che sona il Cimbolo e l'altra che guarda dentro un Cassa, number 333) and "a large painting of a naked Venus on a bed with a little dog sleeping with two other figures with her hand between thighs, 5 hand-palms high" (un quadro grande di una Venere nuda sopra il letto con un Cagnolino che dorme con due altre figure con la mano tra le coscie alto di 5 palmi, number 322), which was another version of Venus of Urbino - portrait of Isabella Jagiellon. There are several other versions and copies of this painting, some of which are related to Sustris and his followers. Among the most beautiful, probably created at the same time as the original or shortly after, are the following paintings from private collections: "Reclining Venus", considered to be a work of the early 17th century (oil on canvas, 101 x 150 cm, Bonhams London, December 10, 2003, lot 98), "Reclining Venus", attributed to the Modern Italian School (oil on panel, 28.5 x 39.5 cm, Nouvelle étude in Paris, November 21, 2022, lot 53), as well as three paintings on a dark background: "Reclining Venus", attributed to the circle of Lambert Sustris, auctioned in France on April 24, 2014 (oil on canvas, 112 x 172 cm), "A lady as Venus, reclining on a bed by follower of Titian", auctioned in London (oil on canvas, 90 x 131 cm, Christie's, July 11, 2003, Auction 9665, lot 199) and "Venus, manner of Lambert Sustris", auctioned in Rome (oil on canvas, 100 x 136 cm, Finarte Auctions, November 28, 2017, Auction 144/145, lot 62). The same woman was also depicted in similar composition, this time more mythological due to presence of the god of war Mars and the god of desire Cupid, the son of the love goddess Venus and Mars, and a dove. "Romans sacrificed doves to Venus, goddess of love, whom Ovid and other writers represented as riding in a dove-drawn chariot". A white dove is a symbol of monogamy and enduring love, but also the regenerating and fertile powers of the goddess "arose from the conspicuous courtship and prolific breeding of the birds" (after "Animals and Animal Symbols in World Culture" by Dean Miller, p. 54). It is known from at least three different versions, one by circle of Titian, is in the royal Wilanów Palace in Warsaw (oil on canvas, 113.3 x 166.5 cm, inv. Wil.1547). The painting was most probably purchased by Stanisław Kostka Potocki before 1798 as the work of Agostino Carracci, although it cannot be ruled out that it was added to the collection much earlier. A smaller version in the style of Lambert Sustris is in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg since 1792 and it comes from the collection of Prince Grigory Potemkin (oil on canvas, 101.5 x 170.5 cm, inv. ГЭ-2176), who during his career acquired lands in the Kiev region and the Bratslav region, provinces belonging to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. A miniature copy of the Hermitage version, painted on copper, was in private collection in Italy before 2015 (oil on copper, 20.5 x 29.2 cm, Sotheby's New York, October 30, 2019, lot 22). Another two versions, also attributed to Sustris or his circle, are in private collections in Florence (oil on canvas, 108 x 173 cm, Premier Auction, February 5, 2022, lot 434, earlier or later in Vienna) and in Rome (Fototeca Zeri, Numero scheda 42869), the version in Florence being close to the style of Bernardino Licinio (d. 1565). The shape of the castle in the distant background matches the layout of the Tarnowski Castle at the Saint Martin's Peak in Tarnów. This Venus can be considered an alternative version of the best-known depiction of the goddess of love by Sustris, now in the Louvre, which clearly depicts the same woman (oil on canvas, 132 x 184 cm, INV 1978; MR 1129). This masterpiece by the painter uses the same elements, with the god Mars in the background. However, the references to love are even more direct here, with white pigeons copulating and Cupid pointing an arrow at them and looking at Venus. This painting probably comes from the Fugger collection in Augsburg, but the earliest confirmed provenance before entering the collection of Louis XIV of France in 1671 is the collection of his superintendent of finances Nicolas Fouquet (1615-1680). A comparable composition is that of Sustris representing the same model in the guise of Flora, goddess of fertility and blossoming plants, with a Cupid in a landscape, preserved in the Pinacoteca Egidio Martini in Venice (oil on canvas, 102 x 126, inv. 028). The same model can also be identified in a series of paintings depicting the biblical heroine Judith, exemplary in virtue and in guarding her chastity. In a version from private collection in England, she is depicted in a green dress with the raised sword in a composition close to the effigy of Zofia Szydłowiecka as Judith by workshop Lucas Cranach the Elder (oil on canvas, 84.2 x 63.1 cm, Christie's London, April 30, 2015, lot 487). Another version of this Judith was in private collection in Mönchengladbach in Germany (Heinz Brandes collection, probably lost during World War II). A version from the Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands Park shows her in a blue dress before the naked body of Holofernes (oil on canvas, 121.5 x 100.5 cm, inv. 356). It was recorded in the posthumous inventory of the collection of a Swedish businessman born in Stockholm, Henrik Wilhelm Peill (1730-1797), as "Italian, Judith with the head of Holofernes". In a version from the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille she is depicted in a purple dress and accompanied by a servant (oil on canvas, 113 x 95 cm, inv. P 261). This painting was acquired by Louis XIV, in 1662, from a banker and collector Everhard Jabach, born in Cologne. A lower quality copy of the version in Lille is in the Münsterschwarzach Abbey (oil on canvas, 123.5 x 96 cm, inv. 10377). During the Middle Ages its influence reached as far north as Bremen and in the south to Lambach, near Linz in present-day Austria. Between 1631 and 1634 the abbot of Münsterschwarzach lived in exile in Austria, it is possible that he acquired the paining there from the collection of Queen of Poland, Catherine of Austria, who died in Linz on February 28, 1572. The representation of the same sitter in the guise of another biblical heroine, Susanna, epitome of female virtue and chastity, unjustly accused of sexual transgression, is similar. This painting was purchased in 1961 by the Museo de Arte de Ponce from the collection of the family Trolle-Bonde in the Trolleholm Castle in southern Sweden (oil on canvas, 105 x 125 cm, inv. 61.0200). The painter evidently used the same set of preparatory drawings to create the face of Susanna and Judith in Lille. There are also two other paintings by Sustris depicting this sitter. One is a Madonna and Child, attributed to the 17th-century Venetian school, but very similar in style to Flora in the Pinacoteca Egidio Martini (oil on canvas, 82 x 68.5 cm, Pandolfini in Florence, Auction 290, February 26, 2019, lot 232). The other is a Portrait of a woman reading, attributed to Sustris, which was in a private collection in Rome in 1977 (oil on canvas, 83.5 x 77 cm, Fototeca Zeri, Numero scheda 42866). This image evokes the representations of the Cumaean Sibyl, a prophetess, supposed to have predicted the coming of Christ, such as those by Guercino and Domenichino. The Cumaean Sibyl was generally said to have come from the east. Given the number of paintings in which her face was used, this woman was Sustris's greatest muse, and he likely wouldn't have wanted to paint a nude effigy of his wife or mistress for another man. If she was a famous courtesan, as some might claim, why has her name been forgotten? The popularity of "obscene" images in Poland-Lithuana before the Deluge (1655-1660) was apparently so great that some authors urged against them. "Lascivious paintings and statues, speeches and songs full of obscenity [...], whom will they not lead to all kinds of debauchery?" (Picturae & statuae lascivae, sermones & cantilenae obscoenitatis plenae [...], quam aetatem quem sexum non contaminant?), wrote in his treatise "Commentaries on the Improvement of Commonwealth" (Commentariorvm de rep[vblica] emendanda) dedicated to king Sigismund Augustus and published in Kraków in 1551, his secretary Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski (1503-1572). Half a century later Sebastian Petrycy, professor of the Kraków Academy in his commentaries to Aristotle's Oeconomicum libri duo (Oekonomiki Aristotelesowey To Iest Rządu Domowego z dokładem Księgi Dwoie), published in Kraków in 1601, wrote that children and young ladies "looking at the painted naked people will easily learn to be shameful" and confirmed his opinion in a gloss to "Politics" by Aristotle (published in 1605), writing that "indecent images are to be hidden from the youth [...] so that young people would not be scandalized" (partially after "Ksiądz Stanisław Orzechowski i swawolne dziewczęta" by Marcin Fabiański, p. 57-58). The same Sebastian Petrycy also complains about the patricians, who in their newly built houses "put expensive pictures", depicting Vulcan, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Cupid. According to Wanda Drecka, this "expensiveness" of the images would indicate imported paintings. The inventories of the collection of Boguslaus Radziwill from 1656 and 1657 include such paintings as "Cupid, Venus and Pallas", "Venus and Hercules" and "Venus and Cupid" (after "Polskie Cranachiana" by Wanda Drecka, p. 26-27) by Cranach or Venetian painters. The inventory of paintings belonging to his daughter mentions "A half-naked lady in sables" (297/6, after "Inwentarz galerii obrazów Radziwiłłów z XVII w." by Teresa Sulerzyska), the register of paintings of the descendant of the Jagiellons John II Casimir Vasa, sold in Paris in 1673, mentions a painting of Judith with the head of Holofernes (396) and a painting of a naked woman (440), both on canvas, and the inventory of the picture gallery of the Radziwill Palace in Biała Podlaska from 1760 mentions "Portrait of a lady with two Cupids" (item 512, after "Zamek w Białej Podlaskiej ..." by Euzebiusz Łopaciński, p. 46). None of these paintings survived in the former territories of Sarmatia, just like most of the likenesses of Zofia Tarnowska created during her lifetime. 
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) nude (Reclining Venus) by Lambert Sustris, ca. 1550-1553, Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) nude (Reclining Venus) by workshop or circle of Titian, ca. 1550-1553, Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) nude (Reclining Venus) by circle of Lambert Sustris, ca. 1550-1553, Borghese Gallery in Rome.
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) nude (Reclining Venus) by Lambert Sustris, ca. 1550-1553, Private collection (auctioned in London).
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) nude (Reclining Venus) by follower of Lambert Sustris, after 1550, Private collection (auctioned in Paris).
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) nude (Reclining Venus) by Lambert Sustris, ca. 1550-1553, Private collection (auctioned in France).
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) nude (Reclining Venus) by Lambert Sustris or circle, ca. 1550-1553, Private collection (auctioned in London).
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) nude (Reclining Venus) by Lambert Sustris or circle, ca. 1550-1553, Private collection (auctioned in Rome).
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) as Venus with a dove by circle of Titian, ca. 1550-1553, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) as Venus with a dove by Lambert Sustris, ca. 1550-1553, The State Hermitage Museum.
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) as Venus with a dove by Lambert Sustris, ca. 1550-1553, Private collection.
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) as Venus with a dove by circle of Lambert Sustris, ca. 1550-1553, Private collection in Rome. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) as Venus with a dove by circle of Lambert Sustris or Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1550-1553, Private collection in Florence.
Venus and Cupid with disguised portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) by Lambert Sustris, 1550s, Louvre Museum.
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) as Flora by Lambert Sustris, 1550s, Pinacoteca Egidio Martini in Venice.
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) as Judith with the head of Holofernes by Lambert Sustris, 1550s, Private collection.
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) as Judith with the head of Holofernes by Lambert Sustris, 1550s, Private collection. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) as Judith with the head of Holofernes by Lambert Sustris, 1550s, The Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands Park.
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) as Judith with the head of Holofernes by Lambert Sustris, 1550s, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille.
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) as Judith with the head of Holofernes by Lambert Sustris or follower, 1550s, Münsterschwarzach Abbey. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) as Susanna by Lambert Sustris, 1550s, Museo de Arte de Ponce.
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) as the Cumaean Sibyl by Lambert Sustris, 1550s, Private collection. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570) as Madonna and Child by Lambert Sustris, 1550s, Private collection.
Portraits of Catherine of Austria and Zofia Tarnowska by Titian
Family events that took place in 1553 brought a great revival in the monotonous existence of the Jagiellons. In the spring, Queen Isabella arrived to Warsaw with her 13-year-old son, John Sigismund Zapolya, to live with her mother and sisters. Soon, Sigismund Augustus also visited Warsaw, and in June the whole family went to Kraków for his wedding with Catherine of Austria, widowed Duchess of Mantua. The dynastic marriage of the king with a daughter of Ferdinand I, just few months after the wedding of the only daughter of Hetman Jan Amor Tarnowski, was decided to prevent the threat of an alliance of Tsar Ivan the Terrible with the Habsburgs against Poland-Lithuania. In July, Catherine's brother, Archduke Ferdinand, governor of Bohemia, escorted her to Kraków. The ceremony was attended by Duke Albert of Prussia, the Silesian dukes of Cieszyn, Legnica-Brzeg and Oleśnica, the papal legate Marcantonio Maffei from Bergamo (Republic of Venice), many foreign envoys and Polish magnates. The ceremonial entry to Kraków took place on July 29 and the coronation the next day. During the procession, Jan Amor Tarnowski, carried the royal crown.
During his visit the Archduke demanded that the Habsburgs should be granted succession in Poland-Lithuania in the event of king's death without a male heir. Sigismund Augustus seemed willing to agree to this request, however the senators, inspired by Tarnowski, were to answer him that this would not happen, because the king had no right to do so (after "Panowie na Tarnowie. Jan Amor Tarnowski, kasztelan krakowski I hetman wielki koronny ..." by Krzysztof Moskal, part 8/9). The same year, Francesco Lismanini, a preacher and confessor of Sigismund Augustus, was sent to Venice to procure books for his library. Before his return in 1556, he also visited Moravia, Padua, Milan, Lyon, Paris, Geneva, Zurich, Strasbourg and Stuttgart, while among books published in this period were two dedicated to Hetman Tarnowski, both by Italian physician Giovanni Battista Monte (Johannes Baptista Montanus), Explicationes, published in Padua in 1553 and In quartam fen primi canonis Avicennae Lectiones, published in Venice in 1556. In about 1553 died Giovanni Alantsee from Venice, a pharmacist from Płock, initially a supplier of the Dukes of Masovia and later of the court of Sigismund I, who remained in Bona's service (sent by her in 1537 on a secret mission to Vienna). One of the Italian envoys who traveled permanently to Venice on the orders of the Polish royal court was a certain Tamburino. On April 30, 1549, he received 1 ducat for an unspecified order. Before her departure for Italy, the Queen deposited in Venetian banks, and also borrowed at interest, her great income from Masovia, Lithuania and Bari. In November 1555 Queen Bona wrote to Hetman's wife, Zofia Tarnowska née Szydłowiecka, asking her to arrange for a mature lady (matronam antiquam) to accompany her daughter Sophia to her husband in Germany. In 1559 Sigismund Augustus admitted to his service in Vilnius two goldsmiths from Venice, Antonio Gattis and Pietro Fontana. If Philip II could commission paintings in Titian's Venetian workshop, the same could the king of Poland and Polish magnates. Kraków and Tarnów are closer to Venice by land then Madrid. Also some contacts of Princes of Ostroh with Venice and Italy are confirmed in sources. The teacher of Constantine Vasily's sons was, among others, a Greek, Eustachy Nathanael, from Crete. He was probably educated, like many Greeks from Crete, in Italy, probably in Venice. Other Greek, Emanuel Moschopulos, educated in Collegium Germanicum in Rome also settled in Ostroh. According to letters of Germanico Malaspina (ca. 1550-1604) from 1595, papal nuncio in Poland, Constantine Vasily even asked the Catholic patriarch in Venice to come to Poland: a riformare il suo dominio (to reform his domain). The inventory register of Catherine's dowry, drawn up in Kraków on August 8, 1553 and written in Latin by an Italian courtier of the queen, lists a large number of jewels, precious fabrics and costumes including dresses "in the Spanish manner" (more hispanico) as well as seven magnificent large tapestries from the series The Seven Virtues: Prudence, Temperance, Hope, Charity, Faith, Justice and Fortitude (Auleae uiridices septem cum figuris septem virtutum uidelicet fidei, spei, Charitatis, Iusticiae, Prudentiae, Temperantiae et fortitudinis, after "Wyprawa Królowej Katarzyny" by Józef Korzeniowski, p. 80-81, 83, 85). Catherine took them with her to Austria in 1565 and it is very likely that they were made to order or purchased by her. Even before her marriage to Sigismund Augustus, she had used the services of the Habsburg tapestry maker Jhan de Roy. In 1549, Catherine asked him to order and purchase tapestries in Flanders for three rooms at a cost of about 1,000 guilders. The tapestry maker received a passport from Ferdinand's court in Prague for free passage to Antwerp and for the transport by land and water of the canvases and tapestries to Innsbruck, where the court of the Roman king was supposed to stay and where Jhan de Roy was commissioned to deliver the purchased tapestries to count Joseph von Lamberg (after "Arrasy Zygmunta Augusta" by Mieczysław Gębarowicz, Tadeusz Mańkowski, p. 8, 10-11). The tapestries were made under the direction of Frans Geubels in Brussels, probably before 1549, after a design by Michiel Coxcie, who also made cartoons for the famous tapestries of Sigismund Augustus at the same time. After Catherine's death in Linz, they were inherited by her brother Emperor Maximilian II (after "Inventar der im Besitze des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses befindlichen niederländer Tapeten und Gobelins" by Ernst von Birk, p. 229-230). They are now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum. The tapestry with the Fortitude is one of the most beautiful (wool, silk and metal, 352 x 469 cm, inv. XVII, 7). It shows a personification of the Fortitude in the form of a seated female figure with a helmet and shield, similar to the Roman Minerva. To her right is a roaring lion and to the left the biblical Jael killing the sleeping Sisara. The inscription above reads FORTITVDO EST MEDIETAS / CIRCA TIMORES ET AVDACIAS ("Fortitude is the one in the middle, surrounded by fears and daring"). Jael's facial features resemble known effigies of Catherine, so it is possible that Coxcie depicted the Archduchess as a biblical heroine. Herodias with the head of Saint John the Baptist, also known as Salome, by Titian is known from several versions. The best, the so-called Raczyński Herodias, was in the 19th century in the possession of the noble Raczyński family, according to the label on the back (oil on canvas, 114 x 96 cm, after "Nemesis: Titian's Fatal Women", Nicholas Hall, Paul Joannedes, p. 17-19). The woman's face is identical with the face of Venus with the lute player by Titian in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Saint Catherine by Titian in the Prado Museum in Madrid, she is therefore Queen Catherine of Austria, third wife of Sigismund Augustus, in guise of the biblical temptress. A copy of this painting by Titian and workshop, which was by 1649 in the royal collection in England (Hampton Court), is today in the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo. Another copy by workshop or follower of Titian from private collection in Germany was sold in Cologne (oil on canvas, 106 x 93.5 cm, Van Ham Kunstauktionen, May 19, 2022, lot 517). Also Parrasio Micheli (ca. 1516-1578), a painter profoundly influenced by Titian who belonged to the patrician Michiel family in Venice, copied this painting. It was owned by a Venetian family (oil on canvas, 104 x 93 cm, sold at Babuino Auction House, March 28, 2023, lot 18). Such a composition depicting the Archduchess could have been commissioned in Titian's workshop around 1548, because the X-ray of the famous posthumous portrait of her aunt, Empress Isabella of Portugal (1503-1539), painted almost ten years after her death, shows a similar composition (Prado Museum in Madrid, inv. P000415). It is not known why the painter reused the canvas, perhaps the portrait of the Archduchess was not paid for. In the early 1570s, as indicated by the model's costume (characteristic ruff), while Catherine was living in Linz in Austria, Titian also painted another version of this composition, which was in the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria. This painting has been lost and is known only from a small copy painted by David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690), almost a century later around 1650 (Christie's London, auction 15495, July 6, 2018, lot 124). It was also reproduced in the Theatrum Pictorium (number 51), but from these copies it is difficult to tell whether they depicted the same woman, that is, Catherine of Austria in the guise of Salome. There is also another similar painting by Titian of other biblical heroine, Judith, in identical pose. This painting was by 1677 in Florence in the collection of Marchese Carlo Gerini (1616-1673), today in the Detroit Institute of Arts (oil on canvas, 112.7 x 94.9 cm, inv. 35.10). According to X-ray examination it was painted upon other unfinished portrait of a monarch holding an orb and sceptre, possibly Sigismund Augustus. The woman depicted bears gret resemblance to other effigies of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570), Princess of Ostroh by Lambert Sustris and workshop of Titian, especially her effigies as Judith. 
Fortitude, tapestry from the series The Seven Virtues of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) by workshop of Frans Geubels in Brussels after design by Michiel Coxcie, before 1549, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) as Herodias (or Salome) with the head of Saint John the Baptist and servants (Raczyński Herodias) by Titian, 1553-1565, Private collection.
Portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) as Salome with the head of Saint John the Baptist and servants by Titian, 1553-1565, National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo.
Portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) as Salome with the head of Saint John the Baptist and servants by workshop or follower of Titian, 1553-1565, Private collection.
Portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) as Salome with the head of Saint John the Baptist and a servant by Parrasio Micheli after Titian, 1553-1565, Private collection.
Portrait of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570), Princess of Ostroh as Judith with the head of Holofernes and a servant by Titian, 1553-1565, Detroit Institute of Arts.
Portrait of Constantine Vasily, Prince of Ostroh by Jacopo Tintoretto
The man in a black costume lined with white fur in a portrait by Jacopo Tintoretto in the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, on loan to the Gallery since 1947, bears a strong resemblance to effigies of Constantine Vasily (1526-1608), Prince of Ostroh, including that visible in a gold medal with his portrait (treasury of the Pechersk Lavra and the Hermitage), and his mother Alexandra Olelkovich-Slutska from paintings by Cranach and his workshop. It is dated to about 1550-1555, the time when in 1553, at the age of 27, Constantine Vasily married Zofia Tarnowska. The painting comes from William Coningham's collection in London, exaclty as the portrait of Queen Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) with a dog by Francesco Montemezzano in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In 1559 Constantine Vasily became the voivode of Kiev. The economic power of his estates and his considerable political influence quickly earned him the title of "uncrowned king of Ruthenia". In 1574, he moved the princely residence from Dubno to Ostroh, where the reconstruction of Ostroh Castle began under the Italian architect Pietro Sperendio from Breno near Lugano. Cristoforo Bozzano (Krzysztof Bodzan) from Ferrara, called incola Russiae (resident of Ruthenia), who reconstructed the Ternopil Castle in 1566 for Jan Krzysztof Tarnowski, also most probably worked for Constantine Vasily. 
Portrait of Constantine Vasily (1526-1608), Prince of Ostroh by Jacopo Tintoretto, 1553-1565, National Galleries of Scotland.
Portraits of Thomas Stafford, ambassador of the King of Poland by Giovanni Battista Moroni and workshop
The portrait of a man by Giovanni Battista Moroni presenting a letter dated in Italian September 20, 1553 (Di Settembre alli XX del M.D.LIII), is known from at least three versions. His left hand, holding another document, is very similar to Moroni's famous tailor in the National Gallery in London. One vesion, sold in 2015 in London, comes from the collection of Marquise de Brissac in France, the other in the Honolulu Museum of Art, was before 1821 in the collection of Edward Solly (1776-1844) in London and another from Scandinavian private collection, showing just the man's head, was auctioned in London (Sotheby's, 09.12.2003, lot 326). Two versions were painted on canvas and the smallest, attributed to Italian School early 17th century, was painted on wood.
Apart from the date and abbreviation D V S, which could be Dominationis Vestrae Servitor (Your Lordship's Servant) in Latin or Di Vostra Signoria (of Your Lordship) in Italian, the rest is illegible and could be either in Italian or in Latin. The man is therefore showing his letter, most probably a response, to someone very important. On July 9, 1553, Mary Tudor, the eldest daughter of Henry VIII of England, proclaimed herself Queen of England. On August 3, she triumphantly entered London with her sister Elizabeth, and ceremonially took possession of the Tower. On September 27, she and Elizabeth moved into the Tower, as was the custom just before the coronation of a new monarch and on October 1, 1553, Mary was crowned in Westminster Abbey. While in a letter, in Portuguese, dated in Lisbon, September 20, 1553, king John III of Portugal announces the despatch of Lorenzo Piz de Tavora, a member of his council, as his ambassador to congratulate her Majesty on succeeding to the throne, Sigismund Augustus, king of Poland, sends a letter, in Latin, dated in Kraków, October 1, 1553, addressed to queen Mary. He despatches to Her Majesty's presence Thomas Stafford, grandson of the Most Noble Edward Stafford, late Duke of Buckingham, for that purpose. He prays the Queen to place unhesitating confidence in the said Stafford, of whom he speaks in the highest terms of praise, especially with regard to his cultivated and gracefully modest manners (Lat. State Paper Office, Royal Letters, vol. XVI. p. 9). Also king's newly wed wife, Queen Catherine of Austria, sends a letter on October 1, 1553 to queen Mary, congratulating her upon her accession, speaking in terms of high commendation of Thomas Stafford, and earnestly requests that he may be restored to the honours and possessions formerly possessed by his ancestors (Lat. State Paper Office, Royal Letters, vol. XVI. p. 11). Shortly after Jan Łaski's departure from England, Hieronim Makowiecki came to London at the end of 1553 as an envoy of the Polish king, and in the following year Leonrad Górecki attended Mary's wedding to Philip II of Spain. According to a letter of Marc'Antonio Damula, Venetian ambassador to the Imperial Court, to the Doge and Senate, dated in Brussels, August 12, 1554: "It is being treated about, to give the government of the kingdom of Naples to the Queen of Poland [Bona Sforza], together with a council, and the Emperor has already said that he is content with this; and they are endeavouring to obtain the consent of the King of England, who is expected to give it readily, the kingdom of Naples being now weary and depressed by the many wrongs endured at the hands of the Spanish governors. The ambassador of the Queen aforesaid has purchased an organ at Antwerp for 3,000 crowns, as also goldsmith's work to the amount of 6,000, to give to the Queen of England, and will go thither to endeavour to arrange this business, which is supposed to be very near conclusion". Thomas Stafford (ca. 1533-1557) was the ninth child and second surviving son of Henry Stafford, 1st Baron Stafford and Ursula Pole. His maternal grandmother was Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury and the last direct descendant of the Plantagenets. This lineage made Thomas and his family particularly close to the throne of England. In 1550 he went to Rome, where his uncle Cardinal Reginald Pole (1500-1558) was nearly elected a pope in the papal conclave convened after the death of Pope Paul III, and where he remained for three years. He was resident in Venice in May of 1553 when the Signory permitted him to view the jewels of Saint Mark and to bear arms in the territories of the Republic. He arrived to Poland during the summer of 1553 when Sigismund Augustus was celebrating his third marriage with Catherine, daughter of Anna Jagiellonica. It was most likely on her initiative that Stafford became an envoy of Poland-Lithuania to England. The king's recommendation to restore him to the Dukedom of Buckingham appeared to have no effect, as in January 1554 he joined the rebellion, directed against Mary's plans to become the wife of Philip II. The rebels were defeated, Stafford was captured, but was able to escape to France, where he announced his claims to the crown of England. He returned to England in April 1557, but he was arrested and sentenced to death as a traitor. He was beheaded on May 28, 1557 on Tower Hill in London. The date on a letter in mentioned portraits match perfectly the time when Stafford could receive an ambassadorial nomination and send a response expressing his appreciation to the king of Poland. Also previous locations of the works match Stafford's journeys - one was in England, one in France and one in Scandinavia, possibly taken from Poland during the Deluge. The sitter bears a strong resemblance to effigies of Thomas' uncle Cardinal Reginald Pole by Sebastiano del Piombo and workshop, in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest and in the Hermitage Museum, and by unknown artist, in the Trinity College of the University of Cambridge. 
Portrait of Thomas Stafford (ca. 1533-1557), ambassador of the King of Poland by Giovanni Battista Moroni, 1553, Private collection.
Portrait of Thomas Stafford (ca. 1533-1557), ambassador of the King of Poland by Giovanni Battista Moroni or workshop, 1553, Honolulu Museum of Art.
Portrait of Thomas Stafford (ca. 1533-1557), ambassador of the King of Poland by workshop of Giovanni Battista Moroni, ca. 1553, Private collection.
Portrait of Abraham Zbąski by Jacopo Tintoretto
In 1553 died Stanisław Zbąski, castellan of Lublin, the father of Abraham and Stanisław (1540-1585), and on the basis of his last will written in the Lublin town book, Abraham was to receive Kurów estate with a stonghold near Płonki, and Stanisław the town of Kurów and compensation of 1000 florins. The same year the Catholic church in Kurów was turned into a Protestant temple.
The castellan of Lublin, himself educated in Leipzig (1513/1514) and most probably in Italy, send his eldest son to a Protestant university in Wittenberg in February 1544, together with another Abraham Zbąski (D. Abrahamus / D. Abrahamus de Sbanski / poloni), identified as the son of Piotr Zbąski (d. 1543) from Greater Poland, the owner of Zbąszyń, who was most likely the same age as his friend Marcin Czechowic (born in November 1532) and the son of Stanisław. One Abraham Zbąski also studied in Królewiec (Königsberg) in Ducal Prussia in 1547 (as Abrahamus Esbonski. Polonus) and in Basel from May 1551. On November 30, 1550, Abraham Zbąski (the one from Kurów or from Zbąszyń) join the court of King Sigismund Augustus. Perhaps under Abraham Zbąski's influence Celio Secondo Curione (Caelius Secundus Curio), an Italian humanist, dedicated to King Sigismund Augustus his work De amplitudine beati regni Dei, published in Basel in 1554 - on December 1, 1552, in a letter to Zbąski, he asked about the title of the Polish king, as he intended to dedicate his book to him. Celio dedicated to Abraham his Selectarum epistolarum librer II, published in 1553, and his handwritten dedication to Zbąski preserved in a volume of his M. Tullii Ciceronis Philippicae orationes XIIII, published in 1551 (Poznań University Library). This Abraham Zbąski frequently travelled to Italy, mainly to Bologna, in 1553/1554, in 1558/1559 and between 1560 and 1564. "I heard that this Abram, who recently arrived from Italy, could be quite a gem in this family" (Jakoż słyszę ten Abram, nowo z Włoch nastały, Że to może w tym domu klenot być niemały), wrote about the Zbąski family in his Bestiary (Zwierziniec/Zwierzyniec), published in 1562, the Polish poet and prose writer Mikołaj Rej. In 1554 he continued his studies at the University of Leipzig, where he enrolled for winter semester (as Abrahamus Sbansky) with Marcin Czechowic (Martinus Czechowicz), a Protestant thinker and a leading representative of Polish Unitarianism, and Stanisław Zbąski of Lublin (Stanislaus Sboxsky Lubelensis), his brother or cousin. The portrait of a young man by Jacopo Tintoretto in the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham was acquired in 1937 from the collection of Francis Drey (1885-1952) in London, who recalled that the portrait was previously in a French private collection (oil on canvas, 121 x 93.3 cm, inv. 37.13). Basing on this, together with the style of the costume, it was suggested that the sitter is a Frenchman. His rich costume, more northern, sword and gloves indicate that he is a wealthy nobleman, like the Zbąskis of the Nałęcz coat of arms. According to Latin inscription in upper right corner, in the month of March (or May) 1554, the man was 22 years old (ANNO 1554 MENSE MA / AETATIS SUAE 22). This date and age match the age of one of the Zbąskis (both born in about 1531 or 1532), who was in Italy in 1553/1554 and in winter of 1554 enrolled at the University of Leipzig, further north of Venice. The man bear a resemblance to effigy of Stanisław Zbąski (1540-1585), from his tomb monument in Kurów, created by Italian sculptor Santi Gucci or his workshop, and to the distant descendant of the Zbąskis, bishop Jan Stanisław Zbąski (1629-1697) from his portrait in the Skokloster Castle in Sweden. 
Portrait of Abraham Zbąski aged 22 by Jacopo Tintoretto, 1554, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts.
Portrait of Nicolaus "the Black" Radziwill by Agostino Galeazzi
Titian's portrait of a general, held at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Kassel (oil on canvas, 229 x 155.5 cm, inv. GK 488, signed: TITIANVS / FECIT, on the small rock on the left), is identified by Belarusian researcher Iryna Borisovna Lavrovskaya as the effigy of Nicolaus "the Black" Radziwill (1515-1565). According to the biographies of the painter and the model, it can be said with certainty that their paths crossed in the same year in Augsburg in 1547, where Radziwill received the title of Prince of the Holy Roman Empire (confirmed by Sigismund Augustus in 1549). At the same time, he also concluded a very important political alliance with the Habsburgs. Ms. Lavrovskaya's forensic and cultural expertise (cultural contexts, practices, and norms) reinforces the hypothesis that the portrait of a general is the effigy of Nicolaus "the Black" (Heritage, No. 2, 1993, p. 82-84). This portrait is also considered to represent Ferrante I Gonzaga (1507-1557), governor of the Duchy of Milan between 1546 and 1554, who corresponded with the Radziwills (cf. "La trama Nascosta - Storie di mercanti e altro" by Rita Mazzei). Several other Italian aristocrats have been proposed as possible models, consistent with the hypothesis that the model must be Italian, although nothing speaks strongly in favor of this hypothesis, except the origins of the painter.
The painting was purchased in 1756 by Gerard Hoet in Paris for William VIII, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, at the auction of the Duke of Tallard's collection. It previously belonged to the collection of Monsieur de la Chataigneraye (or Châtaigneraie), Treasurer of the Chamber of the King and Children of France, "In Paris, at the Royal Abbey of Saint-Victor, his residence", included in the catalogue published in Paris in 1732 (Catalogue de tableaux [...] du cabinet de feu Monsieur de la Chataigneraye [...] A Paris, en l'abbaye Royale de Saint Victor, lieu de sa demeure, p. 23). It is not known how this important collection of paintings by the greatest masters of European painting came to the unknown Monsieur de la Chataigneraye. The clue concerning the earlier provence of the portrait of a general could be the possessions of King John II Casimir Vasa, at the Abbey of Saint-Martin in Nevers, at the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris and at the Château de Cachan near Paris, part of which was sold at auction in the French capital on February 15, 1673. Among the "uninventoried furniture" (meubles non inventoriéz) in the minutes of the sale of King John Casimir's property is an unspecified "portrait of a Polish prince", purchased by Monsieur Corade (un portrait d'un Prince pollonnois, after "Uzupełnienie do inwentarzy pośmiertnych króla Jana Kazimierza ..." by Ryszard Szmydki, p. 85). Nicolaus lost his father at a young age and was raised with his brother John (1516-1551) by his uncle George I "Hercules" Radziwill (1480-1541). In 1529, along with his brother and sister, he was taken to the royal court of Sigismund I and Bona, where he was raised and educated. In 1534, he entered the Kraków Academy (Jagiellonian University), but did not complete his studies; the following year, he participated in battles against the Muscovite army at the head of his banner. He opted for a diplomatic and state career. The rapid rise of Nicolaus "the Black" began after 1544, when Sigismund I transferred full powers of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to his son, Sigismund Augustus. Radziwill received the position of district marshal and became a member of the highest state body: the Grand Ducal Council. On the way back from Augsburg, on February 12, 1548 in Sandomierz, Nicolaus married the fifteen-year-old daughter of one of the greatest Polish patrons, Chancellor Krzysztof Szydłowiecki (1466-1532), Elżbieta Szydłowiecka (1533-1562), Countess of Szydłowiec. King Sigismund Augustus and Queen Bona attended the wedding. In 1550, he was appointed Chancellor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and, a year later, Voivode of Vilnius. In 1553, he joined the Lutheran Church and, two years later, converted to Calvinism and began corresponding with prominent Calvinist theologians, including John Calvin himself. The establishment of the portrait gallery in Nesvizh is associated with Radziwill "the Black", who commissioned images abroad, including in Strasbourg (after "Monumenta variis Radivillorum ..." by Tadeusz Bernatowicz, p. 20). In one of the letters, the longing father instructed his son Nicolaus Christopher "the Orphan", who was studying abroad, to commission a portrait and send it to Lithuania. The portrait, sent from Strasbourg, aroused dissatisfaction and at the same time biting remarks about his son's clothes. The voivode ordered a new life-size portrait of his son to be made so that he could see how tall he was. He also ordered a chain with the image of the king to be painted on his son's chest (after "Tylem się w Strazburku nauczył ... " by Zdzisław Pietrzyk, p. 164). The inventory of the Radziwill collection of 1671 probably mentions two portraits of the prince (items 10/10 and 12/2[?]), undoubtedly made during his lifetime. The painting depicting the granting of the title of Imperial Prince by Emperor Charles V to Nicolao Radziwił Palatino Vilnensis most likely depicted the scene involving Nicolaus "the Black" Radziwill in 1547, because Nicolaus II Radziwill (1470-1521), nicknamed Amor Poloniae, received this title in 1518 from Emperor Maximilian I (1459-1519), Charles's grandfather (item 91/10, compare "Inwentarz galerii obrazów Radziwiłłów z XVII w." by Teresa Sulerzyska). One of the most splendid Renaissance half-armors preserved in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna was made for Nicolaus "the Black" Radziwill (inv. A 1412). It was made around 1555 in Nuremberg by Kunz Lochner, who also created armors for King Sigismund Augustus (Royal Armory in Stockholm, Kremlin Museum, and Polish Army Museum in Warsaw). The rich, colorful decoration, unusual for German armor, was probably made to the customer's specifications. This half-armor was once part of a field and tournament ensemble. Other pieces from this ensemble from the armory of Nesvizh Castle (Belarus), the Radziwill family residence, are preserved in Paris (sallet, Musée de l'Armée, inv. 3570) and in New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art, several pieces). The armor was presented by Radziwill to Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria (1529-1595), a relative of King Sigismund Augustus and Imperial Count of Tyrol. Its presence in the Archduke's collection dates back to 1593. At Wawel Castle there is a conical helmet from 1561, which, according to tradition, belonged to Nicolaus (inv. 1370, purchased in Paris in 1937). The "general" in Titian's painting wears a chainmail and, over it, a splendid Renaissance doublet. His Renaissance costume is completed by a decorative burgonet helmet adorned with a dragon. This burgonet is held by Cupid, son of Mars, god of war, and Venus, goddess of love, which indicates that the man was depicted in mythological disguise. Considering the identification of the sitter with Nicolaus "the Black," this mythological costume could be that of Palemon (Publius Libon), legendary Roman founder of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and relative of Emperor Nero. In 2019, a Portrait of a commander, attributed to the Brescian painter Agostino Galeazzi (1523-1576) was auctioned in Vienna (oil on canvas, 128 x 107.5 cm, Dorotheum, October 22, 2019, lot 40). Due to a certain similarity in facial features, pose, and armor to the Titian painting from the Potocki collection, now at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles (oil on canvas, 110 x 80 cm, inv. 2003.486), the portrait is considered to represent Alfonso d'Avalos (1502-1546), an Italian condottiero of Aragonese origin. Stanisław Krzyżanowski (1841-1881) described Titian's painting in his book published in Kraków in 1862 about the Potocki Palace in Tulchyn, Ukraine ("Tulczyn ...", p. 15). According to family tradition, the portrait of d'Avalos came from the collection of King John III Sobieski (1629-1696) or Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski (1732-1798) (after "Portret Alfonsa d'Avalos Tycjana z kolekcji Potockich" by Agnieszka Woźniak, p. 557), so it could have come from an earlier royal collection, such as that of the Jagiellons. Mieczysław Potocki (1799-1878) transferred the painting collection from Tulchyn to France. The portrait of d'Avalos is believed to have been painted between January and February 1533; the commander died in 1546. However, the man in Galeazzi's portrait is dressed according to later fashion, more typical of the late 1550s or early 1560s. Similar Spanish-style hose (calzas, chausses), codpiece (bragueta), and small ruff can be seen in a portrait of Don Carlos (1545-1568), son of King Philip II of Spain, in the Prado Museum in Madrid, believed to have been painted between 1555 and 1559 (inv. P001136). Similar armor and chausses with codpiece are also seen in a portrait of the 16-year-old Alessandro Farnese (1545-1592), painted in 1561 by Antonis Mor (Meadows Museum, inv. MM.71.04, inscription top right: ANNO ÆTATIS SVE. XVI. / 1561); the ruff is larger in Alessandro's portrait. According to Marco Tanzi, Galeazzi's portrait also lacks the Order of the Golden Fleece, which d'Avalos received in 1531, visible in a painting by Titian from the Potocki collection. Similar chausses and a ruff are also visible in a portrait by Titian in Kassel, which is considered to have been painted in the early 1550s. In the image of Radziwill "the Black" in the Hermitage Museum (inv. ОР-45841), Spanish-style chausses can also be seen, accompanied by a ruff and decorative armor. The same is true for the image of Nicolaus's brother John (inv. ОР-45844), while his father John "the Bearded" wears fantastically decorated armor (inv. ОР-45838). As the most important political figure in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania after the king in the 1550s and 1560s, his contacts undoubtedly extended to Italy and Spain. Although there is no direct evidence of these contacts, several facts attest to them. In April 1552, Radziwill met his "nephew" Jan Krzysztof Tarnowski (1537-1567). Together, they set off on horseback, then by barge on the Vistula River, for Gdańsk, from where the young Tarnowski embarked on a journey to Brussels, where he was presented to Emperor Charles V, then to London, Basel, and finally to Italy. In early 1553, Nicolaus "the Black" was sent to the court of Ferdinand I to dissuade him from forming an alliance with Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible. During his stay in Vienna, he concluded the marriage of Sigismund Augustus to his relative Catherine of Austria (the king agreed to a third marriage on April 10, 1553). He also replaced the monarch during the marriage per procura, as well as on the symbolic wedding night, during which Catherine was ashamed to lie down next to Radziwill, but was forced to do so by her father Ferdinand, who grabbed her by the head, and by her elder brother Maximilian (1527-1576), who grabbed her by the legs (after "Ostatnia z rodu" by Paweł Jasienica, p. 88). From 1548 to 1551, during the absence of Prince Philip, Maximilian and his wife Maria of Spain (1528-1603) acted as regents of Spain and moved to live in Vienna in 1552. The Lutsk Regional Museum houses a large painting, painted between 1752 and 1759, depicting the scene of the marriage per procura in Vienna in 1553 with Radziwill "the Black" and Catherine (inv. Ж-260, КВ-26383). In 1556, Pier Paolo Vergerio (1498-1565), educated in Padua, dedicated a translation of the work of the Spanish reformer Juan de Valdés, "The Spiritual Milk" (Lac spirituale), to Radziwill's son, Nicolaus Christopher "the Orphan". In October 1556, Vergerio stayed in Vilnius where he met Queen Catherine and Radziwill "the Black". In Galeazzi's portrait, the man holds a simple military baton, typical of portraits of Spanish commanders. Nicolaus "the Black" Radziwill holds a similar baton in his likeness, taken from Archduke Ferdinand II's Armamentarium Heroicum, the catalog of the arms in the Archduke's collection held at Ambras Castle, published in Innsbruck in 1601. The print was made by the Flemish engraver Dominicus Custos (1560-1612) after a drawing attributed to the Veronese draftsman and engraver Giovanni Battista Fontana (1524-1587), accompanied by Nicolaus's biography in Latin (British Museum, inv. 1871,0812.448). Moreover, the man in Galeazzi's portrait resembles Radziwill in Custos's engraving, the right eyebrow is very similar. The same applies to the portrait by Titian in Kassel, which clearly depicts the same man. The facial features are also comparable to those of Radziwill's son, Cardinal George Radziwill (1556-1600), painted by an Italian painter around 1592 (Lutsk Regional Museum, inv. Ж-31, КВ-16425). The dark black hair and beard in the paintings by Titian and Galeazzi also correspond to known effigies of Radziwill "the Black". Agostino Galeazzi was a pupil of Alessandro Bonvicino, known as Moretto da Brescia. From his youth, he worked in Moretto's workshop alongside Giovanni Battista Moroni until the master's death in 1554. He may have collaborated with Moretto on the portrait of Nicolaus's cousin, Queen Barbara Radziwill, depicted as Saint Catherine of Alexandria (Museum of Nysa), which I have identified and attributed. Since Galeazzi was one of the most faithful followers of Moretto's style, critics tend to attribute to him the creation of certain paintings sometimes attributed to Bonvicino. In one of his earliest solo paintings, the Adoration of the Magi from San Pietro in Oliveto, painted in 1551 (Centro Pastorale Paolo VI in Brescia), the central figure of Saint Melchior wears a crimson cloak lined with lynx fur, typical of the Sarmatian nobility of the time, while the Magi's servants in the background also evoke the typical effigies of the inhabitants of Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia. The full-length portrait of King Sigismund Augustus from 1563, now in the North Carolina Museum of Art (inv. GL.60.17.46), is also attributed to Galeazzi. 
Portrait of Alfonso d'Avalos (1502-1546) with a page from the Potocki collection by Titian, ca. 1533, Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
Portrait of Nicolaus "the Black" Radziwill (1515-1565) with Cupid and a dog by Titian, ca. 1550-1552, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Kassel.
Portrait of Nicolaus "the Black" Radziwill (1515-1565) holding a baton by Agostino Galeazzi, ca. 1555-1560, Private collection.
Portraits of Halszka Ostrogska by Bernardino Licinio and workshop of Tintoretto
"What's happening to me? where I was taken? To France, or to Italy, or elsewhere? And after all, a neighbor invited me to his wedding, and I see a strange dress in this circle of female gender, and I don't see any Polish woman here, I don't know who I honor and welcome. This one sits, I see, she's from the domain of Venice, and this one in this robe, from the land of Spain. This one is supposedly French, and the other wears a Netherlandish outfit, or it's Florentine?", describes the great diversity of women's fashion in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in his satire "Reprimand of Women's Extravagant Attire" (Przygana wymyślnym strojom białogłowskim), published in Kraków in 1600, Piotr Zbylitowski (1569-1649), a poet and courtier.
From 1585, Zbylitowski was a courtier of Stanisław Górka (1538-1592), voivode of Poznań, then, in 1593, he participated in the Czarnkowski embassy to King Sigismund III, who was staying in Sweden. After returning to Poland, he married Barbara Słupska and settled in the village of Marcinkowice near Sącz in Southern Poland. In addition to the diversity of dress, which has been confirmed in Poland-Lithuania since at least the sumptuous wedding ceremonies of Sigismund II Augustus in 1543, in this work, which he dedicated to his patroness starościna Zofia Czarnkowska née Herburt (d. 1631), he also criticize the great opulence of clothing and jewelry. Extravagant headdresses, crowns and ruffs on heads, pearls and rubies, necklaces of precious diamonds, dresses with "six sleeves" adorned with pearls and precious stones, Spanish and French farthingale (portugał jak się na niej koli), conical caps similar to Turkish kiwior, robes embroidered with gold, lead him to scathing remarks - "it's a pity that she doesn't hang anything on her nose either", "how the neck will not tear from these severe ruffs" of Flemish lace, "it would be hard for her to go to work" or "it is difficult to recognize them in such clothes". The women of Poland-Lithuania dressed according to the latest fashion from Italy, Spain and France, because due the high price of Polish grain "it is not expensive" and such a rich dress can be made just "for a heap of rye". To their conservative husbands wanting them to wear more modest or Polish clothes, the wives responded angrily: "I am your companion, not your handmaid, I am allowed as you, I am not a slave". The Synod of Protestants in Poznań convened in 1570, enacted a rule of reprimanding and punishing the "licentious clothes", which generally did not bring the desired results (after "Reformacja w Polsce" by Henryk Barycz, Volume 4, p. 39). This opulence of costume was as in Italy, Spain and France undoubtedly reflected in portraiture, however, someone checking the portraits of women from Poland-Lithuania before the Delugue (1655-1660), and this article, will unmistakably have the impression that it was a poor country of old nuns. This would be correct because the majority of the portraits that survived the destruction during the wars and the subsequent impoverishment of the country were created by less skilled local artists for churches and monasteries. Such portraits were commissioned by wealthy women in their old age for the temples they founded or supported. Thus, they were depicted in a black outfit covering the whole body, a white bonnet covering the hair and ears and holding a rosary. A large number of these portraits have survived because either they were not of high artistic class, or they were created for provincial churches, far from the major economic centers of the country, which were destroyed, or both. Over a century of portraiture in Poland-Lithuania of mainly young women, disappeared almost completely. In 1551, the richest bride in Poland-Lithuania - Elizabeth (1539-1582), Princess of Ostroh also known as Halszka Ostrogska (illustri virgini Elisabetae Duci Ostroviensi, Kxięzna Helska Ilijna Ostroska, Hałżbieta Ilinaja Kniażna Ostroskaja), reached the legal age of marriage (12) and the battle for her hand began. She was the only child of Beata Kościelecka (1515-1576), the illegitimate daughter of king Sigismund I and protegee of Queen Bona, and her husband Illia (1510-1539), Prince of Ostroh. Halszka's huge fortune aroused so much interest that in 1551 the Sejm in Vilnius adopted a special resolution stating that "the widow [Beata] may not marry her daughter without the consent of close relatives", including guardians, her uncle Prince Constantine Vasily (1526-1608) and king Sigismund II Augustus. Two years later, in 1553, Constantine Vasily decided to marry Halszka to Prince Dmytro Sangushko (1530-1554), a hero of the defense of Zhytomyr from the attack of the Tatars and the eldest son of her other guardian Prince Fyodor Sangushko (d. 1547). Dmytro received written consent from Constantin Vasily and the mother for the marriage, however, when the king objected, the mother withdrew her consent. At the beginning of September 1553, Constantin Vasily and Dmytro arrived in Ostroh, where the widow lived with her daughter and stormed the castle. During the forced marriage ceremony on September 6, 1553, Halszka was silent and her uncle answered for her. Beata wrote a complaint to the king that the marriage took place without her consent and Sigismund II Augustus deprived Sangushko of the post of the starost and ordered him to appear in January 1554 in Knyszyn at the royal court. Despite the intervention of Ferdinand I of Austria, King of the Romans and future Emperor, who was constantly intriguing against the Jagiellons, in a letter dated December 11, 1553, blaming the incident on Halszka's mother, who "began to appropriate her daughter and, without her uncle's permission and consent, wanted to marry her off as she wished", Prince Constantine Vasily was deprived of the rights of guardian by the king and Dmytro was sentenced to infamy for failure to appear at the court, expulsion from the state, confiscation of property and an obligation to return Halszka to her mother. On January 20, 1554, a reward of 200 złotys was announced for Sangushko's head. Dmytro and Halszka, disguised as a servant, fled to Bohemia, hoping to take refuge in the Roudnice castle, which belonged to the hetman Jan Amor Tarnowski, father-in-law of Prince Constantine Vasily. They were pursued by the Voivode of Kalisz Marcin Zborowski, who captured them at Lysá nad Labem near Prague and fearing that Ferdinand I would release Dmytro ordered his servants to kill him on the night of February 3 at Jaroměř near the Silesian border. For murder on the territory of a foreign state, Zborowski was arrested and imprisoned, however, thanks to the intercession of king Sigismund II Augustus, the Czech king soon ordered his release. Zborowski took Halszka to Poznań to her relatives, the Kościelecki and Górka families. On March 15, 1554, she saw her mother again, who arrived to Poznań. The beauty and wealth of a young 14-year-old widow again attracted numerous suitors, including the sons of Marcin Zborowski, Piotr and Marcin, Calvinists. Beata opted for Orthodox Prince Semen Olelkovich-Slutsky (d. 1560). The king, however, decided to marry her to his loyal supporter count Łukasz III Górka (d. 1573), a Lutheran, which was announced in May 1555. With the support of Queen Bona, Beata and her daughter strongly opposed the will of the monarch and Halszka even wrote to Górka that she would rather die than marry him. However, with Bona's departure for Italy in 1556, the situation for them became increasingly difficult. Eventually the king lost his patience and decided to force the marriage. The wedding took place on February 16, 1559 at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, however, the marriage remained unconsummated (non consummatum). When the royal court moved to Vilnius, Princess Beata and her daughter fled secretly to Lviv, where they found refuge in a fortified male Dominican monastery. The king ordered Halszka to be separated from her mother and taken to her husband. Royal forces besieged the monastery but the women only gave up after their water supply was cut off. To the surprise of the Lviv starost who entered the monastery by order of the king, Beata announced that her daughter had just been married to Prince Olelkovich-Slutsky, who entered the monastery disguised as a beggar, and the marriage was consummated, so Górka would no longer be entitled to Halszka. The young princess was delivered to Warsaw, where the king declared all agreements made with Prince Olelkovich-Slutsky to be null and void and she was handed over to Łukasz Górka, who, despite her resistance, soon brought her to his residence in Szamotuły. She often accompanied her husband, always dressed in black. When he died suddenly at the beginning of 1573, she intended to marry Jan Ostroróg, but her uncle Constantin Vasily did not allow her to do so. She returned to Ruthenia, where she died in Dubno in 1582 at the age of 43. No signed effigy of Halszka preserved. In 1996, a Ukrainian artist created her imaginative portrait and depicted her like a nun holding a prayer book. In the Galerie Canesso in Paris, there is a painting depicting the "Young Lady and her Suitor", attributed to Bernardino Licinio, who died in Venice around 1565 (oil on panel, 81.3 x 114.3 cm). This painter made portraits of Halszka's mother, Beata, identified by me. It was sold in 2012 (Sotheby's New York, 26 January 2012, lot 21) and comes from the collection of Caroline Murat (1782-1839), Queen of Naples, sold in 1822, while she was in exile at the castle of Frohsdorf in Austria. She therefore probably acquired it in Austria, where resided king Ferdinand I or Naples, where collections of Queen Bona were moved after her death in Bari. It cannot be excluded that one of them received this painting as a gift. The young lady with loose blond hair wears a green cloak, a color being symbolic of fertility. Her white linen chemise has fallen from her shoulder to reveal her breast. The bas relief behind her, showing a warrior in ancient armour, connotes mythology. It could depict Odysseus leaving Penelope, but at the later stage of the painting's creation, it was painted over and uncovered during a recent restoration of the work after 2012. The woman turns her face away while glancing at her suitor. In response, he places his right hand on her wrist and his left on his heart in a gesture imploring amorous passion and future promise. Echoing the beauties of Palma Vecchio and Titian, the painting is dated to around 1520, however, the costume of the suitor indicate that it was created much later. His crimson satin doublet and regularly slashed jerkin are almost identical to those seen in a portrait of Lodovico Capponi by Agnolo Bronzino (The Frick Collection, 1915.1.19), which is generally dated to around 1550-1555. His pose and his hat are reminiscent of King Edward VI holding a flower by William Scrots (National Portrait Gallery and Compton Verney), generally dated to around 1547-1550. A workshop copy or by an unknown 17th century copyist, such as Alessandro Varotari (1588-1649), of this painting was put up for sale in 2023 in Mosta, Malta (oil on canvas, 112 x 87 cm, Belgravia Auction Gallery, December 9, 2023, lot 512). A reduced version of this composition is also known, showing only the man holding a document (a love letter?). It was in a private collection in Turin and was attributed to a Venetian painter of the first half of the 16th century (compare Fototeca Zeri, Numero scheda 39412). This painting was created either as a separate composition or, more likely, it is a fragment of the original painting that was cut and repainted later, so that the portrait of the woman and the man can be sold separately. The same woman was depicted in another painting attributed to Licinio. It was confiscated during World War II from the collection of Van Rinckhuyzen in the Netherlands for Hitler's Führermuseum in Linz (oil on canvas, 80.5 x 81 cm). This painting is usually dated around 1514, but in this case the dating is also not very adequate because her black dress most closely resembles that seen in portrait of a poetess Laura Battiferri, also by Bronzino (Palazzo Vecchio in Florence), dated around 1555-1560. She is holding a feather fan, similar to that in the portrait of Catherine of Medici (1519-1589), Queen of France by Germain Le Mannier (Palazzo Pitti in Florence, inv. 1890, n. 2448), created between 1547-1559. She was also represented in a painting by workshop of Jacopo Tintoretto, today in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (oil on canvas, 102.9 x 86.4 cm, inventory number 180) from the 1550s. In all of mentioned effigies the model's face resemble the effigies of Halszka's mother and father by Bernardino Licinio, identified by me. Consequently the suitor in the Paris painting could be Dmytro Sangushko, Semen Olelkovich-Slutsky or Łukasz III Górka. 
Portrait of Elizabeth (1539-1582), Princess of Ostroh (Halszka Ostrogska) and her suitor by Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1554-1555, Galerie Canesso in Paris.
Portrait of Elizabeth (1539-1582), Princess of Ostroh (Halszka Ostrogska) and her suitor by follower of Bernardino Licinio, after 1554 (17th century?), Private collection.
Man with a love letter by workshop of Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1554-1555, private collection. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Elizabeth (1539-1582), Princess of Ostroh (Halszka Ostrogska) holding a feather fan by workshop of Bernardino Licinio, ca. 1555-1560, Private collection. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Elizabeth (1539-1582), Princess of Ostroh (Halszka Ostrogska) by workshop of Tintoretto, 1550s, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
Portrait of Adam Konarski by Jacopo Tintoretto
In 1552, a brilliant diplomatic career of a young nobleman from Greater Poland, Adam Konarski (1526-1574), began. King Sigismund Augustus sent him to Rome as an envoy to Pope Julius III. Perhaps the effect of this mission was the sending of the first apostolic nuncio to Poland in 1555, Bishop Luigi Lippomano.
Adam was a son of voivode of Kalisz Jerzy Konarski and Agnieszka Kobylińska. He studied at the Lubrański Academy in Poznań, then in Frankfurt an der Oder, from 1542 in Wittenberg and later in Padua, from where he returned to his homeland in 1547. He decided to devote himself to a career in the church as a priest, but as a result of refusal to receive the office of coadjutor of Poznań, he decided, upon the advice of his father, to pursue a secular career. In 1548 he became the secretary of King Sigismund Augustus and in 1551 he was appointed chamberlain of Poznań, the official responsible for supervising the servants and the courtiers of the king. In the same year, he finally received the Poznań provostry, but he did not quit his job at the royal chancellery. On the occasion of the king's wedding with Catherine of Austria, he went to Kraków in June 1553 together with the nuncio Marco Antonio Maffei (1521-1583), Archbishop of Chieti (born in Bergamo in the Venetian Republic) and returned to Rome in November to stay there until April 1555 (after Emanuele Kanceff, Richard Casimir Lewanski "Viaggiatori polacchi in Italia", p. 119). Upon his return, he received the post of canon of Kraków and scholastic of Łęczyca. He was again sent to Rome in 1557 after the death of Queen Bona and in 1560, also to Naples, regarding the inheritance of the Queen. In 1562, for his services to the king, he received the office of the bishop of Poznań, which he took upon his return to Poland in 1564. In 1563 Girolamo Maggi (ca. 1523-1572), an Italian scholar, jurist and poet, also known by his Latin name Hieronymus Magius, dedicated to Konarski his Variarvm lectionvm seu Miscalleneorum libri IIII, published in Venice (Venetiis : ex officina Iordani Zileti). In 1566-1567 Adam travelled to Padua. Bishop Konarski died on December 2, 1574 in Ciążeń and was buried in the Poznań Cathedral. His beautiful tomb monument there (in the Holy Trinity chapel) was created by royal sculptor (mentioned in the documents of the royal court in 1562), Gerolamo Canavesi, who, according to his signature, created it in his workshop at St. Florian's Street in Kraków (Opus Ieronimi Canavesi qui manet Cracoviae in platea Sancti Floriani). It was transported and installed in Poznań in about 1575. The portrait of a bearded man holding gloves by Jacopo Tintoretto in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin was purchased at Christie's, London, in 1866 (oil on canvas, 116 x 80 cm, inv. NGI.90). According to Latin inscription the man was 29 years old in 1555 (1555 / AETATIS.29), exactly as Adam Konarski when he was returning from his mission to Italy, undeniably through the Republic of Venice, to Poland-Lithuania. The man bears great resemblance to the effigy of Bishop Adam Konarski in the National Museum in Poznań and his tomb sculpture in the Poznań Cathedral. 
Portrait of royal secretary Adam Konarski (1526-1574), aged 29 by Jacopo Tintoretto, 1555, National Gallery of Ireland.
Portraits of Franciszek Masłowski by Tintoretto
The years 1555-1557 were important in the life of the young nobleman Franciszek Masłowski (Franciscus Maslovius). In 1555 he was appointed counselor to the Polish nation at the University of Padua. The following year he undoubtedly participated with other Polish students in organizing the reception of Queen Bona Sforza who traveled to Bari via Padua and Venice. In 1557, at the age of around 27, he published in Padua his translation from Greek into Latin of Demetrius of Phalerum's treatise on rhetoric (Demetrii Phalerei, De elocutione liber a Francisco Maslovio Polono in Latinum conversus ...).
In December 1555, Bona, who had taken her treasures with her and had previously sent money to Venice, was in Italy. Already in September 1555, her ambassador Arturo Pappacoda made efforts to obtain permission to pass through the lands of the Republic of Venice. The queen arrived in the city of Treviso, welcomed by the knight Giovanni Cappello (1497-1559), patricians of Treviso and Venice, who led her to the city of Padua. On March 27, 1556, she entered the city accompanied by her ladies traveling in twelve black velvet carriages each pulled by four horses. In each carriage sat three ladies dressed in Italian and Polish fashion, followed by other carriages for ladies and servants. The triumphal arch with Corinthian columns was built by the Veronese architect Michele Sanmicheli (1484-1559). Emblems and inscriptions adorned this gate and the figure of Bona represented as personification of Poland (la Polonia in figura di Reina) and provided with the inscription: Polonia virtutis parens et altrix, which could be translated as "Poland, nourisher and mother of virtue". A book by Alessandro Maggi da Bassano, a Paduan scholar and collector of antiquities, published in Padua in 1556, entitled "Description of the arch made in Padua on the arrival of the Most Serene Queen Bona of Poland" (Dichiaratione dell'arco fatto in Padova nella venvta della serenissima reina Bona di Polonia), describes the decorations. The allegorical statue of Bona was probably similar to the allegory of Poland from her tomb in Bari (Basilica of Saint Nicholas), in the form of a half-naked woman holding the arms of the kingdom (the eagle), sculpted by Francesco Zaccarella between 1589-1593. The arrival of the Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania was a very important event for the Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian community in Italy. The wealthy queen also distributed generous gifts, for example to several women from Padua, she presented each of them with a crucified Christ, carved from coral, and a hundred Hungarian gold coins (after "Il passaggio di regina Bona Sforza per Padova e Venezia" by Sandra Fyda, p. 29, 31). Thus, although she was the wife and mother of elected and not hereditary monarchs, her arrival was also important for the local population. The splendor of her reception was also noted by some foreigners, such as the Earl of Devonshire, who wrote on March 29, 1556 to John Mason, the English ambassador to the court of Charles V, that the Queen of Poland had arrived in Padua and had been received there with great solemnity (after "Polska w oczach Anglików ..." by Henryk Zins, p. 82). She was also received with great honors by the Duke of Ferrara, in whose palace she stayed. After a month-long stay in Padua, the queen arrived in Venice on April 26, 1556, where she was greeted with great pomp by a delegation of one hundred of the most distinguished patrician women. At the age of about 91, at the bequest of the Doge Francesco Venier (1489-1556), the Venetian writer Cassandra Fedele (ca. 1465-1558) gave her last public speech, an oration welcoming the queen. In Venice, Bona embarked for Bari, escorted by a fleet of galleys of the Serenissima. Masłowski dedicated his translation of Demetrius' work to Bishop Jan Przerębski (ca. 1519-1562), Vice-Chancellor of the Crown and royal secretary, with whose support he went to study in Italy in 1553. The dedicatory letter preceding his translation is dated from Padua on April 5, 1556 "when we were waiting for the arrival of Queen Bona" (Patauio. V. Cal. April. quo die Bonę reginę ad nos aduentum expectabamus. Anno à Christo nato MLLVI), however, this date is probably incorrect and should rather be March 1556 (compare "Kilka uwag o łacińskich przekładach traktatu Demetriusza ..." by Jerzy Starnawski, p. 201). He was helped in his work by a professor of philosophy and rhetoric Francesco Robortello (Franciscus Robortellus, 1516-1567), who encouraged Franciszek to translate the text when he took refuge from the plague at professor's country estate. In 1557 another Pole Stanisław Iłowski (Stanislaus Ilovius, d. 1589), a nobleman of Prawda coat of arms, from Masovia, also published in Basel his Latin translation of the same treatise (Demetrij Phalerei De Elocutione Liber a Stanislao Ilovio Polono ...), which he dedicated to Nicolaus "the Black" Radziwill (1515-1565), in dedicatory letter from 1556. Franciszek actively participated in the life of Sarmatian students at the University of Padua, among whom were Jan Kochanowski, Andrzej Patrycy Nidecki (Andreas Patricius), Jan Grodziecki, Stanisław Warszewicki, Piotr Giezek (Petrus Gonesius) and Mikołaj Śmieszkowic (Nicolaus Gelasinus). His studies at the faculties of philosophy and law at the University of Padua lasted until 1558. Shortly after his return to Poland-Lithuania, he probably worked for Bishop Przerębski. He began his public activity as a deputy from the Sieradz Voivodeship to the Warsaw Sejm in 1570. In the same year, he became royal secretary to Sigismund Augustus and the Wieluń scribe. Later, he was also secretary to King Stephen Bathory. According to most sources, Franciszek was born around 1530 as the son of Piotr, a judge of Wieluń, and Anna Gawłowska (compare "Polski slownik biograficzny ...", 1935, Volume 20, p. 124). The noble Masłowski family of Samson coat of arms, from which he came, originated from the Wieluń region. His marriage to Konstancja Konarska left no descendants. He probably died after 1594, although according to some sources he died young in Padua. The epigram of his friend Jan Kochanowski Do Franciszka probably refers to his travels to Rome and Greece, and in 1573 he went to France with a Polish-Lithuanian delegation offering the throne to Henry of Valois. In addition to Latin and Greek, he probably knew Italian well after five years of study in Italy and brought many souvenirs from his stay. Unfortunately, it is difficult to find any trace of the Masłowski family in Wieluń and the surrounding area today. The town was destroyed by fires in 1631 and 1644, but also by Swedish forces in 1656 and by Polish troops, who took revenge on its Protestant inhabitants for their support of the Lutheran Swedes. On September 1, 1939, the town was bombed by the German Luftwaffe. Since Italy and especially Venice in the 16th century were famous for their painters, Franciszek most likely took many portraits with him. Kochanowski probably refers to such a portrait received as a gift from Masłowski in his In imaginem Franc. Maslovii, in which he comments that the "portrait is skillfully painted," but that the painter has not captured "the knowledge and the greatest talent" (Exiguam, Francisce, tui suavissime partem / Scita licet nobis ista tabella refert. / Agnosco faciem, verosque in imagine vultus, / Doctrinam et summum non video ingenium). These portraits were usually ordered in several copies, some of which the young student must have also given to his friends in Italy. In the Fondation Bemberg, Hôtel d'Assézat, in Toulouse, France, is a "Portrait of a Gentleman" (Portrait de gentilhomme, oil on canvas, 107 x 88 cm, inv. 1167), attributed to Jacopo Robusti, better known as Tintoretto. A black embroidered velvet doublet, gloves, and a valuable sword held by the man indicate that he was a wealthy nobleman. The painting was acquired in Venice by an English amateur artist John Skippe (1741-1812) in 1784. Unfortunately, the identity of the sitter has long been lost. The family or friends of this young man, who owned the painting, did not affix any inscription or coat of arms to the portrait, indicating that he was probably a foreigner in the Venetian Republic. The date placed on the base of the column in the lower left corner of the painting, informs us in Italian that the man was 26 years old on March 12, 1556 (1556 / DI.XII MARZO / A.XXVI), exactly like Franciszek Masłowski, when with other members of the Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian community he was preparing for the arrival of Queen Bona. According to my findings, Tintoretto often painted portraits of Bona's son, Sigismund Augustus; we can therefore assume with great probability that he also painted the portrait of his future secretary. The same man, although older, was depicted in another painting attributed to Tintoretto, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (oil on canvas, 105.5 x 86 cm, inv. GG 1539). The painting can be verified in the 1720 inventory of the imperial painting collections of Stallburg in Vienna, so like other paintings in this collection, it most likely comes from former Habsburg collections. During the second interregnum (1575), Masłowski (together with his brother Gabriel) was a supporter of Emperor Maximilian II (1527-1576), son of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), whose act of election he signed in 1575, against the Infanta Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) and her husband. In 1587, during the third royal election, he signed the election of the emperor's son, Archduke Maximilian III (1558-1618). The Habsburgs thus received an effigy of their supporter in the Commonwealth. The difference in eye color (blue and brown) is either the effect of the painter not having seen the real model at the time the Viennese painting was made around 1562 or later, or the use of cheaper pigments (common practice for copies). His dark hair and red beard were either natural or the effect of a certain fashion at the royal court. 
Portrait of a nobleman Franciszek Masłowski (ca. 1530 - after 1594), aged 26, holding a sword and gloves, by Tintoretto, 1556, Fondation Bemberg in Toulouse.
Portrait of a nobleman Franciszek Masłowski (ca. 1530 - after 1594), sitting in a chair by Tintoretto, ca. 1562 or after, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Self-portraits and portraits of Sigismund Augustus by Lucia Anguissola
Provenance of a portrait of a lady sitting in a chair from the collection of the royal Wilanów Palace in Warsaw (inventory number Wil. 1602) is unknown. It was suggested that it comes from the collection of Aleksander Potocki or his parents - Aleksandra née Lubomirska and Stanisław Kostka Potocki, however it cannot be excluded that it comes from the royal collection. It may be tantamount to "The picture in which the Seated Lady" (No. 247. Obraz na ktorym Dama Siedzi), mentioned in the inventory of the Wilanów Palace from 1696 in the part concerning paintings brought from various royal residencies to Marywil Palace in Warsaw (Connotacya Obrazow, w Maryamwil, zostaiących, ktore zroznych Mieysc Comportowane były, items 242-303). The painting in Wilanów was attributed to Agnolo Bronzino and Scipione Pulzone.
The woman was also depicted in other similar portrait in quarter-length, which is in Galleria Spada in Rome. This painting is attributed to Sofonisba Anguissola, while the costume is similar to that visible in Lucia Anguissola's self-portrait in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan. The latter painting is more a miniature (28 x 20 cm) and was signed and dated '1557' by the author (MD / LVII / LVCIA / ANGUISOLA / VIRGO AMILCA / RIS FILIA SE IP / SA PINX.IT). Lucia was Sofonisba's younger sister and was initiated into painting by Sofonisba and perhaps she perfected herself in Bernardino Campi's studio. Just two years earlier, in 1555, Lucia and her two other sisters Europa and Minerva were portrayed by Sofonisba in her famous Game of Chess, signed and dated on the edge of the chessboard (SOPHONISBA ANGUSSOLA VIRGO AMILCARIS FILIA EX VERA EFFIGIE TRES SUAS SORORES ET ANCILLAM PINXIT MDLV). The Game of Chess was acquired in Paris in 1823 by Atanazy Raczyński and today forms part of the collection of the National Museum in Poznań. The effigy of Lucia in the Game of Chess is very similar to mentioned two portraits in Wilanów and Galleria Spada. A copy of the portrait from Galleria Spada, in green dress, is in private collection. It was identified as effigy of Bianca Cappello, Grand Duchess of Tuscany and attributed to Alessandro di Cristofano Allori or as Sofonisba's self-portrait. Also another portrait is similar to mentioned two works in Wilanów and Rome, a portrait of a lady as Saint Lucy, half-length, in a red embroidered dress and brown mantle, attributed to circle of Sofonisba Anguissola, which was sold in December 2012 (Christie's, lot 171). It was painted more from above, like a self potrait looking in the mirror above sitter's head, therefore the silhouette is more slender and the head bigger. She holds attributes of Saint Lucy (Latin Sancta Lucia, Italian Santa Lucia) - the palm branch, symbol of martyrdom and eyes, which were miraculously restored to her. The style of all these three larger effigies, in Wilanów, Galleria Spada and as Saint Lucy, is very similar to the best known work of Lucia Anguissola, the portrait of a physician from Cremona Pietro Manna holding the staff of Asclepius, today in the Prado Museum in Madrid. This work was also signed (LVCIA ANGVISOLA AMILCARIS / F[ilia] · ADOLESCENS · F[ecit]) and was probably sent to King Philip II of Spain to win the royal favor. Portrait of king Sigismund II Augustus in armour in full-length in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, discovered by me in August 2017, is stylistically very similar to the portrait in Wilanów described above. In this portrait, however, the king has unnaturally big eyes, that were to become the hallmark of the Sofonisba's self-portraits and portrait miniatures by her hand. We can therefore assume that Lucia sent her self-portrait to Warsaw in order to enjoy royal favour and created some effigies of the royal family basing on miniatures created by her sister. On November 29, 2017 another portrait attributed to Lucia Anguissola was sold at an auction (Wannenes Art Auctions, lot 657). This work is similar to Lucia's self-portrait in Castello Sforzesco, however her costume and coiffure are almost identical with the so-called Carleton Portrait in Chatsworth House, the portrait of Sigismund Augustus' second wife Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551) by circle of Titian. 
The Game of Chess by Sofonisba Anguissola, 1555, National Museum in Poznań.
Self-portrait in a dress of gold cloth by Lucia Anguissola, ca. 1555-1560, Galleria Spada in Rome.
Self-portrait in a green dress by Lucia Anguissola, ca. 1555-1560, Private collection.
Self-portrait sitting in a chair by Lucia Anguissola, ca. 1555-1560, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
Self-portrait as Saint Lucy by Lucia Anguissola, ca. 1555-1560, Private collection.
Portrait of King Sigismund II Augustus by Lucia Anguissola, ca. 1555-1560, Alte Pinakothek in Munich.
Portraits of the Jagiellons and Dukes of Pomerania by Giovanni Battista Perini and workshop
"The most illustrious prince, a very dear friend. Not so long ago Johannes Perinus, our distinguished and faithful painter, complained to us, although the inheritance of his uncle the late Johannes Perinus had passed to himself and his brothers by a legitimate line of succession as the closest relatives, yet they discovered Franciscus Taurellus and his consorts, who from the donation they would contend that the same inheritance belonged to them" (Illustrissime princeps, amice plurimum dilecte. Conquestus est apud nos non ita pridem Johannes Perinus, pictor insignis ac fidelis noster, etsi haereditas patrui quondam Johannis Perini ad se fratresque suos legitimo successionis tramite tanquam ad proximos agnatos ab intestato devoluta esset, repertos tamen Franciscum Taurellum et consortes eius, qui (quod) ex donatione eandem haereditatem ad se pertinere contenderent), wrote Duke John Frederick of Pomerania (1542-1600) in a letter dated June 10, 1578 from Szczecin to Francesco I de' Medici (1541-1587), Grand Duke of Tuscany.
The duke intervened in favor of the Italian painter Giovanni Battista Perini (Parine) from Florence, his court painter. Before he become the "Princely Pomeranian portrait painter" (fürstlich-pommerischen Contrafaitmaler), he worked for the Electoral court in Berlin and in about 1562 he created the portrait of Electress Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573), known from a copy by Heinrich Bollandt (Berlin Palace, lost during World War II), and the portrait of her husband Joachim II (Berlin City Museum, VII 60/642 x). He probably became Joachim's court painter in 1524, as a certain painter Johann Baptista was mentioned as such at that date, and he was considered "the best painter of all in the Margraviate [of Brandenburg]" (der beste Maler überhaupt in der Mark). As he worked for the Electress and as it was customary in the 16th century to lend painters to other royal and princely courts, he probably also worked for the Jagiellons. A certain Giovanni Battista Perini, son of Piero, is mentioned in Florence in 1561 and 1563, but the profession is not specified. If he was the painter of Joachim II, then either he returned to his homeland, or he worked on the orders of the Elector from Florence. We generally think of "remote work" as a 21st century invention, however, already in the 16th century or even earlier many artists were working remotely. Cranach thus worked for several of his clients, as well as many Venetian painters, in particular Titian, copying other paintings and study drawings. For Charles V, in 1548 he painted his wife Isabella of Portugal, who died in 1539, using a mediocre painting as a reference. The Roman sculptor Bernini thus worked for Cardinal Richelieu of France and King of England. The so-called "Book of Effigies" (Visierungsbuch), lost during the World War II, was full of various preparatory drawings for the effigies of the Pomeranian dukes, mainly by Cranach's workshop, including the portraits of John Frederick and his brother Ernest Louis from 1553. They were most likely rendered by the painters with the ready-made portraits. The scenario that the Elector's lack of payment prompted Perini to leave Florence to personally claim his due and when he did not receive it he decided to enter the service of the Duke of Pomerania, is also possible. Joachim II died in 1571 and that year he painted the Electress Catharine (in a letter to the same, he asked 110 thalers for it, while she only wanted to give him 80 thalers), and passed at this period much of his time at Kostrzyn (Cüstrin), where he painted the celebrated Leonhard Thurneysser, as appears from one of his letters. Thurneysser paid him 20 thalers for it (after "Berliner Kunstblatt" by Ernst Heinrich Toelken, Volume 1, p. 143). Perini was employed by the ducal house of Pomerania as early as 1575, because on September 6, 1575, the dowager Duchess Mary of Saxony (1515-1583) wrote in a letter from Wolgast to her eldest son, Duke John Frederick, that the painter complained to her about his salary which was not paid by the elector of Brandenburg (after "Baltische Studien", Volume 36, p. 66). In 1577 he created the retable for the ducal chapel in Szczecin, rebuilt in the Renaissance style between 1575-1577 and decorated with Italianate frescoes (destroyed during air raids in 1944). He undoubtedly made many portraits, however, only one mention, in the inventory of the estate of Duke Barnim X/XII (1549-1603), is known: "full-length effigy of the late Duke John Frederick and of his wife by Johann Baptist" (hochseligen Herzog Johann Friedrichs F. G. und derselben Gemahlin Contrafei per Johannem Baptistam ganzer Gestalt). He died on April 6, 1584 in Szczecin. Duke John Frederick's contacts with his "very dear friend" Grand Duke Francesco were certainly not limited to a single letter. Monarchs of this era frequently exchanged their effigies and precious gifts and Francesco was a renowned patron of the arts. In 1560, one of the most productive medalists of the Italian Renaissance, Pastorino de' Pastorini (1508-1592), who four years earlier (in 1556) created a medal with a bust of Queen Bona Sforza, made a medal with bust of Grand Duke Francesco (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1974.167). On the obverse it shows the profile of the duke and on the reverse Tiberinus, the genius of the Tiber, and the inscription Felicitati Temporum S.P.Q.R. in Latin. Twelve years later, in 1572, he created another medal of the Duke and in 1579 a medal of his wife Bianca Cappello (Museo del Bargello and British Museum). Perhaps Francesco recommended Pastorini to Duke John Frederick because the gold medal with his bust was clearly created in Pastorini's style (Münzkabinett in Dresden, BRA4086). Stylistically it is particularly similar to the medals of Gianfrancesco Boniperti and Massimiano Gonzaga, Marquis of Luzzara from the 1550s (both in the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and the medal of Ercole II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, from about 1534 (National Gallery of Art, Washington). According to the date in Latin it was minted in 1573 (M.D.LXXIII). His age is also in Latin (Æ XXXII), his name, however, and the title abbreviation are in German (Hans Friderich H[erzog] Z[u] S[tettin] P[ommern]). Medal with bust of Gracia Nasi the Younger (la Chica) by Pastorini from about 1558 bears the name of the sitter in Hebrew characters and her age in Latin, therefore, such mixtures of languages were not new to Pastorini. Two shaking hands and the inscription "Remember Me" (Memento Me) on the back of John Frederick's medal suggest that it was a gift to his relatives in Saxony. Between 1971 and 1984, the Royal Castle in Warsaw was rebuilt with funds collected by civil society committees organized throughout Poland and in many foreign countries with large Polish communities. The building, which was the seat of the Polish kings and parliament, was bombed by the Germans in September 1939. During the following years of German occupation, the castle was methodically robbed and looted by the occupier and deliberately left unrestored to cause further damage. In September 1944, shortly before the end of World War II, the Germans blew up the building. In 1977, the government of the Federal Republic of Germany donated three full-length portraits of the Jagiellons - Sigismund I, his second wife Bona Sforza and his eldest daughter Isabella Jagiellon, Queen of Hungary, to the rebuilt Royal Castle (oil on canvas, 203.5 x 108, 210.5 x 111, 203.5 x 111.5 cm, inventory number ZKW/59, ZKW/60, ZKW/61). The paintings come from the Wittelsbach collection in Munich and may have been part of the dowry of Anna Catherine Constance Vasa, the great-granddaughter of Sigismund and Bona. The painter evidently used the same or similar set of preparatory drawings as the studio of Lucas Cranach the Younger to create miniatures of the Jagiellon family, dated variably between 1553 and 1565 (Czartoryski Museum). These miniatures were bought in London before the mid-19th century by a Polish collector, Adolf Cichowski and purchased by Władysław Czartoryski in Paris in 1859 at the auction of his collection. The provenance of Cranach's set in England is not known. Miniatures commissioned by Polish monarchs from a foreign artist in the 16th century were again purchased abroad in the 19th century. At that time, Cranach's workshop created several full-length portraits, such as the effigy of Augustus, Elector of Saxony and his wife Anna of Denmark from around 1564 (Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna), from the imperial collection of the Stallburg in Vienna, therefore very probably a gift to the Habsburgs, or portraits of Joachim Ernest, Prince of Anhalt and his first wife Agnes of Barby-Mühlingen, painted in 1563 (Georgium in Dessau). Thus the paintings of the Jagiellons could be part of a large order for the effigies of the royal family from different painters, including Cranach. Because of this general similarity to miniatures, the Warsaw full-length portraits are attributed to a German or Polish painter, but their style and technique indicate Italian influences. The set in the Czartoryski Museum is made up of 10 miniature portraits, so at least 7 effigies from the Warsaw cycle are missing, assuming it reflected the Cranach miniatures. The portrait of Princess Catherine Jagiellon in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg (oil on canvas, 201 x 99 cm, Gm 622), destroyed during the Second World War, was probably part of this series as well as two other paintings from this museum - portraits of two wives of Sigismund II Augustus, Elizabeth of Austria (1526-1545) and Catherine of Austria (1533-1572), daughters of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547). The composition of the two latter is slightly different from the four paintings described above. They have similar measurements (oil on canvas, 200 x 103 cm, Gm617 and 195.5 x 101.5 cm, Gm623), however, these two have inscriptions in German and in Latin, so either they were from another set or these two alone were made and sent to the sister of the two queens Anna of Austria (1528-1590), Duchess of Bavaria. Both paintings depicting the wives of Sigismund Augustus have a similar monogram PF, which is identified as the painter's monogram, but his identity remains unknown, hence he is called the Monogramist PF. The style of the two paintings resembles that of the portrait of Joachim II by Perini in Berlin. His portrait is unsigned and bears a Latin inscription, but its style indicates that the author was a German court painter. It is possible that in the portraits of two queens of Poland the inscription was also added later, and the monogram could be the abbreviation of Perini fecit in Latin, that is, made by Perini. Possibly also the full-length portrait of Sigismund II Augustus in armor by Lucia Anguissola, discovered by me in 2017 (oil on canvas, 200 x 118 cm, Alte Pinakothek in Munich, 7128), belonged to this or a similar cycle, although its composition is different and the painter does not copy the same effigy as Cranach in the Czartoryski series. Another portrait that could be from the same workshop is the portrait of a bearded man in the Palace of Versailles (oil on paper mounted on canvas, 96 x 77 cm, inv. 893 / M.R.B. 172). It is generally dated to the 17th century, but its style and sitter's costume indicate that it dates from the mid-16th century. The man bears a strong resemblance to the effigy of King Sigismund II Augustus by Venetian painter Battista Franco Veneziano from around 1561 (print, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, RP-P-OB-105.261). Another possible author of this painting could be Giovanni del Monte, who was court painter to the king around 1557, however no signed work by this painter is known. The only known portrait of Pomeranian rulers attributed to Giovanni Battista Perini was the effigy of Duke John Frederick in the Pomeranian Museum in Szczecin, which was lost during World War II. According to the Latin inscription, it was painted in 1571 (ANNO DOMINI 1571), four years before Perini is generally thought to have entered the Duke's service. Italianate portrait of Duke John Frederick and his wife Erdmuthe of Brandenburg as donors under the crucifix in the main altar of the Church of St. Hyacinth in Słupsk, was undoubtedly created in Perini's milieu. It was most probably founded by Erdmuthe and most likely painted by Jakob Funck in 1602, a painter and carpenter from Kołobrzeg, who signed it with a monogram I.F.F. (Jacobus Funck fecit) on the cross. He may have been trained in Perini's workshop. In the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm there is a similar small portrait of a princely couple, also close to the style of Perini, although attributed to Lucas Cranach the Younger (oil on panel, 32 x 52 cm, NMGrh 94). It comes from the Gripsholm Castle and according to the 18th century Swedish inscription it depicts Christian IV of Denmark (1577-1648) and his wife Anne Catherine of Brandenburg (1575-1612), which is obviously incorrect as the couple is dressed in costumes from the 1590s, but when they married in 1597, Christian and Anne Catherine were in their twenties while the couple in the painting is much older and effigies do not match other portraits of the King of Denmark and his wife. It can also be compared to the portrait of John Frederick's younger brother Boguslaus XIII and his wife Anna of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg from 1600 and the effigy of a woman closely resembles the model medal with bust of Erdmuthe by Tobias Wolff from 1600 (Münzkabinett in Berlin). The man's face, apart from the mentioned portrait in Słupsk, also resembles the face of Duke John Frederick from his 1594 silver thaler (Münzkabinett in Berlin). Therefore, the painting was most likely transported to Sweden after 1630 during the Swedish occupation of Pomerania. 
Portrait of King Sigismund I (1467-1548) by workshop of Giovanni Battista Perini, 1550s or 1560s, Royal Castle in Warsaw.
Portrait of Queen Bona Sforza (1494-1557) by workshop of Giovanni Battista Perini, 1550s or 1560s, Royal Castle in Warsaw.
Portrait of Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559), Queen of Hungary by workshop of Giovanni Battista Perini, 1550s or 1560s, Royal Castle in Warsaw.
Portrait of Crown Princess Catherine Jagiellon (1526-1583) by workshop of Giovanni Battista Perini, 1550s or 1560s, Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Queen Elizabeth of Austria (1526-1545), aged 16 by Giovanni Battista Perini, 1542 or after, Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.
Portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572), aged 24 by Giovanni Battista Perini, 1557 or after, Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.
Portrait of King Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) by Giovanni Battista Perini or Giovanni del Monte, ca. 1560, Palace of Versailles. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Gold medal with bust of Duke John Frederick of Pomerania (1542-1600), aged 32 by Pastorino de' Pastorini, 1573, Münzkabinett in Dresden (Photo: © SKD).
Portrait of Duke John Frederick of Pomerania (1542-1600) and his wife Erdmuthe of Brandenburg (1561-1623) by circle of Giovanni Battista Perini, possibly Jakob Funck, 1590s, Gripsholm Castle.
Portaits of Sophia Jagiellon, Duchess of Brunswick by Lucas Cranach the Younger, French and Flemish painters
Following the Second Margraves' War (1552-1555), King Ferdinand I confiscated the estates of Albert II Alcibiades (1522-1557), Margrave of Brandenburg-Kulmbach, grandson of Sophia Jagiellon (1464-1512), and his lands were subject to imperial sequestration. Upon Albert's death on January 8, 1557 in Pforzheim, the inheritance was claimed by two other descendants of Sophia Jagiellon: her other grandson George Frederick (1539-1603), Margrave of Ansbach, and her son Albert of Prussia (1490-1568). By mid-February 1557, Margrave George Frederick already had the support of a large group of allies, including the Electors of Brandenburg and Saxony, the Duke of Saxony, the Margrave of Brandenburg-Küstrin and the Landgrave of Hesse, as well as the Duke of Württemberg and the Margrave of Baden. These and their advisors jointly petitioned King Ferdinand, the Emperor's representative, to demand that George Frederick be immediately invested with the Principality of Kulmbach and, in lengthy speeches, described the current situation as a disgrace to the House of Brandenburg.
Having already assumed the government of the Principality of Ansbach in 1556, at the age of 15, George Frederick sought, after the death of Albert Alcibiades, who died without issue, to reunite the Kulmbach region, occupied by the Bohemian Governor, Count Schlick, under imperial sequestration, with the principality he had inherited. Thanks to the efforts of his family and allies, the young prince finally obtained the withdrawal of the Bohemian Governor, which allowed him to enter the city of Bayreuth on March 27, 1557. To the great displeasure of the Catholic Habsburgs, the Protestant George Frederick reunited in his hands substantial lands surrounding the imperial city of Nuremberg, as well as several possessions in Silesia. As for Albert of Prussia's claims, although he was supported by Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia and Sigismund Augustus and his wife, Catherine of Austria, decided to write personal letters of support, it was claimed that, upon the election as the Grand Master, the Duke had renounced his claims to the Franconian inheritance. His Brandenburg relatives also opposed Albert's investiture (after "Das preussisch polnische Lehnsverhältnis ..." by Stephan Dolezel, p. 93). The complex case of the Franconian inheritance was undoubtedly discussed in Wolfenbüttel, where the aged Henry II (V) "the Younger" (1489-1568), Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and Prince of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, and his much younger wife Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575) hosted the electoral couple of Saxony - Augustus (1526-1586) and his wife Anne of Denmark (1532-1585), Prince Magnus of Denmark (1540-1583), Duke of Holstein, and two dukes of the House of Guelph - Otto II (1528-1603), Duke of Brunswick-Harburg and Ernest III of Brunswick-Grubenhagen-Herzberg (1518-1567), husband of Margaret of Pomerania-Wolgast (1518-1569). The Duke of Brunswick, who took command of the League's troops against Albert II Alcibiades, lost two eldest sons at the Battle of Sievershausen in 1553. His youngest son, Julius, destined to become a clergyman and infirm, became heir to the principality to the despair of his father, who noticed his fragile constitution and his sympathies for French culture and the Protestant faith (after "Wolfenbüttel: Geist und Glanz einer alten Residenz" by Friedrich Thöne, p. 43). Therefore, Henry, then sixty-seven years old and widowed since 1541, decided to marry the Jagiellonian princess (February 22, 1556). The Duke designated the future children of this marriage as his heirs, while Julius was to receive a life annuity. However, Henry's second marriage remained childless. Sophia brought 32,000 florins as a dowry and a rich trousseau worth 100,000 to 150,000 thalers, silverware, carpets and jewelry and later inherited 50,000 ducats from Bona's inheritance. Shortly after the wedding, the duke decided to rebuild Wolfenbüttel Castle, as he indicated in his letter to Philip I (1504-1567), Landgrave of Hesse, dated June 25, 1556. The architect was probably Francesco Geromella (Chiaramella) da Gandino, who worked in Wolfenbüttel between 1556 and 1559 and who probably arrived in Wolfenbüttel from Venice (his presence there is confirmed in September 1554). The Langelsheim steelworks, founded by Duke Henry in 1556, was named Frau-Sophien-Hütte in Sophia's honor. Prince Julius, in turn, was a propagator of French culture. He studied first in Cologne, then in Leuven in Flanders, and from 1550 he traveled to France. After the initial tensions following Henry's death, Sophia's relationship with her stepson was friendly, as evidenced by a letter from Julius dated December 30, 1573, in which he offered her, as a New Year's gift, a carved alabaster and marble door frame (ein Thürgericht) and a vase (Kantel) made of the same material. These works were by the renowned French sculptor Adam Lecuir (Liquier Beaumont), who also created the funerary sculpture of Sophia in St. Mary's Church in Wolfenbüttel. Also at this time, the widowed duchess became friends with the Francophile Landgrave William IV of Hesse-Kassel (1532–1592) and supported the French bid for the Polish throne. Sophia also had Schöningen Castle, her widow's seat, rebuilt. She ordered large windows to be made in the main, residential part of the castle, overlooking the courtyard, from which an entrance in the form of a spiral staircase was built. In the "new tower", on the wall of the chamber intended for the castle chapel, a beautiful Renaissance bay window (more Italico) was constructed. In 1569, a bell funded by Sophia was hung in the eastern tower of the castle. The building had numerous bedrooms, service rooms, kitchens, pantries, a large dance hall (Dantz Sadell), a chapel and a magnificent fountain erected in the middle of the courtyard. Inventories from 1575 mention more than 100 pictures hanging on the walls of the rooms occupied by Sophia or placed on furniture. Most of them, up to 70, were devoted to religious themes, including the Passion, the Crucifixion, and effigies of the Virgin Mary. On the other hand, the absence of images of Saint Stanislaus, Saint Adalbert, and other patron saints of Poland in this collection is somewhat surprising, although Sophia owned paintings of Saint John, Saint Christopher, and Saint Bernard. She also owned a painting depicting the beheading in 1568 of the leaders of the anti-Spanish opposition in the Netherlands and 31 portraits, including Sigismund Augustus, the children of Catherine Jagiellon, Sigismund and Anna, and Henry of Valois, King of Poland and France. However, the list does not include the portrait of Bona Sforza promised to Sophia by her sister Catherine in 1572, and strangely enough, there are no images of the princess's sisters, nor finally a portrait of herself, although it is known that such a picture was painted in 1556 by Peter Spitzer (after "Zofia Jagiellonka ..." by Jan Pirożyński, p. 117, 130, 135). This indicates that some of the paintings depicting religious scenes were in fact disguised portraits. Sophia's German family was represented by a portrait of Duke Henry in full armor, and then portraits of his daughters from his first marriage - Catherine and Margaret, Duke Julius and his wife Hedwig of Brandenburg (1540-1602), daughter of Sophia's stepsister, Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573). According to the inventory of Wolfenbüttel Castle drawn up in 1589, it is known that in the large "Burgundy Hall" there were two portraits depicting Duke Henry the Younger with the Order of the Golden Fleece and his second wife Sophia Jagiellon. It can be assumed that these two paintings previously belonged to Sophia, although they are not mentioned in the Schöningen inventory of 1575. A private collection holds a fragment of a painting, painted in the style of Lucas Cranach the Younger, depicting the head and bust of a reclining nude woman in a landscape (panel, 35.5 x 30.5 cm). The painting was confiscated in 1938 from the family of the Jewish art dealer Heinemann in Munich. It is considered a fragment of a larger composition depicting the reclining water nymph Egeria, a form of the Roman goddess of the hunt Diana, as in the disguised portraits of Queen Bona, mother of Sophia, that I have identified. In this respect, the painting can be compared with the one by Lucas Cranach the Younger in the National Museum in Oslo, dated "1550" (inv. NG.M.00522). Interestingly, the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo owns another painting by Lucas Cranach the Younger, which appears to be a fragment of the same painting as the woman's face from the Heinemann collection (panel, 53 x 69 cm, inv. KM 100.320). The Otterlo fragment depicts a stag hunt and bears, in the lower center, the painter's mark and the year "1557". It comes from the Marczell de Nemes collection, auctioned in Paris in 1913. The fragment of a woman's hand wearing a bracelet, visible in the lower left, confirms that this is indeed a fragment of a composition depicting a naked water nymph. The stag hunt takes place near a large city, visible in the background on the left. This is Nuremberg, and the view corresponds perfectly to the panorama published by Braun and Hogenberg in 1575 (Wrocław University Library, 8-IV.B./2). This same panorama shows typical costumes of Nuremberg, but no hairstyle or women's cap matches that of the image from the Heinemann collection. Although the woman's forehead was shaved, as was the custom at that time in Germany and Poland-Lithuania, her hairstyle is typical of French fashion, as evidenced by the portrait of a lady dated "1557" in the upper right corner, painted by Catharina van Hemessen (Lempertz in Cologne, Auction 1197, May 21, 2022, lot 2011A). Several of the noble guests who visited Wolfenbüttel in 1557 were painted by Cranach the Younger and his workshop. It is not known why the painting was cut into pieces and what happened to the other parts. It may have been cut up because of its poor condition or to sell pieces more profitably - landscapes and portrait. Another possible reason was that the painting was controversial, due to the woman's nudity, its meaning, or both. Why did the goddess, a wealthy aristocrat following French fashion, organize a hunt near Nuremberg? The events in 1557, the year the painting was created, provide a clue. Since hunting was usually organized on one's own lands or on the territories of friendly rulers, the woman wanted to demonstrate that the lands surrounding Nuremberg were her family estates. Her facial features bear a striking resemblance to known effigies of Sophia Jagiellon, such as the funerary sculpture by Lecuir in Wolfenbüttel or the miniature by Cranach the Younger in the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków (inv. MNK XII-544). The image as a whole, like the disguised portraits of Sophia's mother, can therefore be interpreted as an important message to the Habsburgs and their supporters. In this context, this controversial portrait of the Duchess of Brunswick could therefore have been cut into pieces as early as the 16th century. A very similar and idealized effigy of the same woman from the same period, attributed to the 16th-century School of Fontainebleau, is in a private collection (oil on panel, 49.6 x 38.1 cm, Christie's New York, Auction 1822, April 19, 2007, lot 11). In the early 20th century, the painting belonged to the D'Atri collection in Paris and Rome. Like in the painting by Cranach the woman is naked, she has a partially shaved forehead and red hair. She wears jewelry in her hair, resembling a diadem and an elaborate necklace. A similar painting of this woman, also attributed to the School of Fontainebleau, from the second half of the 16th century, depicts her as Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture, fertility, and motherhood, holding a cornucopia. This "Portrait of a lady as Ceres" is also in a private collection (oil on panel, 101 x 79.5 cm, Bonhams London, December 7, 2005, lot 73). In this version, the lady wears a gold necklace and bracelets, however, the painter has marked the dark roots of her red hair, indicating that she had dyed it. Another version of the same effigy, also attributed to the School of Fontainebleau and known as a "Portrait of a young woman" or "Allegory of Beauty", could be a work by a Flemish painter, as its style indicates (oil on panel, 47.5 x 30 cm, Sotheby's Paris, June 26, 2014, lot 3). The versions at King's College, Cambridge (oil on panel, 47 x 34.5 cm) and Eton College, Windsor (oil on canvas, 48.5 x 37 cm, inv. FDA-P.38-2010) are traditionally identified as portraits of Elizabeth "Jane" Shore (ca. 1445 - ca. 1527), mistress of King Edward IV of England, following a rather simplistic belief that a naked lady must be a courtesan or the favorite of a monarch. The painting at King's College has been dendrochronologically dated to 1550-1560. The earliest reference to Jane Shore's likeness at King's College is in the 1660 inventory, while Eton's is mentioned in 1714. As both colleges were supported by the King of England, it is quite possible that one or both paintings were originally in the royal collection. In a portrait from a private collection in Genoa (Italy) – collections of works of art and furniture from three exclusive Genoese residences (oil on panel, 49 x 37 cm, Cambi Casa d'Aste, Auction 837, June 30, 2023, lot 687), the same model was depicted wearing a red French-style dress. This painting was auctioned with an attribution to the 17th-century English School (Scuola inglese del XVII secolo, Ritratto di gentildonna in abito rosso), probably due to the fact that many similar effigies are identified as portraits of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. The Lower Saxony State Museum in Hanover holds another portrait from the same period, painted in a similar style, probably by the same painter or his circle (oil on panel, 49 x 34.5 cm, inv. KM 105, exhibited at Wolfenbüttel Castle). This portrait comes from the collection of Sophia of the Palatinate (1630-1714), Electress of Hanover, where it was considered an effigy of Eva von Trott (ca. 1506-1567), mistress of Duke Henry II of Brunswick. In 1558, Henry ended this affair and offered Eva a residence at the Kreuzstift monastery in Hildesheim. Due to the Spanish clothing, the portrait is dated to the beginning of the second half of the 16th century. At that time, Eva von Trott was around fifty years old. The portrait, however, shows a much younger woman and, on this basis, is now identified as representing Sophia Jagiellon (after "Die deutschen, französischen und englischen Gemälde ...", ed. Angelica Dülberg, p. 87). The model's facial features closely resemble those of the woman in the portrait from the D'Atri collection and the portrait in the guise of Ceres. Her tiara is identical to that in the portrait from the D'Atri collection, while her Spanish dress is similar to that visible in the portrait of Sophia, depicted with blond hair, today in the Czartoryski Museum (inv. MNK XII-296), identified by me. This painting is attributed to Peter Spitzer, a pupil of Cranach, court painter to Duke Henry, active in Brunswick between 1533 and 1578. However, since its style is closer to the Flemish school, his authorship is unlikely. Sophia and her half-sister Hedwig Jagiellon, Electress of Brandenburg, although they had lived in Germany for several years and knew the language, felt isolated and estranged there, as expressed in the letter from the Duchess of Brunswick to Sigismund Augustus from January 1571. "And because Her Grace [Hedwig Jagiellon] as well as myself are completely foreign and unknown in these countries and do not know where to look for consolation, advice, protection, and demands from anybody else but God and Your Royal Highness", Sophia wrote to her brother (after "Dynastic identity, death and posthumous legacy of Sophie Jagiellon ..." by Dušan Zupka, p. 797, 803). In a letter to her relative, Emperor Maximilian II, son of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), dated from Schöningen on January 17, 1573, Sophia describes herself as "a poor, foreign widow and previously deeply troubled and abandoned, living among a foreign and unknown nation in these lands, destituted and deprived of almost all earthly and human comforts" (ausländische und zuvor hoch bekümmerte und verlassene arme Wittwe, unter einer frembden und unbekanten Nation diser Lande gesessen, fast alles Irdischen und Menschlichen trosts destituirt, und beraubt worden). This isolation further explains why the Duchess of Brunswick and her portraits are almost completely forgotten in Western Europe today. 
Stag hunt near Nuremberg, fragment of the portrait of Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575), Duchess of Brunswick as Diana the Huntress-Egeria by Lucas Cranach the Younger, 1557, Private collection.
Fragment of the portrait of Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575), Duchess of Brunswick as Diana the Huntress-Egeria by Lucas Cranach the Younger, 1557, Private collection. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portait of Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575), Duchess of Brunswick as Ceres by the School of Fontainebleau, ca. 1556-1560, Private collection.
Portait of Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575), Duchess of Brunswick by the School of Fontainebleau, ca. 1556-1560, Private collection.
Portait of Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575), Duchess of Brunswick by Flemish or French painter, ca. 1556-1560, Private collection.
Portait of Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575), Duchess of Brunswick by Flemish or French painter, ca. 1556-1560, King's College, Cambridge.
Portait of Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575), Duchess of Brunswick by Flemish, French or British painter, before 1714, Eton College, Windsor.
Portait of Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575), Duchess of Brunswick in Spanish costume by Flemish or French painter, ca. 1556-1560, Lower Saxony State Museum in Hanover. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portait of Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575), Duchess of Brunswick in French costume by Flemish or French painter, ca. 1560, Private collection.
Portraits of Sigismund Augustus and his third wife by Tintoretto and Lambert Sustris
After Sigismund I's marriage to Bona Sforza in 1518, the presence of Italian artists in Poland-Lithuania gradually increased.
In 1547 a painter Pietro Veneziano (Petrus Venetus) created a painting to the main altar of the Wawel Cathedral. Ten years later, on March 10, 1557 in Vilnius, King Sigismund Augustus issues a passport to the Venetian painter Giovanni del Monte to go to Italy, and according to Vasari, Paris Bordone has "sent to the King of Poland a painting which was held very beautiful, in which was Jupiter and a nymph" (Mandò al Re di Polonia un quadro che fu tenuto cosa bellissima, nel quale era Giove con una ninfa). The latter also created an allegorical portrait of royal jeweller Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio, receiving medallion with king's effigy as a proof of his nobilitation and royal patronage of Sigismund Augustus. Giovanni Battista Ferri (Ferro) from Padua in the Venetian Republic worked in Warsaw in about 1548 and the royal accounts from 1563 provide information about the payment of over one hundred thalers to Rochio Marconio, pictori Veneciano for eight paintings made for the king. Portrait of Sigismund the Old from around 1547 from the collection of the Morstins in Pławowice, today at the Wawel Castle (inventory number ZKWawel 3239), is considered by Michał Walicki as a very definite manifestation of the Venetian tradition (after "Malarstwo polskie: Gotyk, renesans, wczesny manieryzm", p. 33). It is possible that this paining, which is sometimes attributed to German painter Andreas Jungholz, was actually created by Pietro Veneziano or his circle. Contacts with the Venetian milieu of Titian have very probably further intensified when in 1553 Sigismund Augustus married his cousin Catherine of Austria, widowed Duchess of Mantua as a wife of Francesco III Gonzaga. The high demand for paintings in the Venetian workshops required painters to complete their work quickly. This involved a change in technique which uses a series of fast brushstrokes to create the impression of faces and objects. For many prominent patrons, speed was very important as they required several copies of the same image to be sent to different relatives, like effigies of the Habsburgs by Titian. In a letter of 1548, Andrea Calmo eulogised Tintoretto's ability to capture a likeness from nature in a mere half hour and according to Vasari he worked so fast that he had usually finished while the others were just thinking about starting. On December 18, 1565 in Florence, Francesco I de' Medici, who since 1564 was regent of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in place of his father, married Joanna of Austria, the youngest daughter of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), Queen of Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, and sister of Catherine of Austria, Queen of Poland. According to preserved letters, that year Sigismund Augustus sent at least two envoys to Florence: letter of March 10, 1565 notifying Francesco about sending of the envoy Piotr Barzi (from a family of Italian origin), castellan of Przemyśl and two letters of October 2 and 6, 1565 about sending the envoy Piotr Kłoczowski, royal secretary, to attend the wedding (after "Archeion", Volumes 53-56, p. 158). Around that time Florentine painter Alessandro Allori and his workshop created several portraits of young Francesco I de' Medici holding a miniature of his wife Joanna, which were undoubtedly meant to be sent to different European royal and princely courts. It is possible that also king of Poland, who sent his envoy for Francesco's wedding, received a copy and the version which was acquired before 1826 by Gustav Adolf von Ingenheim (1789-1855), later transported to Rysiowice in Silesia and today in the Wawel Royal Castle (inventory number 2175), may possibly be considered as such. Also the princes of Tuscany undoubtedly had images of the Polish-Lithuanian royal couple. Portrait of a man in a fur coat, attributed to Tintoretto, in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (oil on canvas, 110 x 91.5 cm, inv. Contini Bonacossi 33), was acquired in 1969 from the Contini Bonacossi collection in their Villa Vittoria in Florence. According to museum's description of the painting the relationships with Titian's portraiture appear evident in this work. A man with a long beard in his forties or fifties wears expensive fur coat, which were imported to Western Europe mainly from the eastern part of the continent. Poland and Lithuania at that time were considered as one on the largest exporters of pelts of various animals: "the total number of hides exported from Poland in the second half of the 16th century amounted to about 150,000" (after "Acta Poloniae Historica", 1968, Volumes 18 - 20, p. 203). In 1560 Berardo Bongiovanni, Bishop of Camerino reported that, "The king [Sigismund Augustus] dresses simply, but has all kinds of clothes, Hungarian, Italian, of gold cloth, silk, summer and winter attires lined with sables, wolves, lynxes, black foxes, worth over 80,000 gold scudi". Five years later, in 1565, Flavio Ruggieri described the king: "He is 45 years old, of fairly good height, mediocre, great sweetness of character, more inclined to peace than war, speaks Italian by the memory of his mother, he loves horses and he has more than three thousand of them in his stable, he likes jewels of which he has more than a million red zlotys worth, he dresses simply, although he has rich robes, namely furs of great value". The man bear a great resemblance to preserved effigies of Sigismund Augustus, especially a minaiture by Lucas Cranach the Younger in the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków (inventory number XII-538), created between 1553-1565. The same facial features were also captured in two other portraits attributed to Jacopo Tintoretto or his workshop, both in private collection. In one of them the man, much younger then in the version from the Contini Bonacossi collection, resemble greatly Sigismund Augustus from his effigy created by Marcello Bacciarelli (considered as the effigy of Jogaila of Lithuania), from the Marble Room at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, created between 1768 and 1771 (inventory number ZKW/2713). This portrait was sold in Munich, Germany (oil on canvas, 56 x 44 cm, Hampel Fine Art Auctions, April 11, 2013, lot 570), where there is also a full-length portrait of the king (Alte Pinakothek, inv. 7128). The other was in a private collection in the United States (oil on canvas, 48.9 x 38.8 cm, Christie's New York, May 31, 1991, lot 213). A similar portrait, attributed to Tintoretto, showing the same man from a different angle, is in the Miramare Castle, deposit of the Galleria nazionale d'arte antica di Trieste (oil on canvas, 46 x 41 cm, inv. 47). This "portrait of a man" was purchased from the collection of Pietro Mentasti in 1955 and it is generally dated between 1550 and 1553. In all the mentioned paintings, the model wears coats lined with various expensive furs. It is quite surprising that in today's Italy (apart from my discoveries) it is difficult to find effigies of Sigismund Augustus, whose ties with his mother's native land were strong throughout his life and who was also the heir to the Duchy of Bari and could also claim the Kingdom of Naples and the Duchy of Milan. A companion to the portrait in Uffizi is undoubtedly another portrait from the Contini Bonacossi collection with similar dimensions and composition, showing the man's wife, now in Belgrade (National Museum of Serbia, oil on canvas, 110 x 83 cm). Federico Zeri (1921-1998), noticed the great similarity of this portrait to minaiture of Catherine of Austria in the Czartoryski Museum (Fondazione Federico Zeri, card number 43428), created, like the effigy of Sigismund Augustus, by Lucas Cranach the Younger in his workshop in Wittenberg. However, the portrait is identified as depicting Christina of Denmark (1521-1590), despite bearing no resemblance to any confirmed effigy of widowed Duchess of Milan and Duchess of Lorraine, who dressed more according to French/Netherlandish fashion and not Central European, like the woman in the described portrait. She is holding a compass in her left hand and her right hand on a celestial globe. Catherine's interest in cartography is confirmed by support to cartographer Stanisław Pachołowiecki, who was in her service between 1563-1566 (after "Słownik biograficzny historii Polski: L-Ż" by Janina Chodera, Feliks Kiryk, p. 1104). She was depicted in a black dress, most probably a mourning dress after death of her father Emperor Ferdinand I (died 25 July 1564), therefore the portrait should be dated to about 1564 or 1565, shortly before her departure to Vienna (October 1566). A copy of the painting in Belgrade, painted on oak panel, is in Kassel (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, oil on panel, 45.5 x 35 cm, inv. SM1.1.940), where there are also several other portraits of the Polish-Lithuanian Jagiellons, identified by me. The style of the painting in Kassel is more Netherlandish and can be attributed to Lambert Sustris, a Dutch painter, presumably a student of Jan van Scorel, active mainly in Venice where he worked in Titian's studio. King Sigismund Augustus established a permanent postal connection between Kraków and Venice. "The tasks of the post office included taking orders in the markets, sending very expensive and light goods [like paintings on canvas] and bullion coin" (after "Historia gospodarcza Polski do 1989 roku: zarys problematyki" by Mirosław Krajewski, p. 82). Merchants importing luxury goods, like Tucci, Bianchi, Montelupi, Pinozzo family, coming from Venice, Battista Fontanini, Giulio del Pace, Alberto de Fin, Paolo Cellari, Battista Cecchi, Blenci and many others, used it frequently. It was organized on the Italian model and for many years it was operated mainly by Italians. From 1558 it was run by Prospero Provano, then, from 1562, by Christopher de Taxis, former Augsburg postmaster and imperial court postmaster, from 1564 by Pietro Maffon, a native of Brescia in the Venetian Republic, and after him from 1568 by Sebastiano Montelupi, a Florentine merchant, who received an annual salary of 1,300 thalers. In 1562, a shipment from Kraków through Vienna to Venice took about 10 days, and from Kraków to Vilnius through Warsaw - 7 days. Royal mail was free of charge, private senders paid according to the agreed rate. Montelupi was obliged to carry royal and diplomatic mail, so he sent horse messengers every week. The royal post was under the management of the Montelupi family for nearly 100 years and they maintained the line between Kraków and Venice until 1662. In his book Hercules Prodicius ..., published in Antwerp in 1587, the humanist Stephanus Winandus Pighius (1520-1604) describes the visit of Prince Charles Frederick of Jülich-Cleves-Berg (1555-1575), grandson of Queen Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), to his uncle's castle of Ambras, near Innsbruck, in September 1574. "Charles was particularly delighted when he saw in the spacious, magnificent dining room the pictures of the illustrious members of the House of Austria, the relatives of the Emperor Ferdinand and the most flourishing princes of our time, painted from life by the skilful hand of the excellent painter Titian. He was delighted to recognize among them his parents [Maria of Austria (1531-1581) and William of Jülich-Cleves-Berg (1516-1592)] in their wedding finery, his grandfather Ferdinand and his wife Anna, mother of such a large family, his great-uncle Charles V with Eleonora, daughter of King Manuel of Portugal [Isabella of Portugal (1503-1539) or Eleanor of Austria (1498-1558)], then the emperor's son Philip with his wife Maria, daughter of King Henry of England [Mary Tudor (1516-1558)], and his uncle Maximilian with Charles V's daughter Maria [Maria of Spain (1528-1603)]. He also looked with delight at King Sigismund of Poland [Sigismund Augustus] in a fur coat, the mighty Duke Alexander of Etruria [Alexander Farnese (1545-1592), Duke of Parma] in shining armor, several aunts and related princes whom he had never seen before", read the description of the family portrait gallery (after "Hercules Prodicius seu Principis iuuentutis vita et peregrinatio", p. 235, Complutense University of Madrid, and "Die k. k. Ambraser-Sammlung: Geschichtliche Einleitung und die Rüstkammern", p. 14). It seems that all these portraits from the collection of Archduke Ferdinand II (1529-1595), son of Anna Jagellonica, were made by Titian (principes in tabulis ad vivam effigiem Titiani peritissimi pictoris ingeniosa manu coloribus imitatos). The painter, who according to Carlo Ridolfi (1594-1658) visited Innsbruck after his stay in Spain, probably after 1547 or 1550 and before 1556, must have based all or the majority of these effigies, including the portrait of "King Sigmund of Poland in a fur coat" (Considerare iuuabat pellitum Polonum Sigismundum regem), on other portraits of Habsburgs and their relatives. In his Maraviglie dell'arte ... (p. 166), published in Venice in 1648, Ridolfi confirms that Titian painted portraits of King Ferdinand (emperor from 1556) and his wife Anna, whom he calls Maria, and her daughters in Innsbruck. If Ridolfi could have confused the name of the wife of the King of the Romans, he could also have forgotten or not known that the painter had visited Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia. If Titian's visit to Innsbruck actually took place after 1547, he could not have painted Queen Anna ad vivum (from life), because she died on January 27, 1547 in Prague. This sentence therefore refers more to the impression made by the paintings and not to the fact that all members of the Habsburg family (or the sovereigns who were related to them by marriage) posed directly for Titian in Innsbruck. If the portrait of the Sarmatian monarch was actually painted by Titian in Innsbruck, he must have based it on other effigies or study drawings, just like Tintoretto, whose visit to Sarmatia is also not confirmed by the sources. 
Portrait of King Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) wearing a fur trimmed coat by Tintoretto, ca. 1550-1553, Galleria nazionale d'arte antica di Trieste.
Portrait of King Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) wearing a black fur trimmed coat by Tintoretto, 1550s, Private collection.
Portrait of King Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) by Tintoretto, 1550s, Private collection.
Portrait of King Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) in a fur coat by Tintoretto, ca. 1565, Uffizi Gallery.
Portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) with a globe and a compass by Tintoretto or Titian, ca. 1565, National Museum of Serbia in Belgrade.
Portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) with a globe and a compass by Lambert Sustris, ca. 1565, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Kassel.
Portrait of Francesco de' Medici (1541-1587) by Alessandro Allori, ca. 1565, Wawel Royal Castle.
Portaits of Sigismund Augustus, Catherine of Austria and court dwarf Estanislao by Venetian painters
In 1553 Sigismund II Augustus decided to marry for the third time with a widowed Duchess of Mantua and his cousin Catherine of Austria. The wedding celebrations lasted 10 days and Catherine brought as a dowry 100,000 florins as well as 500 grzywnas of silver, 48 expensive dresses, and about 800 jewels. Somewhat distant marriage continued for a few years and Catherine became close with two yet-unmarried sisters of Sigismund, Anna and Catherine Jagiellon.
The royal court travelled frequently from Kraków through Warsaw to Vilnius. In October 1558 the queen became seriously ill. Sigismund was convinced that it was epilepsy, the same disease that tormented his first wife and Catherine's sister. For this reason, the marriage has become even more distant and the king sought to obtain annulment. It was a matter of international importance, Catherine's father Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor ruled vast territories to the west and south of Poland-Lithuania and assisted Tsar Ivan the Terrible in expanding his empire on eastern border of Sigismund's realm, while Catherine's cousin King Philip II of Spain was the most powerful man in Europe, ruler of half the known world from whom Sigismund was claiming the inheritance of his mother Bona. The queen become attached to her new homeland and her family used their influence to not allow the divorce. The arch-Catholic king of Spain undeniably received portraits of the couple. The portrait of a lady in a dress of green damask attributed to Titian from the Spanish royal collection is very similar to Catherine's portrait by the same painter in the Voigtsberg Castle and to her portrait in Belgrade. It is recorded in the inventory of the Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid of 1794 as a companion to a portrait of a soldier, now attributed to Giovanni Battista Moroni, a painter trained under Moretto da Brescia and Titian: "No. 383. Another [painting] by Titian: Portrait of a Madam: a yard and a quarter long and a yard wide, companion to 402. gilt frame" (Otra [pintura] de Tiziano: Retrato de una madama: de vara y quarta de largo y una de ancho, compañera del 402. marco dorado) and "No. 402. Another [painting] by Titian: half-length portrait of a man, a yard and a half high and a yard wide, with gilt frame" (Otra [pintura] de Tiziano: retrato de medio cuerpo de un hombre, de vara y media de alto y vara de ancho, con marco dorado). The effigy of "a soldier" bears great resemblance to portraits of the king and his costume is in similar style to that visible in a miniature by Cranach the Younger in the Czartoryski Museum. The portraits of Sigismund Augustus (most likely) and his third wife were in the collection of the favorite residence of King Philip II - the Royal Palace of El Pardo near Madrid, among the paintings by Titian - "In another box was the portrait of the king of Poland, in armor and without a helmet, on canvas" (En otra caja metido el retrato del rey de Polonia, armado e sin morrion, en lienzo) and "Catherine, wife of Sigismund Augustus, king of Poland" (Catalina, muger de Sigismundo Augusto, rey de Polonia) (compare "Archivo español de arte", Volume 64, p. 279 and "Unveröffentlichte Beiträge zur Geschichte ..." by Manuel Remón Zarco del Valle, p. 236). Both paintings have similar dimensions (oil on canvas, 119 x 91 cm / 117 x 92 cm, inventory number P000262, P000487) and matching compostion, just as portraits of Pietro Maria Rossi, Count of San Secondo and his wife Camilla Gonzaga by Parmigianino in the same collection (Prado Museum), with the wife's portrait painted with "cheaper", simple dark background. The portraits of Sigismund and Catherine from Contini Bonacossi collection, although very similar, differ slightly in style, one is closer to Tintoretto, the other to Titian, therefore it cannot be excluded that just as in case of Sigismund's famous Flemish tapestries his large commission for a series of portraits was realized by different cooperating workshops from the Venetian Republic. Copies of "The Venetian Officer", as it is sometimes called in literature, are in the castle of Monselice, also known as Ca' Marcello, near Padua (oil on canvas, Fototeca Zeri, Numero scheda 45161, from the Cini collection, with the original in Madrid dated 1560-1563) and in a private collection in England (oil on canvas, 126.1 x 95.5 cm, Sotheby's London, October 29, 1998, lot 445, as by an 18th century copyist after Moroni). A smaller version of the portrait of a woman from Prado, today in the Museo Correr in Venice (oil on canvas, 22 x 17 cm, inv. Cl. I n. 0091), is attributed to Domenico Tintoretto (1560-1635). Sigismund Augustus reunited with his wife in October 1562 at the wedding of Catherine Jagiellon in Vilnius. The king's sisters and his wife dressed similarly and similar Venetian style dress to that visible in the portrait of queen Catherine is included in the inventory of Catherine Jagiellon's dowry: "Damask (4 pieces). A long green damask robe, on it the embroidery of gold cloth with red silk, wide at the bottom, covered with patterned green velvet, trimmed with gold lace on it with green silk. The bodice and sleeves along embroidered with the same embroidery." Sigismund Augustus had his ambassadors in Spain, Wojciech Kryski, between 1559 and 1562 and Piotr Wolski in 1561. He sent letters to the king of Spain and to his secretary Gonzalo Pérez (like on 1 January 1561, Estado, leg. 650, f. 178). He also had his informal envoys in Spain, dwarves Domingo de Polonia el Mico, who appears in the house of Don Carlos between 1559 and 1565, and Estanislao (Stanisław, d. 1579), who was at the court of Philip II between 1553 and 1562, and whom Covarrubias cited as "smooth and well proportioned in all his limbs" and other sources described as a skillful, well educated and sensible person (after Carl Justi's "Velázquez y su siglo", p. 621). Estanislao is recorded back in Poland between 1563-1571. Apart from being a skilled huntsman he was also most probably a skilled diplomat, just as Jan Krasowski, called Domino, a Polish dwarf of Catherine de' Medici, Queen of France or Dorothea Ostrelska, also known as Dosieczka, female dwarf of Sigismund's sister Catherine Jagiellon, queen of Sweden. Queen Catherine of Austria sent Polish dwarves to her brother Ferdinand II (1529-1595), Archduke of Austria, and to her brother-in-law Albert V (1528-1579), Duke of Bavaria. In the gallery of Archduke Ferdinand II in Ambras, there was a portrait of a "great Pole" (gross Polackh) in a yellow coat with the inscription DER GROS POLAC, probably copied by Anton Boys from an original, mentioned in the inventory of 1621 (Aber ain pildnus aines Tartarn oder Polln mit ainem gelben röckhl, f. 358), while the inventory of the ducal art chamber (Kunstkammer) in Munich of 1598 by Johann Baptist Fickler mentions a portrait of a Polish dwarf Gregorij Brafskofski (Conterfeht des zwergen Gregorij Brafskofski so ain Poläckh, 3299/3268) (after "Die Porträtsammlung des Erzherzogs ..." by Friedrich Kenner, item 159). In 1563 the king of Spain placed two portraits of Estanislao, one showing him in Polish costume of crimson damask, both by Titian, among the portraits of the royal family in his palace El Pardo in Madrid (included in the inventory of the palace of 1614-1617, number 1060 and 1070). It is also very probable that the king of Poland had his portrait. The portrait of unknown dwarf in Kassel attributed to Anthonis Mor (oil on panel, 105 x 82.2 cm, inventory number GK 39), although stylistically also close to Venetian school, seems to fit perfectly. In the same collection in Kassel there are also other portraits linked to Jagiellons. A pensive monkey in this painting is clearly more a symbol connected to deep knowledge and intelligence than joyfulness. A drawing by Federico Zuccaro (Zuccari) in Cerralbo Museum in Madrid (inventory number 04705) shows a monarch receiving an emissary with a cardinal and figures in Polish costumes. The effigy of the monarch is similar to portrait of King Sigismund II Augustus in coronation robes from the thesis of Gabriel Kilian Ligęza (1628) and other effigies of the king. In the National Gallery of Ireland, there is another drawing by Zuccaro, showing king's mother Bona Sforza (inventory number NGI.3247). Between 1563 and 1565, the painter was active in Venice with the Grimani family of Santa Maria Formosa. It is highly probable that he was also employed on some large order from the king of Poland. In addition to the splendid gold-woven tapestries ordered in Flanders, the king purchased other luxury items from foreign merchants. In 1553, the Nuremberg merchant Kasper Niezler sold the king some jewelry for 1,500 zlotys. Similarly, Boneficus Hagenarus sold jewels for 1,264 zlotys and 7 groszy, and Nicolaus Nonarth for 956 zlotys. Nonarth personally brought the valuables to the king in Vilnius in 1554. Until 1560, the king's suppliers of clocks were mainly German merchants, including Andreas Wolprecht in 1549 and Hanus Hellzschmidt from Augsburg in 1558. A year later, a German merchant, whose name is not mentioned, brought the king to Piotrków a "large silver clock", for which he was paid 173 zlotys and 10 groszy. Among the royal suppliers of jewels until 1560, the account books mention two Italians. The first of them, the royal scribe Traiano Provana (Trojan Provano), delivered to Sigismund II Augustus in 1556 gold products set with precious stones, which he had acquired in Italy, as well as a painting by an unknown Italian painter. He received 478 zlotys and 12 groszy for the jewels, and 346 zlotys and 20 groszy for the painting. Three years later, the Italian merchant Antonio Borsano sold a gold box to the Crown Carver Mikołaj Łaski in Kraków, for which he was paid 400 thalers, equivalent to 440 zlotys. In the same year, 500 zlotys were paid to Claudio Moneste mercatori Lugdunensi (from Lyon) for the jewels that the king had personally collected from him (after "Dostawcy dworów królewskich w Polsce i na Litwie ..." by Maurycy Horn, Part II, p. 15). The portraits commissioned by such a splendid patron must have been of the highest class, but because of their relatively low value at the time we do not have many documentary traces. In July 1562, for the processional banner, painted on both sides, Moroni received 13.5 gold scudi, from Andrea Fachinetti and Alberto Vasalli (after "Giovan Battista Moroni ..." by Simone Facchinetti, p. 100). 
Portrait of King Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) in crimson costume by Giovanni Battista Moroni, ca. 1560, Prado Museum in Madrid.
Portrait of King Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) in crimson costume by follower of Giovanni Battista Moroni, ca. 1560, Castle of Monselice. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of King Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) in crimson costume by follower of Giovanni Battista Moroni, after 1560 (18th century?), Private collection.
Portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) in a dress of green damask by Titian or circle, ca. 1560, Prado Museum in Madrid.
Portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) holding a book by Venetian painter, ca. 1560, Museo Correr in Venice.
Portrait of court dwarf Estanislao (Stanisław, d. 1579) by Anthonis Mor or circle of Titian, ca. 1560, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Kassel.
Sigismund II Augustus receiving an emissary, with a cardinal and figures in Polish costumes by Federico Zuccaro, 1563-1565, Cerralbo Museum in Madrid.
Bona Sforza, Queen of Poland by Federico Zuccaro, 1563-1565, National Gallery of Ireland.
Portraits of Krzysztof Warszewicki by Paolo Veronese and Jacopo Tintoretto
Krzysztof Warszewicki (Christophorus Varsavitius or Varsevitius in Latin), a nobleman of the Kuszaba coat of arms, was born in Warszewice near Warsaw as the son of Jan Warszewicki, castellan of Liw (1544-1554), and later castellan of Warsaw (1555-1556), and his second wife Elżbieta Parysówna. He was born in the first months of 1543, and the year of his birth was certainly determined by Teodor Wierzbowski on the basis of a note by Vincenzo Laureo (Lauro), bishop of Mondovì, papal nuncio in Poland-Lithuania. Describing the Warsaw Convention of 1574, Laureo mentions the attacks and accusations that Warszewicki received from opponents for his previous conduct, especially for the reckless act he committed in Italy fifteen years ago, in 1559, "at the age of sixteen". In his speech to King James I of England in the spring of 1603, Warszewicki states that he is "over sixty years old" (mihi-ultra quam sexagenario).
The old father and the young mother indulged his whims. They send him to the court of King Ferdinand I in Prague and Vienna, where little Krzysztof was admitted as a page. From there the eleven-year-old boy, probably with Ferdinand's envoys, was sent to London for the marriage of Philip of Spain to Mary Tudor, Queen of England. The splendid entry of the Spanish prince into the capital of England on July 25, 1554, despite Krzysztof's young age, already made a strong impression on him and contributed to his sympathies with the Habsburg dynasty. Returning from London to Poland, Krzysztof probably stayed at the court of Jan Tarnowski, castellan of Kraków, or at the court of Jan Tęczyński, voivode of Sandomierz, with whose family Krzysztof's grandfather and father had close relations. He also stayed in his parent's house. Piotr Myszkowski, having met his father at the Piotrków Sejm in 1555, persuaded him to send his son abroad, where he could receive a better education. The castellan decided to send his son to Germany. At the end of April 1556 Krzysztof, together with Franciszek Zabłocki and Jan Głoskowski, came to Leipzig and enrolled as students of the "Polish nation" for the summer term, but after two months they left Leipzig for Wittenberg, where they also enrolled at the university in July of that year. Then Krzysztof went to Prague and Vienna, probably because there he could get letters of recommendation needed for Italy. Leaving Vienna, he took money and a horse from an Italian, but he was caught in Villach and forced to return the stolen things, as Mikołaj Dłuski claimed eighteen years later. 14 years old Warszewicki went Bologna, where he spent over two years studying at the University until the autumn of 1559. The natural stop on his journey from Vienna was Venice, although the precise dates of his stay are not known. In a speech given in Venice in March 1602, he says "after forty years I returned to you" (post quadragesimum annum ad Vos appuli). He also visted Naples, Rome, Florence and Ferrara. Certain aspects of his stay in Italy were discussed at the Convention of Warsaw on September 2, 1574 before the parliament, when he was chosen as envoy from Masovia. Abraham Zbąski and Piotr Kłoczewski, starost of Małogoszcz accused Warszewicki of stealing a gold chain from Krzysztof Lwowski in Naples, that he borrowed money in many Italian towns, escaped and was condemned in absentia, while the Poles lost their reputation with the Italians because of this, and indecency "by debauching with men in a dishonorable way". From Venice he returned via Vienna to Poland and in the spring of 1561 he was in Warsaw. He returned to Italy in 1567 and 1571 with Bishop Adam Konarski (1526-1574), as his courtier and secretary. He became a priest in 1598 and thanks to the grant of 150 zlotys from the Kraków chapter and 100 ducats from the council of Gdańsk in October 1600, he returned to Italy again, passing through Prague, Munich, Augsburg and Innsbruck. He visits Mantua, Rome, Genoa, Bologna and stays more than four months in Venice accompanied by Giovanni Delfino (1545-1622), procurator of San Marco (after "Krzysztof Warszewicki 1543-1603 i jego dzieła ...", pp. 56-64, 129). Krzysztof's half-brother Stanisław (d. 1591), who studied in Kraków, Wittenberg (under Philip Melanchthon) and Padua, was secretary to King Sigismund II Augustus from 1556. Warszewicki was one of the most vocal critics of the elective system in Poland-Lithuania, although he acknowledged that it was rooted in old Polish customs. His fascination with the Queen of the Adriatic is best reflected in his first major work, a narrative poem "Venice" (Venecia/Wenecia), first released in 1572 in Kraków, and later in 1587 also in Kraków. The poem applied the convention of a lament uttered by personified Venice, which painted a panoramic view of the relations between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Porte (after "Venice in Polish Literature ..." by Michał Kuran, p. 24). In the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, there is a portrait of a boy attributed to Paolo Veronese (oil on canvas, 30.5 x 21.7 cm, inventory number 2570 (OK)). In 1928 the painting was in the collection of Jacques Goudstikker (1897-1940) in Amsterdam (after "Paolo Veronese ..." by Adolfo Venturi, p. 120) and it was purchased by the museum in 1958. The significantly reinforced inscription in the upper part dates the work to 1558 (Anno 1558), when the painter worked on the decoration of the Marciana Library in Venice, painted frescoes in the Palazzo Trevisan in Murano and between 1560 and 1561 he was called to decorate Villa Barbaro in Maser. The inscription may have been added after it left the artist's studio and the boy was 15 or 13 years old (Aetatis 15[3]) because the last number is not clearly visible. At that time, wealthy Venetians preferred larger effigies, full-length or group portraits and frescoes (portraits of Francesco Franceschini, Iseppo da Porto and his son, Livia da Porto Thiene and hier daughter, Giustinia Giustiniani on the balcony), so this small effigy, easy to transport and sent to other places, is quite unusual. Around 1558, when he was 15, Jan, Krzysztof's father, died and it is not known if he returned to Poland from Bologna, if so, he traveled through Venice or the vicinity. Such a small painting would be a good gift for his worried mother. The same man, although older, is depicted in another painting from the Venetian school. This larger, half-length portrait by a red curtain was created by Jacopo Tintoretto (oil on canvas, 70.3 x 58 cm, sold at Christie's London on December 7, 2007, live auction 7448, lot 195). It comes from the collection of Oskar Ernst Karl von Sperling (1814-1872), a German major general in the Prussian Army, who stationed in Wrocław and died in Dresden (sold at the Kunstsalon Paul Cassirer in Berlin on September 1, 1931). Its earlier history is unknown. The landscape behind him shows an imaginative waterside temple with large stairs, a triumphal arch-shaped doorway and a rose window. This is probably the temple of Apollo at Delphi on which the ancients had placed the inscription "Know thyself" (Gnothi seauton). "Let the diplomat, then, as instructed by Apollo of Delphi, and with my advice previously given, strive to know himself", advises Warszewicki in his De legato et legatione from 1595 (after "O pośle i poselstwach" by Jerzy Życki). In this work he also makes frequent reference to Venice. Early in 1567 he left for Rome. On March 21, 1567, he was in Padua and most likely returned to Poland with a letter of March 8, 1570 from Pope Pius V to the Infanta Anna Jagiellon. His letters to Konarski are addressed from Padua - May 18 and August 10, 1571. In both cases, the only direct link to Venice is the painter, but that does not mean that the model was also Venetian. 
Portrait of Krzysztof Warszewicki (1543-1603) at the age of 15 by Paolo Veronese, 1558, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.
Portrait of Krzysztof Warszewicki (1543-1603) by Jacopo Tintoretto, ca. 1571, Private collection.
Portraits of Princess Elizabeth Radziwill by Lambert Sustris and Frans Floris
In 1554 the construction of a large fortess in Berezhany in western Ukraine, called the "Eastern Wawel", was accomplished and its founder Mikołaj Sieniawski (1489-1569), voivode of Ruthenia commemorated it on a stone plaque with Latin inscription above the southern gate. The architect of the building is unknown, however, the Renaissance decor suggests that he was Italian.
Descended from a noble family from Sieniawa in southeastern Poland, he raised the Sieniawski name to great power and importance. Under hetman Jan Amor Tarnowski, of the same clan crest of Leliwa, Sieniawski took part in the battle of Obertyn in 1531 and in as many as 20 other war campaigns. In 1539 with Tarnowski's intercession, he become the Field Hetman of the Crown and received from King Sigismund I the Medzhybizh Fortress, which he rebuilt in Renaissance style. Around 1518, he married Katarzyna Kolanka (d. after 1544), daughter of the Field Hetman of the Crown Jan Koła (d. 1543) and a niece of Barbara Kolanka (d. 1550), wife of George Radziwill (1480-1541), nicknamed "Hercules". Sieniawski was a Calvinist and raised his children as Protestants. Nevertheless his eldest son Hieronim (1519-1582), who became a courtier of the king Sigismund Augustus in 1548, married a Catholic, Princess Elizabeth Radziwill (d. 1565). The religion was unsurpassable obstacle in many countries of divided Europe at that time, but apparenly not in the 16th century Poland-Lithuania, the "Realm of Venus", godess of love. Hieronim and Elizabeth were married before May 30, 1558 as on this date Sieniawski bequeathed to his wife "for eternity" the estates, including Waniewo, which she had previously granted him "and bequeathed to him by particular Polish laws" (after "Podlaska siedziba Radziwiłłów w Waniewie z początku XVI wieku ..." by Wojciech Bis). Elizabeth, Princess of Goniądz and Medele (Myadzyel), was the youngest of three daughters of John Radziwill (d. 1542) and Anna Kostewicz of Leliwa coat of arms. As John had no son, the Goniądz-Medele line of the Radziwill family became extinct, and his domains were divided between his daughters, Anna, born in 1525, Petronella, born in 1526, and Elizabeth. On June 5, 1559, king Sigismund Augustus, orders Piotr Falczewski, Knyszyn leaseholder and Piotr Koniński, governor of Belz, to settle the matter between the royal subjects of the Tykocin Castle and the Kamieniec chamberlain Hieronim Sieniawski and his wife Elizabeth Radziwill. After Elizabeth's death her estates were inherited by her husband, who in 1577 sold Waniewo to the Princes Olelkovich-Slutsky. In the 18th century, the Berezhany Castle was famous for its collection of paintings parts of which are now kept in various museums of Ukraine. In 1762, the collection was located in 14 halls, other rooms and a library. The walls were covered with historical pictures. On the plafonds of two large halls there were battle compositions and the Great Hall was decorated with 48 portraits of the kings of Poland. In the "Viennese" halls, one with a large canvas on the ceiling showing the Relief of Vienna in 1683 and walls covered with red-gold brocade, there were portraits of Queen Jadwiga and Tsar Peter I, the other with Venetian style gilded ceiling and walls covered with green-red brocade was also hung with portraits. In the room with walls covered with Persian fabric with gold and silver, there were portraits of Hieronim Sieniawski, King Sigismund Augustus, Potocki, voivode of Kiev and a landscape painting. In the next room covered with green-red brocade and red portiere tapestries, there were Italian religious paintings. The gilded wooden ceiling of one of the rooms was decoarated with planets and carved human heads, most probably similar to the orginal coffered ceiling in the Chamber of Deputies at the Wawel Castle. There was a large pyramid-shaped chandelier there and several portraits of family members. Next was the library with other paintings and a room with gilded ceiling with 11 paintings showing the episodes from the Battle of Khotyn (1621) and several other portraits. In the fourth upper room there was a gilded ceiling filled with portraits (after "Brzeżany w czasach Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej: monografia historyczna" by Maurycy Maciszewski, p. 33-34). From 1772, after the First Partition of Poland, Berezhany belonged to Austria, while the descendants of the Sieniawski family were based in Russian partition. The abandoned castle gradually fell into disrepair. Many valuable items were sold at auction on August 16, 1784. When princess Lubomirska won the trial in Vienna against the Austrian government to recover the portraits of the Sieniawski family painted on silver and other valuables from the family tombs, it turned out that they were melted for coinage. Paintings and portraits were moved to the outbuildings, where they were rotting and crumbling to dust (after "Brzeżany w czasach Rzeczypospolitej ...", p. 54). The author of an article, published in Dziennik Literacki from 1860 (nr 49) recalled: "Today I will only add that there were very expensive Italian paintings in the chapel and castle halls in Berezhany. There are still people who remembered them. For some of these paintings, the Sieniawskis paid several thousand ducats. Years ago, when I asked the guardian of the chapel and the castle, a simple peasant, where are the paintings, he replied that the smaller ones were dismantled and stolen, and the larger canvases were cut into sacks on the order of the officialists. It happened 30 years ago. There were many historical portraits among the paintings, namely of the Sieniawski family". The deed of destruction was accomplished during the First and Second World War. The "Realm of Mars", god of war, left only ruins in Berezhany. The portrait of lady in the Museum of Western and Eastern Art in Odessa, Ukraine (inventory number ЗЖ-112) was acquired in 1950 from Alexandra Mitrofanovna Alekseeva Bukovetskaya (d. 1956), wife of Ukrainian painter Evgeny Iosifovich Bukovetsky (1866-1948). In 1891 Bukovetsky made a trip to western Europe, returning to Odessa in the same year. In Paris he attended the Académie Julian and worked for some time in Munich. Nevertheless, he or his wife, most likely acquired the painting later in Ukraine. The effigy is considered the work of a 16th-century Venetian artist and dated between 1550 and 1560. In 1954, on the back of the main canvas, a piece of another canvas was found with the inscription: restavrir 1877. Interestingly, between 1876-1878 Stanisław Potocki started renovation and restoration works in Berezhany. The costume of depicted woman is very similar to that visible in the effigy of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) in unknown collection (published on livejournal.com on June 2 2017). The portrait of the Queen is inscribed in Latin: CHATARINA.REGINA.POLONIE.ARCHI: / AVSTRIE, therefore should be dated to between 1553-1565, before the Queen's departure from Poland. It is also closely related to a portrait of an unknown lady wearing a red velvet gown with a V-shaped white lace front from the 1550s in the Apsley House. Another similar costume and pose of the sitter is visible in the portrait of a lady in red dress by Giovanni Battista Moroni in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, dated to about 1560. The woman wears a heavy gold earrings with cameos with female busts and a belt with a large cameo with sitting goddess Minerva holding on her right hand a figure, the personification of victory. Similar cameos were set on the casket of Hedwig Jagiellon, created in 1533 (The State Hermitage Museum) and the casket of Queen Bona Sforza, created in or after 1518 (Czartoryski Museum, lost during World War II). A certain similarity can also be indicated with the cameo with bust of Queen Barbara Radziwill by Jacopo Caraglio, created in about 1550 (State Coin Collection in Munich). The style of the mentioned portrait in Odessa is very close to the portrait of Veronika Vöhlin, created in 1552 and to the portrait of Charles V seated, created in 1548, both in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich and both attributed to Lambert Sustris, the same painter who created several effigies of Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570), the only daughter of hetman Jan Amor Tarnowski. The same woman was also depicted in another painting attributed to Sustris or his circle, and showing Venus and Cupid with the view of the evening landscape. It was painted on canvas (88 x 111 cm) and is today in the private collection in Germany. A smaller version of this composition (29.5 x 42 cm), painted on panel is today in the Hallwyl Museum in Stockholm. It was acquired in 1919 in Berlin, where before 1869 there was a Radziwill Palace (later Reich Chancellery). Basing on signature (F.F.) and style it is attributed to the Flemish painter Frans Floris, who traveled to Italy probably as early as 1541 or 1542. He spent several years there with his brother Cornelis. From 1547 until his death he lived in Antwerp, where he managed a large studio with many pupils. In 1549 Cornelis Floris was commissioned to make a funerary monument for Dorothea, wife of Albert, Duke of Prussia, cousin of King Sigismund II Augustus, in Königsberg Cathedral. Design for several tapestries with monogram of Sigismund Augustus (Wawel Royal Castle), created in about 1555, is attributed to Cornelis Floris. Until his death in 1575 he worked on an impressive series of sculptures at home and abroad, including the tomb for Duke Albert in Königsberg, carved in 1570. Königsberg, known as Królewiec in Polish, was the capital of Ducal Prussia, fief of Poland (till 1657) and one of the biggest cities and ports situated close to estates of the Goniądz-Medele line of the Radziwill family. Paintings by Frans Floris were imported to different countries in Europe already in the 16th century, like the Last Judgment, created in 1565, today in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, which was verifiable in Prague in 1621, and he died while working on large paintings for a Spanish client. In Poland there is an Allegory of Caritas, acquired in 1941 for the Museum in Gdańsk (inventory number M / 453 / MPG) and a portrait of a girl as Diana in the National Museum in Wrocław (inventory number VIII-2247). The Holy Kinship by Frans Floris from the Łańcut Castle, dated to about 1555, was sold in 1945 in Zurich and tin sarcophagus of Sigismund Augustus with allegories of five senses (Wawel Cathedral) was created by Flemish/Dutch sculptors (Monogrammist FVA and Wylm van Gulich) in 1572 and inspired by engravings after drawings by Frans Floris. The sitter from the described paintings by Lambert Sustris and Frans Floris, bear a resemblance to effigies of Anna Kostewicz and John Radziwill (a print and a portrait in the National Museum in Warsaw), parents of Elizabeth Radziwill. Among paintings offered in 1994 by Karolina Lanckorońska to the Wawel Royal Castle in Kraków, there is a small painting depicting the Rest on the Flight into Egypt (oil on panel, 94.5 x 69.6), painted in the style close to Lambert Sustris (inventory number ZKWawel 7954). Before 1915 it was in the Lanckoroński Palace in Rozdil (Rozdół in Polish), between Berezhany and Lviv in Ukraine, and later transported to Vienna. 
Portrait of Princess Elizabeth Radziwill (d. 1565) by Lambert Sustris, 1558-1560, Museum of Western and Eastern Art in Odessa.
Portrait of Princess Elizabeth Radziwill (d. 1565) as Venus and Cupid by Lambert Sustris or circle, 1558-1560, Private collection.
Portrait of Princess Elizabeth Radziwill (d. 1565) as Venus and Cupid by Frans Floris, 1558-1560, Hallwyl Museum in Stockholm.
The Holy Kinship from the Łańcut Castle by Frans Floris, ca. 1555, Private collection.
The Rest on the Flight into Egypt by Lambert Sustris, third quarter of the 16th century, Wawel Royal Castle.
Portraits of Anna Jagiellon, Catherine Jagiellon and Catherine of Austria as Venus by Titian
In 1558 died Mary Tudor and Philip II of Spain, ruler of the half of the known world was widowed again. He decided to marry. The future wife should be fertile and bear him many healthy sons, as his only son Don Carlos was showings signs of mental instability. At the same time the contacts of the Polish court with Spain increased. It is possible that Sigismund Augustus proposed his two unmarried sisters Anna and Catherine and sent to Spain their portraits. The match with the king of Spain, apart from great prestige, would also allow Sigismund to claim the heritage of his mother and the Neapolitan sums.
In January 1558, the councilor of the king of Spain, Alonso Sánchez took possession of the goods of the late Queen of Poland Bona in the name of the Spanish Crown and sequestered everything that was in the castle in Bari. Wojciech Kryski was sent to Madrid to appeal to Philip II about Bona's inheritance. Instructions for Kryski (January 16, 1558) and a letter from Sigismund Augustus to Philip (April 17, 1558) were dated from Vilnius. A letter of Pietro Aretino to Alessandro Pesenti of Verona, musician at the royal court, dated 17 July 1539, is the earliest witness to Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio's presence in Poland. Pesenti had been the organist to Cardinal Ippolito d'Este before becoming a royal musician at the Polish court on 20 August 1521. He was Bona's favourite organist and Caraglio created a medal with his profile on obverse and muscial instruments on reverse (Münzkabinett in Berlin). There were also other eminent Italian muscicians in royal capella, like Giovanni Balli, known in Poland as Dziano or Dzianoballi, who in the 1560s was paid 25 florins quaterly and many others. Among the lute players, the favourite of the king Sigismund II Augustus was Walenty Bakwark or Greff Bakffark (1515-1576), born in Transylvania who entered his service on 12 June 1549 in Kraków. He recieved many gifts from the king and his salary increased from 150 florins in 1558 to 175 florins in 1564. In 1559 he acquired a house in Vilnius and he travelled to Gdańsk, Augsburg, Lyon, Rome and Venice. From 1552 the court organist of the king was Marcin Andreopolita of Jędrzejów and Mikołaj of Chrzanów (d. 1562), an organist and composer. Most probably before his arrival to Poland Caraglio created numerous erotic prints, including sets of Loves of the Gods, which also contain very explicit scenes. One depicting Venus and Cupid (Di Venere e amore) is signed by him (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, RP-P-OB-35.614, · CARALIVS · / · FE · under Venus' foot). In April 1552, he made a brief return trip to Italy. On October 18, 1558 in Warsaw, Sigismund Augustus issued a privilege to Prospero Provano (or Prosper Provana, d. 1584), a Piedmontese merchant, to arrange permanent post Kraków - Venice via Vienna (Ordinatio postae Cracowia Venetias et super eandem generosus Prosper Provana praeficitur). The company was subsidized by the king and Prospero was paid 1,500 thalers a year by the royal treasury. The post was to transport luggage and people. Two paintings by Titian from the Spanish royal collection (Prado Museum in Madrid, oil on canvas, 138 x 222.4 cm, P000420 and 150.2 x 218.2 cm, P000421) and one from the Medici collection in Florence by workshop of Titian (Uffizi, oil on canvas, 139.2 x 195.5 cm, inv. 1890, 1431), shows Venus, goddess of love. They were created at the same time and they are almost identical, the protagonists however are different. In Prado versions the musician is interrupted in the act of making music by the sight of a nude beauty. He directs his eyes to her womb. In Uffizi version a musician is replaced with a partridge, a symbol of sexual desire. As in Venus of Urbino, all alludes to the qualities of a bride and the purpose of the painting. A dog is a symbol of fidelity, donkeys refer to eternal love, a stag is the attribute of the huntress Diana, a virgin goddess and protector of childbirth and a peacock, sacred animal of Juno, queen of the gods, sitting on a fountain refer to fecundity. A statue of satyr on the fountain is a symbol of the sexuality and voluptuous love. A pair of embraced lovers are heading towards the setting sun. A copy of "older" Venus from Prado is today in the Mauritshuis in The Hague (oil on canvas, 157 x 213 cm, inventory number 343). This painting was created in the studio of Titian and at the beginning of the 19th century was in the collection of Lucien Bonaparte, the younger brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, and later, until 1839, belonged to Cardinal Joseph Fesch in Rome. Another, most probably a workshop copy and close to the works by Lambert Sustris, is in the Royal Collection in England (oil on canvas, 96.3 x 136.9 cm, RCIN 402669). It once belonged to King Charles I and it is also attributed to Spanish artist Miguel de la Cruz (Michael Cross, active 1623-1660). Paintings from the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (oil on canvas, 115 x 210 cm, inv. 1849), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (oil on canvas, 165.1 x 209.6 cm, inv. 36.29) and the Fitzwilliam Museum (oil on canvas, 150.5 x 196.8 cm, inv. 129) are similar, but the women are married. The musician directs his eyes to breasts of the goddess, a symbol of maternity, or her head crowned with a wreath. Her womb is covered and in Berlin painting the goddess is departing (carriage in the background) towards the peaks of the far north - a good quality copy of this painting, possibly from Titian's 19th century copyist, is in Kaunas, Lithuania (oil on canvas, 115.5 x 202 cm, National Museum of Art, inventory number ČDM MŽ 1217). The copy from the collection of the Jewish lawyer Gino Pincherle in Trieste, lost during World War II, was attributed to the school of Titian (oil on canvas, 40 x 60 cm). The copyist did not faithfully reproduce the original, replaced the organist with a large vase and omitted the Cupid. The lanscape with stags and dancing satires in paintings of crowned Venus allude to fecundity. Despite the divine beauty of two sisters of king of Poland, Anna and Catherine Jagiellon, Philip decided for more favorable match with neighbouring France and married Elizabeth of France, who was engaged with his son. The younger Catherine married Duke of Finland in 1562 in Vilnius and departed to Finland. The painting in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin was acquired in 1918 from private collection in Vienna and the painting in the Fitzwilliam Museum was in the Imperial collection in Prague by 1621, therefore both were sent to Habsburgs. Lambert Sustris created a reduced copy of the version from the Fitzwilliam Museum without the lute player (or possibly cut later), which was sold in Rome in 2014 (Minerva Auctions, November 24, 2014, lot 18). The painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art was described in great detail in a 1724 inventory of the Pio di Savoia collection in Rome. Cardinal Rodolfo Pio da Carpi, humanist and patron of the arts, was the favorite candidate of Philip II of Spain in the Conclave of 1559. Catherine of Austria, willing to save her marriage and give the heir to Sigismund Augustus, most probably sent her portait to Rome to get a blessing, just as her mother Anna Jagellonica in about 1531 (Borghese Gallery). The effigy of Saint Catherine of Alexandria by Titian from about 1560 in the Prado Museum (oil on canvas, 135 x 98 cm, P000447) is very similar to other effigies of Queen Catherine and her portraits as Venus. The slashed wheel and the sword allude to the martyrdom of the saint and difficult marital situation of the Queen. Her royal status was appropriate for a foundation such as Royal Monastery of El Escorial (recorded as far as 1593). Despite her efforts she did not managed to save her marriage. The painting of Venus in Berlin was acquired in 1918, the year when Poland regained its independance after 123 years, eliminated by neighbouring countries. Blond goddeses of European culture were rulers of the country that should not exist (in the opinion of countries that partitioned the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), something totally inimaginable and inacceptable to many people back then. It is also worth noting here that one of the most important and one of the most beautiful male nudes in European painting, inspired by Renaissance and Baroque female nudes (such as Diego Velázquez's Venus del espejo), is found in Poland. The work, now kept at the National Museum in Warsaw (oil on canvas, 60 x 73 cm, MP 2242 MNW), was painted by Aleksander Lesser (1814-1884), a Polish painter of Jewish origin, in 1837, during his studies in Munich (signed and dated lower right: 18AL37). 
Portrait of Princess Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) as Venus with the organ player by Titian, ca. 1558, Prado Museum in Madrid.
Portrait of Princess Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) as Venus with the organ player by workshop of Titian, ca. 1558, Mauritshuis in The Hague.
Portrait of Princess Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) as Venus with the organ player by workshop or follower of Titian, possibly Lambert Sustris, ca. 1558 or after, The Royal Collection.
Portrait of Princess Catherine Jagiellon (1526-1583) as Venus with the organ player by Titian, ca. 1558, Prado Museum in Madrid.
Portrait of Princess Catherine Jagiellon (1526-1583) as Venus with a partridge (Venere della pernice) by workshop of Titian, ca. 1558, Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Portrait of Princess Catherine Jagiellon (1526-1583) as Venus with the organ player by Titian, ca. 1562, Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.
Portrait of Princess Catherine Jagiellon (1526-1583) nude by the school of Titian, ca. 1562 or after, Private collection, lost during World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Princess Catherine Jagiellon (1526-1583) as Venus with the organ player by follower of Titian, first half of the 19th century, National Museum of Art in Kaunas.
Portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) as Venus with the lute player by Titian, ca. 1558-1565, Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) as Venus by Lambert Sustris, ca. 1558-1565, Private collection.
Portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) as Venus with the lute player by Titian, ca. 1558-1565, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) as Saint Catherine by Titian, ca. 1558-1565, Prado Museum in Madrid.
Venus and Cupid by Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio, mid-16th century, Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Reclining male nude by Aleksander Lesser, 1837, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of Catherine Jagiellon in red by Giovanni Battista Moroni
Renaissance painters often drew inspiration from real life to depict religious scenes and placed them in interiors and settings typical of their country. This is why Giovanni Battista Moroni's Adoration of the Magi is set in a ruined Renaissance house, whose architecture is typical of Lombardy (oil on canvas, 97 x 112 cm, Codice di catalogo nazionale: 0303270207). Interestingly, the painter dressed Saint Melchior, the oldest member of the Magi, traditionally called the King of Persia, who brought the gift of gold to Jesus, in a costume typical of Polish-Lithuanian nobles of the time. The man wears a velvet coat the color of crimson Polish cochineal lined with expensive white fur. Similar costumes can be seen in the Theatrum virtutum ac meritorum D. Stanislai Hosii ..., created by Tomasz Treter (1547-1610) in Rome before 1588 (National Library of Poland, Rps BOZ 130), where, according to Latin captions, Polish noblemen were represented (Nobilis Polonus). After 1617, the Venetian painter Tommaso Dolabella placed his religious scene depicting the 11th-century Saint Stanislaus at the court of Sigismund III and the saint is surrounded by notables from Poland-Lithuania in their national costumes, including one in a crimson coat lined with white fur (Church of the Assumption of Mary in Warta). This means that the rich eastern kingdom was also for Moroni an example of oriental splendor and he knew this costume from his everyday life. This painting is dated around 1555-1560 and was originally part of the collection of the notary Gian Luigi Seradobati of Albino, the master's hometown. A copy probably made by Moroni's workshop is also in a private collection (oil on canvas, 97 x 120 cm, attributed to School of Bergamo).
A young woman in the portrait of a lady, known as La Dama in Rosso (Lady in Red) by Moroni in the National Gallery in London (oil on canvas, 155 x 106.8 cm, inv. NG1023), bears great resemblance to Catherine Jagiellon's miniature in German costume by Lucas Cranach the Younger and her portraits by Titian and his workshop. The identification as a portrait of poetess Lucia Albani Avogadro (1534-1568) is manly based on engraved effigy of Lucia in profile, with generic resemblance, by Giovanni Fortunato Lolmo created between 1575 and 1588, therefore almost ten years after her death, and inventory of Scipione Avogadro's collection in Brescia, which describes "two portraits by Moretto [da Brescia], one of the count Faustino, standing, the other of the countess Lucia, his wife" (Due ritratti del Moretto, uno del conte Faustino in piedi, altro della contessa Lucia sua moglie). The painting was purchased from Signor Giuseppe Baslini at Milan in 1876 with other portraits from Fenaroli Avogadro collection, most probably from their villa in Rezzato, near Brescia. Its previous history is unknown, it is threfore possible that it was acquired when their villa was extened in the 18th century or that Filippo Avogadro, who greeted Queen Bona in Treviso in 1556, wanted to have a portrait of her beautiful daughter. The sitter is pointing to a simple fan of straw worked with silk, the main accessory as in the portrait by Titian in Dresden. The fan was regarded as a status symbol in ancient Rome and developed as a means of protecting the holy vessels from pollution caused by flies and other insects in the Christian Church (flabellum), thus becoming a symbol of chastity. In Venice and Padua a fan was carried by betrothed or married women. Its specific octagonal shape might be a reference to renewal and transition as eight was the number of Resurrection (after "Signs & Symbols in Christian Art" by George Ferguson, p. 154), can then be interpreted as readiness to change marital status. In 1560, at the age of 34, Catherine was still unmarried and did not want be betrothed to a tirant, Tsar Ivan IV, who invaded Livonia committing horrible atrocities. This portrait would be a good information that she prefers an Italian suitor. It was commissioned around the same time as portraits of Catherine's brother and his wife by Moroni and Titian (Prado Museum). The king opposed his sister Catherine's marriage to the Duke of Finland. In response to his mother's letters, which required him to help his sisters marry, Sigismund Augustus constantly repeated that he did not want to impose his will on them, but that he would comply with that of his sisters. He declared to the Duke of Finland, who was seeking to marry Princess Catherine: "Venetians came to the Kingdom of Cyprus offering a noble Venetian woman in marriage. The princess Her Majesty will be all the happier than her other sisters, for she will marry whomever she wishes; while they had to marry men they have never seen [in real life]" (after "Cnoty i wady narodu szlacheckiego ..." by Antoni Górski, p. 62). Less well known is the fact of the marriage negotiations which, with the mediation of Ludovico Monti, lasted for years, although conducted with little conviction on the part of both parties, between a son of Ferrante I Gonzaga (1507-1557), governor of the Duchy of Milan between 1546 and 1554, and the youngest daughter of Bona (after "La trama Nascosta - Storie di mercanti e altro" by Rita Mazzei). Perhaps they were undertaken thanks to queen's efforts. It is not clear why he wanted to marry Catherine, although her older sister Anna was unmarried. Perhaps Anna, aged thirty-three, seemed too old to the count of Guastalla, or perhaps he knew from somewhere that Catherine was prettier. However, Sigismund Augustus refused Gonzaga (February 1556), because he feared that the Italian, married to a Jagiellonian princess, would become Bona's heir and take over Bari (after "Jagiellonowie: leksykon biograficzny" by Małgorzata Duczmal, p. 340). The governor of Milan undoubtedly received several portraits of the Polish-Lithuanian Princess-Infanta. In a letter dated 20 February 1556, the king mentions other candidates and "the delay in efforts". 
Portrait of Catherine Jagiellon (1526-1583) in red by Giovanni Battista Moroni, 1556-1560, National Gallery in London.
Adoration of the Magi with a man in a costume of a Polish-Lithuanian nobleman by Giovanni Battista Moroni, ca. 1555-1560, Private collection.
Portraits of Catherine Jagiellon by circle of Titian
In the 16th century fashion was an instrument of politics and princesses of Poland-Lithuania had in their coffers Spanish, French, Italian and German robes. Their clothing also reflected the great diversity of Poland-Lithuania (and Ruthenia).
The inventory of dowry of Catherine Jagiellon (1526-1583), Duchess of Finland includes many items similar to these visible in the portraits identified as likenesses of the Duchess of Urbino: "Necklaces with precious stones, 17 pieces (the most expensive 16,800 thalers)", "Pearl caps (13 pieces). From 40 thaler. to 335", "Buckles on (thirteen) French and Spanish robes", 17 velvet, long underneath garments, including one crimson with 72 French buckles (ferety), and "longitudinal pontały [jewels and ornaments sewn onto the dress, imitating embroidery] with blocks with the same white and brown-red enamel is pair 146", 6 satin underneath garments, one robe of white satin embroidered with gold and silver with 76 buckles, and a robe of brown-red satin embroidered along the length with gold thread (Opisanie rzeczy, które Królewna J. M. Katarzyna Polska a Księżna Finlandzka z sobą wziąść raczyła A. D. 1562 die octava mensis Octobris, compare "Jagiellonki polskie w XVI wieku. Korrespondencya polska ...", Volume 3, p. 312-314, 317, 320). The wealth of clothes of Catherine's brother, Sigismund Augustus, as well as the great diversity of the country, its fashions and customs were praised by Jean Choisnin de Chastelleraut in his "Speech in truth of all that happened for the entire negotiation of the election of the king of Poland", dedicated to Catherine de' Medici (1519-1589) and published in Paris in 1574 (Ie diray d'auantage, qu'il a laisse plus de riches habillemens, & d'armes, & d'Artillerie que tous les Roys qui sont auiourd'huy viuans ne sçauroient monstrer, p. 123). The Duchess of Finland took with her from Vilnius many luxury clothes and household items, as well as plenty of clothing "for eight ladies and two female dwarves" (na ośm panien i na dwie karliczki) and servants. As in other European countries, marriage plans and negotiations were often accompanied by portraits, so many portraits of the beautiful and wealthy daughter of Sigismund I and Bona Sforza must have been made during her lifetime. However, very few were known before this blog. Furthermore, very few sources confirming this practice within the ruling dynasty of Poland-Lithuania have been preserved. In a letter from 1562 to Gabriel Tarło (d. 1565), Duke Albert of Prussia (1490-1568), cousin of Sigismund Augustus, requests a portrait and information on the age and dowry of the king's youngest sister (der jüngsten Schwester des Königs) - Catherine, with a view to her possible marriage to the young Duke of Holstein. At that time, there were Italians at Albert's court, such as the horse trainer Antonio Arduvia from Ferrara (confirmed in 1558), a mason (in 1562), a lutenist (in 1565), a physician from Florence (in 1566) and most likely an Italian painter. According to a contract from 1561, several ships were to be built each year for the Venetians in East Prussia (compare "Die Kunst am Hofe der Herzöge von Preussen" by Hermann Ehrenberg, p. 118, 196). It is therefore quite possible that Italian artists were involved in creating the portrait of Catherine for the Duke of Holstein. Friends and allies of Catherine's mother in Italy must also have received several portraits of the princess, who spoke Italian fluently. While mentions of portraits of kings, queens and hereditary princes of Spain, France and England are quite common in inventories of the Medici residences, such as "a painted portrait of the Queen of England, by the hand of Louis the Flemish" (Un quadro del ritratto della regina d'Inghilterra, di mano di Luigi Fiamingo), mentioned in the inventory of the Palazzo Vecchio from the 1560s (Guardaroba di Cosimo I de' Medici, Segnatura: ASF, GM 65, c. 160), the status of the elected monarchs of Poland-Lithuania probably contributed to the fact that their effigies were not considered worthy of mention or their identity was quickly forgotten after being received. The inventory of the Villa del Poggio Imperiale from 1646-1652 mentions "A small painting on panel, depicting a foreign lady, by Titian" (Quadretto in tavola, dipintovi una gentildonna forestiera, di Tizziano, Segnatura: ASF, GM 674, c. 2), as well as one of the oldest mentions of a portrait "representing a lady dressed in black in the old style, said to be the Duchess Eleonora of Urbino, by Titian" (dipintovi una signora vestita di nero all'antica, che dicono sia la Duchessa Leonora d'Urbino, di Tizziano, Segnatura: ASF, GM 674, c. 272). The number of mentions of portraits of kings, queens or princes of Poland increases in the inventories of the early 17th century, when the mothers of the young Medicis and the Polish-Lithuanian Vasas were related (Constance of Austria and her younger sister Maria Maddalena). The portrait identified as representing Giulia da Varano (1523-1547), who married Guidobaldo II della Rovere (1514-1574), Duke of Urbino, in 1534, now preserved in the Pitti Palace in Florence (oil on panel, 113.5 x 88 cm, inv. 764 - Oggetti d'arte Pitti (1911)), can be considered a portrait of a bride or depicting a potential candidate for marriage. Numerous jewels and a bunch of roses allude to the purity and qualities of a bride. The necklace is a jewel in which three different stones are set, each with its own precise meaning: the emerald indicates chastity, the ruby indicates charity, the sapphire indicates purity and the big pearl is finally a symbol of fidelity in marriage. The portrait could therefore be dated to around 1534, but the woman looks older than 11 years old (Giulia's age at the time of her marriage). The identification as portrait of Giulia da Varano is mainly based on inventory of the Ducal Palace of Pesaro from about 1624, which says about the portrait of the Duchess in ebony frames with her coat of arms and interlaced monogram G.G. of Giulia and her husband (Quadro uno simile con cornici d'ebano con lauoro dell'arme di Casa Varana con G. G. legati insieme ne cantoni fog[li] e e ghiande di cerqua col Retratto della Duch[ess]a Giulia Varana). The Duchess of Urbino died in Fossombrone, at the age of 24, in 1547, after two months of illness. She was buried in a gamurra satin ochre dress with stripes, displayed at the Brancaleoni Castle in Piobbico. The following year, the widower Guidobaldo remarried Vittoria Farnese (1519-1602). In the 17th century, a painter from the Marche created portraits of two of Guidobaldo's wives, both inscribed in Latin (private collection). While the effigy of Vittoria resembles other portraits identified as Guidobaldo's second wife, the portrait of a lady in a green dress inscribed in Latin IVLIA VARANI / I VXOR GVIDONIS VBALDI II VRB・DVC, could hardly be compared to the portrait in the Pitti Palace. The monogram on the buckles of the woman's dress visible in the portrait is interpreted as that of Giulia and Guidobaldo, but it closely resembles the monogram of Catherine de' Medici, Queen of France, who was regent of France between 1560 and 1563. A similar interlaced CC can be seen on a plaque with miniatures of Catherine, her husband and other members of her family, painted by François Clouet around 1559. It probably belonged to Catherine herself, who would then have left it as an inheritance to her favourite niece Christine of Lorraine (1565-1637), married to the Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinand I (1549-1609), now preserved in the Uffizi Gallery (inv. 1890, 815). The dress of the Queen of France from her miniature portrait in the center is also decorated with buckles with the monogram of her and her husband HCC intertwined. The Queen of France, the most powerful Italian woman of the time, was undoubtedly a model or idol for the woman in the portrait, as her dress and hairstyle bear a strong resemblance to French fashion of the time, visible in the portrait of Catherine de' Medici by an unknown painter, after original from the 1550s (Uffizi Gallery, inv. 4301 / 1890) and the miniature portrait of Mary Stuart (1542-1587), Queen of Scots by François Clouet, dated circa 1558-1560 (Royal Collection, RCIN 401229). The famous pendant of the namesake of the Queen of France, Catherine Jagellon with her monogram C with which she was buried, commissioned by her father in Nuremberg in 1546 and made by Nicolaus Nonarth (now in the Treasury of Uppsala Cathedral), was not included in the mentioned inventory of her dowry, however the crimson dress with 72 French buckles or 146 pontały matches the portrait in Florence almost perfectly. The Florentine museums have one of the richest collections of effigies of European monarchs, in particular of Catherine de' Medici, of various origins, some of which were probably sent from France or painted by Florentine painters. We can mention three others representing her before widowhood (Uffizi, inv. 21 / 1890 and inv. 2257 / 1890; Pitti, inv. 2448 / 1890), as well as four as a widow (Uffizi, inv. 2236 / 1890; inv. 441 / Poggio Imperiale (1860); Pitti, inv. 275 / Oggetti d'Arte Castello (1911); Pitti, inv. 5665 / 1890). Catherine Jagiellon, despite her links with the Italian peninsula, is not represented (according to the sources and identifications known before this blog). The portrait preserved in the Pitti Palace is considered to be a copy of a lost original by Titian, which indicates that the painter and his workshop created several portraits of this bride intended to be sent to different places in Europe. The woman depicted strongly resembles the future Duchess of Finland, based on her known effigies in German-style costume (Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, inv. Gm 622, lost, and Czartoryski Museum in Kraków, MNK XII-543). The same woman was depicted in another portrait thought to be a work by Titian's studio (oil on canvas, 39.4 x 31.1 cm, Christie's New York, Auction 2511, January 26, 2011, lot 115). She was shown in profile wearing a Spanish-style satin dress and a pearl snood or cap, a comparable example of which was depicted in the intaglio with the profile of Catherine's mother, Bona Sforza (Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, inv. 284). The portrait was sold with an attribution to the late 16th-century Venetian school, and the identification of the sitter as Giulia da Varano has not been maintained. The woman wears a pendant with an indistinct monogram (probably as a result of copying), which could originally be an intertwined I and C, thus Ioannes and Catharina for John of Finland and Catherine Jagiellon, four intertwined Cs as in the mentioned monogram of Catherine de' Medici or Christogram IHS. A somewhat similar late Gothic pendant with a Christogram from the second half of the 15th century adorns the Diamond Robe of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa (Jasna Góra Treasury). In Florence, another portrait of the same woman, depicted in a black velvet dress embroidered with gold, is preserved, today in the Bardini Museum (oil on canvas, 73 x 54 cm, inv. Bardini, n. 1461). The work in the catalogue of the auction of the Bardini collection, which took place in London in 1922, was attributed to Paolo Veronese. This attribution was later corrected to the Venetian school of the second half of the 16th century. The inventory of the Duchess of Finland included four black velvet dresses, three of which were probably Italian or French in style, and a Spanish "under the throat" (pod gardło) with 198 trumpet-shaped buckles. The style of this painting resembles works attributed to Bernardino Licinio, who died in Venice before 1565. 
Portrait of Catherine Jagiellon (1526-1583) by Venetian school, most probably Bernardino Licinio, 1550s, Bardini Museum in Florence.
Portrait of Catherine Jagiellon (1526-1583) in a pearl snood net by circle of Titian, before 1562, Private collection.
Portrait of Catherine Jagiellon (1526-1583) as a bride by circle of Titian, before 1562, Pitti Palace in Florence.
Portrait of a courtier, most likely the writer Łukasz Górnicki by Paris Bordone
"It must be to Your Royal Majesty's good fortune, Most Serene and Gracious King, that under no other Polish king were there so many scholars in Poland as during the reign of Your Royal Grace: and it is not by chance, but precisely from Your Royal hands, that Poland possesses so many books in its own language, as there have never been before. [...] And I, a servant of Your Royal Grace, noting this, and understanding that all this is very pleasing to Your Royal Grace, what someone does for the Polish nation with a virtuous spirit, undertook a work, so that I could also show something. And according to the old custom, as did Count Balcer Castiglion, whose courtier I wished to translate into Polish, I recorded the conversations of Your Royal Grace's courtiers, from Prądnik. [...] Written in Tykocin, on the eighteenth of July in the year one thousand five hundred and sixty-five from the Nativity of Our Lord", reads the dedication to King Sigismund II Augustus. It was published in 1566 in the best-known work of the writer Łukasz Górnicki (1527-1603) - "The Polish Courtier" (Dworzanin polski), a paraphrase of the treatise Il cortegiano by Baldassare Castiglione.
Unlike Castiglione, who, in his famous work, written at the court of Urbino between 1508 and 1516 and published in 1528 in Venice, propagated new rules of social coexistence, a culture of behavior and respect for women, Górnicki not included any female characters, which in the original reflected the atmosphere of the Italian court. He also removed homoerotic themes, adding: "As for de effeminatis [the effeminate] he speaks of, since this bad custom has not come down to us, it would be a shame to mention it as well". It should be remembered, however, that around 1554 Górnicki received minor clerical orders (Jan Kochanowski did the same) and obtained several ecclesiastical benefices in this capacity. As a member of the clergy at the time of the impending Counter-Reformation, he undoubtedly could not freely base his work on Castiglione's original. However, he included the following conversation between Stanisław Bojanowski (1507-1555) and Andrzej Kostka: "[...] and yet women always want to be men [...] This is indeed the case, but not because of our greater perfection, but because of the freedom we have taken from them" (białegłowy lepszego nie baczą, ale niebożątka radyby mężczyznami były dla swobody, chcąc ujść surowej naszej zwierzchności, którąśmy sobie sami nad nimi przywłaszczyli, i tą zniewoliliśmy niebogi nad przystojeństwo). In 1554, Łukasz's uncle, Stanisław Gąsiorek, called Anserinus, better known as Stanisław Kleryka, cleric of the royal chapel on Wawel, made a will in his favor and bequeathed him the Wieliczka rectory and the canonship of the Kruszwica collegiate church, and then, in 1562, the rectory in Kęty. Górnicki did not personally perform the duties associated with his office, but, as was the custom at the time, simply drew on the income from these offices, using deputies. Having thus acquired greater financial resources, he left for Italy in 1557 for two years, where he began studying law in Padua. He returned to Poland in February 1559 and, although he did not obtain a university degree, he received the honorable rank of secretary of the royal secret chancellery, a position that, in practice, was reserved only for eminent individuals. On November 23, 1559, he was appointed librarian to Sigismund Augustus. He held this for nearly thirteen years, until the king's death in 1572. Probably shortly after his return from Italy, he began adapting Castiglione's Il cortegiano in Vilnius and completed it in Tykocin, where the royal library was eventually relocated. He adapted Castiglione's work to the reality of the court of his former patron, the Crown Vice-Chancellor and Bishop of Kraków, Samuel Maciejowski (1499-1550). From around 1545 he stayed at the Bishop's Palace in Prądnik, near Kraków. At that time, the Orthodox, Protestant, and Jewish denominations dominated in many parts of the country, so claims that the views of a small group of courtiers at the court of the Catholic bishop perfectly reflected those of the entire nation are completely unfounded. The Polish Courtier was printed in Kraków in 1566 by one of the finest printers of the time, Maciej Wirzbięta (1523-1605). The work, however, was not among the widely read. Unlike the successive reprints of Kochanowski's works, no new edition appeared during Gornicki's lifetime, that is, before 1603 (after "Łukasz Górnicki, jego życie i dzieła" by Raphael Löwenfeld, p. 20-21, 23, 25, 28, 32, 35, 38, 45-47, 79, 94, 107, 164, 225). Another important work by Górnicki in the context of his travels and education in Italy is "A Conversation between a Pole and an Italian on Polish Freedoms and Rights" (Rozmowa Polaka z Wlochem O Wolnosciach Y Prawach Polskich), a political dialogue written around 1588-1598 and published around 1616. The Pole is a representative of Sarmatian ideology, while the Italian recreates the views of the author himself, boldly criticizing the political system in Poland and in particular "golden freedom", the judicial system and the administration. The writer's stay in Italy between 1557 and 1559 was not the only one. He probably stayed there between 1543 and 1548, although the precise dates are unknown. In many places Górnicki refers to Gasparo Contarini's work De magistratibus, et repub. Venetorum libri quinq., published in Basel in 1547, which he had evidently studied thoroughly. The Republic of Venice serves as his model everywhere. He probably also visited Rome, and even stayed there for a long time. With the royal court, he traveled through the lands forming Sarmatia, notably to Gdańsk and Królewiec in 1552, then to Kaunas and Vilnius the following year. Shortly after Easter 1553, Sigismund Augustus sent an embassy to Vienna to negotiate a marriage with his relative Catherine of Austria, widow of the Duke of Mantua and daughter of the Roman King Ferdinand. Przerębski headed the embassy, and among the few courtiers who accompanied him was also Górnicki. Between 1559 and 1562, Łukasz lived mainly at the court in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In 1561, he was in Rudnik. In the same year, the king left Vilnius in November and arrived in Łomża, where Górnicki received "secret letters". In October 1562, he attended the wedding of Catherine Jagiellon, the king's sister, in Vilnius with the entire court, and then went to the Sejm in Piotrków. The year 1561 was particularly important for Górnicki, as he obtained from the king written confirmation of his alleged nobility of the Ogończyk coat of arms (May 6 / July 2), which was questioned in 1555 by Łukasz Oleśnicki. He was actually the son of Marcin Góra (original name) and Anna Gąsiorkówna, poor townspeople from Bochnia. On February 13, 1561, the king also granted him an annual pension of 100 florins, paid around Easter from the tax office of the city of Kraków, and on May 15, a second sum of 100 Hungarian gold zlotys, which constituted the tax on Kraków's Jews. It is not known when he renounced his ecclesiastical benefices, but around 1570 Górnicki married Barbara Broniewska (1557-1587), 30 years his junior, daughter of Stanisław (1507-1582), equerry of Przemyśl and starost of Medyka. Barbara's father was a royal courtier who traveled to various courts in Europe. The writer died on July 22, 1603, at the age of 76 (Obiit Anno Domini 1603. Die 22 mensis Julii, aetatis suae anno 76to), as evidenced by the commemorative plaque on his tombstone in the Bernardine Church in Tykocin. He was buried alongside his wife and children, and the tombstone was erected by his sons Jan and Łukasz. The church, located on an island in the Narew River, adjacent to the castle island, was demolished before 1771 due to the river waters undermining the buildings. There are no known portraits of the author of "The Polish Courtier" from the time he lived. No information about his appearance has survived. According to information and portraits found on the internet, artificial intelligence depicts him as a dark-haired man. A description left by Górnicki in "The Polish Courtier" suggests that he was a connoisseur of painting: "Like a good Painter, he sets a thing in shadow and makes it opaque and with brightness he sets it far away, deep, lowers, shortens it, according to need: by putting different colors, he supports one thing against another; and knowing where to put something against something, he shows what he wants to the eyes of men". In 2008, a portrait of a dark-haired man wearing a black fur-lined coat and holding a cap in his right hand, painted by Paris Bordone, was sold in London (oil on canvas, 94.5 x 78 cm, Sotheby's, December 4, 2008, lot 167). At the beginning of the 20th century, this painting was in a private collection in Florence. The man's pose and his rich costume suggest that he was a nobleman and courtier. In the lower right corner, we can see traces of inscription: ÆTATIS / ANNO / [..] III, while at the time of the Van Diemen sale in 1935, the catalog states that the inscription in the lower right was: ÆTATIS / ANNO / XXXIII and that the work was signed and dated in the lower left: O.P.B. [Opus Paris Bordone] 1561. The painting was therefore created in the year in which Górnicki received confirmation of his nobility and significant income. The man depicted in this portrait was 33 years old at the time of its creation. Although the date on his tombstone indicates that Łukasz should have been 34 that year, this discrepancy is minimal and generally acceptable, as in the case of the portrait of Ferdinand I of Austria (1503-1564), aged 46 in 1548 (MDXLVIII / ANNO ETATIS SVE / XXXXVI), created by Titian's workshop or follower (Dorotheum in Vienna, June 9, 2021, lot 155). Since the inscription is damaged, it is possible that the original age was XXXIIII or that the painter, for some reason, did not add an "I". Moreover, the age of Łukasz's wife at the time of her death is very interesting in this regard. According to the poem dedicated to her by her husband, "She lived 29 years and three months and died in 1587, on the last day of February" (Żyła lat 29, miesięcy trzy, umarła roku 1587, dnia ostatniego Lutego, after "Żywot Łukasza Górnickiego" by Bronisław Czarnik, p. 48), she was therefore born around December 1557. Paris Bordone worked for King Sigismund Augustus and also painted a splendid portrait of his goldsmith Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio, now preserved in Wawel Castle. There is no evidence that the painter and the model met around 1561 and, in general, Bordone's visit to Sarmatia is not confirmed. However, in the same year, a friend of Górnicki - Andrzej Patrycy Nidecki (1522-1587), who had also studied in Padua between 1557 and 1559 and returned to the country in May 1559, published in Venice fragments of Cicero with a dedication to Filip Padniewski (dated: Dat. Vilnæ, in Lituania, die XX. Iunii, anno Christi nati M. D. LX. [Vilnius June 20, 1560], Fragmentorvm M. Tvllii Ciceronis tomi IIII cum Andr. Patricii adnotationibus; Venetiis, apud Iordanum Ziletum [Giordano Ziletti], M. D. LXI.). Therefore, in the same way that the book finished in Vilnius could be printed in Venice, the portrait of the courtier living in Vilnius could be produced in Venice. 
Portrait of a courtier, most likely the writer Łukasz Górnicki (1527-1603) by Paris Bordone, 1561, Private collection.
Portrait of Jan Firlej by Titian
After his missions to Emperor Charles V in Worms in 1545 and to the court of King Ferdinand I of Austria in 1547, the brilliant career of Jan Firlej (1521-1574) continued. He was a courtier of the king (1545), secretary of the king (1554), castellan of Belz (1555), voivode of Belz (1556), voivode of Lublin (1561), grand marshal of the Crown (1563), voivode and starost of Kraków (1572) and marshal of the Sejm (1573). After 1550, he converted to Lutheranism, then to Calvinism and introduced Protestantism in his estates. He was one of the most prominent promoters of Protestantism in the Commonwealth and an ardent defender of Polish dissidents.
Before Queen Bona left for Italy in 1556, Jan was delegated by King Sigismund Augustus, together with several other castellans under the direction of Crown Chancellor Jan Ocieski, to collect important state documents from her. The description of their activities, preserved in the letter of the chancellor of January 27, 1556 from Warsaw to the king, is interesting: "When we came to receive the letters, Her Highness began with the words: Praise God that everyone should know about my business. In my lord's time no one knew what I had in my chest; now I have to open it. But I am really happy to do it, and I will gladly do it" (Laudetur Deus quod omnes debent scire res meas; tempore domini mei nemo scivit quid ego in cista mea habebam; nunc oportet me aperire. Sed vere ego sum contenta, libenter faciam). It was mainly Queen Bona's protection that helped the house of Firlej grow: "The one who ran away from us with an immeasurable catch / Cunning, greedy, lustful, Italian in a word, [...] With what she stripped from others, she dressed the Firlejs", wrote Ignacy Krasicki (1735-1801). Interestingly, this negative opinion about the queen was written by the Catholic bishop, who after the first partition of Poland became a close friend of Frederick II of Prussia, considered misogynist and homosexual (after "Dwie książki o Ignacym Krasickim" by Stefan Jerzy Buksiński, p. 62). After the death of his brother-in-law Jan Boner (1516-1562), the castle of Ogrodzieniec passed into the possession of Jan Firlej, as husband of Zofia, daughter of Seweryn Boner. Zofia's father was a royal banker and baron in Ogrodzieniec, a title received from King Ferdinand I in 1540. Firlej was also the king's envoy to Moldavia, where he received the oath of allegiance from Bogdan IV (1555-1574), prince of Moldavia (from 1568 to 1572). During the first interregnum (1572-1573), the French court sent him rich gifts through a Pole, in order to obtain his support for the candidacy of Henry, Duke of Anjou to the throne of Poland-Lithuania, but Firlej rejected the gifts and severely rebuked the messenger. He allegedly wanted the throne for himself. In the picture gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, there is portrait of a man in a coat lined with expensive lynx fur, painted by Titian (oil on canvas, 115.8 x 89 cm, GG 76). The painting comes from the the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria and was recorded in the Theatrum Pictorium (number 95), after two paintings depicting Roxelana (numbers 93, 94), identified by me. David Teniers the Younger, court painter of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, created between 1650-1656 a small copy of this painting, now in the Courtauld Institute of Art (oil on panel, 22.6 x 17 cm, P.1978.PG.436). He also depicted the painting in several views of Archduke's Gallery in Brussels (Schleißheim State Gallery, 1819, 1840, 1841), however in an incorrect layout, thus probably copying the earlier version of Lucas Vorsterman's engraving or a drawing. Titian's painting was previously thought to depict Filippo di Piero Strozzi (1541-1582), a member of the Florentine Strozzi family and condottiero, who in 1557 entered the French army and fought the Calvinist Huguenots, but this identification was rejected. Strozzi's miniature, possibly by Anton Boys, is also in the Kunsthistorisches Museum. The Habsburg collections included many portrait paintings of notable figures, mostly sent as gifts, so the man in the Venetian painter's painting must have been an important international figure. This is more of an official portrait, so the man was rather not a warrior or military leader, like Strozzi portrayed in a suit of armor of an admiral. He was most likely a diplomat or politician. The painting was initially larger in its upper part, as evidenced by old photographs and copies by Teniers. His face has also been changed. Possibly it was repainted by another painter because Titian does not render the likeness well and these alterations were removed in the 20th century. The man's pose and facial features, especially in the pre-restoration versions, resemble Jacopo Tintoretto's portrait in the Kröller-Müller Museum, depicting Firlej in 1547 at the age of 26. The painting is generally dated to around 1560, when Jan obtained important posts of voivode of Lublin (1561) and grand marshal of the Crown (1563). As a Calvinist close to Queen Bona, he can generally be seen as an opponent of the Habsburgs and their policies, but as an important dignitary, good relations with him, like for the French court, were undoubtedly important. So it was good to receive his beautiful portrait, but not necessarily to remember his identity. 
Portrait of Jan Firlej (1521-1574) by Titian, 1560s, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Jan Firlej (1521-1574) by Titian, 1560s, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (before restoration).
Portrait of Jan Firlej (1521-1574) by David Teniers the Younger after Titian, 1650s, Courtauld Gallery in London.
Portrait of Jan Firlej (1521-1574) from the Theatrum Pictorium (95) by Lucas Vorsterman the Elder after Titian, 1673, Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava.
Portrait of Catherine Jagiellon in white by Titian
In the first half of the 18th century, a Swedish painter Georg Engelhard Schröder, created copies of two portraits of Venetian ladies by Titian. These two portraits, in Gripsholm Castle near Stockholm, are undeniably a pair, pendants showing two members of the same family, sisters. They are the only two copies of Titian by Schröder in this collection, they have almost identical dimensions (99 x 80 cm / 100 x 81 cm), composition, the two women are similar and the paintings have even similar inventory number (NMGrh 187, NMGrh 186), a proof that they were always together. The woman holding a cross and a book is Anna Jagiellon, as in the painting by circle of Titian in Kassel, the other must be then her younger sister Catherine Jagiellon, Duchess of Finland from 1562 and later Queen of Sweden.
After 1715 the Gripsholm Castle was abandoned by the royal court and between 1720 and 1770, it was used as a county jail. In 1724 Schröder was made the court painter of Frederick I of Sweden, who highly valued him. It is very probable that the king ordered the painter to copy two old, damaged portraits of unknown ladies from Gripsholm, which were then thrown away, replaced with copies by Schröder. The portrait of a second lady, in white dress and holding a fan, considered to be Titian's mistress, his daughter as a bride or a Venetian courtesan, is known from several copies. The best known is that in Dresden (without a pattern on sitter's dress, which a pupil of Titian most probably forgot or didin't managed to add), acquired in 1746 from the collection of the d'Este family (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, oil on canvas, 102 x 86 cm, inv. Gal.-Nr. 170), which were friends and allies of "the Milanese princess", Bona Sforza, Catherine's mother. The other, now lost, was copied by Peter Paul Rubens, most probably during his stay in Mantua between 1600-1608, tohether with a portrait of Isabella d'Este, also by Titian and also considered to be lost (both in Vienna - Kunsthistorisches Museum, oil on canvas, 96.2 x 73 cm, GG 531) and another recorded by Anton van Dyck in his Italian sketchbook (British Museum) from the 1620s. In case of a copy by Rubens, it's also highly probable that Catherine's son, Sigismund III Vasa, who ordered paintings and portraits from the Flemish painter, also commissioned a copy of a portrait of his mother in about 1628. Another copy by a Flemish painter, holding a rose, can be found in Canterbury Museums and Galleries (oil on canvas, 54 x 40 cm, CANCM:4036). The dress, as that visible in the portraits, is described among the dresses of the Duchess of Finland in the inventory of her dowry from 1562: "Satin (6 pieces). Satin white robe; on it four embroidered rows at the bottom made of woven gold thread with silver; the bodice and sleeves are also embroidered in a similar manner; buckles on them with red enamel 76" (after "Jagiellonki polskie w XVI. wieku: Korrespondencya polska ..." by Alexander Przezdziecki, Volume 3, p. 317). This likeness, as well as the best-known effigy of the princess, a miniature by Lucas Cranach the Younger (Czartoryski Museum, oil on copper, 19.5 x 17.5 cm, inv. MNK XII-543), and a full-length portrait in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg (inv. Gm 622), destroyed during the Second World War, probably based on the same initial portrait, can be compared with two portraits of the Czech noblewoman Bohunka of Rožmberk (1536-1557). In the portrait in Nelahozeves Castle (inv. č. L 4766), Bohunka was depicted in a black outfit very similar to that of the best-known portraits of Catherine. In a later portrait, probably painted on the occasion of her engagement around 1555, now in the Lobkowicz Palace in Prague (inv. č. L 5185), she wears a rich dress in the Spanish-French style. Even without Titian's idealization, Catherine, just as her mother, was considered a beautiful woman, which, unfortunately, is less visible in her portraits in German costume by Cranach the Younger. The Russian envoy reported to Tsar Ivan the Terrible in 1560 that Catherine was beautiful, but that she was crying (after "Furstinnan : en biografi om drottning Katarina Jagellonica" by Eva Mattssons), unwilling to marry a man famous of his violence and cruelty. The painting in Dresden, and its copies, was most probably commissioned by Sigismund Augustus or Anna Jagiellon and sent to the Italian friends. Another version of this portrait by circle of Titian, most probably from the collection of Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575), Duchess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel is also in Kassel not far from Brunswick (Wilhelmshöhe Castle, oil on canvas, 99 x 79 cm, inv. 490). The three sisters Sophia, Anna and Catherine are therefore reunited in their portraits by circle of Titian in Kassel. In 1563, King Eric XIV of Sweden imprisoned his brother John and his consort Catherine Jagiellon in the Gripsholm Castle. Few years later Catherine granted authority to her sister Anna to fight for the Italian inheritance of Queen Bona. In the Uffizi Gallery in Florence there is also a miniature by an Italian painter, possibly Sofonisba Anguissola, showing the same blond woman in a costume similar to that visible in portraits of Catherine Stenbock, Dowager Queen of Sweden from the 1560s (oil on panel, 13 cm, inv. 1890, n. 3953). It depicts Catherine Jagiellon during the time of imprisonment in Gripsholm Castle between 1563 and 1567. Rather because of the appearance of the lady and her costume, than the style of the painting, it was initially attributed to the Northern School, to Hans Holbein the Elder. The miniature comes from the collection of Cardinal Leopold de Medici (1617-1675). The style of this work is also comparable to that of Sofonisba's master, Bernadino Campi (1522-1591), especially the portrait of Isabella Gonzaga (1537-1579), Princess of Francavilla (Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 63.43.1), identified by me. Both Sofonisba and Campi came from Cremona, just like Catherine's courtier, Paolo Ferrari, who had arrived in Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia before 1556 with the intention of serving Queen Bona, Catherine's mother. He was not part of the princess's retinue, but in Finland he was counted among the courtiers. Sigismund Augustus, when marrying off this sister, foresaw that misfortune might befall her. This may be a later addition, but Łukasz Górnicki (1527-1603) expresses it this way: in Gdańsk, before Catherine's departure to Finland, the king "had some talks with his sister in the black chamber near us, the meaning of which was: that if anything happened to the princess, let her not blame the king, to which the princess gave a wonderful answer; and the duke [of Finland] was not present at this conversation. He got into the carriage with the princess, and the duke of Finland rode on a horse; and for quite a while the king sat in the carriage together with the princess, then he got out and said goodbye to the duke and the princess, who was bidding farewell to the king with tears" (partially after "Cnoty i wady narodu szlacheckiego ..." by Antoni Górski, p. 60-61). Althought considered a compassionate and loyal queen, the religious issues made Catherine unpopular with her contemporaries in Sweden. The Catholic queen maintained close relations with Poland-Lithuania and Italy. Her agent was Paolo Ferrari from Cremona, mentioned above, she also had her own ambassadors in Rome, a Dutch Catholic named Petrus Rosinus, and Ture Bielke. Catherine is considered to have had an influence on her husband John III of Sweden in many areas, such as his religious attitude, foreign policy and art. For her son (Sigismund III), she kept a Polish teacher and taught him perfect Polish. The names of her daughter and son, Isabella (in honour of her grandmother Isabella d'Aragona of Naples, Duchess of Milan) and Sigismund (in honour of her father), both contrary to Swedish tradition, indicates that, like her mother Bona Sforza, she had a much greater influence on politics than is officially claimed. 
Miniature portrait of Crown Princess Catherine Jagiellon (1526-1583) by Lucas Cranach the Younger or workshop, ca. 1553-1565, Czartoryski Museum.
Portrait of Catherine Jagiellon (1526-1583), Duchess of Finland in white by Titian, ca. 1562, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.
Portrait of Catherine Jagiellon (1526-1583), Duchess of Finland in white by circle of Titian, ca. 1562, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Kassel. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Catherine Jagiellon (1526-1583), Duchess of Finland in white by Peter Paul Rubens after lost original by Titian, ca. 1600-1608 or 1628, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Catherine Jagiellon (1526-1583), Duchess of Finland holding a rose by Flemish painter after Titian, after 1562, Canterbury Museums and Galleries.
Portrait of Catherine Jagiellon (1526-1583), Duchess of Finland in white by Georg Engelhard Schröder after original by Titian, 1724-1750, Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Miniature portrait of Catherine Jagiellon (1526-1583), Duchess of Finland by Italian painter, possibly Sofonisba Anguissola or Bernadino Campi, ca. 1563-1567, Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Portrait of king Sigismund Augustus holding a buzdygan by workshop or follower of Giovanni Battista Moroni
In 1551 Georg Joachim de Porris (1514-1574) or von Lauchen, also known as Rheticus, a mathematician and astronomer of Italian heritage, best known for his trigonometric tables and as Nicolaus Copernicus's sole pupil, lost his job at the Leipzig University following the alleged drunken homosexual assault on a young student, the son of a merchant Hans Meusel. He was sentenced to 101 years of exile from Leipzig. As a result, he would come to lose the support of many long-time benefactors including Philipp Melanchthon. Earlier rumors of homosexuality forced him to leave Wittenberg for Leipzig. Constitutio Criminalis Carolina, a comprehensive criminal code, promulgated in 1532 by Emperor Charles V and binding for the Holy Roman Empire until 1806, mandated the death penalty for homosexuality. He fled following this accusation, for a time residing in Chemnitz before eventually moving on to Prague, where he studied medicine. He then moved to Kraków. Having settled there, where he lived in the Kaufman's tenement house in the Main Square, he erects a large obelisk in Balice near Kraków with the financial and technical assistance of Jan Boner (1516-1562), the king's advisor and the leader of the Lesser Poland's Calvinists. This gnomon of 45 Roman feet high (about 15 meters) used to indicate the declination of the sun, necessary for astronomical observations and calculations, was ready in mid-July 1554 (according to letter from Rheticus to Jan Kraton, a Wrocław naturalist, July 20, 1554). The obelisk's pyramidal shape was thought to be a link between heaven and earth and a symbol of heavenly wisdom. Rheticus' obelisk become a symbol of Oficyna Łazarzowa (Officina Lazari), printing house of Łazarz Andrysowicz (died before 1577) in Kraków.
Between 1562-1563, Rheticus was closely associated with the court of king Sigismund Augustus, making rare astronomical instruments for him on the occasion of the famous August conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 1563. After the death of Jan Benedykt Solfa (1483-1564), the court physician of the king, Rheticus assumed his position as well as the function of court astrologer. According to accounts of Berardo Bongiovanni, Bishop of Camerino and Papal Nuncio to Poland (1560-1563), written in 1560, "the king keeps 2,000 horses in the stable, 600 of which I saw, the rest were in the villages for fodder, as well as the foals and the stud. I have also seen 20 royal armor, four of which are remarkable works, namely one with a beautiful carving and silver-clad figures, depicting all the victories of his ancestors over Moscow. It cost 6,000 scudi. There are other victories on others. [...] Finally, he has thirty saddles and horse tacks, so rich that it is impossible to see the richer elsewhere. Some are of pure gold and silver, it is not surprising, knowing that they belong to such a king, but that they are also a masterpiece of art, no one who has not seen it would not believe it. [...] In each craft, the king has skilled masters, Jacob of Verona for jewels and carving on them, several Frenchmen for casting cannons, a Venetian for woodcarving, a Hungarian expert lute player, Prospero Anacleri, a Neapolitan for dressage of horses, and then for any craftsmanship. He allows all these people to live as everyone likes, because he is so good and gracious that he would not want to cause anyone the slightest pain. I just wish he was a bit stricter in the matter of religion" (after "Relacye nuncyuszów apostolskich", Volume 1, pp. 96-100). In 1565 Flavio Ruggieri reported that, "The king has horses in Lithuania, brought from the Kingdom of Naples during the times of Queen Bona, when also many horses were brought to Italy from Poland". Another Ruggieri (or Ruggeri), Giulio, Papal Nuncio from 1565, recalled at the beginning of 1568, drew up for the Pope's information a full report, which, after the manner of the Venetian reports, stated about the king: "now he usually lives in Lithuania, most often in Knyszyn, a small castle of this province on the border of Mazovia, where he has stables with lots of beautiful horses, some of which are Neapolitan, the other Turkish, the other Spanish or Mantuan, and most Polish. This love of horses is, in a way, the reason that the king likes to live here, and maybe also that this place, being almost in the center of his countries, it is more convenient in terms of domestic administration for the king and those who have an interest, than Kraków, located on the Polish border" (after "Relacye nuncyuszów apostolskich", Volume 1, p. 182). Adam Miciński, the court equerry of the king, in his work published in Kraków in 1570 entitled O swierzopach i ograch (On mares and stallions), says that the royal herds consisted of Arab, Turkish and Persian stallions, and the Polish mares, and that Nicolaus Radziwill, brought the king stallions from the Archipelago (Greek Islands), including from Venetian-ruled city of Candia (modern Heraklion, Crete). In 1565 Giert Hulmacher, a burgher from Gdańsk, supplied the king with two Friesian horses, bought in the Netherlands. Portrait of a man in armor in the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh is signed in lower left corner with a monorgam G B M and a date "1563", thence attributed to follower of Giovanni Battista Moroni (oil on canvas, 255 x 161.9 cm, inv. GL.60.17.46). The style of this painting is also very close to Moroni. In the early 19th century it was owned by the Lord Stalbridge in London. The man, in a partially gilded armor, is holding a gold flanged mace of Eastern origin, very popular in Poland-Lithuania in the 16th and 17th centuries and known as buzdygan. Similar maces were depicted in the magnificent funerary monument of Stanisław Maleszewski (d. 1555) in the cloister of the Dominican Church in Kraków, created around 1555 by the workshop of Bartolommeo Berrecci or Santi Gucci, and that of Piotr Boratyński (1509-1558), castellan of Belz and Przemyśl and secretary to King Sigismund II Augustus, in Wawel Cathedral, created around 1558 by the workshop of Bartolommeo Berrecci (founded by his wife Barbara Dzieduszycka). His crimson trunkhose of Venetian fabric are very similar to that visible in a portrait of Sigismund Augustus in crimson costume in the Prado Museum in Madrid. Behind the man, among antique Roman ruins, stand his white horse and an obelisk, similar to that visible in a reconstruction of the Mausoleum of Emperor Augustus in Rome published in 1575, on title page of Rheticus' Canon doctrinae triangulorum, published in Leipzig in 1551, several publications of Oficyna Łazarzowa, some sponsored or dedicated to Polish-Lithuanian monarchs, or in the portrait of royal jeweller Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio from about 1553. Facial features of a man bear a strong resemblance to effigies of king Sigismund Augustus by Tintoretto. This painting is also attributed to the Brescian painter Agostino Galeazzi (1523-1576), pupil of Moretto da Brescia (after "Pittori intorno a Moretto ..." by Stefano Bonaldo, p. 24, 26), who according to my identification painted the portrait of Nicolaus "the Black" Radziwill (Dorotheum in Vienna, October 22, 2019, lot 40). 
Portrait of king Sigismund Augustus in armor holding a buzdygan by workshop of Giovanni Battista Moroni or Agostino Galeazzi, 1563, North Carolina Museum of Art.
Portrait of King Sigismund II Augustus at the age of 43 by Tintoretto
"For the magnates, the elected ruler was only primus inter pares, to whom honor and respect were to be shown as a symbol of the state, but not necessarily obedience. Some magnates even allowed themselves to attack and ignore the monarch" (after "Obyczaje w Polsce ..." by Andrzej Chwalba, p. 203). In the great hall of his beautiful palace in Warsaw (Sandomierski Palace), among the portraits of the ancestors of Great Crown Chancellor Jerzy Ossoliński (1595-1650), there was a portrait of King Ladislaus IV Vasa with such inscription - Primus inter pares (First among equals). The term was introduced under Emperor Augustus to describe his position in the Roman state (Principate). Augustus wanted to use this designation to emphasize his subordination to the republican institutions, de facto, however, he was absolute ruler. According to Aleksander Bronikowski, the reign of Sigismund Augustus in Poland-Lithuania, a constitutional king with little power, shows the process of further limitation of monarch's prerogatives.
Such position of the Polish monarch also determined the iconography. The majority of people accustomed to the well-known effigies of Francis I, King of France and especially Henry VIII of England in rich fabrics and adorned with precious stones and jewels from head to toe, consider them an archetype of a Renaissance monarch. Despite the fact that his wardrobe was full of the most exquisite European and Oriental clothes, Sigismund Augustus usually dressed modestly, similar to the rulers of Europe's greatest power of the 16th century - Spain. In several of his portraits, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1500-1558) is dressed in simple black attire. If not for the distinctive features and the Order of the Golden Fleece, such portraits could be considered effigies of a mere merchant (e.g. series by workshop of Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen). Some of the portraits of the Emperor's brother and successor to the Imperial throne Ferdinand I of Austria (1503-1564), husband of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), by workshop and follower of Titian, were even inscribed with a standard latin inscription, indicating only the age of the model and the date (Prado Museum in Madrid and Private collection in Vienna). According to mentioned inscription Ferdinand was 46 in 1548 (MDXLVIII / ANNO ETATIS SVE / XXXXVI), which is not entirely accurate as he was born on March 10, 1503, so generally speaking should be 45 in 1548. However, the version from Fugger Castle in Babenhausen provides the titulature (FERDINANDVS. D.G. ROMA. / IMP. ANNO. 1548) and the resemblance to many other of his preserved effigies is so obvious that the identification is not disputed. What is also noticeable in the mentioned portraits of Ferdinand is the color of his hair which is different in all versions. He has the darkest hair in the versions in Spain (Prado and Convent de Las Descalzas Reales in Madrid, attributed to Anthonis Mor) and the brightest in the versions in Germany and Austria. Ferdinand commissioned his portraits from Titian's studio in Venice and one version was undoubtedly sent to Poland to a relative of his wife Sigismund II Augustus (also husband of two of Ferdinand's daughters). Around 1538 Titian and his disciples realized also a series of portraits of King Francis I of France (1494-1547), allegedly inspired by a medal engraved by Benvenuto Cellini in Fontainebleau in 1537. Two of these portraits, in the Louvre and in the Harewood House are very similar, but many details differ (hairstyle, costume, background), so it is more likely that he painted these portraits based on study drawings of the king sent from France. These portraits were gifts to various monarchs of Europe and were copied by various workshops. The portrait of Italian Duke of Savoy, Emmanuel Philibert (1528-1580), painted by circle of Antonis Mor in the Netherlands between 1555-1558, today in the Lviv National Art Gallery, could be a gift to Sigismund II Augustus. In a letter dated April 10, 1546 from Königsberg, Duke Albert of Prussia informs King Christian III of Denmark that the young King of Poland, Sigismund Augustus, had commenced building a new palace at Vilnius in Lithuania, for which he wished to have, among other things for its decoration, the portraits of the King and his family, and requesting that they should be furnished by his Majesty, whereupon the King, in a letter dated Kolding, the 6th of June, 1546, answers the Duke, that he willingly would have sent to the King of Poland the portraits wished for, but as they were not ready, and his Majesty's portraitist, Jacob Binck, whom he had some time before sent to the Duke, had not yet returned, he must rest contented until Binck came back and painted them (after "The Fine Arts Quarterly Review", Volume 2, pp. 374-375). In early 1570 a Swedish envoy arrived in Warsaw, where Sigismund Augustus settled for good from January 1570, with a portrait of Prince Sigismund (1566-1632), son of his sister Catherine. One of the few preserved, painted and inscribed effigies of "the last of the Jagiellons" is a portrait in the National Museum in Kraków (SIGISM. AUGUSTUS REX / POLONIÆ IAGELLONIDARUM / ULTIMUS, MNK I-21). It was probably created in the first half of the 17th century as a copy of a lost original by Lucas Cranach the Younger (known from a miniature from his workshop in the same museum, mirror view, Czartoryski collection, MNK XII-538). It was acquired in Sweden by a Pole Henryk Bukowski (1839-1900), who after the January Uprising settled in Stockholm and founded an antique shop. In 2022, a portrait of a gentleman by Jacopo Robusti known as Tintoretto from the Ferria Contin collection in Milan was auctioned (oil on canvas, 117 x 92 cm, Pandolfini Casa d'Aste, September 28, 2022, auction 1160, lot 21). According to inscription in Latin on the right the man was 43 in 1563 (AÑO ÆTATIS / SVÆ XXXX III / 1563), exacly as king Sigismund II Augustus (born on 1 August 1520), when workshop or follower of Giovanni Battista Moroni, realized his portrait holding a buzdygan (North Carolina Museum of Art). The man bears a striking resemblance to other effigies of the monarch by Tintoretto identified by me and his squinted eyes make him look very much like his mother in her portraits by Cranach. The same man with a similar expression on his face was depicted in another painting by Tintoretto, now in the Rollins Museum of Art in Winter Park, Florida (oil on canvas, 57.46 x 46.35, inventory number 1962.2). He is, however, much older and wears armour adorned with gold, similar to that in the portrait of Sigismund Augustus at the age of 30 with a royal galley (Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, GG 24). The face is also similar, as well as to the smaller "derivative" works of this portrait. The portrait was previously attributed to Paolo Veronese. 
Portrait of King Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572), aged 43 by Tintoretto, 1563, Private collection.
Portrait of King Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) in armour by Tintoretto, 1565-1570, Rollins Museum of Art.
Portraits of Georgia of Pomerania, countess Latalska by Paolo Veronese and circle
On October 24, 1563 in Wolgast, Georgia of Pomerania, granddaughter of Anna Jagiellon (1476-1503), Duchess of Pomerania, married Stanisław Latalski (1535-1598), count in Łabiszyn, starost of Inowrocław and Człuchów. On this occassion Philip I (1515-1560), Duke of Pomerania-Wolgast asked the court administration of his uncle Barnim IX in Szczecin for a larger series of tapestries to decorate the festive chambers, altogether 28 pieces.
Georgia was a posthumous daughter of George I, Duke of Pomerania and his second wife Margaret of Brandenburg (1511-1577). She was born on November 28, 1531 as the only child of the couple and named after her father. When her mother remarried in 1534, she was brought up at the court of her stepfather, prince John V of Anhalt-Zerbst (1504-1551) in Dessau. It was decided, however, that when she reached her eighth birthday, in 1539, she must be returned to Pomerania under the custody of her half-brother Philip I. Despite this, Margaret was able to have kept her daughter with her until May 1543, when she was finally sent to Wolgast. There were plans to marry her to Jaroslav of Pernstein (1528-1560), Prince Eric of Sweden (1533-1577), future Eric XIV, when she was just 10 years old and later to Otto II (1528-1603), Duke of Brunswick-Harburg. In the fall of 1562, negotiations were initiated with Stanisław Latalski, who was an envoy of Greater Poland to the Piotrków Sejm in 1562/1563. Latalski was a son of Janusz, voivode of Poznań and Barbara née Kretkowska. His father received the title of Count of the Holy Empire from Emperor Charles V in 1538 and in 1543 he was sent to Emperor Ferdinand in order to arrange a marriage of Sigismund II Augustus with Elizabeth of Austria. In 1554 young Stanisław, accompanied by Jan Krzysztof Tarnowski, son of Hetman Jan Amor, and Mikołaj Mielecki travelled to England, Switzerland and Italy. During this trip, they had the opportunity to meet Emperor Charles V in Brussels and his son Philip of Spain in London (after "Hetman Jan Tarnowski ..." by Włodzimierz Dworzaczek, p. 316). The couple lived in Łabiszyn and in Człuchów, where Georgia was visited by her mother Margaret of Brandenburg. In 1564 Stanisław went to Wittenberg, to his wife's nephews, the Pomeranian princes Ernest Louis and Barnim, who were studying there. In the same year, under Georgia's influence, he converted to Lutheranism and brought the preacher Paul Elard (or Elhard) and his brother Hans from Szczecin, giving them in 1564 the castle chapel in Człuchów, and two years later also the parish church. Most of the city's population converted to Lutheranism. He also built a wooden Lutheran church in Łabiszyn. Between 1557 and 1564 Stanisław rebuilt the Inowrocław Castle in the Renaissance style with Italianate attics (ochędożone po włosku brandmury [literally firewall from Dutch/German/Polish - brandmuur, brandmauer, ogniomur]). The castle, however, was destroyed in 1656 during the Deluge. His father Janusz, voivode of Inowrocław and Poznań, corresponded with Protestant Duke George II of Brzeg (1523-1586) and Catholic King Ferdinand I (1503-1564). In a letter from 1550 to Duke George, Janusz thanks him for the two dogs he sent him and sends him in return two falcons trained for hunting and adds that he will send four of them to King Ferdinand (Serenissimo Regi Romanorum quatuor lectos falconas assignavi, cum iisque suae Sacrae Majestatis falconarius, qui eos tollat, in itinere expectatur). After the birth of her first child in 1566, three years after the wedding - a daughter named Maria Anna - Georgia lost her mind and never completely regained her sanity since. She died in childbirth in late 1573 or early 1574. Portrait of a lady wearing an elaborate yellow silk dress in Kensington Palace was painted in the style close to Paolo Veronese (oil on canvas, 87.6 x 64.8 cm, RCIN 400552). It was previously attributed to Leandro Bassano and comes from the collection of the Capel family at Kew Palace in London (acquired in 1731). The coat of arms, which is unidentified, was painted in a different style, hence it is clearly a later addition. It is painted over an original inscription in Latin, which is still in part legible: AETATIS SVAE XXXII. / ANNO DNI / 1.5.6.3 / SIBI. The woman was therefore 32 years old in 1563, exacly as Georgia of Pomerania, when she married Latalski. The upper part of her dress is transparent and embroidered with white flowers of five petals, very similar to the Luther rose visible on the epitaph of Katharina von Bora (1499-1552), wife of Martin Luther, in the Marienkirche in Torgau, created in 1552. Around her neck is a string of pearls, associated with purity, chastity and innocence and a large green jewel-pendant on a long chain, a color being symbolic of fertility. She is holding a green parrot on her hand, a symbol of motherhood. The woman bear a great resemblance to half-brother of Georgia of Pomerania, Prince Joachim Ernest of Anhalt (1536-1586) in his effigies by Lucas Cranach the Younger (Georgium in Dessau and private collection) and to effigies of Georgia's mother Margaret of Brandenburg by Lucas Cranach the Elder, identified by me (Grunewald hunting lodge in Berlin and private collection). The same woman, although somewhat older, was depicted in another similar painting by Veronese, now in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (oil on canvas, 117.3 x 100.8 cm, inv. 594). The painting comes from the Electoral Gallery in Schleissheim Palace near Munich, where it had been listed since at least 1748 (after "Alte Pinakothek: italienische Malerei", ed. Cornelia Syre, p. 280). From the same gallery comes the portrait of Queen Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) as a widow, painted by the workshop of Sofonisba Anguissola, attributed by me, now in the Royal Castle in Warsaw (inv. ZKW 64). The particular expression of the woman in the painting also correspond with reports that Georgia suffered from mental health problems. In the Schorr collection in London there is another interesting portrait painted in 1563 (oil on panel, 117 x 82.5 cm, inv. SRR6370427). The man is holding a pair of gloves and wears a gold signet ring set with a precious stone on his index finger, suggesting that he was a man of some wealth. The painting is attributed to Anthonis Mor, also known as Antonio Moro, a Dutch portrait painter born in Utrecht, who painted many aristocrats and members of the ruling families of Europe. According to the date inscribed on the contemporary frame around the painting, the man was 28 years old in 1563, exactly like Latalski when he was elected to the Diet of Piotrków and married Georgia. The same man can be identified in a portrait by Tintoretto, painted two years later, in 1565, which once belonged to the imperial collection of the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, the senior Swabian branch of the House of Hohenzollern (oil on canvas, 100.8 x 87.7 cm, Christie's London, Auction 11974, July 8, 2016, lot 159, signed and dated lower left: IAC·TENTORETO·F· / ·15·65·). This painting also bore another inscription in the upper left corner, invisible today. The Latalskis were a wealthy family, although today very few traces of their prosperity remain in Poland. Among them, we can cite two books published in Leipzig in 1533 by Melchior Lotter the Elder (1470-1549), who printed works by Luther and Cranach, Age[n]da s[e]c[u]nd[u]m cursum et rubrica[m] eccl[es]ie cathedralis Posnaniensis ... and Eva[n]gelistaru[m] quatuor passiones D[omi]ni n[ost]ri Jhesu Christi. In ecclesia cathedrali Posnanien[si] ... (Kórnik Library, sygn.Cim.Qu.2953; sygn.Cim.Qu.2954). These books, intended to unify the liturgy in the Poznań diocese, were financed by Jan Latalski (1463-1540), Bishop of Poznań, favourite of Queen Bona and uncle of Stanisław. The title page of both books is decorated with a beautiful woodcut with the arms of Latalski - Prawdzic with the apostles Peter and Paul, signed with an indistinct monogram on the stone in the center of the composition. This woodcut is very much in the style of Cranach and comparable to the woodcuts with the effigies of the two apostles preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 21.35.5; 22.67.34) or the title page of Luther's book Von Jhesu Christo eine Predigt, published in Wittenberg in 1533. The study drawing with the arms of Latalski was probably sent to Wittenberg or to a collaborator of Cranach in Leipzig or made in Poznań by a member of Cranach's workshop. The same is probably true for the portraits of members of the Latalski family, especially Stanisław who travelled and had connections in different parts of Europe. As in the case of the portrait of Cosimo I de' Medici (1519-1574), Grand Duke of Tuscany, wearing the Order of the Golden Fleece, painted by the workshop or circle of Mor in the late 1560s (Sotheby's New York, January 27, 2007, lot 624), it would be difficult to prove how the painter and the model met, since they probably not met in person at the time the painting was created and the effigy was based on other portraits or study drawings. However, Count Stanisław undoubtedly had the opportunity to meet the painter personally in Brussels or London during his visit to that city in 1554. In 1604, Karel van Mander, in his biography of Anthonis, reports on the trip that the latter made to London at the request of Charles V to paint a portrait of Mary Tudor, one of his best-known works, now kept in the Prado Museum in Madrid (inv. P002108). The following year Latalski went to Italy, which also made possible a personal acquaintance with Tintoretto and other Venetian painters. His uncle Bishop Jan was also the initiator of the publication in Venice of the Kraków Breviary in 1538, which, however, bears the Abdank coat of arms of his successor Jan Chojeński (1486-1538) on the tile page (after "Przywileje drukarskie w Polsce" by Maria Juda, p. 37). The Italian, Netherlandish and German influences in the Latalskis' patronage and portraiture perfectly reflect the diversity of the country. 
Portrait of Georgia of Pomerania (1531-1573/74), countess Latalska, aged 32 with a parrot by circle of Paolo Veronese, 1563, Kensington Palace. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Georgia of Pomerania (1531-1573/74), countess Latalska by Paolo Veronese, ca. 1570, Alte Pinakothek in Munich.
Portrait of a man aged 28, most probably Count Stanisław Latalski (1535-1598) by Anthonis Mor, 1563, The Schorr Collection.
Portrait of a man holding a pair of gloves, most probably Count Stanisław Latalski (1535-1598) by Jacopo Tintoretto, 1565, Private collection.
Woodcut with the coat of arms of Prawdzic of Jan Latalski (1463-1540), Bishop of Poznań, Apostles Peter and Paul from Eva[n]gelistaru[m] quatuor passiones ... by circle or workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1533, Kórnik Library.
Portrait of Anna Jagiellon holding a zibellino by Tintoretto
In 1562 on the occasion of the wedding of her younger sister Catherine in Vilnius, Anna ordered for herself three gowns: "one robe of red taffeta, and two hazuka dresses of red velvet" all sewn with pearls. The sisters dressed identically, as evidenced by their miniatures by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger from about 1553. Inventory of Catherine's dowry includes many items similar to these visible on the portrait of a lady holding a zibellino by Tintoretto from about 1565: a golden belt set with rubies, sapphires and pearls valued at 1,700 thalers, "a black sable stitched together from two, his head and four feet are golden, set with precious stones" of 1,400 thalers worth, a chain of large round, oriental pearls of 1,000 thalers worth, a neacklace of round, oriental pearls of 985 thalers worth, velvet long, crimson robe with three rows of pearl edgings with 72 French-style enameled buckles, velvet crimson hazuka dress lined with sables, four velvet outer garments for summer, eleven white linen shirts with gold sleeves, and even "one large yellow Turkish rug for the table".
By the mid-1560s, Anna's financial situation had improved. The assistance of an important Mazovian official, Wojciech Bogucki, an old friend of her mother, played an important role. Bogucki, as treasurer (podskarbi) and general intendent (ekonom) of Mazovia (and after his death his successor Marcin Falęcki), was largely responsible for the financial affairs of Anna's court. Her income increased considerably in these years. She now had a stable income from her Mazovian estates and Sigismund Augustus agreed to give her 1,900 Polish zlotys annually from the royal salt mines, and sometimes sent her an extra money. In 1564, for example, Anna's total income can be estimated at nearly 18,000 Polish zlotys, and she was now spending a lot (in 1564, her expenses reached 21,000 Polish zlotys). The accounts of 1564 allow us to estimate the number of her courtiers at about 70 people. The steward was Stanisław Wolski, castellan of Rawa, who was sent to Vienna in January 1564 to convey Anna's message to the emperor. Among the courtiers, the physician Casary (Caspary) was the best paid: his salary in 1564 amounted to the enormous sum of 854 Polish zlotys and 29 groszy. There were also the notary Andrzej Hincza, the bookkeeper Grzegorz Goryszewski, six coachmen, an "overseer of the silver" and two servants in charge of the silverware, a hairdresser, a pharmacist, one male and one female bath attendants (Raczek łaziebnik and kąpielowa Miliczina), a stove attendant, a servant in charge of the ladies-in-waiting, four doormen, and three servants in charge of the clothes. Among the important figures were Algismund, the cellar and wine overseer, and Jan, the trumpeter. There were nine cooks, mostly Poles, but Jerzy (Giorgio) Macarona was probably Italian, as his name suggests, while Jerzy Bohemus probably came from Bohemia. There was also a certain Gaspar, servant to the main cook. Among the matrons at the princess's court at that time were Elżbieta Maciejowska, Mrs. Świdnicka, Mrs. Bentkowska, as well as a "Italian maiden" Livia, probably an old lady-in-waiting of Bona, who had not married, and eight ladies-in-waiting. In 1564, the salaries of the court members amounted to almost 4,000 Polish zlotys (including arrears). The costs of sending special envoys and letters amounted to 140 Polish zlotys, which testifies to rich contacts. Considerable sums were spent on textiles and clothing for courtiers and servants. These clothes were made from various types of textiles, such as silk taffeta, satin, damask, Bohemian and English (luńskie) cloths of various colors. In one year (1564), Anna purchased 12 cubits of red silk taffeta and 1/2 cubit of black silk taffeta for a dress, as well as black satin to finish her damask dress. She had one of her old damask dresses altered and had five new ones made: one in black satin, three in damask, and one in black velvet with silver fringes. A damask cloak was also to be made for her. The greatest expenses, however, were incurred by the table. The rich list of products purchased for the kitchen suggests that meals at Anna's court were abundant and refined (after "The Court of Anna Jagiellon: Size, Structure and Functions" by Maria Bogucka, p. 95-98). Apart from Cranach's miniature, there are no known portraits of the princess from this period, but sources confirm the existence of such effigies. In November 1569, a faithful portrait (wahrhaftig Conterfey) of Anna was made for Prince Barnim of Pomerania (1549-1603). At the initiative of Sigismund Augustus, negotiations on the marriage of Anna with Barnim were conducted in Drahim by Stanisław Sędziwój Czarnowski (1526-1602). However, they did not lead to any results, because the Pomeranian side wanted to expand its territory at the expense of the Polish crown, which Sigismund Augustus could not accept, since these issues were decided by the Sejm, and its consent was unlikely - the Pomeranians demanded several starosties as a dowry for Barnim's future wife. Sigismund Augustus, for his part, was ready to generously equip his sister, offering her the considerable sum of 400,000 Polish zloty, as well as a rich trousseau of clothes and equipment and a share of Queen Bona's inheritance. Despite the consent of the Princess and Barnim and the serious involvement of the Polish side in these negotiations, the planned marriage of Anna Jagiellon with the Pomeranian Prince did not take place (after "Książęta Pomorza Zachodniego ..." by Zygmunt Boras, p. 181). Earlier, in August 1557 in Vilnius, Antoni Wida painted portraits of princesses Anna and Catherine for Duke Albert of Prussia (1490-1568). As with his sister Catherine's marriage, Sigismund Augustus did not want to impose his will on Anna regarding her marriage. On November 16, 1562, he replied to Nicolaus "the Black" Radziwill (1515-1565) from Warsaw that he had not yet discussed the candidacy of the Danish Prince Magnus (1540-1583) with her: "we do not know the opinion or will of Her Grace in this matter, and we would not want to act without the knowledge and consent of Her Majesty herself, otherwise than we have done with our younger sister, according to her own will" (after "Jagiellonki polskie w XVI. wieku ..." by Aleksander Przezdziecki, Volume 3, p. 41). In September 1565 arrived to Cracow count Clemente Pietra to announce the marriage of Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany with a cousin of Sigismund Augustus and Anna, Joanna of Austria (a sister of Sigismund Augustus' first and third wife) and to ask for the hand of Anna for 16 years old Ferdinando, brother of Duke Francesco. It is highly probable that on this occasion the king commissioned in the workshop of Tintoretto in Venice a portrait of himself, his wife and his 42 years old sister, created just as earlier effigies of the Jagiellons by medalier van Herwijck or painter Cranach the Younger, basing on drawings or miniatures sent from Poland. Experts frequently point out the uniqueness of this effigy, now at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (oil on canvas, 98 x 75.5 cm, inventory number GG 48), not only because of the frontality of the woman's posture, but also the unusual cut of her outfit - red velvet dress. For the authors of the exhibition "Titian and the image of women in 16th century Venice" at the Royal Palace of Milan (February 23 to June 5, 2022), "she is not a Venetian gentlewoman but from the Venetian hinterland" (Il vestito fa ritenere che non si tratti di una gentildonna veneziana ma dell'entroterra veneto) and her jewelry and the oriental carpet express good taste and high social status. Similar to the effigy of the second wife of Anna's brother, Barbara Radziwill, known as "La Bella" (Pitti Palace in Florence, Inv. 1912 no. 18), a zibellino on her hand is a fertility talisman, indicating that she is an unmarried woman. Weasel pelts (zibellino) were mainly imported to Italy from Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy. This painting, sometimes also attributed to Marietta Robusti, known as Tintoretta (d. 1590), most probably comes from the collection of James Hamilton (1606-1649), 1st Duke of Hamilton, which after his death entered the collection of Archduke Leopold William of Austria in Brussels. Hamilton collected Venetian paintings through his agent, Viscount Basil Feilding, who was sent in 1634 as ambassador to Venice, where he remained for five years. It differs, however, from the work represented in the catalog of the Archduke's collection - Theatrum Pictorium (number 79). The print by Lucas Vorsterman the Younger shows a slightly larger image and fragments of architecture in the background and attributes the original painting to Titian. There is also no zibellino in this version. It is possible that the painting was modified or that it is one of the many versions belonging to the Habsburgs, relatives of Crown Princess Anna Jagiellon, who undoubtedly received her effigies. It was mentioned in the gallery in 1735. The portrait resembles Anna's miniature by workshop of Cranach from around 1553, her funerary monument from around 1584, and a portrait by Tintoretto in the Collegium Maius in Kraków. 
Portrait of Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) when Crown Princess of Poland-Lithuania holding a zibellino by Tintoretto, ca. 1565, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) when Crown Princess of Poland-Lithuania from the Theatrum Pictorium (79) by Lucas Vorsterman the Younger after Titian, 1660, Princely Court Library in Waldeck.
Portraits of Queen Catherine of Austria as Venus Verticordia by Titian and workshop
"Today I came to Radom, where the queen lives, and that same evening I visited Her Highness, comforting her in the name of the Holy Father after the loss of Emperor His Higness, although three months ago I had fulfilled this obligation by one of my secretaries, whom I sent to Radom. The Queen seemed to accept this very pleasantly, and in return she kisses His Holiness' most holy feet in the most humble way. She asked me to visit her the next morning for easier conversation", wrote about his visit on December 3, 1564 to Queen Catherine of Austria, Venetian bishop and papal nuncio Giovanni Francesco Commendone (1523-1584), in his letter to Cardinal Charles Borromeo (1538-1584), future saint.
The next day this secret audience took place, a description of which we find in Commendone's next letter: "It was on it that she spoke of her unhappy condition, complaining that, apart from leaving her for no reason, there were also attempts to divorce her, and that this was the main cause of the Synod. She considered all the accusations made against her with such care, caution, and respect for the king that I do not know whether I felt more pity or admiration for her. Later she said extensively that she knew well how the ministers, especially the envoys of the courts, contribute to all this; so she begged me and beseeched me for the holy priesthood, in the name which I had until now, and for the kindness shown to me by her father, and by her brothers, and also the Bavarian prince, that I would have mercy on her; and then she opened up completely to me and said that she had been secretly informed about the efforts made with the Holy Father for divorce, and that His Holiness, with my advice and commitment, allows it. [...] She spoke all these words with bitter tears and sobbing so that I could hardly answer her. [...] I assured her, most honestly, that the king had not mentioned a word of divorce [...]. I wish and hope to convince the Queen someday that I did just the opposite; that I tried in various ways and under various appearances to dissuade from these intentions, to suppress these thoughts, and that the same is the opinion of the Holy Father. [...] At the supper (because she wanted me to dine with me) I saw her greatly comforted. Finally, bidding me farewell, she again took me aside and asked me to recommend her pious services to the Holy Father begging him to take care of her and not to forget in his holy prayers that God may console her in these worries. I understand that the Hungarian War increased the Queen's suspicions: some argue that for this divorce and for the Emperor's other practices with the Prussian Master and Moscow against the Kingdom of Poland, efforts were made to entangle him in these Transylvanian troubles. Whatever the answer to the matter of divorce, no matter how indifferent, I remind Your Majesty most humbly to write it with a key" (after Aleksander Przeździecki's "Jagiellonki polskie w XVI. wieku. Korrespondencya Polska", Volume 3, p. 104-107). Undobtedly also works of art, paintings, were part of all these secret negotiations and political efforts. In May 1562, the queen settled in Radom alone, abandoned by the king. As a widowed Duchess of Mantua, daughter of Emperor and cousin of Philip II of Spain, she knew the power of image and allegory. In the Borghese Gallery in Rome, where there is also a portrait of Catherine of Austria's mother Queen Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547) as Venus with Cupid stealing honey by Lucas Cranach the Elder, there is a painting of Venus blindfolding Cupid by Titian, dated by Adolfo Venturi to about 1565. It was probably acquired in 1608 as part of Cardinal Paolo Emilio Sfondrati's collection. According to Erwin Panofsky it shows Venus Verticordia between the blindfolded Cupid and Anteros, the one with his eyes open, symbols of contrasting aspects of love, the blind and sensuous, and the clear-sighted and virtuous, and two nymphs symbolizing Marital Affection and Chastity. The matrons of Rome, who were so renowned for good management that old Cato told the senate, "We Romans govern all the world abroad, but are ourselves governed by our wives at home," erected a temple to that Venus Verticordia, quæ maritos uxoribus reddebat benevolos (Venus the Turner of Hearts, who makes husbands well disposed to their wives), whither (if any difference happened between man and wife) they did instantly resort. There they did offer sacrifice, a white hart, Plutarch records, sine felle, without the gall (some say the like of Juno's temple), and make their prayers for conjugal peace (after Robert Burton's "The Anatomy of Melancholy", Volume 3, p. 310). Venus has the features of Queen Catherine of Austria, similar to her other effigies by Titian. The Queen probably commissioned it as a gift for the Pope or one of the cardinals. A copy of this painting was in the collection of Cornelis van der Geest and is seen in two paintings of his art gallery in the 1630s, by Willem van Haecht. In 1624 Prince Ladislaus Sigismund Vasa, grandson of Catherine Jagiellon, visited his gallery in Antwerp. The Nationalmuseum in Stockholm has two workshop copies of this painting, out of four known previously. One, attributed to Andrea Schiavone (inventory number NM 7170), came to the Nationalmuseum with the collection of Nicola Martelli, a Rome art dealer, in 1804, the other was transferred in 1866 from the Swedish royal collection (inventory number NM 205). It is possible that some previously known copies were taken from magnate or royal residencies in Poland during the Deluge (1655-1660), or even from the Royal Castle in Radom, which was ransaced and burned in the spring of 1656. Interestingly, in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan, there is a painting of Adoration of the Magi by Titian from this period with figures in oriental costumes, very similar to contemporary Polish-Lithuanian attire. This work comes from the collection of Cardinal Federico Borromeo (1564-1631), cousin of Saint Charles Borromeo. It cannot be excluded that it was another luxury gift from the Queen of Poland commissioned in Venice. Some time later, most probably between 1566-1570, therefore after Queen's departure to Austria, Titian created another version of this composition. At some point after the painting's completion, most likely in the mid-18th century, its right side was cut away. Before 1739 it was in the collection of Charles Jervas or Jarvis in London (his sale, at his residence, London, 11-20 March 1739, 8th day, no. 543, as by Titian). In 1950 the painting was sold to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York and in 1952 offered to the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The blonde goddess seems younger and more beautiful and composition was modified. The inventories up to 1780 describe the picture as "Venus binding the eyes of Cupid, and the Graces offering a Tribute", similar to the painting in the royal Wilanów Palace in Warsaw (Wil.1548), in which Venus bears the features of Crown Princess Anna Catherine Constance Vasa (1619-1651), granddaughter of Catherine Jagiellon, and to the painting in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, where Venus has the features of Ladislaus Vasa's first wife Cecilia Renata of Austria. The figures bear attributes of the goddess of love: apples, a dove and flowers. They could also be interpreted as assistants of Fortuna Virilis, an aspect or manifestation of the goddess Fortuna, often depicted with a cornucopia (horn of plenty) and associated with Venus Verticordia. Fortuna Virilis, according to the poet Ovid, had the power to conceal the physical imperfections of women from the eyes of men. The x-radiographs have revealed a number of alterations, especially in woman's face, which was initially less sublime and more close to the features of the Queen. It is possible that through this painting, Catherine wanted to convince Sigismund Augustus that her rightful place is at his side and that she should return to Poland. 
Allegory with portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) as Venus Verticordia (Turner of Hearts) by Titian, 1563-1565, Borghese Gallery in Rome.
Allegory with portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) as Venus Verticordia (Turner of Hearts) by workshop of Titian, attributed to Andrea Schiavone, 1563-1565, Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.
Allegory with portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) as Venus Verticordia (Turner of Hearts) by Titian or workshop, 1566-1570, National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Adoration of the Magi with figures in Polish-Lithuanian costumes by Titian, ca. 1560, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana.
Portraits of Anna Jagiellon and Catherine of Austria by Titian and workshop
After the return of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572), third wife of Sigismund Augustus, to her native Austria in 1565, Princess-Infanta Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596), the king's only unmarried sister who remained in Poland-Lithuania, became the most important woman in the Realm of Venus.
Anna resided mainly in Masovia, in splendid residences built by her mother Bona and the Masovian dukes. The Princess-Infanta had a small court, but considering her position as the only living relative of the king, present in the country after Catherine's departure, her importance must have increased after 1565. However, very little is known about this period in the life of the future elected queen of the Commonwealth. Magnificent fabrics were acquired for the Infanta and her ladies, from which dresses in Italian, Spanish, French, Polish and German styles were made, similar to those mentioned in the register of dowry of Catherine Jagiellon from 1562. The accounts confirm that on January 24, 1564, a piece of cloth for the princess's court was purchased from the Jew Józef in Płock for 6 zlotys, as well as two pieces of Krosno linen for 15 zlotys, from which shirts for the princess were sewn. In mid-April, this merchant delivered to the court of Princess Anna 5 and a half ells of black velvet for 18 zlotys 10 groszy, 4 ells of flesh-coloured Chinese silk and threads for sewing a letnik ("summer dress") for 24 groszy, and 7 ells of black velvet for 16 zlotys 10 groszy. According to a note prepared by the treasury scribe, the inferior quality velvet was used on May 10, 1564 to sew dresses for the court ladies of Princess-Infanta Anna (after "Dostawcy dworów królewskich w Polsce i na Litwie ..." by Maurycy Horn, Part II, p. 13). Among the most important events in the life of the Warsaw court, besides the marriages of Anna's court ladies, were the visits of her brother. During one of these visits, the king arrived ill on a Sunday in Lent (March 10, 1567). Sigismund Augustus probably caught a fever on the way. He was so weak that he had to be carried from the carriage in a chair to the castle chambers, where, lying on a bed, he was often visited by Anna and the "old lady", the influential chamberlain of her court, Jadwiga Żalińska née Taszycka (d. after 1575). This lasted two weeks, then, feeling better, he left in April for the Sejm in Piotrków. The Princess-Infanta, like her mother and brother, loved to surround herself with favourites and listen to the advice of secret advisers, whom her sister Sophia called "secretaries". The energetic chamberlain Żalińska, who was said to "snarl at the princess as if she were a servant" when angry, was generally disliked for her intrigues and greed. She was the wife of Maciej Żaliński, a favourite of the king, and the Żalińskis were reputed to be all-powerful at court. Anna showered her chamberlain with gifts, endured her anger and sulking, protected and financed the education of her son - Jan, an elegant young man, but with a rather dubious character. Along with Żalińska, among the influential women of the court were Zofia Łaska, Elżbieta Świdnicka and Katarzyna Orlikowa, who were admitted to great intimacy and sincerely devoted to the Princess-Infanta (after "Anna Jagiellonka" by Maria Bogucka, p. 79, 116, 153). The letter of Zofia Łaska, clearly reluctant towards Żalińska, to Sophia Jagellon, dated May 23, 1573 from Warsaw, in which she informs her of the election of Henry of Valois and that Anna will probably marry him, is very interesting. The lady-in-waiting also adds: "If anything were to please me, it would be that Your Ducal Highness be there yourself, and especially that Żalińska's son does not sleep there: because everyone criticizes this and holds the Princess responsible for having allowed it. But the Princess does not care" (after "Jagiellonki polskie w XVI. wieku: Korrespondencya polska ..." by Aleksander Przezdziecki, Volume 4, p. 69). "Anna, having taken him under her protection, sent him to study at the Academy of Ingolstadt, then surrounded him with her favors", comments about Mr Żaliński Kasper Niesiecki (1682-1744) (after "Herbarz polski", Volume 10, p. 44). In February 1592, she wrote to Nicolaus Christopher Radziwill "the Orphan" (1549-1616), asking for help for this "pupil of ours" in his efforts to marry Elżbieta (Halszka) Chodkiewiczówna. In the meantime, Żaliński had become the starost of Przedbórz. The beautiful ladies of Anna's court often attracted her brother's attention, as was the case with Anna Zajączkowska, who was distinguished by her extraordinary beauty. Zajączkowska, "a very virtuous young lady of the purest morals," was the Infanta's favorite. Anna's court was famous for its nobility and all maiden virtues. It took a lot of courage and ingenuity to attack this "sacred gynaeceum" (in ancient Greece, it was a part of the house reserved for women), so the royal courtiers used an unusual trick. One day, a nobleman named Mikorski appeared at the Infanta's court, showed the recommendation of the Piotrków starost Andrzej Szpot, asked the Infanta for Zajączkowska's hand in marriage, and then, having received her consent, took the bride out of Warsaw. But instead of going to the altar, Zajączkowska went to the royal bed in Bugaj Castle near Witów. This was a terrible blow for Anna. "It is admirable," wrote a contemporary chronicler, "with what violence the pain pierced the heart of the Infanta, how many deep sighs she heaved, falling on the bed, accusing her brother, who had covered her honor and fame with such shame" (after "Zygmunt August: żywot ostatniego z Jagiellonów" by Eugeniusz Gołębiowski, p. 471). Although her relationship with the young and handsome Jan Żaliński was very ambiguous, it seems that in Zajączkowska's case the Infanta needed to save face in public opinion and especially in front of the Habsburgs, who were well informed about the affairs of the Polish-Lithuanian court. Moreover, Catherine of Austria should not have believed that Anna supported her brother's behavior towards her. Although she lived in Austria, she was still the legal wife of Sigismund Augustus and the Queen of Poland, and, in addition to her family connections in the Holy Roman Empire and Spain, she had many friends in Italy. Having reluctantly left Mantua shortly after the death of Duke Francesco, Catherine of Austria remained very attached to the court of Mantua, which she had known for only a few months of marriage. Once she became Queen of Poland, she began a close correspondence between the two courts. Between Vilnius, where Sigismund Augustus liked to reside, and Mantua, an exchange of gifts and favors, recommendations and various courtesies intensified. Shortly after her marriage to the King of Poland, in 1554, Catherine promised to send a horse to Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga (1505-1563), a very precious gift at the time. From the surviving correspondence, we know that the horse left Vienna around October 22 and that a few weeks later, on November 10, the cardinal may have written to the queen to thank her for this gift. In her letters to Mantua, the Queen only occasionally used the services of secretaries. In a letter to Duchess Margaret Palaeologa (1510-1566) in May 1564, Catherine justified herself thus: "It is no small displeasure that, finding ourselves on a journey to Lithuania, we cannot, as is our custom, reply in our own hand to the letter of Your Illustrious Ladyship" (Ne displace non poco che, per ritrovarne nel viaggio di Lituania, non possiamo secondo ch'è di nostro costume risponder di mano propria alla lettera di Vostra illustrissima Signoria). After the death of Catherine and Sigismund Augustus in 1572, Anna became the object of interest of candidates for the throne of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, among whom were also Italians, including her distant relative, widowed Alfonso II d'Este (1533-1597), Duke of Ferrara. "The Infanta will openly favour both the Duke of Ferrara and Rožmberk [William of Rožmberk (1535-1592)], because she passionately desires the marriage: there is no other way to retain her favour", wrote Andrzej Dudycz to Emperor Maximilian II in November 1574. The friendly court of the d'Este family, so dear to Anna's mother, Bona Sforza, was very involved in the first free elections of the Commonwealth. In 1574, several ambassadors from Ferrara arrived in Poland-Lithuania, including Taddeo Bottone, Antonio Semenza and Ascanio Giraldini. One of them, Alessandro Baranzoni, sent incognito, sought the support of the most eminent Tuscan merchants present in Kraków. Girolamo Mazza, a Venetian who had played a role in the election of Henry of Valois, and Filippo Talducci, an important figure in the Italian merchant community of Kraków, supported the candidacy of the Duke d'Este. Even after the election of Anna and Bathory in December 1575, Talducci did not give up cultivating his relations with Ferrara. In October 1578, a young man from his entourage, Luca Del Pace, who was going to Florence to see his family, passing through Ferrara, was commissioned to bring a portrait of Queen Anna as a gift that Giraldini had been unable to obtain, "because at that time His Majesty had forbidden her to be portrayed" (sendo che in quel tempo Sua Maestà haveva proibito l'essere ritratta). The Este court was therefore fully included in the network of relations of the Tuscan merchants operating in Poland, and Ferrara appears to us as an almost obligatory stop on the Kraków-Florence route (after "La trama Nascosta - Storie di mercanti e altro" by Rita Mazzei). Ippolito Tassoni was sent as ambassador from Ferrara to Poland in the summer of 1553 on the occasion of the marriage of Sigismund Augustus with Catherine of Austria. Two years later, in October 1555, the Ferrarese envoy Antonio Maria Negrisoli was sent by Bona to Ercole II to ask permission to stay in "the palace he has in the city of Venice" (ricercare et pregare Vostra Signoria del palazzo tiene in la città di Venetia) and in the autumn of 1565, Taddeo Bottone was sent to Sigismund Augustus to invite the sovereign to the marriage of Alfonso II d'Este with Barbara of Austria (1539-1572), the younger sister of Catherine of Austria. All these links indicate that the portrait of Queen Anna sent in 1578 was undoubtedly not the only effigy of the member of the Polish-Lithuanian royal family that was in the possession of the Dukes of Ferrara. It is quite possible that the portrait of Alfonso II d'Este from the Popławski collection, attributed to Hans von Aachen, now in the National Museum in Warsaw (inv. M.Ob.1913 MNW) is connected with such family relations or with the duke's candidacy in the royal election of 1587. In the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden there is a portrait by Titian, believed to represent his daughter Lavinia (oil on canvas, 103 x 86.5 cm, Gal.-Nr. 171). The painting comes from the former collections of the d'Este family in Ferrara, which were transferred to Modena in 1598 by Duke Caesar d'Este (1562-1628). In 1746, the painting, together with many other masterpieces from the Galleria Estense in Modena, was sold to Augustus III (1696-1763), elected monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Elector of Saxony, to enrich his collection in Dresden. The identification of the sitter and the attribution are based mainly on the inscription in the upper right corner, which reads in Latin: "Lavinia, daughter of Titian, painted by him" (LAVINIA. TIT. V. F. / AB. EO. P.). This inscription is unusual for Titian's works and was most likely added later, probably to sell this portrait at a more advantageous price as the original work of the famous Venetian master. Today, however, both the author of the portrait and the identity of the sitter are in doubt. In a 1993 publication by Jacob Burckhardt there is a question mark (Lavinia Vecellio?, Dresda, Gemäldegalerie, "Il ritratto nella pittura italiana del Rinascimento", p. 352) and in a 2001 catalogue of Titian's works it is listed as "Portrait of a noblewoman", additonally proven not to be autograph work. There are also suggestions that the person depicted is Bianca Cappello, the future Grand Duchess of Tuscany (after "Die bewegte Frau: Weibliche Ganzfigurenbildnisse in Bewegung ..." by Petra Kreuder, p. 70). The exact dates of birth of Lavinia, daughter of Titan, are unknown. She probably died in 1561. In 1555 she married the wealthy minor nobleman Cornelio Sarcinelli of Serravalle, while the woman depicted seems rather to be a member of the high aristocracy or even the ruling family given her pose and her rich costume. Stylistically and considering the costume, the painting is dated to around 1565, which is generally not disputed. The woman's green dress is not typical of Venice and the authors indicate strong inspirations from Spanish fashion - the costume of Elisabeth of Valois (1545-1568), Queen of Spain according to her portrait in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (inv. GG 3182), is similar in many elements. With this costume, the woman wanted to emphasize her ties to the Spanish monarchy. The Infanta Anna Jagiellon, through her mother, was descended from the kings of Aragon and the kings of Naples and had rights over the possessions that were part of the Spanish Empire at that time. An ostrich feather fan, an accessory of noble ladies, which only married women were allowed to wear in Venice at the time, could in this case indicate the desire to marry. Queen Elizabeth I, whose unmarried status inspired a cult of virginity linked to that of the Virgin Mary, is often depicted with ostrich feather fans, notably in her famous "Armada Portrait". Thus, given that the woman in the Dresden portrait was not Venetian, she should not be considered already married. Furthermore, if the woman was married, the portrait would be accompanied by the portrait of her husband, which is not known. Given its provenance, the painting, commissioned in Venice on the basis of study drawings sent from Poland-Lithuania, could easily have been transported to Anna's relatives in Ferrara. The resemblance of the woman in the Dresden portrait to the Princess-Infanta in the portraits by Venetian painters that I have identified is strong. The portrait by Francesco Bassano in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (inv. GG 33) is particularly similar in terms of facial features and costume. One can also point out the resemblance to the famous miniature of Anna by Lucas Cranach the Younger (Czartoryski Museum, MNK XII-545) (blond hair, small lips). A portrait similar to the one in Dresden, also identified as representing Titian's daughter Lavinia, is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (oil on canvas, 111 x 90.5 cm, GG 3379). The woman is different and due to the lack of resemblance to the Dresden portrait, the identification as Lavinia is questioned. The woman's costume in expensive green fabric is similar, but it is more in the Venetian style. We can identify the same woman in the painting attributed to Titian and his workshop in the Prado Museum in Madrid (inv. P000487), which was previously catalogued as Portrait of Titian's daughter Lavinia Vecellio by Paolo Veronese, and which, according to my identification, represents the third wife of Sigismund Augustus - Catherine of Austria. The resemblance to the portraits of Catherine by Titian's entourage or followers in Voigtsberg Castle and the National Museum of Serbia is also visible in the facial features. The Vienna painting is attributed to Titian and his workshop or to his nephew Marco Vecellio (1545-1611) and is also dated around 1565. It comes from the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria and was listed in the Theatrum Pictorium under number 91, before Titian's portrait of Jacopo de Strada, dated between 1567 and 1568 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, GG 81). The painting was therefore commissioned shortly before Catherine's departure from Poland-Lithuania and probably sent to her Habsburg relatives. Another interesting painting by Titian in the Kunsthistorisches Museum (oil on canvas, 183 x 200 cm, GG 71), depicts the mythological scene of Diana and Callisto. It is generally dated to around 1566 and is thought to have been acquired by Emperor Maximilian II, Catherine's brother and Anna's relative, in 1568. In 1559 Titian had sent an earlier version of this theme to King Philip II of Spain, when Maximilian II declined Titian's offer to paint it for him. In 1568, Veit von Dornberg, the imperial envoy in Venice, had written to Emperor Maximilian II that Titian was willing to provide him with seven "fables", including six versions of Philip II's poesie. However, this offer does not seem to have come to fruition (after "Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice ..." by Frederick Ilchman, Linda Borean, p. 59). Additionally, there were complaints that Titian's portrait of the King of Portugal bore no resemblance to the subject (after "Emperor Maximilian II" by Paula S. Fichtner, p. 98). The painting from Philip's collection is now in the National Gallery in London and the National Galleries of Scotland (inv. NG6616). The painter altered several elements, including the faces of the main characters - the goddess Diana and her close servant. While in the painting made for the King of Spain their faces are indistinct, in the Viennese version they are very characteristic and Diana's servant looks at the viewer in a meaningful way, indicating that in addition to the reference to Ovid's Metamorphoses, the painting has an additional, hidden meaning. The woman depicted as the goddess of hunting and fertility, daughter of the king of the gods Jupiter, closely resembles the woman in Titian's "Venus with an Organist and a Dog" in the Prado (inv. P000420) and the woman in the portrait from Titian's entourage in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Kassel (inv. GK 491), both of which represent the Infanta Anna Jagiellon according to my identification. Around 1568 Titian most likely paint the young king Sebastian of Portugal (1554-1578), whom he never met in person. The nymph Callisto had taken a vow of chastity to Diana. She broke her vow when Jupiter approached her in the guise of Diana. The painting shows the moment when the goddess discovered her subject's pregnancy. As punishment, Callisto was cast out and transformed into a bear by Juno, Jupiter's jealous wife. The painting can therefore be seen as a message to Maximilian and Catherine, who were staying in Austria at that time, that the "daughter of the king (of the gods)" does not tolerate disobedience from her ladies (as in the case of Zajączkowska). In his Zwierziniec, written in 1562 (version published in Kraków in 1574, p. 49v), Mikołaj Rej compares two daughters of Sigismund I - Anna and Catherine - to the goddess Diana (Jakoż ty dwie Dianie, bez pochlebstwa wszego, Umieją pięknie użyć stanu królewskiego, National Library of Poland, SD XVI.Qu.539). 
Portrait of Princess-Infanta Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) by Titian and workshop, ca. 1564-1565, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.
Portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) by Titian and workshop, ca. 1564-1565, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) from the Theatrum Pictorium (91) by Jan van Troyen after Titian and workshop, 1660, Princely Court Library in Waldeck.
Diana and Callisto with disguised portrait of Princess-Infanta Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) by Titian and workshop, ca. 1566-1570, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Jan Amor Tarnowski by Tintoretto
In the Prado Museum in Madrid there is an interesting portrait attributed to Jacopo Tintoretto from the Spanish royal collection (oil on canvas, 82 x 67 cm, inventory number P000366). Because the painting was obviously created by a Venetian painter and the identity of the model is unknown, it is known as a "Portrait of a Venetian admiral". The man in rich armour etched with gold is holding a baton, that is traditionally the sign of a high-ranking military officer.
This work was offered to King Philip IV of Spain (1605-1665) by Diego Felipez de Guzmán (1580-1655), 1st Marquess of Leganés, a Spanish politician and army commander, who fought during more than 20 years in the Spanish Netherlands and in 1635 was named Captain General and Governor of the Duchy of Milan. Such portraits of important military commanders were frequently exchanged in Europe at that time and sent to different places, so that Leganés could acquire the painting in Italy, but also in Flanders or Spain. The portrait is astonishingly similar in features, pose and and style of armour to the well known effigy of Jan Amor Tarnowski commissioned by king Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski in about 1781 for his gallery of effigies of Famous Poles at the Royal Castle in Warsaw (ZKW/3409). The effigy, just as the rest, was undoubtedly based on some original portrait still preserved in the royal collection. It was painted by court painter of king Stanislaus Augustus, Marcello Bacciarelli, who also copied other effigies of famous Poles, including Copernicus (ZKW/3433). During the Great Northern War, royal residencies of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a Venetian style republic of nobles created in 1569 with support of the last male Jagiellon, Sigismund Augustus, were ransacted and burned again by different invaders in 1702 and 1707. That is why some effigy of Sigismund Augustus, survived in the royal collection in about 1768, was confused with the effigy of the progenitor of the Polish-Lithuanian dynasty - Ladislaus Jagiello in the cycle of Polish Kings in the Marble Room at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, commissioned by Poniatowski. Jan Amor Tarnowski (1488-1561) was a renowned military commander, military theoretician, and statesman, who in 1518 became a knight of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and was accoladed by King Manuel I in Lisbon as a knight of Portugal. In the first half of the 1540s, the hetman was already well known to the Habsburgs as a military officer and politician, as evidenced by the letter King Ferdinand I sent to Juan Alonso de Gámiz. The King of Bohemia requested not only that Elizabeth of Austria reward Tarnowski, but also that "he receive a favor in the Iberian Peninsula through Her Majesty". In the account of the expedition that the maestre de campo Bernardo de Aldana made to Hungary in 1548, he is mentioned as "the very noble Count Tornoz". The hetman corresponded frequently with the court of Vienna and perhaps also with Spain with the aim of obtaining a high position in the imperial and Spanish army. In July 1554, Charles V wrote from Brussels to Prince Philip and Mary of Hungary, either in reference to Jan Amor Tarnowski or to his son Jan Krzysztof, to inform them that "the Count of Tarna, Polish (…) came here requesting that he be present at your nuptials and to then travel to Spain at the first opportunity in order to see that province. And being the person he is, and having been highly recommended to us by the King and Queen of Bohemia my children, it is only fair that he be given a warm welcome and good treatment. I kindly request you to treat him with the utmost care for the duration of his stay" (after "Jan Tarnowski and Spain" by Paweł Szadkowski, pp. 55-57). The portrait finally bears a resemblance to the effigies of Jan Amor and his son on his monumental tomb in the Tarnów Cathedral, created between 1561 and 1573 by Venetian trained sculptor Giovanni Maria Mosca called Padovano, who also created tomb monuments of two wives of Sigismund Augustus. According to the inventory, a fine parade burgonnet from the collection of the Krasiński Estate in Warsaw, belonged to Hetman Tarnowski (Polish Army Museum, 35128 MWP). It was richly decorated with engraved and embossed mythological and biblical scenes - the Rape of the Sabine women, the Romans fighting the barbarian tribes, the arrival of Judith at the camp of Holofernes, scenes of camp life and the stylized Jagiellonian eagle with the letter 'S' of King Sigismund I on its chest. It is considered a work of Parisian, Italian or Polish workshop, which indicates that the hetman commissioned the exquisite works of art from abroad. The same man was depicted in another painting attributed to circle of Jacopo Tintoretto or Titian, standing three-quarter-length, in armour with a crimson tunic and holding a baton (oil on canvas, 120.7 x 94.9 cm). This "Portrait of a Venetian officer" comes from private collection and was sold in April 2006 (Christie's New York, lot 206). His velvet tunic with embedded metal plates is similar to so-called corazzina brigandine, a form of armour made of heavy cloth lined with small steel plates, such as that from the Royal Armoury in Warsaw, most likely made in Poland or Italy around 1550, now in the Livrustkammaren in Stockholm (Swedish war booty from 1655, 23167 LRK). Hetman's father-in-law, Chancellor Krzysztof Szydłowiecki, was depicted in a similar crimson brigandine and armour, in a painting by Titian (Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan). The overall style of this portrait resembles works attributed to Bernardino Licinio, who died in Venice around 1565. His large codpiece, a prominent addition to the full suits of armour and the affirmation of virility, was "censored" and repainted, most likely in the 19th century. During the French wars of religion, which lasted from 1562 to 1598, Catholics mocked Huguenots as impotent ébraguettés (without virility) because they would not wear the prominent codpiece (after "A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Renaissance" by Elizabeth Currie, p. 70). In the 16th century, virility was considered a sign of God's blessing, which is why we also find representations of large codpieces in churches. One of the oldest is in the centre of the scene of the Crucifixion, a large fresco painted by Il Pordenone on the counter-façade of the Cathedral of Cremona in 1521. A knight, probably a notable of Cremona, with a large codpiece, holding a large sword, points to the crucified Christ. In May 1543, when entering Kraków for the coronation of Elizabeth of Austria (1526-1545), the members of Hetman Tarnowski's army were dressed in Spanish style (after "Zygmunt August" by Stanisław Cynarski, p. 53), so all of them undoubtedly wore codpieces, with the exception of two Hungarian trumpeters. "Tarnowski was worthy of being compared to ancient captains for his expertise in military discipline and seriousness of counsel" (Era il Tharnouio degno d'esser paragonato a capitani antichi di peritia di disciplina militare e di grauità di consiglio, after "l rimanente della seconda parte dell'historie del suo tempo ...", published in Venice in 1557, p. 201), praised the hetman Paolo Giovio (1483-1552), bishop of Nocera de' Pagani, whose museum filled with many portraits of notable figures was described in a letter sent by Antonio Francesco Doni (1513-1574) on July 17, 1543 to M[es]s[er] Jacopo Tintoretto Eccellente Pittore. 
Portrait of Jan Amor Tarnowski (1488-1561) in armour holding a baton by Jacopo Tintoretto, 1550-1575, Prado Museum in Madrid.
Portrait of Jan Amor Tarnowski (1488-1561) in armour with a crimson brigandine, holding a baton by Bernardino Licinio, 1550s, Private collection.
Portrait of Fedor Senyuta Lyakhovitski by Paris Bordone
"An ancient jewel for great courage given to the Senyuts in Volhynia by the Ruthenian princes, which is in a red field, because they always bravely defended their homeland with their blood" is the description of the Senyuta family coat of arms in Bartosz Paprocki's "The Nest of Virtues, whence the coat of arms of the knights, dukes, and lords of the Polish Kingdom, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Ruthenia, Prussia, Masovia, Samogitia, and other States have their genesis" (Gniazdo cnoty zkąd herby rycerstwa slawnego Krolestwa Polskiego ..., p. 1126), published in Kraków in 1578.
Below the text is the woodcut with reproduction of this coat of arms in a multi-field version with different runic and tamga symbols, some of which are coats of arms of other important Ruthenian noble families like the Yelovitzki (Jełowicki). To the right of the coat of arms, Paprocki included a schematic effigy of the most notable member of the family at that time - Fedor Senyuta Lyakhovitski, tribune of Kremenets (Woyski Krzemieniecki), wearing armor, a shishak helmet and holding a saber (also used as an image of other figures). Fedor, also known as Fiodor Hrehorowicz Sieniut, Teodor Sieniuta Lachowicki or Lachowiecki in Polish, is considered the first Protestant member of the family. He was lord of Lyakhivtsi, Tykhomel and other villages and married twice: to Katarzyna née Jeło-Malińska and to Katarzyna Firlejówna (married in 1588), daughter of Mikołaj Firlej (d. 1588), voivode of Lublin. Firlejówna was a zealous Protestant and probably under her influencee, he converted from Orthodoxy to Calvinism. Samuel Twardowski, in the 1661 epithalamium for Piotr Opaliński and Anna Sieniucianka, mentions that Katarzyna was a lady of "high connections" (koniunkcyj wysokich) and the heiress of large estates. Through this marriage, Fedor received Rudno, near Lublin. The Kórnik Library preserves his estate archives, including a will with a legacy for his wife Katarzyna (BK 1853). They had two sons, Abraham (1587-1632) and Paul Christopher (1589-1640), who studied at the universities of Heidelberg (1603) and Leiden (1605), and a daughter Catherine. Fedor and Malińska's son, Nicholas, was killed in Siwki in 1604 by peasants. In the mentioned epithalamium of Twardowski, which opens with a description of the arrival of Venus in Lesser Poland, Hymen presents the families of the bride and groom, including the military deeds of Fedor Senyuta and his sons (after "Samuel Twardowski: Epitalamia" by Roman Krzywy, p. 18-19, 84). He became tribune of Kremenets, an officer responsible for security, on March 29, 1572. His father, Gregory (Hryhorij, Hrycko or Grzegorz), who died around 1559, was in the service of Illia (1510-1539), Prince of Ostroh (after "Spis ważniejszych miejscowości w powiecie starokonstantynowskim ..." by Jan Marek Giżycki, p. 433-434). He married Anna Patrykiejówna, also called Patrykówna, with whom he had four daughters: Sophia, Anastasia, Catherine and Elizabeth, as well as two sons, Matthew, who was killed by his subjects on May 30, 1563, and Fedor. After his brother's death, Fedor became heir to the Lyakhivtsi estates and the village of Tykhomel. The town of Lyakhivtsi (now Bilohiria, Lachowce, or Lachowice in Polish), originally inhabited by settlers from Masuria, was first mentioned in 1441. Since 1520, the settlement belonged to Queen Bona Sforza, who granted it to Dashka Kalenkovych, whose daughter Anna married Fyodor's grandfather Jesko in 1538. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, a wooden fortress existed in Lyakhivtsi on an island in the middle of a pond, and at that time the town was the center of Arianism. In 1566, the Ruthenian prince Andrei Petrovich Massalski sued Fedor, accusing him of assault near the city gate of Lutsk (after "Honor among nobles ..." by Povilas Dikavičius, p. 263-264). Several documents from the period of October 5, 1568 (claim for payment of a monetary debt to Mr. Stepan Urumsky) to May 29, 1578 mention Fedor, including his complaints against Constantine Vasily (1526-1608), Prince of Ostroh. He died after 1595 and his burial place is unknown. Very little is known about artistic patronage of the family and practically nothing remained of it. In this regard, the trip of Fedor's son, Paul Christopher, to Italy in 1613 is interesting: he visited Padua and Rome (after "Polski slownik biograficzny", Volume 37 [1935], p. 196). In his book published in Kyiv in 1914, Marian Dubiecki (1838-1926) describes the portrait of Paul Christopher, preserved in the Dominican Church of Lyakhivtsi, as "with magnificent and expressive features, perhaps the work of an Italian master" ("Na kresach i za kresami ...", p. 235). It depicted the lord of Lyakhivtsi wearing a crimson cloak lined with sable fur. In 2019, "Portrait of a Gentleman, half length", attributed to the 16th-century North Italian School, was auctioned in New York (oil on canvas, 97.5 x 80 cm, Sotheby's, January 31, 2019, lot 256). The manner in which the velvet fabrics of the costume were painted is very characteristic of the Venetian painter Paris Bordone (1500-1571) and his workshop. A comparable portrait is the one in the Pitti Palace in Florence, depicting a noblewoman in a crimson robe, traditionally known as "The Medici's Nurse" (La balia dei Medici, inv. 1912, Palatina 109; 19th-century critics identified her with a wet nurse of the Medici family). The way the painter has depicted the model's left hand indicates that he may have been inspired by the late works of Titian, which place the painting in the 1560s or around 1570. Several paintings from old collections in the former Sarmatia are linked to Bordone and his workshop. His works were also well known during the partitions. The 1834 register of paintings from the Potocki collection in Wilanów, for example, mentions "A woman's head, Paris Bordone" ("Spis obrazów znaidujących się w galeryi i pokojach Pałacu Willanowskiego ...", p. 10, item 83). The costume of a man wearing a ruff is also more typical of the second half of the 16th century. His pose, one hand on his hip, the richness of his costume, gilded dagger, saber hanging from his belt, and the gold chain around his neck, indicate that he was a wealthy aristocrat. On the chain, we can see a diamond-shaped coat of arms: on a red background, four runic or tamga symbols in gold recall the coat of arms of Senyuta family published in Paprocki's "The Nest of Virtues ...". The man wears a steel gorget, which makes him a military man, like Fedor, whose career culminated in his appointment as tribune of Kremenets. In this respect, the portrait is comparable to the schematic portrait of him in Paprocki's work. 
Portrait of Fedor Senyuta Lyakhovitski, lord of Lyakhivtsi by Paris Bordone, ca. 1563-1570, Private collection.
Portrait of Jerzy Jazłowiecki by Lambert Sustris
In 1563 Stefan Tomsa, a descendant of Moldavian boyars, led a successful conspiracy against the Protestant ruler Iacob Heraclid, known as Despot Voda, who after a 3-month siege of the Suceava Castle was betrayed by mercenaries and personally killed by Tomsa. As a sign of submission to Sultan Suleiman I, Stefan ordered to send the captured Ruthenian Prince Dmytro Vyshnevetsky, who was involved in Moldavian affairs, to Istanbul, where Vyshnevetsky was tortured to death. Unable obtain recognition from the High Porte and to hold on to the throne, Tomsa fled to Poland, where King Sigismund II Augustus, in order to appease the Turks, ordered Jerzy Jazłowiecki (d. 1575), castellan of Kamianets to capture him. The Prince of Moldavia was imprisoned, then sentenced to death and beheaded in Lviv on May 5, 1564.
Jazłowiecki, born in or before 1510, was the son of Mikołaj Monasterski of the Abdank coat of arms (ca. 1490-1559), castellan of Kamianets and his wife Ewa Podfilipska. He was brought up at the court of the bishop of Kraków, Piotr Tomicki (1464-1535), but soon he began his military career under the supervision of Jan Amor Tarnowski (1488-1561) and Mikołaj Sieniawski (1489-1569) and participated in many battles. Already in 1528, as an 18-year-old, he became famous as a royal cavalry captain in the battle with the Tatars near Kamianets. In 1546, under the influence of his wife Elżbieta Tarło, he converted to Calvinism, and later closed the churches on his estates and expelled the Dominican monks. In 1544, he purchased from Mikołaj Sieniawski the town and castle of Yazlovets (Polish Jazłowiec) with the surrounding villages for 6,400 zlotys. The sum was finally paid in 1546 and from 1547 he began to call himself Jazłowiecki. Between 1550-1556 Jerzy rebuilt the Medieval fortress in Yazlovets in Renaissance style to design of Italian architects from the Lviv group of Antoni, Gabriel and Kilian Quadro, brothers of Giovanni Battista di Quadro, active in Poznań (after "Sztuka polska: Renesans i manieryzm", Volume 3, p. 120). It should be noted that the style of the stone portal above the entrance to the castle is similar to the one in the Mikołaj Sieniawski's Castle in Berezhany, created in 1554. In April 1564, he was sent as royal emissary to Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent for which he received a seat in the Senate from the king Sigismund Augustus. In 1567 Jerzy become the Voivode of Podolia, in 1569 the Voivode of Ruthenia and was appointed Field Hetman of the Crown and Grand Hetman of the Crown (without a formal nomination) that year. He also reorganized the defense of the southern borders against the Tatars. During the interregnum in 1573, Jazłowiecki was nominated by the Piast party as a candidate for the Polish throne and was supported by Sultan Selim II (after "Jak w dawnej Polsce królów obierano" by Marek Borucki, p. 69). In the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe, there is a portrait of a general, attributed to Lambert Sustris (oil on canvas, 116.2 x 97.4 cm, inv. 418), similar in style to portrait of Princess Elizabeth Radziwill (Museum of Western and Eastern Art in Odessa), daughter-in-law of Mikołaj Sieniawski, identified by me. This painting of unknown provenance was attributed to a Venetian follower of Titian in the gallery catalogs from 1881 to 1920. The 55-year-old man, according to Latin inscription in lower left corner of the painting (ETATIS / SVE AN / LV), is holding a heavy sword. His armour, beard and shaved head are strikingly similar to the statue of Mikołaj Sieniawski from his tombstone in Berezhany (destroyed during World War II). Behind him there is a view with the same man dismounted from the horse, standing before a body of another man, whose head was cut off. The killed man is wearing an Ottoman turban with pleated red velvet part, called külah, similar to that visible in a drawing by German School from the late 16th century and depicting Wallachian and Moldavian noblemen (inscribed ... reitten die Wallachen unnd Moldauer ..., Private collection). Michael the Brave (1558-1601), Prince of Wallachia and Moldavia, was depicted in similar turban in the Feast of Herod with the Beheading of St John the Baptist by Bartholomeus Strobel, created between 1630-1633 (Prado Museum in Madrid), as well as Alexander II Mavrocordatos Firaris (1754-1819), Prince of Moldavia, who is wearing a similar turban-like headpiece in his portrait created in 1785 or after (Private collection). The standing man in the view is not holding a sword, he did not execute the other man, he just captured him. The general from the painting bear a strong resemblance to portrait of Jerzy Jazłowiecki, when Field Hetman of the Crown, known from the photograph from the collection of the historian Aleksander Czołowski (1865-1944), most probably a 17th century copy of a painting created in about 1569. He was the same age (about 54 or 55) as Jazłowiecki when he captured the Prince of Moldavia in 1564. 
Portrait of Jerzy Jazłowiecki (ca. 1510-1575), castellan of Kamianets, aged 55 by Lambert Sustris, ca. 1565, Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe.
Portraits of Jan Rozdrażewski by Adriaen Thomasz. Key and Sofonisba Anguissola
In 1557, Jan Rozdrażewski (1543-1600), a 14-year-old nobleman of the Doliwa coat of arms, began his studies at the University of Frankfurt an der Oder. Like other members of his family, he probably attended the grammar school in Złotoryja, Silesia. Rozdrażewski was the son of Hieronim, heir to part of Krotoszyn, and Anna of Łuków. In literature, he is confused with his cousin Jan (1537-1585), Count of Pomsdorf (Pomianów), as well as with Jan Rozdrażewski Nowomiejski (d. 1609), auxiliary bishop of Włocławek. Since the latter, later a Catholic priest, studied at the Protestant universities of Tübingen and Basel (registered as originating from Nowe Miasto in 1559), it is highly likely that Rozdrażewski of Krotoszyn also studied in other European countries, notably in Flanders and Italy (his cousins, as children, lived in France, at the royal court of the Valois). It was probably during his studies that Jan became a member of the Unity of the Czech Brethren and in 1567 he married a follower of this denomination, Barbara Lachenberkówna of Ochla, widow of Wacław Reszczyński (d. 1565).
Jan acquired the Krotoszyn estate in 1570 and had previously regained Rozdrażew from the Leszczyński family. He probably rebuilt the Rozdrażew castle destroyed by fire as a brick building, not a wooden one. During his lifetime, Jan Rozdrażewski amassed a considerable fortune. In 1599, he founded a hospital for the elderly in Rozdrażew. From his youth, Jan remained in close contact with the Leszczyński family, the prominent Calvinists of the time (after "Polski słownik biograficzny ...", 1935, Volume 32, p. 371). Despite the efforts of his Catholic family, Rozdrażewski remained a Protestant and, around 1592, began construction of a new and spacious church for his coreligionists in Krotoszyn, which was completed just before his death. In 1599, he was elected a provisional councilor by the Protestant-Orthodox Confederation of Vilnius. On March 1, 1591, he was appointed castellan of Poznań. His second wife, Katarzyna Potulicka, bore him four children. Jan Rozdrażewski died on March 15, 1600, a few weeks after the death of his cousin Hieronim (ca. 1546-1600), Bishop of Kuyavia. He was buried in the church in Krotoszyn, where he had a suitable tombstone prepared. A few years after his death, his widow Katarzyna, along with her minor children, converted to Catholicism and donated the church in Krotoszyn to the Catholics. Only Rozdrażewski's eldest daughter, Anna Leszczyńska, remained faithful to the Evangelical faith until the end of her life. The mentioned tombstone is the only surviving material evidence of his artistic patronage. Very modest compared to other funerary monuments of the time, it survived the destruction of Krotoszyn during fires (1638, 1774) and wars (the Deluge and the Great Northern War). Its main element is the limestone statue of the deceased in armor, depicted asleep and holding a mace. A marble plaque with a Latin inscription confirms the identity of the deceased and his death at the age of 57. The monument is attributed to Hendrik Horst (d. 1612), a Dutch sculptor from Groningen, active in Ruthenia and Greater Poland (after "Sztuka w Polsce od I do III Rzeczypospolitej: zarys dziejów" by Tadeusz Chrzanowski, p. 43). In 1591, Henricus Horst sculptor lapidum Gremugensis ex Frisia, accepted the city law of Poznań and purchased a house in Nowa Grobla. The Rozdrażewski Monument was made after 1597. Next to the monument also remains the altar of Our Lady of the Rosary, one of the oldest in the church. It was consecrated on August 2, 1643, by Bishop Andrzej Leszczyński (1608-1658), then Bishop of Kamianets in Ruthenia and later Primate of Poland. Bishop Leszczyński, son of Anna Leszczyńska née Rozdrażewska, was the grandson of the church's founder. He studied in Kalisz, Ingolstadt (from 1626), and Italy, probably in Siena. The altar was most likely founded by the Confraternity of the Rosary, present in the church since 1636, perhaps at the initiative of Bishop Leszczyński. The central painting depicting Saint Dominic receiving the Rosary from the hands of the Virgin and Child is particularly interesting. Its composition is very reminiscent of that in the parish church of Saint Florian in Kubed, Slovenia, painted in 1598 by the Dalmatian painter Giorgio Ventura (also called Zorzi or Juraj Ventura). Born in Zadar, Croatia, Ventura was a citizen of the Republic of Venice. He was mainly active in Istria at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries and drew inspiration for many of his works from Italian, Dutch and Flemish prints. The style of the painting is more similar to that of the canvas that was in the Michelazzi collection in Trieste in the 1920s, also considered to be Ventura's work, but supposedly dated 1536 (photograph in the collection of the Ca' Foscari University of Venice, inv. V. 2562). Michelazzi's painting, in turn, is reminiscent of the large painting preserved in the Musei Civici in Vicenza (Pinacoteca di Palazzo Chiericati, inv. A50), signed by Girolamo dal Toso, a painter from Vicenza, and dated 1526. Given all these elements, it is quite possible that the earlier import from the Venetian Republic was placed on the altar in Krotoszyn before 1643. In this church, we can therefore admire a tombstone made by a Dutch sculptor and a painting most likely brought from Italy, probably by Catholic members of the Rozdrażewski family. The inscription on Jan's tombstone indicates that it was made at the initiative of his wife after her conversion, because it also mentions his Catholic relative Hieronim, bishop of Kuyavia, who died in Rome over a month before Jan (February 6, 1600) and was buried in the Church of the Gesù. Hieronim studied in Ingolstadt and Rome in the years 1561-1568, and was ordained a priest by Pope Pius V. In his will drawn up in 1599, the bishop left his Protestant relative only two horses from his stable, justifying that it was not proper to endow enemies of the Catholic faith with property from the Church's income. Funerary monuments, such as that of Rozdrażewski or those in Tarnów Cathedral, testify to the high standard of sepulchral art and sculpture in Sarmatia, as well as the quality of portraiture. Many of these funerary monuments were created after the death of the people to whom they were dedicated, the sculptor must therefore have drawn inspiration from their other effigies, usually painted portraits or miniatures. A magnificent monument dedicated to Father Marcin Łyczko of Ryglice (1508-1578), superior of the church in Tarnów, a nobleman with the Sulima coat of arms, can be cited as an example. His tombstone, founded by his relative Piotr Łyczko and his grandsons, is attributed to Wojciech Kuszczyc. The portrait on which Marcin's statue was based was not mentioned in his will, probably due to its low value at that time, which does not mean that it was not a valuable work of art. Another example is the epitaph of Aleksander Wilierski (Wilerski, ca. 1568-1598), canon of the Tarnów collegiate church and official of Pilzno, in brown marble, decorated with an engraved half-figure of the deceased, which undoubtedly strongly recalls the portrait from which it is based. In 1906, at an auction in Amsterdam, a portrait of a young gentleman, attributed to the 16th-century Italian school, was sold (oil on canvas, 105 x 80 cm, "Catalogue des tableaux anciens : provenant des collections Cte A. de Ganay de Paris ...", April 24, 1906, p. 8, item 11). The painting came from Count André de Ganay's collection in Paris, and its previous provenance was not specified. It is probably in a private collection, or was lost or destroyed during the First or Second World Wars. According to the catalog note, the portrait was reminiscent of those of Moroni, but its style closely resembles the Portrait of a goldsmith, sold at auction in Vienna in 2018 (oil on canvas, 107 x 78 cm, Dorotheum, April 24, 2018, lot 34, inscribed and dated upper right: ÆTATIS SVÆ 25 / A.° D.° 1566). Not only is the style of the two paintings similar, but also their dimensions, the costumes of the two men and even the inscription, which indicates that the two effigies were created around the same time. The composition with a table on the left is also generally similar. The inscription on the painting auctioned in Amsterdam indicated that the man was 23 years old in 1536 (A° 1536 ÆTA.23. IDEM.) and the inscription was most likely placed in the upper right corner because its traces are visible on the preserved photograph. Since the costume of the man in the Amsterdam painting clearly dates from the 1560s (small ruff, bulbous hose), the date was probably misread and, as in the Portrait of a goldsmith, it should also be 1566 and not 1536. The man in this painting was therefore the same age as Jan Rozdrażewski before his marriage to Lachenberkówna in 1567. The painting auctioned in Vienna is attributed to Sofonisba Anguissola, then active at the Spanish court of King Philip II in Madrid. As the catalog entry for Portrait of a goldsmith confirms, "we know little of the painter’s activity during these years in Spain until 1573". Rozdrażewski's activities between 1557 and 1567 are also unknown. Since his Catholic relatives were raised at the court of Catherine de Medici, Queen of France, it is possible that Jan reached Spain. A portrait very similar to the one sold at auction in Amsterdam is now in the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Canada (oil on canvas, 101.5 x 75.5 cm, inv. 36-001). The pose is almost identical, as is the costume. The portrait is dated "1564" in the upper left corner. This painting is attributed to the Flemish painter Adriaen Thomasz. Key, who, like Sofonisba, according to my identifications, frequently worked for Sarmatian clients. The Habsburg Netherlands were then affected by the iconoclastic fury that began in the early 1560s and reached its peak in 1566. Key was a Calvinist, but he continued to live in the city after the fall of Antwerp in 1585 and also worked for the Catholics. As with two known portraits of Bishop Hieronim Rozdrażewski (Diocesan Archives in Włocławek and Diocesan Museum in Pelplin), slight differences in physiognomy can be attributed to the fact that the paintings were created by different painters, who interpreted the study drawings or effigies differently. In the case of the portraits of Key and Anguissola, there is a difference of two years (1564 and 1566), which could explain the sitter's higher forehead in later portrait. The face in Key's portrait particularly closely resembles Rozdrażewski's features from his funerary monument in Krotoszyn (beard, nose), although in this case the time difference between the effigies is more than 30 years and the portrait used by the sculptor to create the statue was most likely the one painted around 1591 when Jan received his highest dignity - castellan of Poznań. The portrait of Key comes from the Spinola collection in Novi, near Genoa (after "The Bader Collection: Dutch and Flemish Paintings" by David de Witt, p. 165, item 98), which also confirms that the man in the portrait was probably in Antwerp in 1564 and in Genoa in 1566 (or had returned to Genoa from Spain that year), where he may have met both painters in person. However, the resemblance between the two effigies indicates that the painters may also have relied on study drawings or portraits by other painters. 
Portrait of Jan Rozdrażewski (1543-1600) by Adriaen Thomasz. Key, 1564, Agnes Etherington Art Centre.
Portrait of Jan Rozdrażewski (1543-1600), aged 23 by Sofonisba Anguissola, 1566, Private collection, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portraits of Francesco Lismanini by Giovanni Battista Moroni and Bernardino Licinio
"Lismanini was with us as an envoy of the duke of Prussia; your reverence accuses that this man is not a Catholic, but the duke himself is not one and none of those whom he usually sends to us recognizes the authority of the church, and we, who receive other envoys of the said duke, as well as Tartar and Turkish envoys who are not Catholics and sent by non-Catholics, did not think that Lismanini could be refused an audience, however, he only had a short conversation with us and will take his dismissal without delay. We wish your reverence good health. Given in Grodno on September 1, year of our Lord 1565 of our reign 36", ends his letter to the Venetian cardinal Giovanni Francesco Commendone (1523-1584), King Sigismund II Augustus (after "Pamiętniki o dawnéj Polsce z czasów Zygmunta Augusta ..." by Mikołaj Malinowski, p. 271). That same year, mentioned Francesco Lismanini (Franciscus Lismaninus in Latin or Franciszek Lismanin in Polish) published in Królewiec/Königsberg his book "Short Explanation of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity" (Brevis explicatio doctrinae De sanctissima Trinitate ...), which he dedicated to the king (SERENISSIMO PRINCIPI ET DOMINO, DOMINO SIGISMVNDO AVEgusto Regi Poloniæ, Magno Duci Lithuaniæ, Russiæ, Prußiæ, Masouia, Samogitia, Liuoniæ &c. Domino hæredi, Franciscus Lysmaninus summam felicitatem præcatur).
Born around 1504 to Greek parents on the island of Corfu, which then belonged to the Republic of Venice, Lismanini arrived in Kraków with his parents in 1515. He generally confirmed his Greek origin, but it is difficult to determine whether he was Greek by birth or whether he perhaps came from a family of settlers from the Serenissima (after "Odrodzenie i reformacja w Polsce", Volume 16, p. 38, 45). In the mid-1520s he joined the Franciscan order, becoming its provincial in 1538. Probably receiving his doctorate in theology in Padua around 1540, he soon became a preacher and confessor to Queen Bona Sforza (from 1545). In the 1540s he sympathized with the Reformation, and the Bishop of Kraków Samuel Maciejowski tried unsuccessfully to denounce Lismanini as a "heretic" to the newly elected Pope Julius III in 1549. Since the accession to the throne of Sigismund II Augustus, Francesco had been part of his immediate circle. He left for Italy at the beginning of the summer of 1549, first to Rome to settle secret matters that were very dear to the queen, according to her letter to the pope, and then returned from Venice to Poland in March 1550 (after "Papiestwo-Polska 1548-1563" by Henryk Damian Wojtyska, p. 318). Upon his return from Italy, a rumour spread in Kraków that he was sending as much money and gold as possible to Italy, in order to build a house in Venice, settle there and marry, perhaps with his concubine whom he kept at the nuns of St. Andrew in Kraków. Lismanini spread Calvinist books and ideas among the nobility and at the royal court. He also maintained intensive contacts with Italian theologian Lelio Sozzini (1525-1562) in Switzerland and Poland. In 1553, the king entrusted him with the purchase of books for his library, and Lismanini undertook an extensive tour of Europe. Via Moravia he went to Padua and Milan, then visited the Swiss cities of Zurich, Bern and Basel. After stays in Paris and Lyon, Francesco stayed again in Switzerland in 1554-1555, in Geneva and Zurich, where he met John Calvin. It was in Switzerland that he broke definitively with the Catholic Church when he married, on Calvin's advice, a French noblewoman named Claudia (early 1555). On his return journey to Poland-Lithuania, he visited Strasbourg and Stuttgart in 1556. In 1557 and 1558, he considered settling in Królewiec/Königsberg with Duke Albert of Prussia (1490-1568), whom he had met at the funeral of duke's uncle Sigismund the Old in 1548. In the early 1560s, Lismanini, who was then living in Pińczów, was involved in serious conflicts with Francesco Stancaro (Franciscus Stancarus, Franciszek Stankar, 1501-1574). He spent the last years of his life, from 1563 to 1566, in Prussia as a ducal councillor (compare "Antitrinitarische Streitigkeiten ..." by Irene Dingel, p. 180-181). In the letter of April 29, 1563, the Swiss reformer Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575) calls him "superintendent of the churches of Lesser Poland" (D. Francisco Lysmanino Corcyreo, superintendenti ecclesiarum Minoris Poloniae). Before September 1, 1565, according to the king's letter, he was in Lithuania and Ruthenia. Although little recognized in literature, Lismanini was one of two important reformers of the Church linked to Queen Bona. In the spring of 1541, under the patronage of the queen, the Lithuanian jurist and church reformer Abraomas Kulvietis (Abraham Culvensis in Latin or Abraham Kulwieć in Polish, ca. 1510-1545) opened a school in Vilnius. Kulvietis studied in Louvain, then at the Lutheran University of Wittenberg (he matriculated as Abraham Littuanus Magister in May 1537), where he had the opportunity to attend the lectures of Melanchthon, and perhaps Luther, and then went to study in Italy. He travelled to Rome and Siena, where he received a doctorate in canon and civil law (in utroque iure) on November 28-29, 1540. Abraomas's propagation of Protestant doctrines soon led to his expulsion from Lithuania, and in September 1542, the year the Inquisition and the trials of heretics resumed in Italy, the Catholic Bishop of Vilnius ordered the arrest of Kulvietis' mother and some of his friends, and the seizure of the Kulvietis family's property. The queen advised him to flee Lithuania, as she herself had to leave Vilnius and would not be able to protect him. In Królewiec on June 23, Duke Albert, appointed Kulvietis as his counsellor. Through Jost Ludwig Decius the Younger (ca. 1520-1567), Bona Sforza strongly advised Duke Albert to keep Kulvietis at his side; under no circumstances ("even he had to be restrained by chains") was he to be allowed to leave Królewiec, because in Vilnius he would have been burned at the stake or imprisoned before the queen could help him (Et ita dicas patri tuo, ut scribat domino duci Prussiae, quod illum apud se teneat, nam ille voluit in Lithuaniam domum suam ire et metuendum est, ne illum comburant vel suspendant, nec dimittat, etiam si debeat nolentem in cathena retinere. Nam certe illum comburerent vel suspenderent, antequam ego rescirem, after "Abraomas Kulvietis and the First Protestant Confessio fidei in Lithuania" by Dainora Pociūtė, p. 41, 43-44, 47-50). Before the Second World War, the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne held a "Portrait of an Elderly Gentleman" (Bildnis eines älteren Herrn, oil on canvas, 93 x 76 cm), attributed to Tintoretto. It was mentioned and reproduced in the 1910 catalogue of this museum ("Verzeichnis der Gemälde des Wallraf-Richartz-Museums der Stadt Cöln", p. 67, item 95). The painting was acquired in 1813 from the collection of Josef Truchsess von Waldburg-Zeil-Wurzach (1748-1813), dean of the cathedral of Strasbourg, in Vienna and Nikolsburg. Before World War II, in the Wallraf-Richartz Museums there was also another portrait by Tintoretto, which most likely depicted the singer Krzysztof Klabon (inv. 516), a composer at the Polish-Lithuanian royal court, perhaps born in Królewiec around 1550 and possibly of Italian origin. Although the "Portrait of an Elderly Gentleman" has been attributed to Tintoretto, based on an old photograph, it can be concluded that the style of the painting was closer to the style of another Venetian painter, Bernardino Licinio, similar to the signed work "Portrait of a Man" from 1532 in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (inv. GG 6442, signed and dated: LYCINIO F P V / MDXXXII). Licinio, who probably died in Venice around 1565, was the author of the portraits of Queen Bona (for example the painting in the British Embassy in Rome, inv. 2280), identified by me. Not only the style of the painting is similar, but also the style of the inscription in the two paintings described. According to the Latin inscription in the lower right corner of the painting from the Truchsess collection, it was painted in October 1565, when the man was 61 years old (MDLXV. DIE ... / OCTOBRIS / ΑΝΝΟ ÆΤΑ ... / SVÆ LXI M ... / XI), exactly like Lismanini, when he published his book dedicated to Sigismund Augustus and visited the king, probably in Grodno. Interestingly, the same man, although slightly younger, can be identified in a painting by Giovanni Battista Moroni, active in Lombardy, who painted portraits of Sigismund Augustus (Prado Museum in Madrid, inv. P000262; North Carolina Museum of Art, inv. GL.60.17.46), identified by me. This "Portrait of a man with a book" (Ritratto d'uomo con libro) is now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (oil on canvas, 71 x 56 cm, inv. 1890 / 933). It was purchased in 1660 by Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici (1617-1675) from the art dealer Paolo del Sera (1617-1672), as by Moroni. In the 1675 inventory and in all subsequent inventories, the work appears with an attribution to il Morazzone (1573-1626). The painting is generally dated between 1550 and 1553, which corresponds to Lismanini's visits to Venice and Milan. A damaged or unfinished copy (or modello) was sold in Milan in 2009 (oil on canvas, Sotheby's, October 12, 2009, lot 1491). A good copy is also in the Wilanów Palace in Warsaw (oil on canvas, 39 x 32 cm, inv. Wil.1035). It was first mentioned in the inventory of the mid-19th century, so it is considered to be part of the acquisitions of August Potocki (1806-1867) and his wife Aleksandra (1818-1892). The reverse of the painting bears the inscription F. Vacini 1804, which is why it is believed to be a 19th century painting by an unknown painter depicting an unknown man. Another fine copy, also thought to be by the 19th-century painter, is in a private collection in France (oil on paper mounted on panel, 31,5 x 24 cm, Thierry de Maigret in Paris, July 9, 2020, lot 211). It is attributed to the French school, perhaps because of its resemblance to the style of 19th-century academic painters. 
Portrait of Francesco Lismanini (ca. 1504-1566) by Giovanni Battista Moroni or workshop, ca. 1550, Private collection.
Portrait of Francesco Lismanini (ca. 1504-1566) by Giovanni Battista Moroni, ca. 1550-1553, Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Portrait of Francesco Lismanini (ca. 1504-1566) by workshop or follower of Giovanni Battista Moroni, after 1553 (1804?), Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
Portrait of Francesco Lismanini (ca. 1504-1566) by workshop or follower of Giovanni Battista Moroni, after 1553 (19th century?), Private collection.
Portrait of Francesco Lismanini (ca. 1504-1566), aged 61, by Bernardino Licinio, 1565, Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portraits of Mikołaj Rej by Sofonisba Anguissola and Giovanni Battista Moroni
"Let Mantua be proud of Virgil, Verona of Catullus, You, Rej, her bard, let the country of Sarmatia [Poland-Lithuania] be proud. And all the more so that the land of Italy and Greece gave birth to many, You are almost the only one in Sarmatia" (Mantua Vergilium iactet, Verona Catullum: Te Rei, vatem Sarmatis ora suum. Hocque magis, multos quoniam tulit Itala tellus Graiaque: Sarmatiae tu prope solus ades) (after Polish translation in "Wizerunk własny ...", Part 2, by Helena Kapełuś, Władysław Kuraszkiewicz, p. 97), praises the poet Mikołaj Rej, or Mikołaj Rey of Nagłowice, in his Latin dedication Petrus Roysius Maureus (i.e. Piotr Roizjusz the Moor, born Pedro Ruiz de Moros). The Spanish poet and courtier of King Sigismund II Augustus, included this short poem in Rej's "Faithful image of an honest man" (Wizerunk własny żywota człowyeka poczciwego), published in Kraków in 1558-1560 before the poet's printed effigy showing him at the age of 50 (therefore created in 1555). Under Rej's portrait there is another Latin poem by his friend Andrzej Trzecieski (Trecesius, d. 1584) in which he calls him the Polish Dante (Noster hic est Dantes).
Considered the "father of Polish literature", Rej was one of the first poets to write in Polish (and not in Latin). He was born into a noble family at Zhuravne in Ukraine in 1505. In 1518 he was enrolled as a student of the Cracow Academy and in 1525 his father sent him to the magnate court of Andrzej Tęczyński. Between 1541 and 1548 he converted to Lutheranism, then to Calvinism. Rej participated in synods, founded churches and schools on his estates. The Catholics, who reproached him for the desecration of churches, the expulsion of Catholic priests and the persecution of monks, called him the unleashed Satan, the dragon of Oksza, Sardanapalus of Nagłowice and a man without honor and faith. In 1603, as an author, he was included in the first Polish Index of Forbidden Books. He maintained close contacts with the courts of Sigismund I the Old and Sigismund II August. Rej was also the first in Polish literature to receive a substantial reward for his work. He received Temerowce from King Sigismund I, and Dziewięciele from Sigismund Augustus as a lifelong possession and two towns, one of them Rejowiec, founded by Rej in 1547. He died at Rejowiec in 1569. His grandson, Andrzej Rej, royal secretary and Calvinist, was painted by Rembrandt in December 1637, while he was visiting Amsterdam as an ambassador. Although he praised the wisdom of Queen Bona in his "Bestiary" (Zwierzyniec, 1562 - "A woman of wisdom, that even today she is famous in Poland, and long-remembered her words. She was from the Italian nation where wisdom is born"), beauty of her daughters Anna and Catherine and dedicated his "Life of Joseph" (Żywot Józefa, 1545) to her daughter Isabella, Queen of Hungary, he is perhaps the first author in Poland to oppose strong women and their inflences. In a dialogue between Warwas and Lupus on the cunning of women, written before 1547 and most likely published anonymously, he begins with an appeal to Venus (Wenera), the patroness of females. Women do not participate in local assemblies and parliamentary sessions (Sejm), they do not sit over books, and yet they lead men by the nose. All women are cunning and laugh secretly at men who drink even out of their shoes for their health (after "Mikołaja Reja, żywot i pisma" by Michał Janik, p. 36). He frequently criticizes women, their extravagant clothing and their excessive make-up - "looks like she's wearing a mask" (iż się zda jakoby była w maskarze). In the second known effigy of the poet, published in later edition of his "Faithful image of an honest man" and in "Speculum" (Zwyerciadło), published in 1568, similar to that from 1555, he is not depicted in national costume (crimson żupan), as one would expect from the national poet of the time, but in rich foreign costume – embroidered Italian-style shirt, rich doublet, wearing a hat and several chains. In this last portrait, he is holding a book, just to remind us that he is a poet. Both portraits are woodcuts, created by an artist working for a Kraków-based printer and bookseller Maciej Wirzbięta and most likely they were created after an original painted effigy of the poet as was customary. Later, engravers began to add the relevant inscriptions, that they were authors, not a painter who created the original portrait (fecit, sculpsit, pinxit, delineavit, invenit in Latin). Educated Poles, besides books, also commissioned and acquired portraits of their favorite foreign authors. Portrait of Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) by Pontormo or workshop in the Czartoryski Museum (inventory number XII-218) was most likely brought to Poland already in the 16th century (painted around 1530). Later it was acquired by Princess Izabela Czartoryska, who placed it next to those of Torquato Tasso (423), Francesco Petrarca (424) and Beatrice Portinari (425) in the Temple of Memory at Puławy, opened in 1801. In her collection, which she also enlarged by acquisitions abroad, there were also letters by Tasso (891), Ariosto (892), as well as portraits of French Renaissance poets François Rabelais (944), Clément Marot (945) and Michel de Montaigne (946) and even chairs of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1310) and William Shakespeare (1311) in special box-cases, included in the inventory of the collection published in 1828 (Poczet pamiątek ...). Among the paintings belonging to the "Victorious King" John III Sobieski (1629-1696), which could come from earlier royal collections or those of his father Jakub Sobieski (1591-1646) and mentioned in the inventory of the Wilanów Palace from 1696, we find "A picture of Cicero in a black frame" (Obraz Cycerona wramach czarnych, No. 223), "A pair of paintings, one of which represents Petrarch and the other, Laura, his wife, in black frames" (Obrazow para na iednym Petrarcha, na drugim Laura zona iego, wramach czarnych, No. 223) and "A picture of Laura" (Obraz na ktorym Laura, No. 246). There is also the portrait of Petrarca with the Latin inscription: Franciscus Petrarcha - Magna Poetarum Petrarcha est gloria, sumpsit in Capitolino praemia tanta loco ... mentioned in the 1913 catalogue of portraits from the collection of the oldest Polish university, the Jagiellonian University in Kraków (oil on canvas, 87 x 66 cm, "Katalog portretów i obrazów będących własnością Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego ..." by Jerzy Mycielski, p. 9, item 45). A portrait of Luigi Alamanni (1495-1556), Italian poet and statesman, attributed to the 16th-century Italian school, is located in the former Potocki Palace in Lviv (National Art Gallery, inv. Ж-2021). Why then couldn't the French or the Italians have the portrait of a famous Sarmatian poet? Especially when many Polish collections were transferred to France and Italy. In the Museum of Fine Arts in Reims, in France, there is portrait of a man sitting in a chair and holding a book (oil on canvas, 115 x 96.1 cm, inventory number 910.4.1). He was interrupted while reading so he put his finger in a book so as not to miss the page. He gazes at the viewer and the romantic ruins behind him suggest he is a poet. Another book is lying on a table. The overall style of the painting suggests Giovanni Battista Moroni as a possible author, but the technique is different, so perhaps it was done by a painter from Moroni's workshop or circle. However, it can also be compared to some works by Sofonisba Anguissola, such as her self-portrait with Bernardino Campi (Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena) and self-portrait at the easel (Łańcut Castle), both from the 1550s. His eyes also indicate that she might be the author as she frequently enlarged them in her paintings. This portrait was earlier attributed to Lorenzo Lotto, who died in Loreto in 1556/1557, and can be dated to about 1550 at the earlierst (about 1560, according to some sources). The painting was bequeathed in 1910 by French politician Louis Victor Diancourt (1825-1910), born in Reims, and its earlier provenance is unknown. Perhaps there was initially an oral tradition or documents indicating that the painting depicts a famous poet of the 16th century, so since the portrait was in France, it has been identified as depicting a French poet - François Rabelais (born between 1483 and 1494, died 1553), despite the fact that there is no resemblance to his other effigies. Rabelais was in Italy, in Turin and Rome, in 1534, 1540, 1547-1550, as a physician and secretary to Cardinal Jean du Bellay, nevertheless, as a clergyman in majority of his confirmed effigies he is depicted wearing a large biretta of the Christian clergy, thus, because of this and the lack of resemblance, the identification is now rejected and the work is referred to as a "portrait of an unknown man". The man wears a crimson tunic, typical of the Polish-Lithuanian nobility of the time (Rej was a wealthy nobleman of Oksza coat of arms), and his hat, shirt and face looks very much like in the print showing Mikołaj Rej at the age of 50. Another version of this portrait exists, this one however is by Moroni, now at the Pope John XXIII Hospital in Bergamo (oil on canvas, 86 x 71 cm, inventory number 57099). Coming from the collection of a lawyer Giacomo Bettami de-Bazini and donated to the hospital by his son Antonio, the painting was in storage at the Carrara Academy since 1879. It was probably purchased on the Bergamo market in the early 18th century. "An old man seated in an armchair, entirely titianesque, is one of the best of this painter in the Bettame house" (Un vecchio seduto sopra sedia d'appoggio tutto tizianesco è de' migliori dell'autore in casa Bettame), praised the quality of the painting Francesco Maria Tassi in 1793. It is generally dated to the 1560s and the man is much older. His pose and costume are almost identical to the Reims painting, as if the painter had used the same study drawings created for the previous painting and just changed the face. His frowning eyebrows and more hooked nose are more like in the portrait of Rej published in 1568. Mikołaj dedicated his "Faithful image" to hetman Jan Amor Tarnowski (1488-1561), one of the richest people in Poland-Lithuania, whose portraits were painted by Jacopo Tintoretto and tomb monument carved by Giammaria Mosca called Padovano. Rej's portrait, similar to that of another eminent Polish poet of the Renaissance - Jan Kochanowski (1530-1584) from 1565 (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam), was therefore most likely created by Giovanni Battista Moroni from drawings sent from Poland. The same background as in the painting in Reims was used in another portrait by workshop of Moroni, today in the National Palace of Ajuda in Lisbon (oil on canvas, 112.7 x 109 cm, inventory number 496). It represents an ecclesiastic in a black biretta, seated on a chair and holding an hourglass. His face resembles more the effigies of Rabelais, in particular his laughing portraits, than the Reims painting. 
Portrait of Mikołaj Rej (1505-1569) by Sofonisba Anguissola or circle of Giovanni Battista Moroni, ca. 1555, Museum of Fine Arts in Reims.
Portrait of Mikołaj Rej (1505-1569) by Giovanni Battista Moroni, ca. 1568, Pope John XXIII Hospital in Bergamo.
Portrait of Jan Kochanowski by Giovanni Battista Moroni
Almost all old churches in former territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth have at least one good quality tomb monument in Italian style with effigy of deceased, but portrait paintings are very rare. Wars and invasions impoverished the nation and majority of non-religious paintings that preserved in the country, were sold by the owners.
The exact date of birth of Jan Kochanowski is unknown, however according to inscription on poet's epitaph in the church in Zwoleń near Radom, he died on August 22, 1584 at the age of 54 (Obiit anno 1584 die 22 Augusti. Aetatis 54), therefore he was born in 1530. He started his education at the Artium Faculty of the Kraków Academy in 1544. Presumably in June 1549, he left the Academy and, perhaps, went to Wrocław, where he stayed until the end of 1549. Between 1551-1552 he stayed in Królewiec (Königsberg), the capital of Ducal Prussia (fiefdom under the Polish crown). From Królewiec, he left for Padua in 1552, where he studied until 1555. Kochanowski was elected a counselor of the Polish nation at the University of Padua (presumably from June to August 2, 1554). He returned to Poland in 1555 and after several months in Królewiec and Radom, he left for Italy at the end of the summer of 1556, presumably to repair his health. He was back in Poland between 1557 and 1558 and in spring that year he left for Italy for the third time. At the end of 1558, Kochanowski went to France, and in May 1559, he finally returned to Poland. The poet refers to his portrait made in Italy, probably in Padua, where he studied between 1552 and 1555, in his epigram In imaginem suam (foricenium 35), in which he expresses his concern that the portrait should not betray the feelings that accompanied the pose (Talis eram, cum me lento torqueret amore / Decantata meis Lydia carminibus. / Pictorem metui, cum vultum pingere vellet, / Ne gemitus una pingeret ille meos). He refers to the tradition of ekphrases (written description of a work of art), expressing the highest appreciation for the artistic talent of the painter who is able to perfectly reproduce his subject. He created several epigrams of this kind praising the splendid portraits of his friends, probably also made in Italy, notably In imaginem Andr[eae] Duditii, on the portrait of Andrzej Dudycz (1533-1589), who studied in Venice and Padua, in which he compares the painter to Apelles (Quis te Duditi, novus hic expressit Apelles?), the same in In imaginem Mariani (Apellaea redditum in tabula). In the epigram In imaginem Franc[isci] Maslovii he comments on the portrait of Franciszek Masłowski, who studied in Padua between 1553 and 1558, and in the epigram In imaginem Andr[eae] Patricii, the portrait of Andrzej Patrycy Nidecki (1522-1587), who studied in Padua between 1553 and 1556. In several of his works he also addresses the issue of the impermanence of the painted image (Apelleum cum morietur opus, after "Jana Kochanowskiego wiersze „na obraz” ..." by Agnieszka Borysowska, p. 155-160, 164). In mid-1563, Jan entered the service of Deputy Chancellor Piotr Myszkowski, thanks to which he become the royal secretary of king Sigismund Augustus, before February 1564, the office he held untill his death. In 1564, he helped his friend Andrzej Patrycy Nidecki (Andreas Patricius Nidecicus), also secretary at the traveling court and chancellery of Sigismund Augustus (Kraków - Warsaw - Vilnius). Nidecki was preparing the second fundamental edition of Cicero's "Fragments" for printing. It was published in Venice in 1565 by the printer Giordano Ziletti (Andr. Patricii Striceconis Ad Tomos IIII Fragmentorvm M. Tvllii Ciceronis ex officina Stellae Iordani Zileti), who also published many other Polish-Lithuanian authors. In October 1565 another royal secretary and Kochanowski's friend, Piotr Kłoczowski (or Kłoczewski), left for Ferrara as king's envoy to attend the wedding of Alfonso II d'Este with Sigismund Augustus' cousin Archduchess Barbara of Austria. Kłoczowski, who apparently accompanied him during his first trip to Italy, offered him a new journey: "Piotr, I don't want to take you to Italy a second time. You will get there alone: it's time for me to deal with myself. If I am to become a priest, or better a courtier, If I will live at the court or in my land", wrote the poet (Xięga IV, XII.). Jan Kochanowski, considered one of the greatest Polish poets, died in Lublin. His nephews Krzysztof (d. 1616) and Jerzy (d. 1633), founded him a marble epitaph in the family chapel in Zwoleń, created in Kraków in about 1610 by workshop of Giovanni Lucano Reitino di Lugano and transported to Zwoleń. The portrait of a man holding a letter by Giovanni Battista Moroni in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam (oil on canvas, 87 x 66 cm, inv. SK-A-3410), can be compared with poet's posthumous effigy in Zwoleń. It bears the inscription in Latin and artist's signature at the bottom of the letter: AEt. Suae. XXXV. Miii MDLXV. Giu. Bat.a Moroni ("Age 35. 1565. Giovanni Battista Moroni"), which match perfectly the age of Kochanowski in 1565. At the end of the 18th century the painting was probably in the Mosca House in Pesaro, and then in the collection of Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee (1747-1813), near Edinburgh. Between 1561 and 1573, Giovanni Maria Mosca, known as Padovano, born in Padua in the Republic of Venice and trained in Venice in the workshop of Tullio Lombardo and Antonio Lombardo, created the monumental tomb of Hetman Jan Amor Tarnowski (1488-1561) and his son Jan Krzysztof Tarnowski (1537-1567) in the choir of the Gothic cathedral in Tarnów. The idea for this Venetian-style monument is attributed to Jan Kochanowski, who dedicated several of his works to Jan Krzysztof. "Erect a magnificent monument of Parian marble, / Above the waters of the Vistula. [...] Also let the battles in which he used to disperse his enemies / Be reconstructed in gleaming stone by Phidias" (Quin tu illi Pario de marmore Mausoleum, / Vistuleas ponis nobile propter aquas. [...] Praelia , quosque olim devicit strenuus hostes, Fac spiret paries Phidiaca arte nitens), Kochanowski states in his "Elegy 2" (Elegia II), addressed to the lord of Tarnów (after "Giammaria Mosca Called Padovano ..." by Anne Markham Schulz, p. 154). 
Portrait of Jan Kochanowski (1530-1584), aged 35, holding a letter by Giovanni Battista Moroni, 1565, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.
Portraits of Jan Krzysztof Tarnowski by circle of Dosso Dossi and Lambert Sustris
Wars and invasions contributed not only to the looting and destruction of works of art, including paintings, but also to the resulting chaos and impoverishment, so many preserved images as well as documents confirming the author and the identity of the sitter have been lost. Deteriorating living conditions also had an impact on art collections, as good quality and well-preserved paintings were frequently sold and neglected paintings, even by great masters, due to deterioration, had to be disposed of.
This is probably the reason why, in the 18th century, an unknown local painter made a copy of the full-length portrait of Count Jan Krzysztof Tarnowski (1537-1567), today in the National Museum in Warsaw (oil on canvas, 229 x 114 cm, inventory number MP 5249 MNW). The original must have been of good Venetian work, as the painter was inspired by the blurred brushstrokes of painters from the circle of Titian, particularly visible in the upper part of the painting. The identity of the model is confirmed by a large coat of arms of the Tarnowski family - Leliwa, above his head on the right, and a lengthy inscription in Latin on the left - Joannes Christophorus Comes / In Tarnow Tarnowski ..., listing all his titles. The painting comes from the Tarnowski collection, deposited with five other portraits in the National Museum during World War II. His costume, although generally resembling the 16th century attire of Polish-Lithuanian and Hungarian nobles, which were very similar (fanciful szkofia, a hat decoration of Hungarian origin, and Polish delia coat lined with fur), is quite unusual. A similar tunic with a longer part in the back, embroidered on the front with vertical rows of buttons, is visible in the effigy of a Pole (Polognois, f. 41) from Théâtre de tous les peuples et nations de la terre by Lucas de Heere, painted in the 1570s (Universiteitsbibliotheek Gent). However, the wider sleeves, the silver color, the belt and the garters are not typical and it is possible that he wore the costume made in Lisbon in 1516 for his father Jan Amor Tarnowski, as suggested by some authors. A Polish nobleman in a Hungarian-Portuguese costume is just another confirmation of the great diversity of fashion in Poland-Lithuania of the Renaissance, confirmed by so many authors, which has been forgotten today. King Manuel I of Portugal (1469-1521) was depicted in similar tunic in a disguised portrait as Saint Alexis in the scene of Wedding of Saint Alexis by Garcia Fernandes, painted in 1541 (Museu de São Roque in Lisbon), and Tarnowski's portrait and attire can be compared to some portraits of governors of Portuguese India - Francisco de Almeida (d. 1510) and Afonso de Albuquerque (d. 1515), created after 1545, both in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon. Such diversity was not only the Polish specialty and also occurred in other countries in Europe. The full-length portrait of a Spanish noble lady Doña Policena de Ungoa (Polissena Unganada), daughter of Juan de Ungoa, Barón de Sonek y Ensek, Mayordomo del Emperador (Emperor's Steward) and Margarita Loqueren, Camarera de la Emperatriz (Maid to the Empress), governess to the children of Empress Maria of Spain (1528-1603) and wife to Don Pedro Laso de Castilla, depicts her dressed in the German/Austrian fashion of the imperial court in Prague and Vienna from the 1550s (not the Spanish fashion, like the Empress). Inscription in Italian: ILL. DONNA POLISSENA UNGANADA MOGLIE DI D. PIETRO LASSO DE CASTIGLIA ..., confirms her identity. This portrait comes from the Arrighi de Casanova collection in the Château de Courson near Paris and was variably attributed to the Italian, Spanish (circle of Alonso Sánchez Coello) and Austrian school (follower of Jakob Seisenegger). In recent literature, the identification of the model in Warsaw portrait has been questioned due to the discovery of a miniature in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (GG 5338). According to short inscription in Latin (IOANNES / COMES / A SERIN), it depicts Count Jan Zrinský (ca. 1565-1612), a nobleman from the Zrinský (Zrínyi) family of Zrin (Serin), son of Nikola IV Zrinski (ca. 1508-1566) and Eva z Rožmberka (1537-1591). According to Jan K. Ostrowski ("Portret w dawnej Polsce", p. 34), the sitter should rather be identified as the father of Jan, famous commander Nikola IV, so this inscription is partially incorrect, therefore, its author had a vague knowledge of who was really depicted. If the first part of the inscription (IOANNES) could be incorrect, the second (A SERIN) could also be questioned and the model is not Jan Zrinský, but Jan Tarnowski. This small miniature comes from a series of almost 150 contemporary and historical portraits of rulers of Europe and members of the imperial House of Habsburg, including many Polish monarchs. Many of them were created by Flemish painter Anton Boys for Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria (1529-1595), son of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), after 1579, when he become his court painter. Boys copied many other effigies form the Imperial collection, representing the models on dark or brown backgound, however some mistakes happened and the effigy of Viridis Visconti (1352-1414), Duchess of Austria and a daughter of the Lord of Milan, Bernabò Visconti, is most likely the effigy of Isabella of Aragon (1470-1524), Duchess of Milan and mother of Bona Sforza as it resembles greatly her profile from the lunette in the house of the Atellani in Milan. The miniature of Count Jan is different and shows a clear influence of Flemish (colors) and Italian (blurred brushstrokes) style. Unlike other miniatures in the series, it has a distinctive background - green fabric. Not only the technique is different, but also the composition. Thus, this earlier miniature by a different painter has just been adapted to the series by adding the inscription. What is also very important for the identification of the model is which man has been depicted on a larger version with a more detailed description. Mainly the person who ordered the portrait was interested in having the full version. The larger painting depict Count Jan Krzysztof Tarnowski. Only the possible author of the miniature remained and all the given factors speak for Lambert Sustris (d. 1584 or later), a Dutch painter active mainly in Venice, who in 1552 created full-length portraits of Hans Christoph Vöhlin and of his wife Veronika von Freyberg zum Eisenberg (Alte Pinakothek), as well as many effigies of Jan Krzysztof's sister Zofia Tarnowska (1534-1570), identified by me. The same man, also against green fabric, but now in a more Italian attire, yellow doublet and embroidered shirt, was depicted in another portrait, sold in London in 2019 (oil on canvas, possibly reduced, 56.5 x 45.3 cm, Sotheby's, 5 December 2019, lot 109). It comes from the Addeo collection in Rome and it was identified as portrait of Duke Alfonso I d'Este (1476-1534) and attributed to Dosso Dossi (d. 1542). Both identification and attribution were later rejected and the painting was sold as by circle of Girolamo da Carpi (1501-1556), who collaborated with Dosso Dossi on commissions for the d'Este family. The influences of Dossi's style are visible, thus the authorship of his pupils, such as Giuseppe Mazzuoli (d. 1589) or Giovanni Francesco Surchi (d. 1590), is possible. However, the style of this painting is also very similar to the head study of a young man, possibly being a portrait of the young Tintoretto, attibuted to Lambert Sustris (Slovak National Gallery, O 5116). The characteristic feature of the children of Zofia Szydłowiecka (1514-1551), protruding ears, visible in the funerary monument of Jan Krzysztof Tarnowski by Giammaria Mosca Il Padovano in the cathedral of Tarnów, as well as in the portraits of his sister by Sustris, is noticeable in both described paintings in Vienna and from the Addeo collection. Considering the age of the man, the two effigies were most likely created shortly before the death of Jan Krzysztof, who died of tuberculosis on April 1, 1567 as the last male representative of the Tarnów line of the Tarnowski family. Jan Krzysztof received his middle name in honor of his maternal grandfather Krzysztof Szydłowiecki (1467-1532), Grand Chancellor of the Crown, whose portrait by Titian is in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan. He received an excellent education and traveled extensively in his youth. He was imperial count and proprietor of Roudnice nad Labem in Bohemia and he visited the imperial court in Vienna in 1548. In 1554 he went to Italy. After the death of his father in 1561, the young count maintained the closest relations with Nicolaus Radziwill the Black (1515-1565), the husband of his aunt. After Radziwill's death, Jan Krzysztof managed his estates located in the Crown including Szydłowiec. He maintained a large court, and his main supplier was a Jew from Sandomierz, Jakub Szklarz, who brought goods from Gdańsk (after "Panowie na Tarnowie ..." by Krzysztof Moskal, part 9). Between 1554 and 1555 Jan Krzysztof (il Tarnoskijno pollacco) stayed in Italy, moving between Padua, Bologna, Ferrara, Modena and Parma. Leaving Modena in the autumn of 1554, he asked Ludovico Monti to thank Cardinal Farnese to Cardinal Farnese, "and to the most illustrious Madam [Margaret of Parma] with Lord Alessandro for the courtesies" (et a la illustrissima Madama col signore Alessandro per le cortesie). A letter dated March 21, 1555 from Ludovico's brother Stefano Monti informs us that the Poles, with a large retinue, had then advanced as far as Tuscany, where in Florence the young Tarnowski was received by Cosimo I (after "La trama Nascosta - Storie di mercanti e altro" by Rita Mazzei). It was probably Jan Krzysztof who commissioned the monument for his father from Padovano, modeled on the monuments of the Venetian doges, the concept of which could have been conceived by the poet Jan Kochanowski, who dedicated several of his works to Jan Krzysztof. Pedro Ruiz de Moros dedicated him his Carmen fvnebre in obitv, published in Kraków in 1561, and Stanisław Orzechowski his Panagiricus nuptiarum, published in Kraków in 1553. Inventories of Tarnów Castle, like the castle itself, have not preserved, but the last will of the court physician and secretary to Count Jan Amor Tarnowski, Stanisław Rożanka (Rosarius), may give an idea of its wealth. Rożanka was educated at the University of Padua in the Venetian Republic. In his will of 1569, which was opened after his death in 1572, Stanisław, a Calvinist and the owner of a house in Saint Florian's Street in Kraków, mentioned many of his exquisite possessions. "And besides the things described above (these are valuables, dresses, utensils, etc.), I have old Roman and Greek numismatics, books, maps, pictures, etc. Of these, my brother, Dr. Walenty, all of my books and mappas and antiqua numismatics both gold and silver, to use and keep. [...] I want my second brother Mr Jan to be given a sable-lined damask szubka [fur coat], a silver cup with a lid, four precious cups and a silver ewer, and all flasks, and armours, also pictures, a chariot &c. &c." (after "Skarbniczka naszej archeologji ..." by Ambroży Grabowski, p. 65). In 1542, Jan Amor, aged 54, the father of Jan Krzysztof, suffering from gout, traveled to Italy for treatment, probably to Abano Terme, a health resort located near Padua. He also visited the Duke of Ferrara Ercole II d'Este and returned via Vienna, where King Ferdinand was to offer him command of his army during the war with the Ottoman Empire, but he did not accept the offer because of the good relations between King Sigismund I and the Turks. Such journeys serve to describe the origins of many beautiful Italian works of art in their collections for many European museums. The collections of the counts of Tarnów were undoubtedly exquisite and comparable to those of the dukes of Ferrara, however, today no traces of this patronage are kept in Tarnów, everything has been looted, destroyed or scattered. The Tarnowskis equaled or even surpassed the Venetian doges and the kings of Poland with their funerary monument and their portraits were equally splendid. 
Miniature portrait of Count Jan Krzysztof Tarnowski (1537-1567) by Lambert Sustris, ca. 1565-1567, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Count Jan Krzysztof Tarnowski (1537-1567) by circle of Dosso Dossi or Lambert Sustris, ca. 1565-1567, Private collection.
Portrait of Wawrzyniec Goślicki by Giovanni Battista Moroni
On January 3, 1567 Wawrzyniec Grzymała Goślicki (Laurentius Grimaldius Goslicius) obtained the degree of Doctor Utruisque Juris (doctor of both laws - civil and church law) at the University of Bologna.
Goślicki was born near Płock in Masovia and after studying at Kraków's Academy he left for Italy after 1562. During his studies in Padua, in 1564, he published the Latin poem De victoria Sigismundi Augusti, which he dedicated to the victory of king Sigismund II Augustus over tsar Ivan IV the Terrible in the war of 1560. After receiving his doctorate in Bologna he visited Rome, and then Naples together with his friends. On the way back, Goślicki stopped in Rome for a while. In 1568, during his stay in Venice, he published his best-known work, De optimo senatore, also dedicated to king Sigismund Augustus. The book printed by Giordano Ziletti was later translated into English with the titles of The Counselor and The Accomplished Senator. After his return to Poland in 1569, he entered the king's service as the royal secretary. He later decided to become a priest and he was elevated to the episcopal dignity in 1577. In 1586 he was made bishop of Kamieniec Podolski and according to a document issued by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese entitled Propositio cosistorialis, he was 48 in 1586, therefore he was born in 1538. Wawrzyniec Goślicki died on October 31, 1607 in Ciążeń near Poznań as the Bishop of Poznań (from 1601) and was buried in the city's cathedral. According to his last will his tomb monument was to be modeled on the monument to his predecessor Bishop Adam Konarski, the work of Girolamo Canavesi, a sculptor from Milan, who had his workshop in Kraków. Goślicki's monument created in Kraków, most probably by workshop of Giovanni Lucano Reitino di Lugano, as Konarski's monument, was transported to Poznań after 1607. The effigy of a young man by Giovanni Battista Moroni in Accademia Carrara in Bergamo (oil on canvas, 56.9 x 44.4 cm, inv. 81LC00174) is very similar to Goślicki's features in his statue in Poznań. According to inscription in Latin (ANNO . AETATIS . XXIX . / M . D . LXVII) the man was 29 in 1567, exactly as Goślicki when he earned his degree at Carolus Sigonius in Bologna. The painting entered the Academy in 1866 from the collection of Guglielmo Lochis with about two hundred other works. It was included in the 1846 catalogue of the painting collection of the Art Gallery and Villa Lochis in Crocetta di Mozzo near Bergamo under the number XVI, as "Portrait of a young man" (Ritratto di giovane uomo, compare "La Pinacoteca e la villa Lochis alla Crocetta di Mozzo presso Bergamo con notizie biografiche degli autori dei quadri", p. 12). Another version by workshop or follower of Moroni, also considered to be a 19th century copy, is in private collection in Florence (oil on canvas, 52 x 42 cm, Maison Bibelot in Florence, "Furniture and Old Master Paintings from a villa in Viareggio - II", October 5, 2018, lot 715). 
Portrait of Wawrzyniec Goślicki (1538-1607), aged 29, by Giovanni Battista Moroni, 1567, Accademia Carrara in Bergamo.
Portrait of Wawrzyniec Goślicki (1538-1607) by workshop or follower of Giovanni Battista Moroni, ca. 1567, Private collection.
Portrait of royal secretary Jan Zamoyski by Tintoretto
"Carissimo Signore Valerio Montelupi, I have received a letter from my Ursyn [Niedźwiedzki] from Padua. He writes that, in accordance with my instructions, he went to Venice in the affairs of a painter. He looked at the paintings almost finished. From his description, I can see two things that should be given close attention. First of all - it was my intention that only two figures should be imagined clearly and decoratively, and this is the figure of the standing Savior and the figure of St. Thomas kneeling with his hand stretched to Christ's side", writes in Italian Chancellor Jan Zamoyski (1542-1605) in a letter of 1602 regarding paintings for the Collegiate Church in Zamość, commissioned in the workshop of Domenico Tintoretto in Venice (after "Jan Zamoyski klientem Domenica Tintoretta" by Jan Białostocki, p. 60).
Zamoyski studied at the Universities of Paris and Padua, where he became Councillor of the Polish Nation and rector of the university in 1563. He also abandoned Calvinism in favor of Catholicism and discovered his love for politics. In the Archives of Venice there is a one-of-a-kind document in which the Venetian Senate congratulates the King of Poland on having such a citizen in his country, and expresses the highest appreciation for Zamoyski (Senato I Filza, 43. Terra 1565 da Marzo, a tutto Giugno): "It happened on April 7, 1565 at a session of the Senate. To the Serene King of Poland. Jan Zamoyski, the son of a noble starost of Belz, spent several years with great glory and honor at our University of Padua; last year, the most esteemed man was a gymnasiarch [the rector] [...] In this office he was doing so well and so excellently that not only the hearts of all young people who came to Padua to educate their minds with science, but also all citizens, especially our officials, he was able to win kindness in a special way. For this reason, we always welcomed him with the best will, and whenever there was an opportunity, we tried to surround him with favor and respect. There were various reasons for doing so; first of all, to your Majesty, whom we love greatly and to whom we are completely devoted, to please in the best possible way, and also, because we are deeply attached to the most noble Polish nation, finally in the conviction that Zamoyski's merits and virtues required us to do so". After returning to Poland, Zamoyski was appointed secretary to King Sigismund II Augustus and in 1567, when he was 25 years old, he acted as the king's commissar entrusted with a responsible and dangerous mission. At the head of the court armed forces, he forcibly took away the illegally seized starosties of Sambor and Drohobych from the Starzechowski family. A painting by Jacopo Tintoretto from the Fundación Banco Santander in Madrid shows a young twenty-five year old man (ANN.XXV). His high social status is accentuated with gold rings, a belt embroidered with gold and a coat lined with ermine fur. He stands proudly with his hand on the table covered with crimson fabric. His hands and the table were not painted very diligently, which may indicate that it was completed in a hurry by the artist's studio working on a large order. The man bear a great resemblance to effigies of Jan Zamoyski, especially his portrait painting, attributed to Jan Szwankowski (Olesko Castle) and engraving by Dominicus Custos after Giovanni Battista Fontana (British Museum), both created in his later years. A portrait attributed to Tintoretto or Titian from the same period is in the Odessa Museum of Western and Eastern Art. It represent Girolamo Priuli (1486-1567), who was a Doge of Venice between 1559-1567, when Zamoyski was in Venice. During the restoration of the painting, the inscriptions TIZIANO and the letters TI (over the shoulder) were discovered, however a very similar portrait in private collection and majority of larger versions are attributed to Tintoretto. The portrait of Priuli was transferred from the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg to the Odessa Museum in 1949. The painting comes from the collection of Prince Lev Viktorovich Kochubey (1810-1890), who distinguished himself in the storming of the Warsaw fortifications during the November Uprising (1830-1831), the armed rebellion in the heartland of partitioned Poland against the Russian Empire. The inventory number on the back '453' is sometimes interpreted as tantamount to an entry in the 18th century catalog of Gonzaga's collections, however, it is unknown where exactly Kochubey acquired the painting. After the collapse of the November Uprising the collections of magnates who sided with the insurgents were confiscated, e.g. painting of Madonna and Child by Francesco Francia in the State Hermitage Museum (inventory number ГЭ-199), created between 1515-1517, was confiscated in 1832 from the Sapieha collection in Dziarecyn, comprising 36 paintings of Old Masters and 72 portraits (after "Przegląd warszawski", 1923, Volumes 25-27, p. 266). In this case the thesis that Priuli's portrait was originally offered to Zamoyski or king Sigismund II Augustus is very probable. 
Portrait of royal secretary Jan Zamoyski (1542-1605) aged 25 by Jacopo Tintoretto, ca. 1567, Fundación Banco Santander.
Portrait of Girolamo Priuli (1486-1567), Doge of Venice by Tintoretto or Titian, 1559-1567, Odessa Museum of Western and Eastern Art.
Portraits of Zuzanna Orłowska by Jacopo Tintoretto
"The King-Deceiver, of mixed Lithuanian and Italian blood, did not deal honestly with anyone. In repaying the shame with which he has covered me, I want to repay him bad for bad", noted the accusations made by Zuzanna (Susanna) Orłowska (or Szabinówna Charytańska, died after 1583), the mistress of King Sigismund II Augustus, historian Świętosław Orzelski (1549-1598) in his book Interregni Poloniae libri VIII (1572-1576).
The king's third marriage with his distant cousin and the Austrian Archduchess Catherine, concluded in 1553, was not happy from the very beginning. Even before his wife's departure in 1566, at the beginning of the 1560s, he allegedly had an affair with Regina Rylska, the wife of the courtier Jan Rylski. The romance of the king and Zuzanna, probably began in 1565, that is, before Queen Catherine left Poland. According to the account of the courtier of the King, Zuzanna was to be the illegitimate daughter of a canon of Kraków, other sources, however, indicate that her father was Szymon Szabin Charytański. The king and his entourage called her Orłowska (Lady of the Eagle or Mistress of the Eagle), possibly in reference to the king's coat of arms (White Eagle). Orłowska was suspected of knowing magic and together with her aunt, famous healer (or a witch-doctor) Dorota Korycka, she was to treat Sigismund Augustus, and received high remuneration for her services. With time, the feeling of the king towards Orłowska weakened, and after recovering, the king decided that "he would have no contact with demons and similar women", as he wrote in a letter to his courtier Stanisław Czarnotulski. He abandoned his mistress, and her place in the royal alcove was taken by Anna Zajączkowska, a lady of the court of Sigismund's sister Anna Jagiellon. Most likely the reason for Zuzanna's separation from the king was her betrayal. Although Orłowska herself was not faithful to him, she believed that it was the king who had disgracedly abandoned her and humiliated her. Apparently, every Thursday, "having invited the devils to a supper", according to Orzelski who knew it from the bed-chamber servant (łożniczy) of the King, Jan Wilkocki, she used magic and sprinkled peas on hot coals, saying: "Whoever has abandoned me, let him suffer so much and sizzle". When in 1569, Sigismund Augustus became seriously ill, he ordered Korycka and Orłowska to be summoned. When both women refused to help him, he promised his former lover, a thousand zlotys as a dowry when she gets married. After the king's death, Zuzanna Orłowska married the Polish nobleman Piotr Bogatko, who in 1583 bequeathed 2,400 florins to his wife as a dower and they had four sons. Jacopo Tintoretto's Bathing Susanna in the Louvre (oil on canvas, 167 x 238 cm, inventory number INV 568; MR 498) shows a moment from the Old Testament story in which biblical heroine Susanna, epitome of female virtue and chastity, unjustly accused of sexual transgression, is watched by two elderly men, acquaintances of her husband, who desire her. She sits naked in a garden beside a pool, while her maidservants are drying or brushing her hair and cutting her nails. A partridge at her feet is a symbol of sexual desire and three frogs is a symbol of fecundity and fertility. "The frog was also sacred for Venus, Roman goddess of love and fertility. Venus's yoni (female genitals) sometimes was depicted as a fleur-delis consisting of three frogs" (after Marty Crump's "Eye of Newt and Toe of Frog, Adder's Fork and Lizard's Leg: The Lore and Mythology of Amphibians and Reptiles", p. 135). "Many medieval recipes for magical and medicinal potions and ointments included frogs and/or toads as ingredients, and the animals were used in rituals intended to cure drought. In addition, medieval and Renaissance people generally thought that witches could turn themselves into frogs and toads at will. The devil too was said to sometimes take the shape of a frog or toad" (after Patricia D. Netzley's "Witchcraft", p. 114). Two ducks represent constancy and rebirth and a rabbit symbolizes fertility. The outwardly turned face of the sitter gazing at the viewer is a clear information that she is someone important. The work is an oil painting on canvas and is generally dated to the third quarter of the 16th century (1550-1575). Neoclassical frame is not original and was added in the 19th century. Bathing Susanna was acquired by King Louis XIV of France in 1684 from Marquis d'Hauterive de L'Aubespine. It is believed to have previously belonged by King Charles I of England (his sale, London June 21, 1650, no. 229), however, it could be also tantamount to "A picture painted on canvas, which shows a naked woman, without frame" (item 440) from the inventory of belongings of king John Casimir Vasa, great-grandson of Sigismund I, sold in Paris in 1673 to Mr. Bruny for 16.10 pounds. "Saint Susanna and two old men, a large painting on canvas" (815) is mentioned among the paintings from the collection of Princess Louise Charlotte Radziwill (1667-1695), inventoried in 1671 (after "Inwentarz galerii obrazów Radziwiłłów z XVII w." by Teresa Sulerzyska). The same woman was also depicted in a portrait painting by Tintoretto, owned by Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed in Amersfoort (oil on canvas, 101.5 x 77.5 cm, NK1639), which was before 1941 in the collection of Otto Lanz in Amsterdam. She is sitting in a chair, dressed in a rich Venetian style costume of orange silk. "In ancient Rome, the wives of the priests of Jupiter [king of the gods] wore a flammeum, an orange and yellow veil. The young Roman women betrothed in marriage copied this style as a symbol of hope for a long and fruitful marriage" (after Leatrice Eiseman's "Colors for Your Every Mood: Discover Your True Decorating Colors", p. 49). Based on all these facts the sitter should be identified as king's mistress Zuzanna Orłowska. Just as royal effigies, the portraits of king's mistress were created in the Republic of Venice basing on drawings or miniatures sent from Poland-Lithuania. The so-called Marshal's Book, a register of official state expenses of the court of Sigismund Augustus between 1543-1572, which was described in a publication from 1924 by Stanisław Tomkowicz ("Na dworze królewskim dwóch ostatnich Jagiellonów", pp. 31, 32, 36), is silent about court painters, as are the bills. Tomkowicz suggests that perhaps their wages were recorded separately and adds that the king often bought paintings, mostly portraits, even in batches of 16 and 20 pieces, however, "over the course of several years, one expense was recorded for the purchase of a painting depicting... a naked woman". The accounts of 1547 also mention a payment to a prostitute (meretricem) Zofia Długa (Sophia Long), who dressed in armor was to fight with Herburt and Łaszcz in a jousting tournament at the expense of the court treasury. 
Portrait of Zuzanna Orłowska, mistress of King Sigismund II Augustus, as Bathing Susanna by Jacopo Tintoretto, 1565-1568, Louvre Museum.
Portrait of Zuzanna Orłowska, mistress of King Sigismund II Augustus by Jacopo Tintoretto, 1565-1568, Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed.
Portrait of Stanisław Karnkowski, Bishop of Włocławek by workshop or circle of Lucas Cranach the Younger
In 2016, during the restoration of a painting of the Holy Family, now kept in the Karlskirche Museum in Vienna, the monogram and the date AD1520 were discovered in the upper right part of the image (after "Karl Borromäus Museum in der Karlskirche, Wien IV" by Alicja Dabrowska). This painting is attributed to Daniel Fröschl (1563-1613), an imitator of Albrecht Dürer, appointed in 1603 court painter and miniaturist to Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, although he worked in the service of the Medici in Florence until 1604. The work is characterized by the beauty of the execution and the particular appearance of some figures. The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John and Saint Joseph are venerated by Emperor Maximilian I (1459-1519) and Empress Bianca Maria Sforza (1472-1510). Fröschl copied an original by Dürer painted in 1520, as confirmed by the monogram, probably in Prague. Dürer in turn created the original painting 10 years after the death of the Empress and one year after the death of the Emperor, how could he have done so since according to the traditional approach, the model and the painter should have met at the time of the painting's creation? Furthermore, he was living in Nuremberg at that time and in July 1520 he went to Cologne and then to Antwerp, so he probably did not have the opportunity to meet Maximilian shortly before his death at Wels Castle near Linz in Austria. The effigy of the emperor and his wife was undoubtedly based on other effigies.
This practice of commissioning paintings from famous painters located elsewhere, based on other effigies or study drawings, was also widespread in Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia. The best example are the miniatures of the Jagiellon family preserved in the Czartoryski Museum (inv. MNK XII-536-545), acquired by Adolf Cichowski in London in the mid-19th century. The miniatures were clearly created by Lucas Cranach the Younger, as indicated by their style, and each of them is signed with his famous mark - the winged serpent, as if he wished to emphasize his authorship on this noble commission. Since Cranach's stay in Sarmatia is not confirmed by the sources, he most likely painted all these effigies based on other portraits. Many paintings by Cranach, his workshop and his followers in the former territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were destroyed or lost during numerous wars and invasions, including a small painting of the Crucifixion from the Wilanów Palace in Warsaw, lost during the Second World War (panel, 53.5 x 52.5 cm, inv. 65, Catalog of Wartime Losses, number 2268). The Crucifixion was purchased in 1804 by Stanisław Kostka Potocki (1755-1821), probably in Lviv, along with six other paintings, all considered to be works by Cranach (compare "Piękno za woalem czasu" by Teresa Stramowska, p. 56). Today, only three paintings remain in Wilanów: the Annunciation (inv. Wil.1860), the Last Supper (inv. Wil.1859) and the Lamentation of Christ (inv. Wil.1861). The Crucifixion, like the three paintings today in Wilanów, was not signed by Cranach's famous winged serpent, and its style was not typical for Cranach the Elder, which is why this traditional attribution was rejected in the catalogues of the Wilanów collection created after World War II and all the paintings are considered works of the German school of the second half of the 16th century. However, the style of the Wilanów Crucifixion, as can be seen from the surviving photograph, is very similar to that of the winged heart-shaped altarpiece, the so-called Colditzer Altar from 1584, now in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg (inv. Gm1116), especially the panel with the Resurrection of Christ. It is interesting to note that only the central panel of the Colditzer Altar depicting the Crucifixion was signed with the artist's insignia and dated (on the shaft of the cross at Christ's feet). The other paintings, including the Resurrection, were not signed. If the Wilanów painting came from an altar or a pulpit, such as the one in Augustusburg made in 1573, which is very likely, only the central panel was signed by Cranach. In the Higher Theological Seminary in Włocławek in northern Poland there is also a portrait from this period. It depicts Stanisław Karnkowski (1520-1603), Bishop of Włocławek (oil, 208 x 86 cm). The way in which the face and especially the hands were painted is very characteristic of Cranach and his workshop and comparable to the full-length portraits of Luther in the Veste Coburg (winged serpent and date "1575", lower right, inv. M.304) or to the painting in Meissen Cathedral (unsigned). The seminary in Włocławek was founded by Karnkowski on March 16, 1568 as one of the first theological seminaries in the Commonwealth. The painting does not come from the seminary, destroyed by the Swedes in 1655-1656 and in the years 1704-1705, but from the Karnkowski collection in Karnków near Lipno. It was acquired from there by Bishop Karol Radoński before 1939. Karnkowski obtained a doctorate in both laws (doctor utriusque juris) in Padua. Although he vigorously fought against the influence of Protestants in his diocese and is considered one of the first bishops of the Counter-Reformation in Poland, he also studied at Wittenberg (after "Krzysztof Plantin i Officina Plantiniana" by Barbara Górska, p. 291), where he undoubtedly had the opportunity to meet Cranach the Elder and his son. In 1574 Karnkowski commissioned in Paris the publication of a panegyric in honour of the Polish King Henry of Valois (Harengue publique de Bien-venue au Roy Henry de Valois, Roy eleu des Polonnes, prononcee par Stanislaus Carncouien Euesque de Vladislauie) with a splendid Polish eagle bearing the king's monogram H and his coat of arms. The Włocławek portrait could therefore be part of the series of portraits commissioned by the newly appointed bishop in 1567 (by the bull of Pope Pius V). The portrait bears four inscriptions. The original, perhaps made by the painter, is the inscription in the upper left corner confirming the bishop's age (ANNO ÆTATIS · / SVÆ · 47), which indicates that the original painting was made in 1567, when Karnkowski was 47 years old. The next inscription in the upper right corner is the year "1570" (ANNO DNI / 1570), perhaps indicating the date of the copy of the original portrait from 1567 or commemorating another important event, such as the so-called "Karnkowski Statutes" or "Constitutions of Gdańsk" (Statuta seu Constitutiones Carncovianae) approved by Parliament in 1570, intended to regulate the rights of the Polish kings over Gdańsk and their maritime law. The other two inscriptions confirm the identity of the sitter and that he was a benefactor of the chapter of Włocławek (STANISLAVS KARNKOWSKY / EPVS / CAPITVLI ISTIVS WLADISLAVIENSIS / SINGULARIS BENEFACTOR). They were probably added with the bishop's coat of arms - Junosza. It is also possible that a member of Cranach's workshop was active in Poland at that time, but since there is no confirmation of this, the hypothesis of the creation of Karnkowski's portraits in Wittenberg is more likely. However, the existence of another portrait of a clergyman in Cranach's style proves that the hypothesis of one or more of Cranach's pupils active in Sarmatia cannot be excluded. This is a portrait of Jeremias II of Tranos (1536-1595), Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, now in the Museum of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, painted in 1588 (oil on canvas, 88 x 82.5 cm, inv. 3282, inscription: EREMIAS PATRIARCHA / CONSTANTINOPOLITAN: DV / EX MOSCOVIA BYZANTHIV / REDIBAT ANNO DOMINI / 1.5. / 88). Until 1887, the painting hung in the amphitheater of the St. Anne Gymnasium in Kraków. The first ecumenical contacts between Lutherans and Orthodox Christians took place during the reign of Jeremias, as evidenced by the lively correspondence between the patriarch and the Protestant theologians of Tübingen, conducted between 1573 and 1581. He also continued the dialogue with representatives of the Catholic Church. In 1588, he undertook a journey through the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to Moscow to raise funds. During his almost two-year journey, he crossed the territory of the Commonwealth twice, in 1588 and 1589, and stayed in Lviv and Vilnius. "At that time some painters strongly influenced by Cranach the Elder were active in Gdańsk and in the northern provinces of the Polish Commonwealth. Those artists also reached Vilnius" (after "Malarstwo obce w zbiorach Collegium Maius" by Anna Jasińska, p. 239-241). They could also be itinerant members of Cranach's workshop. Cranach the Younger died in 1586. Although his son Augustin (1554-1595) continued the family professional tradition in Wittenberg, he died only nine years after his father. In 1588, Cranach the Younger's eldest son, Lucas III (1541-1612), sold a large collection of paintings and prints by various artists to the Electoral collection (Kunstkammer) in Dresden, indicating that the workshop was already in decline. The option with creation of the portrait of the Patriarch in Wittenberg in 1588 for customers from the Commonwealth is therefore also possible. The 1560 inventory of Wolgast Castle confirms that the original portrait of Philip I (1515-1560), Duke of Pomerania-Wolgast by the "painter Lucas" (Lucas Maler) made in 1541 (another version, attributed to Cranach the Younger, is in the National Museum in Szczecin, inv. MNS/Szt/1382) was painted on canvas (An Contrafej auff Tüchern, after "Neue Beitrage zur Geschichte der Kunst und ihrer Denkmäler in Pommern" by Julius Mueller, p. 32). Portrait of a Catholic or Orthodox priest created in Lutheran Wittenberg? Although the church officials of Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia (Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Calvinists and others) were sometimes obliged to listen to or carry out orders from abroad, as confirmed by Jean Choisnin de Chastelleraut in his book published in Paris in 1574, respect was most important in the diverse and tolerant Sarmatia (Mais recognoissans entr'eux que la diuision apporteroit leur entiere ruyne, ils n'ont iamais voulu se courir sus l'vn à l'autre, "Discours au vray de tout ce qui s'est passé pour l'entière négociation de l'élection du roy de Pologne", p. 122, Lyon Public Library). In 1535 and before, the Jewish lady Estera from the court of Queen Bona, wife of Mojżesz Fiszel (1480-after 1543), rabbi of the Polish Jewish community from 1532, sewed the liturgical vestments for the Catholic clergy, including for Piotr Tomicki (1464-1535), Bishop of Kraków (after "Medycy nadworni władców polsko-litewskich ..." by Maurycy Horn, p. 9). This was Sarmatia, which many people abroad did not understand and some wanted to destroy. Sadly, the fact that all this seems unimaginable and sometimes unacceptable today is proof that they succeeded. 
Portrait of Stanisław Karnkowski (1520-1603), Bishop of Włocławek by workshop or circle of Lucas Cranach the Younger, 1567-1570, Higher Theological Seminary in Włocławek.
Portrait of Jeremias II Tranos (1536-1595), Patriarch of Constantinople by workshop or circle of Lucas Cranach the Younger, 1588, Jagiellonian University Museum in Kraków.
The Crucifixion by Lucas Cranach the Younger or workshop, third quarter of the 16th century, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw, lost during the World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portraits of Wojciech Sędziwój Czarnkowski by Adriaen Thomasz. Key
In the summer of 1568 died Jakub Ostroróg, General Starost of Greater Poland, "a man endowed with extraordinary gentleness, piety and prudence, a lover of justice and equality before the law", in the words of the chronicler of the city of Poznań. Ostroróg was a prominent magnate and politician from Poznań and one of the main leaders of the community of Bohemian Brethren. The Protestant community in the city expanded under his protection. He was appointed Starost of Poznań and General Starost by King Sigismund II Augustus in 1566.
The place of the dissident in the Poznań royal castle was taken by the Catholic Wojciech Sędziwój Czarnkowski (1527-1578), and soon the Jesuits were provided with buildings in Poznań (after "Życie codzienne w renesansowym Poznaniu, 1518-1619" by Lucyna Sieciechowiczowa, p. 91). Czarnkowski, a nobleman of Nałęcz III coat of arms, studied in Wittenberg in 1543 and Leipzig in 1545 and he became a royal courtier in 1552. He and his older brother Stanisław Sędziwój (1526-1602), Crown referendary, were strong supporters of the House of Habsburg. Stanisław, educated at German universities in Wittenberg and Leipzig, stayed at the court of Charles V and in 1564 he was an envoy to the Pomeranian dukes, and in 1568, 1570 and 1571 to Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575), Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg. In 1575, the brothers signed the election of Emperor Maximilian II of Austria against the Queen Anna Jagiellon and her husband. During the next royal election in 1587 his son Adam Sędziwój (1555-1627) and brother signed the election of Archduke Maximilian III of Austria (1558-1618) against the Queen's candidate, Sigismund III Vasa. The portrait of Adam Sędziwój, created between 1605-1610 and most probably sent to the Medicis, is in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (inventory number 2354 / 1890). Later in his life he become a supporter of king of Sigismund III Vasa, he organized a confederation in Greater Poland in defense of the king during the Zebrzydowski's rebellion and in his portrait he was depicted in national costume (crimson żupan and delia coat). In the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna there is a portrait of a man in Spanish costume attributed to Adriaen Thomasz. Key (oil on panel, 109 x 82.5 cm, inventory number GG 1034). It is identifiable in the treasury of the imperial collection in Vienna in 1773. The painting was most likely a gift to the Habsburgs. According to inscription in Latin in upper right corner of the painting the man was 41 in 1568 (A°.ÆTATIS.41 /.1568.), exaclty as Wojciech Sędziwój Czarnkowski when he become the General Starost of Greater Poland. A reduced bust-length version of this portrait in oval is now in the Medeiros e Almeida Museum in Lisbon (oil on panel, 59.5 x 48 cm, FMA 65). Before 1931 it was part of the Oxenden collection at Broome Park in Barham, England and was sold on 20 November of that year in London as part of the collection of Muriel Dixwell-Oxenden, Lady Capel Cure (after "Catalogue of early English portraits, the property of Lady Capel Cure ...", as "Sir Antonio Mor, Portrait of Ferdinand 1st of Austria, in black dress with white collar", item 76, p. 17). Netherlandish influences were increasing at that time in Poland-Lithuania, which is reflected in the architecture of cities of the former Commonwealth like Gdańsk, Elbląg, Toruń and Königsberg (at that time Duchy of Prussia was a fief of Poland). Some Netherlandish painters, like court painter Jakob Mertens from Antwerp or Isaak van den Blocke (born in Mechelen or Königsberg), also decided to settle in the Commonwealth. Others, like Tobias Fendt (Kraków, around 1576) and Hans Vredeman de Vries (active in Gdańsk between 1592-1595), went there temporarily or only took orders from customers from Poland-Lithuania. Many famous artists were unwilling to travel, especially when busy with high local demand. In order to have a marble bust made by famous Italian sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, active in Rome, King Charles I of England ordered his Triple Portrait painted 1635-1636 by the Flemish artist Sir Anthony van Dyck, showing the king from three viewpoints (Royal Collection, RCIN 404420). He also ordered a similar portrait and bust of his wife Henrietta Maria in 1638. In about 1640-1642 also Cardinal Richelieu of France sent his Triple Portrait by Philippe de Champaigne to Rome (National Gallery in London, NG798) as a study for his statue by Francesco Mochi and a bust by Bernini (Louvre, MR 2165) and in August 1650, Francesco I d'Este, duke of Modena and Reggio sent paintings by Justus Sustermans and Jean Boulanger as a study for his marble bust by Bernini (Galleria Estense in Modena). In 1552 marble blocks and statues created by Giovanni Maria Mosca called Padovano and Giovanni Cini in Kraków for monuments of two wives of Sigismund II Augustus were floated down the Vistula to Gdańsk and Königsberg, then up the Nemunas and Neris rivers to the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania - Vilnius, covering a total of over 1,500 km. Paintings were less heavy and easier to transport over great distances than the heavy and fragile sculptures. 
Portrait of Wojciech Sędziwój Czarnkowski (1527-1578), General Starost of Greater Poland, aged 41 by Adriaen Thomasz. Key, 1568, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Wojciech Sędziwój Czarnkowski (1527-1578), General Starost of Greater Poland by Adriaen Thomasz. Key, ca. 1568, Medeiros e Almeida Museum in Lisbon.
Portrait of doctor Wojciech Oczko by Venetian painter
In 1569 doctor Wojciech Oczko (1537-1599), called Ocellus, physician, philosopher and one of the founders of Polish medicine, who studied syphilis and hot springs, returned from his studies abroad to his hometown Warsaw and newly created republic of Poland-Lithuania - the Union of Lublin, signed on 1 July 1569, created a single state, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He began to practice medicine at St. Martin's Hospital.
Oczko's father was the Warsaw cartwright Stanisław (d. 1572), one of his brothers Rościsław (Roslanus) was a priest, and his sister Jadwiga married the painter Maciej. He left for the Academy of Kraków around 1559 or 1560, because in 1562 he received bachelor's degree there. He then received a master's degree at the cathedral school in Warsaw and a funding from the chapter in 1565 to study medicine in Italy. Wojciech studied at the Universities of Padua, Rome and Bologna, where he earned a doctorate in medicine. He also travelled to Spain and France, where he spent time in Montpellier. In order to keep him in Warsaw, the chapter of St. Martin's Hospital gave him a house close to the hospital without any payment, provided that he lived in it himself and did the necessary repairs. Later another resolution was passed in 1571 that Oczko should treat the poor free of charge in the hospital. At that time, his fame and renown was so great in the country that he became the archiater (a chief physician) of Sigismund Augustus and the royal secretary (D. D. Sigism: Aug: Poloniae regis Archiatro ac Secretario), according to inscription on his epitaph. He then served for a time as personal physician to Franciszek Krasiński, bishop of Kraków, and from 1576-1582 (with some breaks) as the court physician to Stephen Bathory (the king and his predecessor Sigismund Augustus suffered from venereal diseases, among others). Wojciech also had literary interests and prepared the staging of Jan Kochanowski's "The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys", a play staged at the wedding of Deputy Chancellor Jan Zamoyski in the royal Ujazdów Castle in Warsaw - a note in the accounts of the Deputy Chancellor states on January 6, 1578: "I gave doctor Oczko for building, painting, etc., 151 (zlotys) for the tragedy". His major work "French court disease" (Przymiot francuski), published in Kraków in 1581, is an extensive essay on syphilis, in which he denies the false views of his contemporaries - in Russia, where it certainly came at about this time, it was called the Polish disease (after Oliver Thomson's "Short History of Human Error", p. 328). In his other essay "Hot springs" (Cieplice), published in Kraków in 1578, he speaks about the importance and benefits of mineral waters. From 1598 Oczko lived in Lublin, where he died a year later. He was buried in the Bernardine Church in Lublin, where his nephew Wincenty Oczko, canon of Gniezno, founded him an epitaph made of two-color marble. Portrait of a red-bearded man in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main was acquired on April 17, 1819 from the collection of Johann Friedrich Morgenstern (1777-1844), a German landscape painter, as a work of Titian. Morgenstern most probably purchased the painting during his studies at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, between 1797-1798 (in the first half of the 18th century Dresden was the informal capital of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as the main residence of the Saxon kings). The man in a courtly black costume in French/Italian style is holding his hand on books, so he must be a scholar. According to inscription in Latin on the base of the column he was 33 in 1570 ([A]NNOR[VM]. XXXIII / ANNO. MDLXX), exactly as Wojciech Oczko when he become the royal physician in Warsaw. The sign below the inscription is interpreted as showing a dragon, however it could be also Scorpio, the sign which rules the genitals, as in a German woodcut from 1512 (Homo signorum or zodiacal man) or a print created in 1484 depicting a person with syphilis. An outbreak of syphilis in November 1484 was assigned by Gaspar Torella (1452-1520), physician to Pope Alexander VI and Cesare Borgia, and Bartolomeo della Rocca known as Cocles (1467-1504), astrologer from Bologna, to the conjunction of the four great planets in Scorpio. Oczko's portrait could have been created by a Venetian artist active at that time at the royal court or commissioned in Venice, basing on drawings, like the royal effigies. 
Portrait of doctor Wojciech Oczko (1537-1599), chief physician of king Sigismund Augustus, aged 33 by Venetian painter, 1570, Städel Museum.
Portrait of a man in eastern costume, possibly singer Krzysztof Klabon by Jacopo Tintoretto
The catalogue of Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne from 1927 ("Wegweiser durch die Gemälde-Galerie des Wallraf-Richartz-Museums", p. 70, number 516) includes a portrait painting of a man in eastern costume painted in the style of Jacopo Tintoretto, possiby lost during World War II (oil on canvas, 110 x 82 cm, inv. 516). His long inner robe of bright silk buttoned up with gold buttons is similar to Polish żupan and his dark coat is lined with fur, he also wears a heavy gold chain. This garment resemble greatly the costume of a horseman in the Crucifixion by circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder, created in 1549 (Salzburg Museum), the attire in the portrait of Jan Opaliński (1546-1598), created in 1591 (National Museum in Poznań) or costumes in Twelve Polish and Hungarian types by Abraham de Bruyn, created in about 1581 (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam).
The inscription in Latin is only partially visible on preserved photograph, covered with a later frame: [...] VIII / [...] NTOR / [...] MNI PRIN. / [...] D. / [...] XX. Presumably the text originally read: "His age 28, the chief singer of all, in the Year of our Lord 1570" ([ÆTATIS SVÆ XX]VIII / [CA]NTOR / OMNI[VM] PRIN.[CEPS] / [A.]D. / [MDL]XX). The sitter is holding a small book, which could be a psalter, a book containing a verse translation of the Book of Psalms, meant to be sung as hymns. The man is therefore likely to be Krzysztof Klabon or Clabon (Christophorus Clabonius), who, according to some sources, came from Königsberg in what was then the Ducal Prussia, fiefdom of Poland (a note from 1604: Eruditus Christophorus Clabonius Regiomontanus S.R.M. chori musices praefectus) or he was Italian and his real name was Claboni. If he was born in 1542 (aged 28 in 1570), he could arrive to Poland in 1553 with Queen Catherine of Austria, widowed Duchess of Mantua. Prior to 1565, he belonged to a group of young singers in the royal chapel orchestra of King Sigismund II Augustus, and from 1565 to a group of instrumentalists (translatus ex pueris cantoribus ad numerum fistulatorum). On February 4, 1567, together with four other musicians, he was promoted to full wind-players (ad fistulatores maiores). Antoni Klabon, most probably Krzysztof's brother, was admitted into the king's service at court as a trumpeter in Lublin on June 25, 1569 (Antonius Klabon tubicinator. Susceptus in servitium Maiestatis Regiae Liublini die 25 Iunii 1569, habebit omnem provisionem similem reliquis). In 1576, during the reign of Stephen Bathory, Krzysztof became the bandmaster of the court band and he was replaced by Luca Marenzio in 1596, during the reign of Sigismund III Vasa. He sang at the wedding of Jan Zamoyski with Griselda Bathory (1583), with a lute at two weddings of Sigismund III and at the ceremony on the occasion of the capture of Smolensk (1611). He traveled twice with Sigismund III to Sweden (1593-1594 and 1598). Klabon was also a composer, his extant works are "Songs of the Slavic Calliope. On present victory at Byczyna" (Pieśni Kalliopy słowieńskiey. Na teraznieysze pod Byczyną zwycięstwo) for 4 mixed voices, 3 equal voices, and for solo voice with lute, published in Kraków in 1588, one sacred piece, the five-part Aliud Kyrie (Kyrie ultimum) from the lost Łowicz organ tablatures and the soprano part of one other, Officium Sancta Maria. "Numerous residences dispersed the courtiers of Sigismund Augustus. Many of them stayed away from the king. For example, in 1570 the superior of the royal band, Jerzy Jasińczyc, along with some of the musicians, lived in Kraków, while the rest were in Warsaw with the king, who, moreover, complained that there were not enough of them" (after "Barok", Volume 11, 2004, p. 23). Some famous musicians from the royal capella, like Valentin Bakfark, traveled extensively around Europe. According to accounts of the court of Albert V, Duke of Bavaria in Munich, a singer from Poland was paid 4 florins for a performance in 1570 (Ainem Sänger aus Polln so vmb diennst angehalten 4 fl. after "Beiträge zur Geschichte der bayerischen Hofkapelle", Volume 2, p. 47). 
Portrait of a man in eastern costume, possibly singer Krzysztof Klabon by Jacopo Tintoretto, ca. 1570, Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portraits of Sigismund Augustus with his maritime fleet and at the old age by Tintoretto
Between 1655-1660 the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a wealthy Venetian style republic of nobles created in 1569 with support of the last male Jagiellon, Sigismund Augustus was invaded by neighbouring countries from north, south, east and west - the Deluge. Royal and magnate residencies in Warsaw, Kraków, Grodno and Vilnius and other locations were ransacted and burned which resulted in the loss of works by the greatest Venetian painters, like Paris Bordone, Tintoretto or Palma Giovane and a loss of memory of the royal effigies and their patronage.
The portrait of a "Venetian admiral" in armour from the 1570s, acquired by the National Museum in Warsaw in 1936 from the Popławski collection (oil on canvas, 81 x 68 cm, inventory number M.Ob.635, earlier 34679) bears a great resemblance to the effigies of the king from the last years of his life, notably a miniature by workshop of Dirck de Quade van Ravesteyn at the Czartoryski Museum (MNK XII-146), painted after the original from around 1570. According to Universae historiae sui temporis libri XXX (editio aucta 1581, p. 516), originally published in Venice in 1572, the king was about to set up an enormous fleet against Denmark, consisting of galleys with three, five and more rows on the Venetian model in order to protect "Sarmatia". In the spring of 1570 he entrusted the Maritime Commission with the construction of the first ship for the Polish-Lithuanian maritime fleet, while bringing in specialists Domenico Zaviazelo (Dominicus Sabioncellus) and Giacomo de Salvadore from Venice. Shortly before turning 50 in 1570, the king's health rapidly declined. Antonio Maria Graziani recalls that Sigismund was unable to keep standing without a cane when greeting Venetian Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Commendone in November 1571 who was sent by Pope Pius V to join Venice, Papal States and Spain in the interest of a crusade against the Ottoman Empire. During research carried out in 1996 at the National Museum, an x-ray revealed an unfinished portrait of another man or the same but younger, perhaps unpaid work or not accepted by the client. The painter used the earlier composition to paint a new image on it, which was a common practice in his studio. In the Popławski collection the painting was attributed to Tintoretto. Jan Żarnowski, in the 1936 collection catalog, suggested Jacopo Bassano as a possible author, however, he pointed out the resemblance of this painting among others to two portraits by Tintoretto at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (after "Katalog wystawy obrazów ze zbiorów dr. Jana Popławskiego", number 19, p. 48). One is a portrait of Sigismund Augustus with a royal galley (GG 24), identified by me, the other is a portrait of an old man in a fur coat and carmine tunic, similar to the Polish-Lithuanian żupan (oil on canvas, 92.4 x 59.5 cm, GG 25). The receipt issued by Princess Anna Jagiellon after the death of Sigismund Augustus to Stanisław Fogelweder, in addition to Italian, German and Persian dresses, lists numerous fur garments, such as sable coats, made of leopards, wolverines, lynxes, wolves and black foxes and traditional costumes - żupany, kopieniaki, kabaty, kolety, delie (after "Ubiory w Polsce ..." by Łukasz Gołębiowski, p. 16), which were generally crimson. The resemblance of the men in all the mentioned effigies, in Vienna and Warsaw, is striking. The image of a man in a fur coat is also dated around 1570, like the Warsaw painting, and comes from the collection of Archduke Leopold William of Austria in Brussels, included in the catalog of his collection - Theatrum Pictorium (number 103). The intensity of Poland-Lithuania's contacts with the Republic of Venice around 1570 is attested by some preserved works of art. Portrait of a Venetian senator holding a letter by Jacopo Tintoretto of unknown provenance in the National Art Museum of Belarus in Minsk, was most probably transported to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at that time, possibly offered to the king Sigismund II Augustus or the Radziwills. The map of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - "The Sarmatian part of Europe, which is subject to Sigismund Augustus, the most powerful king of Poland" (Partis Sarmatiae Europae, quae Sigismundo Augusto regi Poloniae potentissimo subiacet) by Andrzej Pograbka (Andreas Pograbius), dedicated to Mikołaj Tomicki, son of the castellan of Gniezno, was published in Venice in 1570 by Nicolò Nelli. In 1572, the reissue of the legal thesis of the king's courtier Pedro Ruiz de Moros (d. 1571) Decisiones [...] De rebus In Sacro Auditorio Lituanico ex appellatione iudicatis, dedicated to the king (RAECLARVM opus quoddam est, Sigismunde Auguste Rex ...), was published in Venice by Bartolomeo Rubini. In a painting by Tintoretto from a private collection, the same man, although older, was depicted with a dark hat, very similar to those seen on many printed effigies of the last male Jagiellon - effigy by Frans Huys and Hieronymus Cock (1553-1562), at the age of 35 by Hans Sauerdumm (1554), by Battista Franco Veneziano (ca. 1561), in Jan Herburt's Statuta y przywileie koronne ... by Monogrammist WS (1570) or by Dominicus Custos (1601), as well as in the portrait painting at the age of 41, thus painted in about 1561, at the Wawel Royal Castle (inventory number 535). Until the end of his life, the king continued to acquire sumptuous clocks and jewels. In 1569, an Augsburg merchant, Hanus Heuzschmidt, received 110 zlotys "for a large round clock, which His Majesty the King had taken to his chamber". On June 10, 1570, the royal treasurer Fogelweder paid 242 zlotys "to a French merchant named Baduero for a diamond ring and for a Turkish gold clasp with diamonds and rubies, which His Majesty the King bought from this merchant". On September 6, the same treasurer gave "Pancratio Henne, a merchant from Nuremberg", 1,544 zlotys for "two golden and stone-set apples for musk [a perforated apple-shaped box for musk and other perfumes] [...] for a diamond ring [...] for 6 small rings [...] and a diamond cross". A few months later (November 16, 1570), the same Fogelweder paid 680 zlotys to the "Frenchman Blasio Bleaus Gioiller for the jewels that His Majesty the King had purchased from him", for which the royal cashier received a receipt "signed by Peter [Pierre] Garnier, the goldsmith of His Majesty the King". In 1571 (June 18), two other French merchants "Blasius de Vaûls and Servatius Marel" delivered to the court of Sigismund Augustus "a pendant on which was depicted the figure of David and Goliath in gold, and on it 9 rubies, 18 diamonds, and 3 pearls" and 2 rings (after "Dostawcy dworów królewskich w Polsce i na Litwie ..." by Maurycy Horn, Part II, p. 16). In 1570, Piotr Dunin Wolski, the king's ambassador to Spain, received 2,000 zlotys per year, due to the high prices in that country, while Sigismund Augustus's agents in Naples, Paweł Stempowski and Stanisław Kłodziński, received 1,500 zlotys per year. A year later, Dunin Wolski received an additional 1,000 Neapolitan ducats, worth 35.5 groszy (after "Polska slużba dyplomatyczna ..." by Zbigniew Wójcik, p. 125). This comparison proves that the sums paid to foreign jewellers and clockmakers were significant. On March 9, 1565, Tintoretto received a payment of 250 ducats for his monumental Crucifixion in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco (536 x 1127 cm). In 1578 he received a total of 200 ducats for the four allegories in the Palazzo Ducale, and he sometimes received up to 20 or 25 ducats for his official portraits. The king, who spent such sums on luxury items from Western Europe, undoubtedly also spared no money for magnificent portraits, but probably because of the low value of these objects and the use of foreign agents, Italian and Jewish merchants, it is difficult to find relevant evidence in the documents. 
Portrait of king Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) in armour with his maritime fleet by Tintoretto, ca. 1570, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of king Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) in a żupan and a fur coat by Tintoretto, ca. 1570, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of king Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) from the Theatrum Pictorium (103) by Lucas Vorsterman the Younger after Tintoretto, 1660, Princely Court Library in Waldeck.
Portrait of king Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) in a hat by Tintoretto, ca. 1572, Private collection.
Portrait of a Venetian senator holding a letter by Jacopo Tintoretto, third quarter of the 16th century, National Art Museum of Belarus in Minsk.
Portraits of children of Catherine Jagiellon by Sofonisba Anguissola and Titian
In a letter of 8 January 1570 from Warsaw (in the imperial archives in Vienna), the imperial envoy, Johannes Cyrus, abbot of the Premonstratensian monastery in Wrocław, informs Baron Trautson von Sprechenstein that the king of Sweden, John III, has sent an envoy to the Polish-Lithianian court with a portrait of his son, Prince Sigismund, and that he will probably want to promote him to the throne of Poland-Lithuania. He also adds that a year earlier the Swedish monarch had received many letters from Germany (most probably from Sophia Jagiellon, Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg), Prussia and Poland urging him to look after his son's interests and succession in Poland-Lithuania (after "Dyarysze Sejmów koronnych 1548, 1553 i 1570 r. ..." by Józef Szujski, p. 134).
In March 1569, Sigismund Augustus agreed to meet with the emperor about the succession. Maximilian II even fixed the date of the congress in Wrocław for August 1569, but the king asked for a delay. In the end, despite the efforts of abbot Cyrus, the congress did not take place at all, because Sigismund Augustus deliberately delayed its date. Prince Sigismund, as the only son of the reigning King of Sweden, was first and foremost his successor, as Sweden was a hereditary monarchy, so the success of all these endeavors should be attributed primarily to the wife of John III, Catherine Jagiellon. With her siblings Sigismund Augustus, Sophia and Anna, she was most likely willing to create a peaceful union of different countries of Europe under one king, thus expanding the idea of the Commonwealth (Res publica), established by the Union of Lublin in July 1569. A very innovative project in 16th century Europe, when many people thought it was noble to invade other nations, kill people, loot, destroy, subjugate others and thus create primitive empires. Unfortunately, such peaceful coexistence never had a reliable chance in Europe before the tragedy of World War II. Catherine ruled Sweden similarly to her mother Bona in Poland-Lithuania, in a way described by Mikołaj Rej in his dialogue between Warwas and Lupus, thus many of her decisions are attributed or signed by her husband. In many cultures, it is said that the man is the head, but the woman is the neck and she can turn the head any way she wants. It was therefore she who had her son's portrait painted and sent with official legation to Poland-Lithuania. The symbolism of this portrait must have been obvious to everyone in the country, so it can be assumed that, like the other effigies of the Jagiellons, it was commissioned from a renowned foreign workshop and that the prince was dressed in the national costume. No other document concerning this painting has been preserved, like probably the effigy itself. However, such portraits were frequently created in series for different notables. It cannot be the full-length portrait of the 2-year-old prince, attributed to the Dutch painter Johan Baptista van Uther (Wawel Royal Castle, inventory number 3221, from the collection of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Kraków), because according to the inscription it was created two years earlier, in 1568, when the prince had actually 2 years (ÆTATIS SVÆ 2 / 1568). What's more the more German or Flemish costume of a boy with a ruff, would not please the supporters of the national cause. In the Zamość Museum there is a small oval portrait of a boy with a feathered hat, which at first glance may resemble the works by the great Polish painter Olga Boznańska (1865-1940), who was inspired by the works of Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) and also painted children, or a 19th century pastiche of portraits of the Spanish infantes by Velázquez, such as effigies of Philip Prospero, Prince of Asturias (1657-1661), however, according to museum experts, the painting is by the Italian school and it was created at the beginning of the 17th century. It was recently included in the exhibition in late 16th century interiors above another importation from Italy, an oriental-style chest of drawers inlaid with mother-of-pearl, ivory and silver, the so-called Certosina technique, from the beginning of the 18th century. Many of the oldest paintings in the museum, such as the Putto with a tambourine by circle of Titian or Lorenzo Lotto from the first half of the 16th century, a copy of the original attributed to Titian from around 1510 (Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna), comes from the collection of the Zamoyski estate in Warsaw. In addition to purchasing the Italian paintings, the Zamoyskis also received them as gifts, such as in 1599 when Papal Nuncio Claudio Rangoni, Bishop of Reggio, gave Chancellor Jan Zamoyski and his wife a copy of the miraculous image of Our Lady of Reggio and in 1603 the same Rangoni also sent a portrait of Pope Clement VIII to Zamoyski. The 1583 inventory mentions two religious paintings of Mary Magdalene and Christ carrying the cross (after "Kultura i ideologia Jana Zamoyskiego" by Jerzy Kowalczyk, p. 97-98), possibly disguise portraits by Italian school. The 1604 print with effigy of Jan Zamoyski (British Museum) was created by the Roman engraver Giacomo Lauro (Iacobus Laurus Romanus) most likely from a study drawing or a miniature sent from Poland. The boy's crimson outfit and characteristic hat are typical of the national fashion of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. We can find similar costume in many works of art depicting Polish-Lithuanian nobles like miniature with Polish horsemen from the Kriegsordnung (Military ordinance) of Albert of Prussia from 1555 (State Library of Berlin), a copy of which most likely belonged to his cousin and overlord Sigismund Augustus, or a Polish-Lithuanian nobleman (Polacho) from Habiti Antichi Et Moderni di tutto il Mondo ... by Cesare Vecellio, published in Venice in 1598 (Czartoryski Library in Kraków). A similar crimson costume and hat can also be seen in the effigy of a Pole (Polognois) from Lucas de Heere's Théâtre de tous les peuples et nations de la terre, painted in the 1570s (Universiteitsbibliotheek Gent), images of Polish-Lithuanian nobles in Theatrum virtutum ac meritorum D. Stanislai Hosii by Tomasz Treter, painted between 1595-1600 (National Library of Poland) or in a much later fragment of the Commonwealth's map (Poloniae Nova et Acvrata Descriptio) by Jan Janssonius, published in Amsterdam in 1675 (National Library of Poland). The broad, blurry brushstrokes of Zamość's painting are characteristic of a one painter living near the beginning of the 17th century - Titian. He was one of the first to leave such visible stains of paint created through dynamic short brushstrokes, thus providing inspiration for many later artists, Velázquez and Rembrandt among them. A large number of orders required him to be quick and to simplify the painting technique. It is particularly noticeable in his late paintings, made between 1565 and 1576 - Boy with dogs in a landscape (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen), Saint Jerome (Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum) and the Crowning with thorns (Alte Pinakothek). The portrait of a boy was painted on cedar wood, a precious wood particularly appreciated by cabinetmakers, imported to Venice from Lebanon, Cyprus and Syria in the 16th and 17th centuries. Titian and his workshop are usually associated with canvas as the primary material, however, some of the master's smaller exquisite paintings for royal patrons were done on more expensive wood or even marble, such as Mater Dolorosa with clasped hands from 1554 (oil on panel, 68 x 61 cm, Prado Museum, P000443) and Mater Dolorosa with her hands apart from 1555 (oil on marble, 68 x 53 cm, Prado Museum, P000444), both commissioned by Emperor Charles V, and also the Penitent Magdalene, probably painted for Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, between 1533 and 1535 (oil on panel, 85.8 x 69.5 cm, Pitti Palace, Palatina 67) or portrait of Pope Julius II, painted between 1545-1546, from the collection of Vittoria della Rovere (oil on panel, 100 x 82.5 cm, Pitti Palace, Palatina 79). The boy in the painting may be three or four years old, as Prince Sigismund, born June 20, 1566, and the effigy resemble the earlier painting and the portrait of Sigismund's sister, Princess Elizabeth "Isabella" Vasa (1564-1566), at Wawel Castle (oil on canvas, 94.8 x 54.7 cm, 3934). The latter portrait is another intriguing aspect of the patronage of the Queen of Sweden. The style of the painting is obviously Italian and due to the inscription ISABEL in Spanish (medieval Spanish form of Elizabeth) it was initially believed to represent Catherine's older sister, Isabella Jagiellon (1519-1559) and dated about 1525. This painting comes from the collection of the Sapieha family in Krasiczyn. The costume of the young girl with a small ruff is much later and the effigy resembles the statue of Princess Isabella as depicted on the sarcophagus of her tomb sculpted by Willem Boy, carved around 1570 (Strängnäs Cathedral). As the eldest daughter of Catherine, she received the name in honor of her famous great-grandmother Isabella of Aragon (1470-1524), Duchess of Milan and suo jure Duchess of Bari. The style of this effigy most closely resembles the paintings attributed to Sofonisba Anguissola, who was court painter and lady-in-waiting to Elisabeth of Valois (Isabel de Francia, Isabelle de Valois), Queen of Spain, from 1560 until queen's death in 1568, and lived at the Spanish court in Madrid. Among the closest analogous paintings are the self-portrait with Bernardino Campi from the 1550s (Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena), the double portrait of the two young girls from around 1570 (Royal Palace of Genoa) and the portrait of a young woman from around 1580 (Lázaro Galdiano Museum). To be painted by the court painter of the Queen of Spain was a great prestige in the 16th century, moreover on the maternal side Catherine was a descendant of some Aragonese monarchs. Very wealthy Jagiellons could easily afford such "extravagance". The style of this painting both in composition and technique resembles the series of paintings of children of Emperor Maximilian II (1527-1576), son of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna - Archduchess Anna (1549-1580) (95 x 60 cm, 8148), Archduke Rudolf (1552-1612) (95 x 55.5 cm, 3369), Archduke Matthias (1557-1619) (95 x 56 cm, 3372), Archduke Maximilian (1558-1618) (95 x 55.5 cm, 3370), Archduke Albert (1559-1621) (95 x 55.5 cm, 3267) and Archduke Wenceslaus (1561-1578) (95 x 55.5 cm, 3371). They were probably commissioned in Spain, as their mother was the Spanish Infanta Maria (1528-1603), daughter of Emperor Charles V and Isabella of Portugal. Also, the dimensions and style of inscription of all these paintings are similar, so the portrait of Isabella Vasa could be one of many paintings depicting the children of Catherine Jagiellon by Anguissola or her workshop. It is also possible that the Wawel Castle painting does not depict the Vasa Princess at all, because some paintings from the Habsburg series are missing, including the effigy of Elizabeth of Austria (1554-1592), future queen of France. The style of the princess's portrait can also be compared to Sofonisba's self-portrait at the easel (Łańcut Castle), which was probably an advertisement of her talent or a gift to a generous client sent to Poland. Catherine most likely commissioned the effigies of her children through her envoys, such as Ture Bielke (1548-1600), who visited Szczecin in 1570 and later went to Venice or Count Olivero di Arco, who entered into relations with the royal court of Sweden after the autumn of 1568 and in the summer of 1570 presented himself in Venice as official ambassador of the Swedish monarch (after "Le Saint-Siège et la Suède ..." by Henry Biaudet, p. 208). In November 1569, Venetian Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Commendone, papal legate to Poland, wrote to Princess Anna asking if it was possible for Anna's sister, as the new queen of Sweden, to influence the country's politics, while Catherine corresponded at the same time with the pope (e.g. letter from Pius V to Catherine Jagiellon, March 8, 1570). Intermediaries at the Spanish court could have been the Polish ambassadors, Piotr Dunin-Wolski (1531-1590), representing Commonwealth's interests between 1561-1573, or Piotr Barzy, starost of Lviv, sent in 1566 to Madrid, where he died in 1569. Also the mentioned painting of a boy with dogs in a landscape (oil on canvas, 99.5 x 117 cm, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen), could be related to Poland-Lithuania. Because the artist used the same study drawing of a dog as in a portrait of a general in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Kassel, painted between 1550 and 1552, it is thought to have been commissioned by the same client or his family. According to Iryna Lavrovskaya, the portrait of a general could be an effigy of Nicolaus "the Black" Radziwill (Heritage, N. 2, 1993. pp. 82-84). The effigy of a boy embracing the dog who looks at a second dog suckling two puppies on the left recalls the story of abandoned Romulus and Remus (Capitoline Wolf), the founders of the city of Rome and the children of the god of war Mars and the priestess Rhea Silvia. Interestingly enough, the eldest son of Nicolaus "the Black", Nicolaus Christopher (1549-1616) is said to have received the nickname "the Orphan" when King Sigismund Augustus found the child left unattended in one of the rooms of the royal palace. After his studies in Strasbourg, in mid-1566, the young 17-year-old Radziwill went through Basel and Zurich to Italy. He stayed longer in Venice, Padua and Bologna, he also visited Florence, Rome and Naples and, as he himself wrote, "everything worth seeing". He returned to the country in 1569 (after "Polski słownik biograficzny", 1935, Volume 24, p. 301). After the death of his mother in 1562 and his father in 1565, at this time in his life he could really feel like an orphan, so an allegorical painting reminiscent of his father would be a good souvenir from Venice. 
Portrait of Princess Elizabeth "Isabella" Vasa (1564-1566), daughter of Catherine Jagiellon or Elizabeth of Austria (1554-1592), granddaughter of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547) by Sofonisba Anguissola, 1560s, Wawel Royal Castle.
Portrait of Prince Sigismund Vasa (1566-1632), son of Catherine Jagiellon, in Polish-Lithuanian costume by Titian, ca. 1570, Zamość Museum.
Boy with dogs in a landscape, most probably allegorical portrait of Nicolaus Christopher "the Orphan" Radziwill (1549-1616) by Titian, 1565-1576, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.
Portrait of Infanta Juana de Austria with court dwarf Ana de Polonia by Sofonisba Anguissola
"We have a great joy with them (...) each day this gift becomes more pleasant to us, for which we also offer our grateful appreciation to Vostrae Serenitati" wrote emperor Charles V on May 11, 1544 to Queen Bona Sforza, who sent him two dwarfs raised at her court, Kornel and Katarzyna.
Dwarfs were present at the Polish court since the Middle Ages, however it was during the reign of Sigismund I and Bona that their presence was significantly strengthened. As servants of Osiris and their association with other Egyptian gods of fertility and creation, like Bes, Hathor, Ptah, dwarfs were also symbols of fertility, revival and abundance in Ancient Roman World and one fresco from Pompeii near Naples is a very special example of it (after "The meaning of Dwarfs in Nilotic scenes" in: "Nile into Tiber: Egypt in the Roman World", Paul G.P. Meyboom and Miguel John Versluys, 2007, p. 205). To secure the endurance of the dynasty in the times when child mortality was very high, fertility was very important to Bona, granddaughter of Alfonso II, King of Naples. There were Spanish dwarfs at the Polish court, like Sebastian Guzman, who was paid 100 florins, a cubit of Lyonian cloth and damask and Polish monarchs sent their dwarfs to Spain, like Domingo de Polonia el Mico, who appears in the house of Don Carlos between 1559-1565. The presence of Polish dwarfs was also significant at the French court. In 1556 Sigismund Augustus sent to Catherine de' Medici, Queen of France two dwarfs, called grand Pollacre and le petit nain Pollacre and in 1579 a dwarf Majoski (or Majosky) was even studying at her cost. A lot of female dwarfs were at the court of the Jagiellons, like a certain Maryna, an old dwarf of Queen Bona, who was paid salary by king Stephen Bathory or Jagnieszka (Agnieszka), female dwarf of Princess Sophia Jagiellon, who was her secretary. Queen Barbara Radziwill, had at her court a dwarf Okula (or Okuliński) and she received two female dwarfs from the wife of voivode of Novogrudok. After her mother left for her native Italy, when all her sisters were married and her brother was occupied with affairs of state and his mistresses, Anna Jagiellon spent time on embroidery, raising her foster children and dwarfs. A portrait showing a little girl hiding under protective arm of a woman by Sofonisba Anguissola in Boston (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, oil on canvas, 194 x 108.3 cm, P26w15), due to appearance of her ruff can be dated to the late 1560s or early 1570s. The woman is Infanta Doña Juana de Austria (Joan of Austria), widowed Princess of Portugal, sister of king Philip II of Spain, ruler of one half of the world and mother of king Sebastian of Portugal, ruler of the second half of the world (according to Treaty of Tordesillas, 1494), sister of Holy Roman Empress Maria of Austria, as well as Archduchess of Austria, princess of Burgundy, a friend of Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), one of the most influential religious orders of the Catholic Reformation, and whose confessor was her cousin Francis Borgia, third Superior General of the Jesuits. She was the most influential and powerful woman in Europe. The portrait which is said to depict Catherine Stenbock (1535-1621), Queen of Sweden from the Stenbock Palace in Kolga (Kolk) in Estonia, now in private collection (oil on canvas, 63 x 50 cm, sold at Bukowskis in Stockholm, Sale 621, December 11, 2019, lot 414), is de facto a copy or a version of Juana de Austria's portrait by Alonso Sánchez Coello from 1557 (Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, inv. GG 3127), most probably created by Sofonisba in about 1560. Kolga Palace was once owned by Swedish soldier Gustaf Otto Stenbock (1614-1685), who during the invasion of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was promoted to field marshal. The painting, once sent to Sigismund Augustus or his sister Anna by Juana, was therefore taken from one of the royal residences during the Deluge (1655-1660) and this unknown lady was later identified as a Queen of Sweden from the Stenbock family. A somewhat similar effigy of Juana, purchased from Andrzej Ciechanowiecki in 1981, is in the Royal Castle in Warsaw (oil on canvas, 107 x 79 cm, inv. ZKW/103/ab). The possible author of the Warsaw painting is the Flemish painter Roland de Mois (Rolán de Moys, ca. 1520-1592), active in Aragon since 1559, or his studio. The portrait in Boston is also very similar to the portrait in the Basque Museum in Bayonne by workshop of Sofonisba or Juan Pantoja de la Cruz (oil on canvas, 170 x 120 cm, inventory number G 2). It depicts Isabel de Francia (Elisabeth of Valois, 1545-1568), Queen of Spain, daughter of Catherine de' Medici and third wife of Philip II, with a little girl, which could be her French female dwarf Doña Luisa. It was a portrait of Queen Isabel that Sofonisba sent to the Pope Pius IV in 1561: "I heard from the most reverend Nuncio of your Holiness, that you desired a portrait, from my hands, of her Majesty the Queen, my mistress", according to Sofonisba's letter dated Madrid, September 16, 1561 and "We have received the portrait of the most serene Queen of Spain, our dearest daughter, that you have sent us" according to Pope's letter dated Rome, October 15, 1561. The girl in Boston portrait is holding in her hand three roses. The association of the rose with love is too common to require elaboration, it was the flower of Venus, goddess of love in ancient Rome. Three flowers symbolize also Christian teological virtues, faith, hope and love, with love pointed as "the greatest of these" by Paul the Apostle (1 Corinthians 13). She is therefore a foreigner at the Spanish court and the painting is a message: I am safe, I have a powerful protector, do not worry about me, I love you, I remember about you and I miss you. It is a message to someone very important to the girl, but also important to Juana. We can assume with a high degree of probability that it is a message to the girl's foster mother Anna Jagiellon, who to strengthen her chances to the crown after death of her brother, assumed the unprecedented but politically important Spanish title of Infanta: Anna Infans Poloniae (Anna, Infanta of Poland, e.g her letter to cardinal Stanisław Hozjusz, from Łomża, 16 November 1572). In the 16th century Spanish portraiture even members of the same family were rarely depicted together. Suffocating court etiquette made exception only to dwarfs and court jesters, like in the portrait of infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia with a female dwarf Magdalena Ruiz by Alonso Sánchez Coello from about 1585 (Prado Museum) or in the portrait of pregnant youger sister of Anna of Austria (1573-1598), Queen of Poland - Margaret, Queen of Spain with a female dwarf Doña Sofía (her name might indicate Eastern origin) from about 1601 by Juan Pantoja de la Cruz or Bartolomé González (Kunsthistorisches Museum). Blood connections and family ties were very important to Spanish Habsburgs, Ana de Austria (Anna of Austria, 1549-1580), fourth wife of Philip II, was his niece (her mother Maria was his sister and her father was his cousin). Spanish sources mentions that in 1578 died Doña Ana de Polonia, court dwarf of Queen Ana de Austria (after "Ana de Austria (1549-1580) y su coleccion artistica", in: "Portuguese Studies Review", Almudena Perez de Tudela, 2007, p. 199), most probably the same mentioned in 1578 in Cuentas de Mercaderes (Merchant Accounts), M. 4, granting her a skirt and other clothing. If this girl is the same with that in the portrait of Juana, and after death of Juana in 1573 she joned the court of a foreign queen who arrived to Spain in autumn of 1570, this lovely green-eyed girl was probably someone more than an agreeable court dwarf. Her name might indicate, apart from the country of her origin, also her family, like Doña Juana de Austria (Joan of Austria, Joan from the House of Austria, the Habsburgs), who was born in Madrid and never visited Austria, hence Doña Ana de Polonia (Anna of Poland, Anna from the House of Poland, the Jagiellons). So was this girl an illegitimate daughter of Sigismund Augustus, who after death of Barbara in 1551 was desperate to have a child or his sister Anna, a vigorous (gagliarda di cervello) spinster? Such a bold hypothesis cannot be excluded due to its nature that rather should be concealed and kept secret, and lack of sources (in Poland apart from paintings, also many archives were destroyed during wars). The preserved sources, especially from the last years of reign of Sigismund Augustus are controversial. Imperial envoy, Johannes Cyrus, Abbot of the Premonstratensian monastery in Wrocław, in a letter dated March 3, 1571 states that "The king would even marry a beggar, if she only gave him a son" and Świętosław Orzelski, Sejm deputy and Lutheran activist, in his diary that "in the same castle [Royal Castle in Warsaw], where Infanta Anna lived, Zuzanna was lying in one bed, Giżanka in the second, third at Mniszek's, the fourth in the room of the royal chamberlain Kniaźnik, fifth at Jaszowski's" about "the falcons" (Zuzanna Orłowska, Anna Zajączkowska and Barbara Giżanka among others), mistresses of the king. He also allegedly had illegitimate daughters with them. Maybe a research in Spanish archives will allow to confirm or exclude the hypothesis that Ana de Polonia was a daughter of Sigismund or of his sister Anna and was sent to distant Spain. The painting was purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner in 1897 from the collection of Marchese Fabrizio Paolucci di Calboli in Forli. Its earlier history is unknown. It was most probably aquired in Poland by cardinal Camillo Paolucci, born in Forli, who was a papal nuncio in Poland between 1727-1738. Also earlier provenance is possible through cardinal Alessandro Riario Sforza, a distant relative of Anna from the branch of the family who were lords of Forli and Imola, who was named papal legate in Spain in 1580, just two years after death of Ana de Polonia, and who could acquire a copy of painting made for the Queen of Poland. Before World War II, the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts in Wrocław owned a magnificent full-length portrait, identified as depicting Don Juan of Austria (1547–1578), the illegitimate son of Emperor Charles V and therefore attributed to Alonso Sánchez Coello (oil on canvas, 197 x 111 cm, inv. kat. 220, Catalog of Wartime Losses, number 11114). The painting came from the collection of Barthold Suermondt (1818-1887), a German entrepreneur and banker who owned significant shares in the Warsaw Steelworks (Towarzystwo Warszawskiej Fabryki Stali). It was purchased in 1874 by the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin and donated to the Wrocław Museum in 1878. Its early history is unknown. Although it can be assumed that Suermondt acquired the painting in Belgium, the Netherlands or Germany, the Polish provenance cannot be ruled out. The style of this painting is very reminiscent of the works of Sofonisba, while the model resembles the effigies of King Philip II of Spain. This painting was most likely based on other effigies and idealized, hence the resemblance is not so apparent at first glance. In the country where some were fascinated by the Spanish Empire, such as Krzysztof Warszewicki (1543-1603), as he expressed in his De Optimo Statu Libertatis Libri duo, published in Kraków in 1598 and especially in his "Speech on the Death of Philip II, Catholic King of Spain" (In mortem Philippi II Hispaniarvm regis catholici oratio), also published in the same year in Kraków, nobles travelled to the Iberian Peninsula and grain and other products were exported from Gdańsk, there were also undoubtedly many effigies of the King of Spain. Warszewicki dedicated this speech to George Radziwill, Bishop of Kraków, as a token of gratitude for having appointed him to the Kraków Chapter, and also because Radziwill had once been the Polish ambassador to Spain and had known the deceased king personally. After the title page of Warszewicki's speech the printing house of Andrzej Piotrkowczyk reproduced a portrait of King Philip II, most likely based on an original painting belonging to the author. Interestingly, the portrait of Philip II in Wrocław was similar in size (197 x 111 cm / 194 x 108.3 cm) and composition to the portrait of his sister, now in Boston. Thus, both portraits most likely came from the same series. 
Portrait of Infanta Juana de Austria (Joan of Austria) by Roland de Mois or workshop, after 1559, Royal Castle in Warsaw.
Portrait of Infanta Juana de Austria (Joan of Austria) from the Stenbock Palace by Sofonisba Anguissola or workshop, ca. 1560, Private collection.
Portrait of Queen Isabel de Francia (Elisabeth of Valois) with a female dwarf by Sofonisba Anguissola or workshop, ca. 1565-1568, Basque Museum in Bayonne.
Portrait of Infanta Juana de Austria (Joan of Austria) with female dwarf Ana de Polonia by Sofonisba Anguissola, ca. 1572, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
Portrait of King Philip II of Spain (1527-1598) by Sofonisba Anguissola, 1570s, Silesian Museum of Fine Arts in Wrocław, lost during World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Stanisław Reszka by Adriaen Thomasz. Key
In 1569 Stanisław Reszka (Rescius), secretary of cardinal Stanisław Hozjusz went with him to Rome. During his stay there, he assisted the cardinal in his public activities in the Roman Curia and during the conclave in 1572. That year he was also an envoy in his name to the Viceroy of Naples, Cardinal Granvelle ("On the third day after the election of Pope Gregory XIII, I left with the most eminent Cardinal Granvelle for Naples", wrote Reszka in a letter), and the following year to King-elect Henry of Valois. He helped the cardinal with organization during his journey and stay in the Eternal City. He was also increasingly active in the cultural and literary field. Rescius assisted in the publication of the works of Cardinal Hozjusz (Paris 1562, Antwerp 1566 and 1571, Cologne 1584). Opera qvae hactenus extitervnt omnia ... was published in Antwerp by the publishing house of the widow and heir of Joannes Steelsius (Antverpiae : in aedibus viduae et haeredum Ioannis Stelsij), shortly after Hozjusz's return to Poland after the 1565-6 papal conclave (20 December - 7 January) and Opera omnia was published by the same publishing house in 1571, hence the work was prepared and directed from Rome. The full-length portrait of Cardinal Hozjusz, offered by Pope John Paul II in 1987 to the reconstructed Royal Castle in Warsaw (inventory number ZKW/2207/ab, previously in the Vatican Library), was painted in 1575 by Flemish painter Giulio (Julius) della Croce, called Giulio Fiammingo. Reszka himself published in Rome portraits with biographies of popes (1580), Roman emperors (1583), Cardinal Hozjusz (1588) and Polish kings (1591) (after "Vademecum malarstwa polskiego" by Stanisław Jordanowski, p. 44).
Stanisław, educated at the Lubrański Academy (Collegium Lubranscianum) in Poznań, in Frankfurt an der Oder as well as in Wittenberg and Leipzig, came from a bourgeois family. He was born in Buk in Greater Poland on September 14, 1544. He obtained his doctorate in Perugia and in 1559 he became the secretary of Bishop Stanisław Hozjusz. In 1565 he was ordained a deacon in Rome and in 1571 he became a canon of Warmia. Two years later, in 1573 he was appointed by King Henry of Valois as the royal secretary and in 1575 he was ordained priest by Hozjusz in the church of St. Clement in Rome. From 1592 he stayed in Naples as an envoy of the Commonwealth. One of Reszka's greatest achievements in Rome was the founding of the Polish College. He recommended many Poles and Prussians to Marcin Kromer, Prince-Bishop of Warmia, like Leonard Neuman, an Olsztyn resident, who was not admitted to the Collegium Germanicum in Rome (after "Działalność polonijna Stanisława Reszki ..." by Aleksander Rudziński, p. 70, 72). As a diplomatic agent in Rome, distinguished by his artistic taste, Rescius also becomes an artistic agent of the monarchs of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was an important supplier of works of art for Sigismund III Vasa, who purchased them in Naples, Rome and Venice, along with Tomasz Treter, Jan Andrzej Próchnicki, Bartłomiej Powsiński, Spanish and Italian envoys and magnates traveling abroad (after "Malarstwo europejskie w zbiorach polskich, 1300-1800" by Jan Białostocki, Michał Walicki, p. 19). He also corresponded with Queen Anna Jagiellon, to whom he sent from Rome on January 19, 1584 "the Indian stone". In the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna there is a portrait of a man with a reddish beard by Adriaen Thomasz. Key (oil in panel, 85 x 63 cm, inventory number GG 3679, signed top left with the monogram: AK). This painting is verifiable in the imperial collection Prague in 1685 and was transferred to Vienna in 1876. Key, a Calvinist painter active in Antwerp in the Spanish Netherlands, painted in 1579 several versions of effigy of William the Silent, the leader of the Dutch revolt, however some portrait paintings of William's opponent Don Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba, are also attributed to him, in collaboration with Willem Key (in Palacio de Liria in Madrid and in Museum Prinsenhof in Delft), as well as portraits of Margaret of Parma (1522-1586), Catholic Regent of the Netherlands (Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, GG 768 and Museum Prinsenhof in Delft). The man with a reddish beard is holding gloves in his right hand and his black costume and pose resemble the portraits of Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1517-1586), when bishop of Arras, especially the painting by Antwerp painter Antonis Mor in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, created in 1549 (GG 1035) or a similar portrait of future cardinal by Titian, created a year earlier (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 30-15). According to Latin inscription in upper part of the painting the man was 28 in 1572 (1572 / Æ T A. 28), exacly as Rescius, when he accompanied Cardinal Granvelle to Naples. The diplomat died there in 1600. 
Portrait of Stanisław Reszka (1544-1600), aged 28 by Adriaen Thomasz. Key, 1572, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portraits of Anna Jagiellon by Tintoretto and circle of Titian
"The Queen is fresh and in such good health that I would not consider it a miracle if she were to become pregnant", reported from Warsaw on 29 January 1579, Giovanni Andrea Caligari (1527-1613), papal nuncio in Poland, about 56 years old Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596), elected co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
"In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, overweightness and obesity were considered symbols of sexual attractiveness and well-being" (after "The Obesity Reality: A Comprehensive Approach to a Growing Problem" by Naheed Ali, p. 7) and Anna's mother Bona Sforza, who visited Venice in 1556, was obese in her 40s and 50s, as visible in the cameo in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 17.190.869). At the end of November 1575 Austrian legation arrived in Warsaw, officially promising the infanta marriage to Archduke Ernest of Austria (1553-1592), the son of Emperor Maximilian II and Maria of Spain, and her relative as a grandson of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547). However, the offer was accepted very restrainedly and cautiously, even coldly. Anna was to reply modestly that she depended on the entire Republic and would only do what custom and the general will would require of her, and that she "entrusted her orphanage to God's holy protection" (after "Anna Jagiellonka" by Maria Bogucka, p. 118). The young Archduke, 30 years younger than the potential bride, undoubtedly received her effigy. News coming mainly from Vienna and Venice informed the general public about the course of 1575 royal election in the Commonwealth. The Fuggers, a prominent group of European bankers, learned about the election of Emperor Maximilian as king of Poland from reports sent from Vienna on December 16, 1575, and then from Venice (newspaper of 30 December) (after "Z dziejów obiegu informacji w Europie XVI wieku" by Jan Pirożyński, p. 141). In the Jagiellonian University Museum in Kraków there is a painting attributed to Tintorretto from about 1575 (after "Muzeum Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego" by Karol Estreicher, p. 100). This painting was offered to the Cracow Academy by Franciszek Karol Rogawski (1819-1888) in 1881 (oil on canvas, 110 x 96 cm, inv. MUJ 425/I, earlier 2526). According to Rogawski's record, the portrait features the queen of Cyprus, Caterina Cornaro (1454-1510), and was acquired at Sedelmayer's auction in Vienna. It had earlier belonged to the Viennese gallery of Joseph Daniel Böhm (1794-1865) and was also attributed to Paolo Veronese, Battista Zelloti and circle of Bernardino Licinio (after "Foreign Painting in the Collections of the Collegium Maius" by Anna Jasińska, p. 146). The crown on her head alludes to a royal dignity, however, the woman's costume does not resemble well known effigies of the queen of Cyprus by Gentile Bellini and can be compered to the dress of La Belle Nani by Paolo Veronese (Louvre Museum), dated to about 1560, or to the costume of a lady from The Madonna of the Cuccina Family (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden), also by Veronese, painted around 1571. Her face has the appearance of not being taken live, as points out Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo ("Un Michele da Verona e uno Jacopo Tintoretto a Cracovia", p. 104), who also attribute the canvas to Tintorretto. Therefore the painting was created after another effigy, a drawing or a miniature. In the catalogue of the 2020 temporary exhibition "Dolabella. Venetian Painter of the House of Vasa", the painting was attributed to a follower of Paolo Veronese with the information that it is also attributed to the circle of Bernardino Licinio (after "Dolabella. Wenecki malarz Wazów. Katalog wystawy", ed. Magdalena Białonowska, p. 150). The painter who joins the influences of different Venetian painters, including Veronese, Tintoretto, Titian and Licinio is Francesco Montemezzano (1555 - after 1602) from Verona, considered a pupil of Paolo Veronese. The best example is the Portrait of a lady, traditionally identified as Rita Bellesi, which was attributed to Tintoretto (according to a label on the reverse) and in 2022 was auctioned with attribution to Montemezzano (Sotheby's London, April 6, 2022, lot 17). The same woman was also depicted holding a cross and a book in a painting in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Kassel (oil on canvas, 92 x 73 cm, inv. GK 491), a copy of which was in the Swedish royal collection (18th century copy of lost original is in the Gripsholm Castle, oil on canvas, 99 x 80 cm, inv. NMGrh 187). The painting in Kassel is attributed to circle of Titian or specifically to his pupil Girolamo di Tiziano, also known as Girolamo Dante, and was acquired before 1749. This effigy is a pendant to portrait of Catherine Jagiellon, Duchess of Finland in white by Titian, identified by me. The woman bears strong resemblance to effigies of Anna Jagiellon, especially the miniature by Lucas Cranach the Younger in the Czartoryski Museum and her tomb sculpture at the Wawel Cathedral. In terms of facial features, the portrait in the Jagiellonian University Museum is particularly similar to the full-length portrait of the kneeling queen as donor in the Sigismund Chapel, created after 1586. Polish-Lithuanian magnates owned a number of paintings by Titian and Tintorretto, like Michał Hieronim Radziwiłł, who according to the Catalogue of his picture gallery, published in 1835 (Katalog galeryi obrazow sławnych mistrzów z różnych szkół zebranych przez ś. p. Michała Hieronima xięcia Radziwiłła wojew. wil. teraz w Królikarni pod Warszawą wystawionych), had a copy of Venus of Urbino by Titian (Portrait of Princess Isabella Jagiellon nude, identified by me), item 439 of the Catalogue, or "Portrait of a lady in a dark green dress trimmed with gold braid. She takes a flower from the basket with her right hand, and leaning, holds a crimson scarf with her left hand. Painting well preserved. - Painted on canvas. Height: elbow: 1, inch 16.5, width: elbow: 1, inch 10" (Portret damy, w sukni ciemno-zielonej, galonem złotym obszytej. Prawą ręką bierze z koszyka kwiatek, lewą oparta, trzyma szal karmazynowy. Obraz dobrze zachowany. - Mal. na płót. Wys. łok. 1 cali 16 1/2, szer. łok. 1 cali 10, item 33, p. 13), a landscape with staffage (item 213, p. 64) and an Italian landscape with a tree (item 273, p. 83), all attributed to Titian or Saint Paul and Anthony in the desert, painted on wood, attributed to Tintorretto (item 365, p. 108). In 1574 Anna decided to reactivate the postal service between Poland and Venice, suspended in 1572 after death of her brother, and to do so at her own expense (after "Viaggiatori polacchi in Italia" by Emanuele Kanceff, p. 106). The Queen, heiress of the Neapolitan sums, used Montelupi's postal facilities, who through their own agents, maintained close contact with the bankers in Naples, who sent them sums of money with great frequency (after "Saeculum Christianum", Vol. 1-2, p. 36). "In fact, we demand Y.L. [Your Lordship] as far as things or needs of our own are concerned, to pay no heed to our expense, because we will gladly cover it everywhere. But whatever may be sent through cursores ordinarios [ordinary messengers], please send through cursores, who may also go as far as Venice. And with the merchants goods, everything comes to us fast and at great cost. As for the other things, another time we will answer to Y.L. With this we wish Y.L. to be well. Dated Varsoviae, die 10 Novembris A. D. 1573. Kind to Y.L. Miss Anna Polish Princess", wrote the Infanta to cardinal Stanisław Hozjusz (after "Starożytności Historyczne Polskie ..." by Ambroży Grabowski, p. 21). Anna was a well known benefactor of the Cracow Academy (now Jagiellonian University) and she visted it twice on 20 July 1576 and on 24 April 1584. Three days after her last visit she sent the doctors of the Academy a mug of pure gold and a few beautifully bound books. If Elizabeth I (1533-1603), hereditary Queen of England, favoured the French fashion, especially "when the Anjou marriage negotiation were at their height" in about 1579 (Janet Arnold's "Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd", 2020, p. 188), the elected Queen of the Polish-Lithuanian Republic, could prefer the fashion of the Venetian Serenissima. 
Portrait of Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596), elected co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by Jacopo Tintoretto or Francesco Montemezzano, before 1579, Jagiellonian University Museum in Kraków.
Portrait of Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) holding a cross and a book by circle of Titian, 1560-1578, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Kassel. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) holding a cross and a book by Georg Engelhard Schröder after original by circle of Titian, 1724-1750, Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Henry of Valois by workshop of Tintoretto
After the death of Sigismund II Augustus in 1572, Catherine of Medici, Queen of France, willing to make her favourite son Henry of Valois, Duke of Anjou the king of Poland, sent her court dwarf Jan Krasowski, called Domino to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Under the guise of visiting his family in his homeland, he was to make some inquiries and explore the mood in the Commonwealth. Catherine used all her power to offer the crown to her son by influencing the noble electors.
In order to be more agreeable to the Ottoman Empire and strengthen a Polish-Ottoman alliance, on May 16, 1573, Polish-Lithuanian nobles chose Henry as the first elected monarch of the Commonwealth. He was officially crowned on February 21, 1574. Expecting that Henry will marry her and she will become a Queen, Infanta Anna Jagiellon the wealthiest woman in the country and a sister of his predecessor, ordered French lilies to be embroidered on her dresses. Already in 1572, the Infanta was accused of wanting the crown for herself or to impose her candidate against the will of the council and the lords of the kingdom. "We already see that Y[our] H[ighness] is doing something without our will, with great anger. We see that you want this crown for you, but you will not elect us the lord", Anna cited the accusations made by the council in a letter of December 18, 1572 from Warsaw to her sister Sophia Jagiellon, Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg. She was also accused of attempts to poison opposition leaders, including Franciszek Krasiński, Bishop of Kraków and Calvinist Jan Firlej, Voivode of Kraków - according to letter from Wawrzyniec Rylski, courtier of Catherine Jagiellon, to Duchess Sophia dated February 2, 1573 from Warsaw (after "Jagiellonki polskie ..." by Alexander Przezdziecki, Volume 4, p. 12, 30, 86). Before the election, the Infanta received the portraits of the candidates to her hand, among whom were Henry of Valois and Archduke Ernest of Austria (1553-1595). The portrait of Henry was delivered in secret, while the portrait of Ernest was brought by Stanisław Sędziwój Czarnkowski (1526-1602) (after "Ostatnie lata Zygmunta Augusta i Anna Jagiellonka" by Józef Szujski, p. 330, 332, 333). As for her distant relative and son of the Emperor, Anna declared in the letter to her sister Sophia dated June 23, 1573 from Warsaw "that they did not want to elect him king in any way, so that he would have me; but all the others advised me against it as best they could". Czarnkowski's letter written after the election to Sophia (May 20 from Płock) is proof that the Infanta definitely contributed to Henry's election - "a letter from a man who, together with Sophia, fell victim to the feminine wiles of the apparently good-natured Anna" (after "Jagiellonki polskie w XVI wieku" by Alexander Przezdziecki, Volume 5, p. CCXIV). Despite the fact that he arrived to Poland with a large retinue of his young male lovers, known as the mignons (French for "the darlings"), including René de Villequier, François d'O and his brother Jean, Louis de Béranger du Guast and especially his beloved Jacques de Lévis, comte de Caylus (or Quélus), and that "he even flattered the Polish lords by cleverly adopting their attire", as wrote Venetian envoy Girolamo Lippomano, he was not feeling well in the unknown country. After death of his brother Charles IX, Catherine urged him to return to France. During the night of 18/19 June 1574, Henry secretly fled the Commonwealth. The portrait of a man in black hat by workshop of Tintoretto from private collection in Milan (reported before 1995, compare Fototeca Zeri, Numero scheda 44861), is almost identical with the portrait of Henry depicted against the wall hanging with his coat of arms as King of Poland in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest by Italian painter (inventory 52.602) and his portrait holding a crown in the Doge's Palace in Venice (Sala degli Stucchi) by workshop of Tintoretto. It bears no distinction, no reference to his royal status, as in mentioned two portraits in Budapest and Venice, he is depicted as a simple nobleman. It is higly probable then that it was one of a series of state portraits commissioned by Anna in Venice before Henry's coronation, as a clear signal that he should marry her before becoming a king. The Infanta was most probably well aware of his inclination towards men, as apart from Krasowski, there were also other Polish dwarfs at the French court. Raised at the multicultural court of the Jagiellons, where people spoke Latin, Italian, Ruthenian, Polish and German, they were perfect diplomats. In 1572 king Sigismund Augustus sent to Charles IX, four dwarfs and in October that year, Claude La Loue brought another three dwarfs from Poland as a gift from Emperor Maximilian II, father of Charles IX's wife Elisabeth of Austria (after Auguste Jal's "Dictionnaire critique de biographie et d'histoire", 1867, p. 896). A portrait, said to be Mariana of Austria with a female dwarf wearing a wimple from a private collection in Spain, lost (Mariana de Austria con una enana, collection of Antonio Hoffmayer in Madrid, oil on canvas, 186 x 116 cm, Archivo de Arte Español - Archivo Moreno, 02342 B), is very similar to the portrait of Elisabeth of Austria in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (inv. GG 3273), which is attributed to Giacomo de Monte (Netherlandish Jakob de Monte, according to some sources). Painter of similar name, Giovanni del Monte, possibly Giacomo's brother, is mentioned as a court painter of Sigismund Augustus before 1557. It is therefore highly probable that the portrait of Queen of France with her dwarf was created for or at the initiative of the Polish-Lithuanian court. On April 28, 2021 a portrait of a young woman wearing an embroidered dress and a pearl necklace by North Italian School was sold on an auction in London (oil on canvas, 25 x 18.5 cm, Sotheby's, lot 317). On other auction her dress was identified as Spanish court dress (Neumeister in Munich, July 15, 2020, auction 388, lot 141). Her costume and style of this painting resembles the portrait of Elisabeth of Valois, Queen of Spain with a female dwarf by Sofonisba Anguissola or her workshop (Basque Museum in Bayonne), the painter who joins the two mentioned terms (North Italian School and Spanish court). The woman in the portrait strongly resembles the effigies of Elisabeth of Austria, especially her best-known portrait by François Clouet in the Louvre, mentioned likeness in Vienna by de Monte and her face from the effigy by Jooris van der Straaten in the Convent of Las Descalzas Reales in Madrid, dated to about 1573. The portrait of Elisabeth's sister Anne, Queen of Spain by Sofonisba is also dated to about 1573 (Prado Museum, P001284). In several portraits, Elisabeth has blond hair, while in this one as well as in the portrait by de Monte, her hair is dark, which could indicate that at some point she lightened her hair or that painters copying effigies from general drawings were unaware of her true hair color. The style of this small portrait is also very similar to another signed work of Sofonisba - portrait of Cameria in the Musée Fabre in Montpellier (inventory number 65.2.1). Elisabeth, like her sister Anne, Queen of Spain, were both granddaughters on the paternal side of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), and as in the case of dynastic relations, the links between artists and patrons from different countries of Europe, including Poland-Lithuania, were also strong. Due to the still small number of medalists in the country, the royal court usually commissioned images of this kind abroad, in Vienna or Prague. Only once, during the short reign of Henry of Valois, did the court order two coronation medals from Parisian artists (after "Dzieje sztuki medalierskiej w Polsce" by Adam Więcek, p. 85). Medals of Henry of Valois on the election as King of Poland, attributed to French sculptor Germain Pilon, are in the National Museum in Kraków (inventory number MNK VII-Md-97) and in the Royal Castle in Warsaw (ZKW.N.830/2511). Similar was the case for portrait paintings, and Venice was the nearest center with a large number of painting workshops. 
Portrait of Henry of Valois (1551-1589), elected monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by workshop of Tintoretto, ca. 1573, Private collection.
Portrait of Elisabeth of Austria (1554-1592), Queen of France by workshop of Sofonisba Anguissola, ca. 1573, Private collection.
Portrait of Elisabeth of Austria (1554-1592), wife of Charles IX as a widow with a female dwarf wearing a wimple by Jakob de Monte (?), after 1574, Private collection, lost. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Sarmatians and disguised portraits of Elector Augustus of Saxony and his Anne of Denmark by Lucas Cranach the Younger and workshop
"On March 3, 1573, Sophia [Jagiellon, Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg] wrote to her envoys in Poland that she could not come and sent them two letters to her sister, Princess Anna, asking Referendary Czarnkowski to deliver them. The content of Sophia's letters to Anna is unknown, but they certainly concerned the most important matters for both sisters, i.e. the execution of Sigismund Augustus' will, the situation in Poland, and the future election. One can only assume that these letters contained many detailed pieces of advice and instructions for Anna. In the meantime, some particularly disturbing news must have reached Schöningen about the Muscovite candidacy for the throne in Poland, popular especially in Lithuania. It concerned Tsar Ivan the Terrible himself or his son Fyodor. Although it is hard to believe today, alongside the candidacies of "Piast", Archduke Ernest, Henry of Valois, John III Vasa or his son Sigismund and Anna Jagiellon herself, this very solution was taken into consideration quite seriously in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at that time, expecting that the union with Moscow could bring similar benefits as the union with Lithuania had once, consolidated by the appointment of Ladislaus Jagiello [Jogaila of Lithuania] to the throne in Kraków. Sophia, whose attitude to Moscow and Ivan the Terrible has already been discussed here, panicked and on March 9, 1573 she addressed letters to the electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, the electors of Mainz, Trier and Cologne, and to the Palatine of the Rhine and Landgrave of Hesse, William, as well as to Duke Julius of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, with a heartfelt request that through their envoys they help to elect Anna to the throne in Poland and then arrange her marriage to the emperor's son or some other Christian prince. She presented Jagiellonian Poland as the bulwark of Christianity and expressed fear that the country might fall into the hands of a "Muscovite" or some other barbarian. Since she herself could not go to Poland due to illness, she asked for delegations to be sent to the electoral Sejm [Diet], which would take appropriate action to convince the Poles to her plan, for the benefit of the Reich, all of Christendom and, of course, Poland. In these letters, Sophia Jagiellon for the first time officially and publicly revealed her plans for the elections in Poland and, as can be seen, they were not entirely consistent with the aspirations of Emperor Maximilian. These letters, the content of which was certainly forwarded to Vienna, did not and could not have any greater significance. The electors had already sent their delegations to Poland, and the instructions given to them naturally ordered them to support the candidacy of Archduke Ernest at the electoral Sejm. In their replies, the electors wrote to Sophia about this politely but clearly. Thus, the action taken by the Duchess of Brunswick proves, on the one hand, her genuine fear for the future of the country and the fate of her sister, but on the other hand it indicates a certain lack of sense of reality" describes the events before the first free election in Sarmatia Jan Pirożyński (after "Zofia Jagiellonka ...", p. 112-113).
These events also reflect the important role of German princes, especially the electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, in the royal election. Saxony, one of the richest regions bordering the Commonwealth, played an important role during and after the election due to its geographical location, because the shortest route to Paris ran through it. The main candidate in this election, Henry of Valois, lived in Paris. In a letter to Charles IX, dated February 7, 1573, Arnaud Du Ferrier (ca. 1508-1585), French ambassador to Venice between 1573 and 1582, informed the French monarch that the Duke of Saxony and the Margrave of Brandenburg were making efforts in Poland on behalf of the imperial son; he therefore considered it appropriate to send an ambassador to the Duke of Saxony, who had always shown favour to the French crown, in order to put an end to these hostile actions (after "Henryk III Walezy w Polsce ..." by Maciej Serwański, p. 77). On May 11, 1573, Primate Uchański nominated Henry of Valois as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, and on May 16, after the French embassy swore in the Henrician Articles and the Pacta conventa ("articles of agreement"), Grand Marshal of the Crown Jan Firlej proclaimed Valois king. Necessary preparations were then made to bring the newly elected king from France to Kraków. Given the delays of the Saxon Elector Augustus (1526-1586) and Emperor Maximilian II in granting a passport, it was decided to take the risk of taking the shortest route, that is, to go through Saxony to reach Paris. Nine envoys: Catholic Bishop of Poznań Adam Konarski (1526-1574), Protestant Jan Tomicki (d. 1575) and his Catholic son Mikołaj Tomicki (d. 1586), Lutheran Andrzej Górka (d. 1583), Catholic Jan Herburt (d. 1577), Catholic converted from Calvinism during his stay in Italy Mikołaj Firlej (d. 1601), Calvinist Ruthenian Prince Alexander Pronsky (ca. 1550 - ca. 1595), Catholic converted from Calvinism during his stay in Italy Jan Zamoyski (1542-1605) and Lutheran Jan Zborowski (1538-1603) set off with a large retinue no later than July 6. The next day they spent in Frankfurt an der Oder, and after passing through the lands of the Elector of Brandenburg, who accepted their passage because he needed good relations with the Commonwealth in the matter of Ducal Prussia, they reached Leipzig on July 12. There the expedition met with complete failure, for on the orders of the Elector the envoys were arrested and ordered to await the consent of the Emperor or return to the borders of Poland. However, thanks to the energy of Jan Herburt, who delivered an impassioned speech before the Elector Augustus, the difficulties were overcome, and the retinue set out on July 19 for the continuation of their journey (after "Diariusz poselstwa polskiego do Francji ...", ed. Adam Przyboś, p. IX). In a letter dated from Leipzig on July 12, 1573, Bishop Konarski, "a faithful and kind servant", informs the Lutheran princess Sophia Jagiellon of the matter. Herburt began his speech by declaring: "It is not for personal reasons, it is not for the desire to visit foreign countries, but to receive a king chosen by the Republic, that we are going to France. From what country? From that one, which is surrounded on all sides by enemies of the Christian name, stands on difficult and dangerous guard over all Christian countries, including your own land" (after "Historya wymowy w Polsce" by Karol Mecherzyński, Volume 1, p. 484). From February 1573 onwards, several envoys from Sarmatia travelled to Saxony, both to secure the support of the elector in the elections and to arrange the passports and travel arrangements of the ambassadors to Paris. The elector's peculiar behavior towards the Commonwealth's envoys in Leipzig, given his previous actions, was most likely intended to please the emperor, whose son lost the election. In a letter dated April 27, 1573, Lucas Cranach the Younger informed Elector Augustus of the completion of the commission for the pulpit for the new hunting lodge at Augustusburg (Jagdschloss Augustusburg) near Dresden. The paintings were transported by an apprentice from Wittenberg to Dresden (probably by ship) and from there by vehicle to Augustusburg. A year earlier, the princely portraits ordered by Elector Augustus were brought to Dresden by ship (after "Lucas Cranach der Jüngere und die Reformation der Bilder", ed. Elke Anna Werner, p. 181, 191). The pulpit is decorated with six pictorial scenes from the life of Mary and the life and passion of Christ: the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Baptism of Christ, the Crucifixion, the Entombment and the Resurrection. All the scenes are attributed to Cranach the Younger and his workshop, but only the scene of the Crucifixion is signed with Cranach's mark and dated "1573" (on the stone at the foot of the cross). The scene of the baptism of Christ (panel, 64 x 61 cm), is attended by Elector Augustus and his first wife Anne of Denmark (1532-1585) along with four or five other people on the left edge of the painting. On the opposite side of the painting stands another group of men, who are considered Old Testament prophets, probably because of their unusual costumes, including the prophet Daniel, patron of the miners, holding a miner's pick. However, the men's long robes, resembling żupan and other typical Sarmatian clothing, as well as fur-lined hats and even a turban, indicate that they are not prophets, but guests of the Elector as indicated also by his hand gesture. The man with the long blond beard is not holding a miner's pick, but a horseman's pick nadziak, one of the main weapons of the famous Polish winged hussars, also popular as a kind of walking stick and an attribute of the nobility. In the background, one can see a panorama of Dresden with its long bridge as depicted by Braun and Hogenberg around 1572. The elector invites the noble guests to his capital. Since Cranach painted all these paintings in Wittenberg and not Dresden, he undoubtedly based all his effigies on study drawings or other portraits. This is not the only scene where portraits can be found in the Augustusburg pulpit. Another scene filled with disguised portraits is the Adoration of the Shepherds, as the meaningful gaze of one of the shepherds on the right of the scene tells us. This shepherd was probably a member of the Elector's court, while Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary bear the facial features of Augustus and his wife Anne of Denmark. In the scene of the Entombment, we see another man dressed in a clearly Sarmatian costume - a kolpak hat, a giermak cloak and a crimson silk żupan. The view of Dresden by Braun and Hogenberg, cited above, shows typical costumes of Saxony of that period, reminiscent of those worn by Elector Augustus and his wife in the scene of the baptism of Christ, while on the other hand the views of Kraków and Warsaw by Braun and Hogenberg show typical Polish costumes, reminiscent of the costumes of the "biblical prophets" in the paintings. At that time, Cranach the Younger sent many of his works not only from Wittenberg to Dresden, but apparently also to Sarmatia, where there were many Lutherans, as evidenced by similar paintings preserved in the Wilanów Palace in Warsaw. The paintings were purchased in 1804 by Stanisław Kostka Potocki (1755-1821), probably in Lviv, where he had also acquired Canaletto's View of St. Mark's Square and Judith with the Head of Holofernes after the fresco by Domenichino. Potocki bought four paintings for 24 ducats, as well as three more, all considered to be works by Lucas Cranach (afer "Piękno za woalem czasu" by Teresa Stramowska, p. 56). Only three paintings have survived in Wilanów: the Annunciation (oil on panel, 56.3 x 55.4 cm, inv. Wil.1860), the Last Supper (oil on panel, 56.5 x 55.2 cm, inv. Wil.1859) and the Lamentation of Christ (oil on canvas, 55.7 x 53.7 cm, inv. Wil.1861). The Lamentation is slightly different and was painted on canvas (possibly moved from panel), so it probably comes from a different series of paintings. The paintings that have not been preserved showed the scenes of the Presentation in the Temple, the Passion (Crucifixion?), the Nailing to the Cross and the Entombment. The Nailing to the Cross was lost during the Second World War (inv. 65, Catalog of Wartime Losses, number 2268). Like most of the paintings in the Augustusburg pulpit, none of the paintings in Wilanów are signed with Cranach's mark, his authorship is rejected and the paintings are considered to belong to a German school of the third quarter of the 16th century. In 2019, the painting depicting the scene of the Adoration of the Shepherds was sold in Vienna (oil on panel, 61.5 x 58 cm, Im Kinsky, April 9, 2019, sale 127, lot 1). This painting had already been sold in London in 1976 (Christie's, October 8, 1976, lot 133) and, based on the comparison with the Augustusburg pulpit, it is attributed to the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger and dated to the 1560s or after 1573. The style of the Adoration of the Shepherds is very similar to that of the Annunciation and the Last Supper at Wilanów and most likely comes from the same series. The Wilanów paintings are slightly smaller than the Adoration of the Shepherds, but the slightly cut-out portal in the Annunciation and the feet of a basin in the Last Supper indicate that the paintings acquired by Potocki were most likely cut to fit the Lamentation of Christ and other paintings acquired in 1804. The facial features of St. Joseph in the Adoration of the Shepherds closely resemble those of Elector Augustus from the Augustusburg pulpit, while those of the Virgin Mary resemble those of the Elector's wife Anne of Denmark. Similarly, the Madonna in the Wilanów Annunciation is clearly another disguised portrait of Electress of Saxony, as the woman closely resembles Anne as depicted in her full-length portraits by Cranach the Younger (Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, inv. GG 3141 and Freiberg City and Mining Museum, inv. 79/14). In the Last Supper from Wilanów we can see through the window the same city as in the Baptism of Christ from the Augustusburg pulpit, that is, Dresden. The Wilanów Lamentation also has similar counterparts, now in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, donated in 1902 by Dmitri Ivanovich Shchukin (1855-1932). The style of the Agony in the Garden (oil on panel, 55 x 55 cm, inv. Ж-408) and the Entombment (oil on panel, 55 x 55 cm, inv. Ж-409), as well as the dimensions of these two paintings, perfectly match the Wilanów Lamentation. In the Moscow Entombment, the city of Dresden can also be seen in the background, while Saint Nicodemus is dressed in a strange red costume trimmed with fur and a fur hat, which is very reminiscent of the traditional costumes of Ruthenian princes, such as the costume of King Michael I according to an engraving by Nicholas de Larmessin I, made between 1669-1678 (National Library of Poland, G.45499). Saint Nicodemus is dressed in a similar costume in the Wilanów Lamentation. If the members of the merchant or noble family from the North German city of Hamburg, could represent themselves around Christ in a triptych today preserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 17.190.13-15) and Electress of Saxony in the guise of the Virgin Mary, the Ruthenian nobles of Lutheran faith could represent themselves in the guise of Christian saints. The three paintings from Wilanów, the two paintings from Moscow and one sold in Vienna were clearly part of the same series, probably originally decorating two pulpits or two altars, made in Cranach's workshop in Wittenberg, perhaps for a Lutheran church in Ruthenia. Portraits of Elector Augustus and his wife, painted by Cranach the Younger, were undoubtedly also in the royal collection of Sarmatia. The Infanta Anna Jagiellon corresponded with Augustus before her election, as evidenced by her letter written in 1575 concerning the death of her sister Sophia, Duchess of Brunswick. In his reply to Anna in 1576, Augustus describes himself as "the most loving prince of the Jagiellonian name and best friend" (amantissimo Jagellonici nominis Principe et amico optimo, after "Dynastic identity, death and posthumous legacy of Sophie Jagiellon ..." by Dušan Zupka, p. 804). 
The Baptism of Christ from the Augustusburg pulpit with Elector Augustus of Saxony (1526-1586) and his wfe Anne of Denmark (1532-1585) inviting the Sarmatians to Dresden and Saxony by Lucas Cranach the Younger and workshop, 1573, Augustusburg hunting lodge.
The Annunciation with disguised portrait of Anne of Denmark (1532-1585), Electress of Saxony by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger, 1560s or after 1573, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
The Adoration of the Shepherds with disguised portraits of Elector Augustus of Saxony (1526-1586) and his wfe Anne of Denmark (1532-1585) by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger, 1560s or after 1573, Private collection.
The Last Supper with a view of Dresden by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger, 1560s or after 1573, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
The Lamentation of Christ with Saint Nicodemus wearing a costume of a Ruthenian prince by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger, 1560s or after 1573, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
Portrait of Sophia Jagiellon and Sidonia von Borcke by Adriaen Thomasz. Key
Two paintings by German school in the Von Borcke Palace in Starogard, north of Szczecin, both lost during World War II, depicted members of the Jagiellonian dynasty. One, created by workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder and representing pregnant Barbara Radziwill with a midwife, was traditionally identified as the most famous member of the Von Borcke family - Sidonia the Sorceress (1548-1620), the other was a signed effigy of Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575), Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg.
Von Borcke, a Pomeranian noble family of Slavic origin, originally known as Borek or z Borku and having two red wolves in their coat of arms, were owners of the large estates in Pomerania with several towns, including Łobez, Resko, Strzmiele, Węgorzyno and Pęzino Castle. Since the times of Maćko Bork (Matzko von Borck), who died in about 1426, the family had some ties to the Jagiellons and Poland. His great-granddaughter, mentioned Sidonia, lived at the court of Duke Philip I in Wolgast and became a lady-in-waiting to his daughter princess Amelia of Pomerania (1547-1580). In 1569 the Polish court planned to marry Amelia to Albert Frederick, Duke of Prussia and Polish vassal. The son of Philip I, Prince Ernest Louis (1545-1592), fall in love with Sidonia and promised her marriage. However, the wedding did not take place, as the prince, under pressure from his family, withdrew from his promise and in 1577 he married Sophia Hedwig of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1561-1631), granddaughter of Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1573), Electress of Brandenburg, daughter of Sigismund I. In 1556 Sophia Hedwig's grandfather, Henry V (II) of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1489-1568), married a daughter of Sigismund I - Sophia Jagiellon. In 1619 in Wolfenbüttel, grandson of Duke Philip I, Duke Ulrich of Pomerania (1589-1622) married a great-granddaughter of Hedwig Jagiellon and Henry V, Princess Hedwig of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1595-1650). The family ties between the ruling families of Poland-Lithuania, Pomerania and Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel were therefore pretty strong at that time. Two known portraits of Hedwig of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel in French costume and large cartwheel farthingale (in the Royal Collection, RCIN 407222 and in the Gymnasium in Szczecinek, lost during World War II) were painted by a Netherlandish painter, attributed to Jacob van Doordt, Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, Daniël Mijtens or Paulus Moreelse. The Dukes of Pomerania frequently commissioned their effigies from the best foreign artists and the so-called "Book of effigies" (Visierungsbuch) of Duke Philip II of Pomerania (Pomeranian State Museum in Szczecin, lost during World War II) was a collection of their likenesses, some of which were attributed to circle of Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach the Elder. The so-called Croy tapestry in the Pommersches Landesmuseum representing the Duke Philip I with his family as well as the family of his wife Maria of Saxony was made in 1554 by Peter Heymans, a Dutch weaver, in Szczecin. The composition of the tapestry was based on the graphics by Lucas Cranach the Elder and it is possible that Cranach's workshop in Wittenberg created the cartoon to this work. The painting of Madonna and Child with cherries by circle of the Netherlandish painter Quentin Matsys was acquired by Duke Boguslaus X (Pomeranian State Museum in Greifswald), some jewels of the Dukes of Pomerania from the late 16th and early 17th century are attributed to Jacob Mores the Elder, active in Hamburg (National Museum in Szczecin), a cup in the shape of a peacock, created by Joachim Hiller in Wrocław in Silesia and a crystal bowl made in Paris and framed in Szczecin, both owned by Erdmuthe of Brandenburg, Duchess of Pomerania are in Green Vault in Dresden. The dukes also commissioned and purchased many exquisite objects from the center of European goldsmithing - Augsburg, like the famous Pomeranian Art Cabinet of Duke Philip II, silver plaques by Zacharias Lencker from Darłowo Altar or ivory veneered and painted box with exotic parrots, fish, and other animals and coat of arms of Philip II of Pomerania and his wife (Courtauld Institute of Art). Some contacts with Italy and Italian artists in this part of Europe are also documented. In 1496 Duke Boguslaus X went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, leaving his duchy under the regency of his wife Anna Jagiellon (1476-1503), sister of Sigismund I. He traveled to Venice and he was received in Rome by the Pope Alexander VI Borgia, who presented him with a ceremonial sword (nowdays in the collection of the Hohenzollern Castle, scabbard, in the Monbijou Palace in Berlin, was lost during World War II). Mannerist west wing of the Castle in Szczecin was built between 1573 and 1582 by Italian architects Wilhelm Zachariasz Italus and Antonio Guglielmo (Antonius Wilhelm) for Duke John Frederick (1542-1600) and Giovanni Battista Perini (Parine) from Florence created the painting to the ducal chapel and duke's portrait. Portrait of Duke Boguslaus XIV (1580-1637) is in the Villa di Poggio a Caiano, one of the most famous Medici villas near Florence. In 1576 de Hane (d'Anna) family from Brabant, settled in Lübeck in Germany, about 290 km west of Szczecin, ordered a painting in Venice for the St. Catherine's Church in Lübeck. This large canvas depicting the Raising of Lazarus (140 x 104 cm) and representing some members of the family in the background, was painted by Tintoretto (signed and dated: IACO TINTORE / VENETIS F. / 1576). Around 1575 other Venetian painter Parrasio Micheli created a large painting depicting Allegory of the birth of the Infante Ferdinand, son of Philip II of Spain, today in the Prado Museum in Madrid (oil on canvas, 182 x 223 cm, inventory number P000479). The work was created in Venice with a portrait of Infante's mother Anna of Austria (1549-1580), Queen of Spain, granddaughter of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), Queen of Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary. The painting was sent by Micheli to Philip II without a commission, to win the favor of the monarch. Spanish monarchs also sent similar gifts to relatives, mostly in Vienna. A large painting by Alonso Sánchez Coello depicting King Philip II of Spain banqueting with his family and courtiers (The Royal feast), created in 1596 (signed and dated: ASC ANNO 1596), purchased by the National Museum in Warsaw in 1928 from Antoni Kolasiński's collection (oil on canvas, 110 x 202 cm, inventory number M.Ob.295, earlier 73635) was perhaps such a gift sent to the Polish-Lithuanian royal family. Micheli also painted the Dead Christ venerated by Pope Pius V, which could be another gift to powerful King of Spain ordered in Venice, this time from the Pope (Prado Museum, P000284). Netherlandish painters created effigies of both Philip II and his wife. A small portrait of the King of Spain from private collection (oil on panel, 46.4 x 35.6 cm), identified by me, is attributed to Adriaen Thomasz. Key, a portrait of Anna of Austria in Alte Pinakothek in Munich (inventory number 4859) was created by Flemish painter (attributed to Justus van Egmont) and very similar preparatory drawing in Albertina Museum in Vienna (inventory number 14269) is also attributed to Key (also to Antonis Mor or Peter Candid, similar to signed portrait painting by Alonso Sánchez Coello in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, inventory number 1733). In her last years the Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Sophia Jagiellon, retired to the residence in Schöningen, where she laid out the famous pleasure garden, which no longer exists today. She remodelled her residencies at Schöningen and Jerxheim in Renaissance style, according to the taste of the time. Her husband Henry V died in 1568 and two years later, in the spring of 1570, Sophia converted to Lutheranism. Most likely around that time a tombstone of Henry V, his two sons, killed in the Battle of Sievershausen in 1553, was created in Marienkirche in Wolfenbüttel. The tombstone is attributed to Jürgen Spinnrad and after the Duchess' death Adam Lecuir (Liquier Beaumont), a sculptor trained in Antwerp, created her relief sculpture basing on an effigy from the time of her marriage (1556). When her stepson tried to limit her authority as a widow, she appealed to Emperor Maximilian II and promised him to support Archduke Ernest's candidacy for the Polish throne and his marriage to her sister Anna. However, Stanisław Sędziwoj Czarnkowski, a supporter of the emperor's son, complained in a letter to Sophia that he tried to persuade Anna to accept the portrait of Archduke Ernest, "which Her Majesty by any mean whatever didn't want to" and further reports that "for four Sundays a picture of a French prince hung at her place". Earlier, in April 1570, Sophia's brother Sigismund II Augustus sent Czarnkowski as his envoy for arbitration in affairs with her stepson, Henry's successor, Julius (1528-1589). The Duchess was fluent in Polish, Italian, Latin and German, and she left a lively correspondence with more than 184 correspondents. She proved herself to be a good financial manager. Sophia had a reputation as a very rich woman with a large amount of cash and borrowing money at interest. The cities of Leipzig - 20,000 thalers, and Magdeburg - 30,000 thalers, took the largest 5% loans from the Duchess, as well as the Elector of Brandenburg, John George - 20,000 thalers and her stepsister Hedwig - 1,000 thalers. Her regular customer-debtor was her stepson, Julius, who often borrowed large sums (e.g. 15,000 thalers in November 1572). She also invested money in various goods, both movable and immovable (after "Zofia Jagiellonka ..." by Jan Pirożyński, p. 70). In her last will, she left Stanisław Sędziwój and his brother Wojciech Sędziwój Czarnkowski (his portrait by Adriaen Thomasz. Key is in Vienna) 500 ducats each. Duke Julius studied in Leuven (Louvain) in the Habsburg Netherlands and visited France in 1550. Under his rule many Netherlandish artists, architects and engineers were employed by the ducal court of Wolfenbüttel, like Willem de Raet from 's-Hertogenbosch (1574–1576), entrusted with the modernisation of the waterways, recruited for Duke Julius by his compatriot, painter Willem Remmers, or a painter Hans Vredeman de Vries (1587–1591), who created a portrait of Sophia's niece Hedwig of Brandenburg (1540-1602), Duchess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and who later moved to Gdańsk (1592-1595). Ruprecht Lobri from the Low Countries become the personal valet of the duke. After discovery of the deposits of decorative stones (marble and alabaster) in his territory in the early 1570s Julius contracted stone cutters from Mechelen: Hendrick van den Broecke, Augustin Adriaens and Jan Eskens. The duke offered alabaster portals to his stepmother Sophia Jagiellon, and the magistrates of Gdańsk and Bremen and sent letters with samples, such as tabletops and dishes, to Duke Henry XI of Legnica and Duke Albert Frederick of Prussia (after "Netherlandish artists and craftsmen ..." by Aleksandra Lipinska), both having close ties with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Sophia bequeathed half of her inheritance to her sisters and the other half to the Commonwealth institutions. Among other things, she decreed that marble tombs should be built in the Wawel Cathedral and that a marble slab engraved with the genealogy of the Jagiellons should be placed in the Chapel of the Holy Cross. The 1575 inventories of the collection of the Duchess of Brunswick list more than 100 paintings and 31 portraits, including images of Sigismund Augustus, the children of her sister Catherine Jagiellon - Sigismund and Anna Vasa, and king Henry of Valois, as well as one historical painting depicting the beheading in 1568 of Lamoral of Egmont and Philip de Montmorency, Count of Horn, the leaders of the anti-Spanish opposition in the Low Countries, most probably by Flemish painter. Her book collection consisted of about 500 items, many of which had beautiful, luxurious bindings. The Map of Poland (Poloniae Recens Descriptio. Polonia Sarmatie Europee quondam pars fuit ...) in the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, created in 1562 by Hieronymus Cock in Antwerp, was most likely commissioned by Sophia Jagiellon. In the National Museum in Warsaw there is a portrait of a woman with a gold chain around the waist, attributed to Adriaen Thomasz. Key (oil on panel, 74 x 52.5 cm, inventory number M.Ob.822 MNW, earlier 34666). It was purchased in 1935 from the collection of Jan Popławski and in the 19th century it was in the Shchukin collection in Moscow. Her costume resembles the one seen in the portrait of Ermgart von Bemmelsberg by Westphalian school, painted in 1574 (private collection), portrait of a woman by Adriaen Thomasz. Key, dated '1578' (Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, 1036), and costumes of women of Brabant and Gdańsk from Omnium pene Europae ... by Flemish engraver Abraham de Bruyn, published in 1581. Her ruff is similar to the one visible in the mentioned portrait of Queen of Spain by Flemish painter in Munich and in the effigy of Joachim Frederick of Brzeg (1550-1602) by Adriaen Thomasz. Key, dated '1574' (National Museum in Warsaw, M.Ob.819). Her face and pose resemble other effigies of the Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg, identified by me, especially the portrait by circle of Titian in Kassel. A portrait of a lady in similar costume, also attributed to Key, is in private collection (oil on panel, 96.5 x 65.1 cm, sold Christie's London, April 20, 2005, lot 17), earlier, presumably, by descent at Studley Royal, Yorkshire. The woman wear a red coral bracelet, a fertility symbol in ancient Rome, as in portraits of young brides by Florentine painter Domenico Ghirlandaio, also believed to be a love talisman and perhaps even an aphrodisiac. According to Latin inscription: AN DNI 1576 (upper left) and ÆTATIS · SVÆ 28 (upper right), the woman was 28 in 1576, exacly as Sidonia von Borcke, born in the Wolf's Nest (Wulfsberg or Vulversberg - Strzmiele Castle) in 1548, when she was a lady-in-waiting to princess Amelia of Pomerania and Prince Ernest Louis fall in love with her. 
Portrait of Sophia Jagiellon (1522-1575), Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg by Adriaen Thomasz. Key, ca. 1574, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of Sidonia von Borcke (1548-1620), aged 28 by Adriaen Thomasz. Key, 1576, Private collection.
Miniature portrait of George Radziwill by workshop of the Bassanos or Sofonisba Anguissola
"In the name of the Lord, in the year 1575. On the 11th of October, which then fell on Tuesday, I left Buivydiškės. I left there my sick brother, the great court marshal of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Nicolaus Christopher, and went to Italy with my younger brother, Albert", wrote in Latin in a diary of his journey George Radziwill (1556-1600), future cardinal (after "Dziennik podróży do Włoch Jerzego Radziwiłła w 1575 roku" by Angelika Modlińska-Piekarz).
Born in Italian style villa of his father in Lukiškės in Vilnius, George was raised and educated as a Calvinist. After his mother's death, in 1562, he spent some time at the royal court (perhaps as a page). Between 1571-1573, together with his brothers Albert and Stanislaus, he studied in Leipzig. In the summer of 1573, he accompanied his brother Nicolaus Christopher "the Orphan" to France and after his return, together with his younger brothers, he converted to Catholicism on April 11, 1574. Through Warsaw (October, 24-26), where he spent time with Infanta Anna Jagiellon, and Vienna (November, 12-20), where he met Emperor Maximilian II and his sons and where he saw "a beast of strange size, an elephant, sent as a gift to the emperor by Philip, king of Spain" on December 3 or 4 he arrived to Venice, the city "which, because of its beauty and its location, undoubtedly holds the priority palm among the cities of the whole world". He went to stay at the Magnificent White Lion, a German inn. He left the city in a hurry two days later, because of the suspicion of the plague, but during his brief stay he admired the St. Mark's Basilica, the Doge's Palace and the Arsenal. "After leaving the arsenal, I was driven around the city for two hours, where I saw many magnificent and very beautiful buildings, especially in the great street that stretches the entire width of the city, in colloquial language it is called the Grand Canal, the beauty of which I could never get enough of". He did not specify which places he visited, it is possible that he was also taken to the famous Venetian painting workshops. George commissioned works of art in Italy for himself and his brother, like in 1579, when one of the Roman painters made an altar for Nicolaus Christopher "the Orphan" (after "Zagraniczna edukacja Radziwiłłów: od początku XVI do połowy XVII wieku" by Marian Chachaj, p. 97). From Venice he went to Padua and then via Florence further to Rome to study philosophy and theology. In the years 1575-1581 he stayed in Italy, Spain and Portugal. In 1581, already as a bishop (from 1579), he was strongly condemned by King Stephen Bathory for the incident with the confiscation and burning of Protestant books in Vilnius. That same year, in 1581 he was again in Venice, together with his elder brother Nicolaus Christopher (after "Ateneum Wilenskie", Volume 11, p. 158). Two years later, in 1583, he was ordained a priest (April 10), consecrated a bishop (December 26), and received the cardinal's beret in Vilnius on April 4, 1584. In March 1586 he set out for Rome, where on June 26 he received the cardinal's hat from Pope Sixtus V. A two sided miniature in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (inventory number 1890, 4051, oil on copper, 10.2 cm) is on one side a reduced and simplified version of portrait of Nicolaus Christopher Radziwill "the Orphan" by Francesco Bassano the Younger or workshop, created between 1580-1586, identified by me. The composition of the miniatures is not similar, so they were probably not created at the same time. Both portraits, although close to miniatures by the Bassanos in the Uffizi (1890, 4072, 9053, 9026), also relate to works of Sofonisba Anguissola, who moved to Sicily (1573), and later Pisa (1579) and Genoa (1581) and who could copy the paintings by the Bassanos. The young man in a ruff is presenting a ring on his finger, comparable to that visible in portraits of cardinal George Radziwill, possibly a souvenir of conversion, and his face resemble other effigies of the cardinal. According to Silvia Meloni, a copy of the recto of this miniature is kept in Udine, noth of Venice, which presents on the back the eagle testing its children in the sun. Eagle was a symbol of the Radziwills and cardinal George used it in his coat of arms, like the one published in 1598 in Krzysztof Koryciński's In felicem ad vrbem reditvm [...] Georgii S. R. E. cardinalis Radziwil nvncvpati [...]. All travelers returning from Venice to Poland or going to Rome from Poland trough Venice had to drive close to Udine. According to George's diary he was in San Daniele del Friuli near Udine in 1575. Funeral speech with biography of Cardinal George Radziwill by Daniel Niger and Jan Andrzej Próchnicki under the title In funere Georgii Radzivili S. R. E. Cardinalis Ampliss was published in Venice in 1600 in printing and publishing house of Giorgio Angelieri. 
Miniature portrait of George Radziwill (1556-1600) by workshop of the Bassanos or Sofonisba Anguissola, 1575-1581, Uffizi Gallery.
Portraits of Anna Jagiellon by Francesco Bassano and circle of Veronese
On 15 December 1575, in Wola near Warsaw, infanta Anna Jagiellon and her husband Stephen Bathory, Voivode of Transylvania were elected as monarchs of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Since the end of the 1570s Anna's court was bursting with life and she kept lively correspondence with many Italian princes, like Francesco I de Medici and his mistress Bianca Cappello, the daughter of Venetian nobleman Bartolomeo Cappello, exchanging news on politics and fashion, sending and receiving gifts (cosmetics, medicaments, crystal bowls and cups, luxury fancy goods, small pieces of furniture e.g. marble tables, silver incrusted boxes etc.) and even courtiers. "From February of 1581 to December of that year, several letters from the agent of Bianca Cappello [...] Alberto Bolognetti, described the perfect female dwarf he found for Cappello in Warsaw; the nana is described as having great "proportions" and being "very beautiful." The nana's travels through Cracow and Vienna were fully documented [...]" (after "Portraits of Human Monsters in the Renaissance" by Touba Ghadessi, p. 63). The portrait of a lady by circle of Paolo Veronese from the 1570s, traditionally identified as effigy of Catherine Cornaro (1454-1510), Queen of Cyprus, and known in at least three variants (in Vienna, Montauban and private collection), bears a strong resemblance to the miniature of Anna when a princess of Poland-Lithuania from about 1553. Also the gold cross pendant set with diamonds, visible on the portrait, is very similar to the one depicted in a drawing, a study for a print, in the Hermitage Museum showing Anna (paper, 33 x 28 cm, inv. ОР-45839). As for the drawing in the Hermitage, it was probably made in the middle of the 17th century, probably after a painting from the Radziwill collection. According to the inscription in the lower right corner, this drawing depicts "Barbara, Queen of Poland" (Barbara Krolowa Polska), however the style of the costume and especially the ruff, typical of the 1570s, indicate that most likely the effigy of Anna was confused with the portrait of her brother's second wife - Barbara Radziwill (1520/23-1551). A rather similar costume is found in a portrait of Dorothea Susanna of Simmern (1544-1592) dated "1575" (Library of Duchess Anna Amalia in Weimar, inv. G 2333) and in the portrait of Sabina of Württemberg (1549-1581) dated "1577" (ANNO. M.D. LXXVII., Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Kassel, inv. LM 1938/349). Although in the aforementioned drawing the queen's features more closely resemble those of her predecessor Catherine of Austria (1533-1572), this effigy can be compared to a woodcut by the monogrammist JB from the 1570s, known from the 19th century copy (National Library of Poland, DŻS XII 8b/p.28/9). This representation of the elected queen of Poland-Lithuania could be inspired by the portraits of Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603), because it recalls the allegorical representation of Elizabeth with the three goddesses, painted by Hans Eworth in 1569 (Windsor Castle, RCIN 403446). In both cases the queen depicted was a suo jure sovereign, which justifies such a depiction, and as in the case of the portrait of the English queen, the painter of the original portrait of Anna could also have been Flemish. The picture in Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum, oil on canvas, 124 x 82 cm, inv. GG 33) was painted in the same period and in the same style as the portrait of a bearded man with hourglass and astrolabe attributed to Francesco Bassano (Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. GG 5775), identified by me as the portrait of king Stephen Bathory, Anna's husband. The portrait of the king was most probably offered before 1582 to Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria for his collection in the Ambras Castle in Innsbruck, while the "portrait of the Queen of Cyprus" was initially installed at the Stallburg, where various holdings of the Habsburg family were brought together and displayed, and later transferred to the Belvedere in Vienna (after "Wien. Fremdenführer durch die Kaiserstadt und Umgebung" by Dr. J. Spetau, p. 122). Like in the case of the Queen's likeness in her widowhood by Martin Kober, acquired from the Imperial collection in Vienna in 1936 (Wawel Royal Castle), her Habsburg relatives undoubtedly received other effigies from different periods of her life. The Queen sent them other valuable gifts, like oriental fabrics, also visble in described portaits by Francesco Bassano. The 1619 inventory of the estate of Emperor Matthias lists several textiles of Ottoman and Safavid manufacture offered by Anna to either Matthias or his brother Emperor Rudolf II, veils and handkerchiefs (after "Objects of Prestige and Spoils of War" by Barbara Karl, p. 136). In the drawing by the Austrian painter Anton Joseph von Prenner (1683-1761) kept at the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest (inv. 3469), made before 1735, the model wears a crown and holds a bow and an arrow. They are also visible in an old photo of the painting taken after 1863. A reduced version of the Vienna portrait, possibly a modello, was sold in Vienna in 1994 with an attribution to Paolo Veronese (oil on paper mounted on cardboard, 31 x 23 cm, Dorotheum, October 18, 1994, lot 66). The Montauban painting comes from the collection of the French neoclassical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) and has been attributed to various painters including Giovanni Battista Moroni, Paolo Veronese and Titian (oil on canvas, 38 x 27 cm, inv. MI.867.149). The portrait of a woman from Barbini-Breganze collection in Venice, today in Stuttgart (Staatsgalerie, oil on canvas, 108.3 x 90.5 cm, inv. 126, acquired in 1852), bears a strong resemblance to the portrait of Anna by Tintoretto in the Jagiellonian University (pose and features) and to her effigy in Vienna holding a zibellino (features and garments), also by Tintoretto. This painting is attributed to Parrasio Micheli, who died in Venice on April 1578. Discovery of a letter of August 20, 1575 in the General Archive of Simancas (Estado, 1336. fol. 233) from the painter to king Philip II, allowed to attribute to him one of his major works as well as assign the subject - Allegory of the birth of the Infante Ferdinand (Prado Museum in Madrid, inventory number P000479). Infante's mother Anna of Austria (1549-1580), Queen of Spain, granddaughter of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), was depicted as bare-chested Venus, while her midwives attend to the mythological child Cupid - "The World celebrates that Venus has given birth" (CELEBRIS MUNDI VENERIS PARTUS), according to inscription in Latin in upper part of the paiting. The painting in Prado was formerly attributed to Carlo Caliari, known as Carletto, the youngest son of Paolo Veronese and believed to represent the birth of Charles V, in his letter, however, Micheli explained all the allegories (after "Ein unbekannter Brief des malers Parrasio Michele" by Constance Jocelyn Ffoulkes, pp. 429-430). In the Stuttgart painting, the queen has a zibellino (weasel skin) on her belt, a popular accessory for brides as a fertility talisman. Therefore, the work must be dated shortly before or after his marriage to Bathory. Anna's strong familial and intellectual connections to Italy and a reputation as an advocate for women's educational pursuits within the scientific disciplines, persuaded Camilla Erculiani, an Italian apothecary, writer and natural philosopher from Padua in the Venetian Republic, to dedicate her work "Letters on Natural Philosophy" (Lettere di philosophia naturale), published in Kraków in 1584, to Anna. The Queen was also known for promoting education of girls at her court (after "Daughters of Alchemy: Women and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy" by Meredith K. Ray, p. 118). One of the finest book illuminations related to Anna was probably also made in Italy. It is her coat of arms with a crown supported by two angels and the inscription ANNA REGINA POLONIÆ in handwritten treatise of Francesco Pifferi of Pisa from 1579 (Delle cagioni dalle quali mossi alcuni heretici sono tornati alla fede catolica), dedicated to the queen (ALLA SERENISSIMA ET SACRA MAESTA ANNA REGI/NA DI Polonia, Wawel Royal Castle, ZKnW-PZS 6046). 
Portrait of Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596), elected co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by Francesco Bassano, ca. 1580, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (before restoration).
Portrait of Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596), elected co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by Francesco Bassano, ca. 1580, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596), elected co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by workshop of Francesco Bassano, ca. 1580, Private collection.
Portrait of Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596), elected co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by workshop of Francesco Bassano, ca. 1580, Musée Ingres in Montauban.
Portrait of Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596), elected co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in a robe of pink damask over a patterned brocade dress by Parrasio Micheli, 1575-1578, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.
Drawing with portrait of Queen Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596), after original by Flemish painter (?), mid-17th century after lost original portrait from around 1575-1577, The State Hermitage Museum.
Allegorical portrait of Anna Jagiellon by Francesco Montemezzano
In July 1572 died Sigismund II Augustus, leaving the throne vacant and all the wealth of the Jagiellon dynasty to his three sisters. Anna, the only member of the dynasty present in the Commonwealth, received only a small portion of inheritance, but still became a very rich woman. Sigismund's death changed her status from a neglected spinster to the heiress of the Jagiellon dynasty.
In June 1574 an unexpected turn of events made her one of the favorites in the second election, after Henry of Valois left Poland and headed back to France. Jan Zamoyski reconciled different camps promoting Anna to the crown. On December 15, 1575, Anna was hailed the King of Poland in the Old Town Square in Warsaw. Jan Kostka and Jan Zamoyski, representing the parliament, came to her to ask for her consent. It was then that Anna was supposed to utter the phrase that she "would rather be a queen than a king's wife". A day later, the nobility recognized her definitively as the "Piast" king and Stephen Bathory, Voivode of Transylvania, was proposed as her husband. The painting identified as allegory of Pomona from the old collection of the Czartoryski Museum bears a great resemblance to other effigies of Anna (oil on canvas, 88 x 75 cm, inv. MNK XII-227). A woman in rich costume is being offered a basket with apples, denoted as symbol of the royal power and a symbol of the bride in ancient Greek thought, and pink roses, which represented innocence and first love - Bathory was the first husband to the 52 years old queen. The painting was previously thought to be a depiction of the biblical Esther, because until 1968 the figure of the boy was painted over. In the catalogue of the Czartoryski Museum from 1914 by Henryk Ochenkowski (Galerja obrazów: katalog tymczasowy), this painting was attributed to "probably Parrasio Micheli" (item 188) and listed together with another painting by the 16th century Venetian School and depicting "Death of the Doge? Three ladies at the bedside. In the background the dogaressa, dictating a letter" (oil on canvas, 101 x 75 cm, item 187), which was most probably lost during World War II. This description fits perfectly with the facts known about the last moments of king Sigismund I the Old, who died in his Wawel residence in Kraków on April 1, 1548, at the age of eighty-one. On February 3, the young king Sigismund Augustus left for Lithuania and the old king was in Kraków with his wife Bona and three daughters Sophia, Anna and Catherine. According to Stanisław Orzechowski the young king who arrived from Vilnius on May 24, was welcomed by his mother "with her three daughters, and with a company of noble matrons" (Bona mater cum filiabus tribus ac cum matronarum nobilium turba adventantem regem expectabat) (after "Zgon króla Zygmunta I ..." by Marek Janicki, p. 92-93). Bona undoubtedly wrote a letter urging him to return and either she or her daughter Anna could commission a painting commemorating the event. However, this description may not have been accurate, because this painting is identified in today's catalogs with a horizontal (and not vertical) work from the first quarter of the 17th century (oil on canvas, 113 x 179 cm, inventory number MNK XII-231). 
Allegorical portrait of Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596), elected co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by Francesco Montemezzano, 1575-1585, Czartoryski Museum in Kraków.
Portraits of Anna Jagiellon by workshop of Tintoretto and Francesco Montemezzano
"There is a bridge across the Vistula near Warsaw, built at a great cost of Queen Anna, sister of King Sigismund Augustus, famous all over the Crown", wrote Venetian-born Polish writer Alessandro Guagnini dei Rizzoni (Aleksander Gwagnin) in his book Sarmatiae Europeae descriptio (Description of Sarmatian Europe), printed in Kraków in 1578.
On 5 April 1573, during the Royal Election after death of king Sigismund Augustus, the longest bridge of Renaissance Europe was opened to the public. The construction cost 100,000 florins, and Anna Jagiellon, willing to become a Queen, also allocated her own funds for this purpose. It was a great achievement and major political success praised by many poets like Jan Kochanowski, Sebastian Klonowic, Andrzej Zbylitowski and Stanisław Grochowski. The bridge, built of huge oaks and pines brought from Lithuania, was 500 meters long, 6 meters wide, it consisted of 22 spans and stood on 15 supports/towers that protected the construction. The construction, however, required constant renovations and was partially broken several times by ice floes on the Vistula River. It was severely damaged after Anna's coronation (1 May 1576) and in his letters from 15 August 1576 to the starosts, King Stephen Bathory recommended the delivery of wood for repair. Again in 1578 and the renovation was managed by Franciszek Wolski, voit of Tykocin. The wood material was floated from the San river. The works were completed in 1582 and "Anna Jagiellon, Queen of Poland, spouse, sister and daughter of grand kings, ordered the construction of this brick fortified tower", according to inscription on bronze plaque in Museum of Warsaw commemorating the fortified Bridge Gate. Anna, as her brother, undeniably ordered some portraits to commemorate her role in construction and maintenance of the bridge. The portrait from private collection in Milan, attributed to Tintoretto or Veronese and depicting a blond woman in a crown against the view of a bridge, fit perfectly (compare Fototeca Zeri, Numero scheda: 40683). Her facial features resemble greatly the portrait by Tintoretto in the Jagiellonian University Museum. The painter depicted the bridge only symbolically in a small window. The recipients of the painting should know what it is about, there was no need to change the convention of Venetian portrait painting to show the whole construction. On her gown there is a symbol of six pointed star, in use since ancient times as a reference to the Creation and in Christian theology - star of Bethlehem. The star, was symbolic of light and of the preaching of Saint Dominic, who was the first to teach the Rosary as a form of meditative prayer, and become an attribute of Virgin Mary, as Queen of Heaven and as Stella Maris. The title, Stella Maris (Star of the Sea), is one of the oldest and most widespread titles applied to Virgin Mary. It came to be seen as allegorical of Mary's role as "guiding star" on the way to Christ. The crown of stars is visible in a painting by Tintoretto in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (acquired from Francesco Pajaro in Venice in 1841), created in about 1570 showing Madonna and Child venerated by St. Marc and St. Luke, and in a painting of Madonna of the Rosary from Sandomierz, created by Polish painter in 1599 in which old Queen Anna was depicted with other members of her family and Saint Dominic. Thanks to Queen Anna's efforts the rosary confraternities, which mainly existed in Kraków were extended to all of Poland on 6 January 1577 and the annual feast of rosary was solemnly celebrated throughout the Commonwealth. She also donated, among other things, a few precious jewels and necklaces with which the image of Black Madonna of Częstochowa was adorned. In 1587 the Queen received the Golden Rose from Pope Sixtus V, which she offered to the collegiate church of St. John in Warsaw, lost. A somewhat similar portrait at bust length from a private collection in Italy is attributed to Giovanni Cariani (oil on canvas, 47 x 36 cm). It was probably cut from a larger canvas because the letters ... ND(Æ). of the original (or later) inscription are still visible in the upper left part. The same woman in similar pose and in similar gown was depicted in painting by Francesco Montemezzano from William Coningham's collection in London (until 1849), now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (oil on canvas, 118.7 x 99.1 cm, inv. 29.100.104). This painting has traditionally been attributed to Veronese, to whose late work it is closely related. Some sources confirm that the Italians had portraits of the elected queen Anna. According to a document kept in the Ducal Chancellery of Modena, in 1578 a Florentine from Kraków, Filippo Talducci, sent a portrait of the queen to Alfonso II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, through one of his men who was going to Florence. Maciej Rywocki, who traveled the peninsula between 1584 and 1587, saw the portrait of Anna in the Villa Medici in Rome and Bernardo Soderini most likely also had it in the 1580s in his villa in Montughi near Florence (compare"Lodovicus Montius Mutinensis ..." by Rita Mazzei, p. 37-38). It is possible that the beautiful portrait of the Venetian noblewoman Bianca Cappello (1548-1587), who became Grand Duchess of Tuscany, attributed to Santi di Tito, or a copy of it, was in the possession of the elected queen Anna Jagellon. It depicts Bianca with a crown and a cabinet with a statue of Venus and Cupid. The painting comes from a collection in the south of France (oil on canvas 153 x 126 cm, Artcurial in Paris, November 13, 2018, lot 20). The two sovereigns frequently exchanged letters and gifts (after "The Court of Anna Jagiellon: Size, Structure and Functions" by Maria Bogucka, p. 103), and many paintings from the royal and magnate collections of Poland-Lithuania were transferred to France. 
Portrait of Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596), elected co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with a symbolic view of the bridge in Warsaw by workshop of Tintoretto or Francesco Montemezzano, 1576-1582, Private collection.
Portrait of Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596), elected co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by workshop of Tintoretto or Francesco Montemezzano, 1576-1582, Private collection.
Portrait of Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596), elected co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with a dog by Francesco Montemezzano, ca. 1582, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Portrait of Bianca Cappello (1548-1587), Grand Duchess of Tuscany with a cabinet with a statue of Venus and Cupid by Santi di Tito, 1580-1587, Private collection.
Mystical marriage of Saint Catherine with a portrait of queen Anna Jagiellon by Venetian painter
In 1556 having ambitions of becoming a Viceroy of Naples, Bona Sforza d'Aragona, Anna's mother, agreed to lend to her distant relative king Philip II of Spain a huge sum of 430,000 ducats at 10% annual interest, so-called "Neapolitan sums". Even when paid, the interest payment was late and according to some people the loan was one of the reasons why Bona was poisoned by her trusted courtier Gian Lorenzo Pappacoda.
On November 10, 1573, and November 15, 1574 Catherine Jagiellon, Queen of Sweden, who had the right to a part of the Neapolitan sums in her dowry (50,000 ducats) agreed to renounce and cede it to her sister Anna, as the dispute deteriorated Polish-Swedish relations. The Commonwealth had bad experiences with a "foreign" candidate, Henry of Valois, who fled the country through Venice just few monts after election, therefore the only possible succesors of over 50 years old queen were children of her sister Catherine, Sigismund born in 1566 (elected as Commonwealth's monarch in 1587) and Anna born in 1568. The painting in the Prado Museum in Madrid (oil on canvas, 117 x 151 cm, inv. P000270), is very close in style to two portraits of Anna from the same period (in Vienna and Kassel). The lady in her 40s or 50s depicted as the Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven is a clear indication that the scene has no purely religious meaning and it is very similar to other effigies of Anna, especially to the portrait by Tintoretto in Kraków. According to the researchers the canvas should be attributed to Palma il Giovane, who created paintings for Anna's nephew and sucessor, Sigismund III Vasa (Psyche cycle and a painting for the St. John's Cathedral in Warsaw, destroyed during World War II) or Domenico Tintoretto, who painted several paintings for Anna's Chancellor, Jan Zamoyski. It has also been attributed to Lambert Sustris, a Flemish painter active in Venice. The canvas comes from the Spanish Royal Collection and the oldest confirmed provenance is the inventory of the collection of Queen Elisabeth Farnese (1692-1766) at the palace of La Granja, made in 1746, where it was listed as a work by Paolo Veronese (No. 274. Vna Pintura original en Lienzo de mano de Pablo Berones, que reptª el Desposorio de Stª Cathalina con el Niño, y Sn Juan abrazados de Ntrâ. Srª). In the collection of the Royal Wilanów Palace in Warsaw there is a painting representing highly erotic subject of Leda and the swan by Palma il Giovane or his workshop from the last quarter of the 16th century (oil on canvas, 130.5 x 152 cm, inv. Wil.1053). It is uncertain how it found its way there, so the option that it was commissioned by Anna, who, as her mother Bona, was strongly engaged in maintaining good relation with her husband Stephen Bathory, is very probable. The painting is also connected with Stanisław Kostka Potocki (1755-1821), who owned such a painting, acquired as the work of the "Cavalier Liberi", probably Pietro Liberi (1605-1687). The mystical marriage of Saint Catherine, a symbol of spiritual grace, should be interprated then that Catherine's children still have claims to the Neapolitan sums and the crown. Its history before 1746 is unknown, therefore it cannot be excluded that the painting was sent to the Spanish Habsburgs, just as her portrait in Vienna, personally by the queen. In November 1575, hence shortly before her election, Anna sent to Spain her envoy Stanisław Fogelweder, who was her ambassador there until 1587. She also had her informal envoys in Spain, dwarves Ana de Polonia (Anna of Poland, died 1578) and Estanislao (Stanislaus, died 1579). 
Mystical marriage of Saint Catherine with a portrait of queen Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) by Venetian painter, possibly Palma il Giovane or Domenico Tintoretto, 1576-1586, Prado Museum in Madrid.
Leda and the swan by Palma il Giovane or workshop, fourth quarter of the 16th century, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
The Banquet of Cleopatra with portraits of Anna Jagiellon, Stephen Bathory and Jan Zamoyski by Leandro Bassano
On 1 May 1576, then 52 years old Infanta Anna Jagiellon married ten years younger Voivode of Transylvania Stephen Bathory and was crowned as co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Soon after the wedding the king started to avoid his elderly wife. He dedicated her just three wedding nights and didn't look into her bedroom afterward. The papal nuncio in Poland, Giovanni Andrea Caligari, reported in August 1578, that the king does not trust her, that he is afraid of being poisoned by her, an art her mother, Bona, was well acquainted with, and he adds in a letter of February 1579, that she is haughty and vigorous (altera e gagliarda di cervello). One night, Anna wanted to visit Bathory, but he escaped. Many people witnessed this event, the Queen developed a fever and was subjected to phlebotomy.
King Stephen reportedly never held a great attraction for the marriage state and women in general, and he married Anna only to do a nice thing for the nation, she however was under the illusion that she would keep her husband with her and seduce him with boisterous balls and feasts. Primate Jan Tarnowski wrote in a letter to a Lithuanian magnate that "as she caught up a man, she carries her mouth high and proud". The Queen had a grudge against Chancellor Jan Zamoyski, who according to Bartosz Paprocki "wanting to be a lord in Masovia, he sowed disagreement between the king and the queen" and "caused that the king did not live with the queen". Some "distasteful" rumors were also spread during the expedition to Polotsk in 1578, when the king slept in the same hut with Gaspar Bekes, his trusted friend (after Jerzy Besala's "Wstręt króla do królowej"). When Stephen left his wife in 1576, he did not see her, with some breaks, until 1583. She resided in Warsaw in Masovia where in a spacious and richly furnished wooden mansion in Jazdów (Ujazdów), built by her mother Queen Bona, she often held festivities and court games, he in Grodno (in todays Belarus). In January 1578 she organized in Jazdów famous wedding celebrations for Jan Zamoyski and his Calvinist second wife Kristina Radziwill, which lasted for several days. Anna hoped that the allure of court life would fascinate her husband and keep him close to her. Vincenzo Laureo, the papal nuncio, wrote in his letter that the queen, after returning to Warsaw, entertained her husband with numerous banquets, balls, receptions, and other entertainments. She brought many objects and items from Italy to Jazdów and had the walls covered with golden samite and tapestries. Her apartments were adorned with a gallery of paintings depicting members of the Jagiellonian family. Following the example of her brother, Sigismund II Augustus, she collected precious stones and jewelry. As was the custom at all courts, Anna had dwarfs (mostly women) and jesters among her servants, and she also organized shows and performances. Her courtiers were often dispatched to Germany, Austria, Italy. The high qualifications of her collaborators are attested by the fact that, since 1572, her personal secretary was the famous philologist and humanist Andrzej Patrycy Nidecki (Andreas Patricius Nidecicus, 1522-1587), educated in Padua. As a religious person, Anna offered many churches rich donations: paintings, gold and silver vessels, altar cloths and chasubles (after "The Court of Anna Jagiellon: Size, Structure and Functions" by Maria Bogucka, p. 101-103). In February 1579, the Queen prepared a court ball, awaiting Stephen's arrival. In the evening, the Warsaw Castle was illuminated, and the inhabitants were waiting for the king's arrival. Unfortunately, only the messenger with the letter arrived. The king wrote in it that due to the preparations for the war expedition, he would spend the whole year in Lithuania. The disappointed queen "ordered the lights to be turned off and the instruments to be taken out, and with great anger she retreated to her chambers", wrote the nuncio in a letter of February 26. The courtiers rumored that he wanted to divorce her. The King and Queen reunited in June 1583 in Kraków for the opulent wedding celebrations of Zamoyski with his third wife and a king's niece, Griselda Bathory. The wedding feast was held in the chambers of Queen Anna at the Wawel Castle. The lavish tournaments and a procession of masks was illustrated by an Italian artist in a "Tournois magnifique tenu en Pologne", today in the National Library of Sweden. Rich Venetian fabrics, like these used in chasubles founded by Anna and her husband (Cathedral Museum in Kraków) or vessels, like enamelled basin with her coat of arms and monogram (Czartoryski Museum), acquired by Anna in Venice, were undoubtedly used during the feasts. The sources confirm that allegorical paintings were brought to the Polish court from Venice for Sigismund III Vasa, Anna's sucessor, like Psyche cycle by Palma il Giovane or Diana and Caliosto by Antonio Vassilacchi. "You subjects learned this riding from your king", snapped resentful Anna in 1583, when someone from her court set off on a journey (after "Andrzej Patrycy Nidecki ..." by Kazimierz Morawski, p. 257-258). The Banquet of Cleopatra by Leandro Bassano in Stockholm shows an episode described by both Pliny's's Natural History (9.58.119-121) and Plutarch's Lives (Antony 25.36.1), in which the spartan Roman warrior Antony being seduced by the sensual opulence of Cleopatra (Nationalmuseum, oil on canvas, 232 x 231 cm, inv. NM 133). The Queen of Egypt takes an expensive pearl, reputed to have aphrodisiac qualities, because of an association between pearls and Venus, the goddess of love, and dissolves it in her wine, which she then drinks. It is a culmination of a wager between Cleopatra and Mark Antony as to which one could provide the most expensive feast, which Cleopatra won. Lucius Munatius Plancus, a Roman senator had been asked to judge the wager. The three protagonists are clearly Anna Jagiellon as Cleopatra, her husband Stephen Bathory as Mark Antony and his friend Jan Zamoyski as Lucius and the painting was commissioned by the Queen to one of her residences, most probably Jazdów. It is recorded in the Swedish royal collection as far as 1739, therefore, most probably, it was taken from Poland during the Deluge (1655-1660), like the marble lions from Ujazdów Castle, or during the Great Northern War (1700-1721). In 1578 with the support of Queen Anna the Brotherhood of Saint Anne was founded in Warsaw at the Bernardine Church of Saint Anne, and approved by the Pope with the bull Ex incumbenti in 1579. The first member and guardian of this fraternity was Jan Zamoyski, chancellor and great hetman of the Crown. In her best-known portraits as a widow wearing a long veil and wimple, including the copy made by the workshop of the Venetian painter Alessandro Maganza (National Museum in Warsaw, inv. MP 5323), the queen is depicted as the founder and protector of the Brotherhood of Saint Anne with a golden distinctorium (a badge) of the Brotherhood in the form of a gold medallion with a representation of Saint Anne. The painting by the same author, Leandro Bassano, from the Swedish royal collection, showing Saint Anne and the infant Virgin Mary was also undeniably created for Anna Jagiellon around the same time as the Banquet of Cleopatra (Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, oil on canvas, 117 x 99 cm, inv. NM 132). In 1760 this Catholic painting with Bernardine nuns was in the collection of Louisa Ulrika of Prussia, who freely converted from Calvinism to Lutheran when she moved to Sweden. It is another indication that this painting also was taken from Poland during the Deluge by Swedish or Prussian (Brandenburgian) forces. Also other paintings by Bassano family and their workshop in Poland were created for partrons in Poland, like the Forge of Vulcan by Francesco Bassano the Younger in the National Museum in Warsaw (oil on canvas, 98.5 x 136.5 cm, inv. M.Ob.86 MNW). It was aquired in 1880 from Wojciech Kolasiński. Taking into consideration that other versions of this painting are in royal collections of "friendly" countries (Prado Museum in Madrid, inv. P005120, recorded as far as 1746 and Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, inv. GG 5737, recorded in Ambras collection in 1663), it is highly possible that it was commissioned or aquired by Bathory or Anna's successor Sigismund III. The work of Bassano's workshop inspired Polish artists of later periods. Although the anonymous painter of the second half of the 17th century or the beginning of the 18th century who painted the Adoration of the Magi in the Bernardine Church in Tarnów may have been inspired by an engraving by Raphael Sadeler the Elder after a painting by Jacopo Bassano, made in 1598 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 2012.136.588), like the artist of the painting auctioned in Stockholm (Stockholms Auktionsverk, January 13, 2017, number 432919), he may have seen an original made in Venice in the 16th century. The central figure of the kneeling Saint Melchior, dressed in eastern, clearly Sarmatian, costume, is very similar. 
The Banquet of Cleopatra with portraits of Anna Jagiellon, Stephen Bathory and Jan Zamoyski by Leandro Bassano, ca. 1578-1586, Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.
Saint Anne and the infant Virgin Mary by Leandro Bassano, ca. 1578-1586, Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.
Forge of Vulcan by Francesco Bassano the Younger, 4th quarter of the 16th century, National Museum in Warsaw.
AI-generated view of the wooden villa of Queen Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596), elected co-monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, of Ujazdów (Jazdów) in Warsaw, based on my hypothetical schematic drawing and 1606 plan by Alessandro Albertini (Il sito della villa di Jasdovia).
Portrait of Pope Gregory XIII, portrait of Constantine Vasily, Prince of Ostroh by workshop of Francesco or Leandro Bassano and portrait of Piotr Myszkowski by Giovanni Battista Maganza
Despite huge losses during the wars, other conflicts and fires Venetian painting is particularly richly represented in the National Art Gallery in Lviv in Ukraine. During the 16th and 17th centuries, Lviv, the second largest city in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, with a population of around 30,000, was the capital of the Ruthenian Voivodeship.
Among the notable works, one could distinguish the Sleeping Venus by Palma Vecchio, portrait of an old man by Titian, identified as effigy of Antonio Grimani (1434-1523), Doge of Venice (oil on canvas, 94 x 79.8, signed in upper right corner: Titianus P[inxit]), offered by professor Florian Singer in 1858, portrait of Francis I (1494-1547), King of France by circle of Titian after original by Joos van Cleve (oil on copper, 16.5 x 12.5 cm, inventory number Ж-41), from the collection of count Leon Piniński, Saint John the Baptist in the wilderness by workshop of Jacopo Bassano (oil on wood, 51 x 67 cm, Ж-287), a copy of work created in 1558 for the altar of the family Testa di San Giovanni in the church of San Francesco in Bassano, Madonna and Child as the Queen of Heaven with Saints by workshop of Jacopo Tintoretto (oil on canvas, 46 x 53 cm, inventory number Ж-755), from the collection of Wiktor Baworowski (1826-1894), David with a sword, presumably a fragment of a larger composition by Venetian painter (oil on canvas, 67 x 78 cm, Ж-1377), from the Lubomirski collection and Saint Veronica wiping the face of Christ on the road to Calvary by Palma il Giovane, until 1940 in the collection of Major Kündl. Given the extensive economic and artistic contacts of the Commonwealth with the Venetian Republic at that time, we should assume that at least two-thirds of these paintings originally found their way into the Commonwealth already at the time of creation by different means (purchases or gifts). Among interesting portraits of the Italian school in the gallery, there is a portrait of Pope Sixtus V (1521-1590) from the collection of the Ossolineum in Lviv (oil on canvas, 116 x 95 cm, Ж-4947). In 1586, in the bull issued on October 10, Sixtus, who was a pope from 1585 to his death in 1590, confirmed the brotherhood of Saint Anne, founded in Warsaw by Queen Anna Jagiellon in 1578. The establishment of the brotherhood was approved by Pope Gregory XIII (1502-1585) in 1579 and confirmed in 1581 by his nuncio to Poland Giovanni Andrea Caligari (1527-1613), bishop of Bertinoro and again in 1584 by another nuncio of Gregory XIII Alberto Bolognetti (1538-1585), who before coming to Poland served as nuncio in the Republic of Venice (1578-1581). In the Commonwealth, Bolognetti was confronted with the advance of Protestantism and the spread of indifferentism. Numbers of both high and low clergy had gone over to Protestantism, some even to atheism. Presentation for church posts at all levels was under the control of local magnates or the king and selection had more to do with loyalty than religious views or vocation. He emphasized to king Stephen Bathory the necessity of appointing only Catholics to office, but with limited success. He also reported to Rome about the trade with Flanders, the port of Gdańsk, where the English heretics had considerable influence, and activities of Spanish agents in Poland, buying grain and other commodities. On May 1, 1584 Pope Gregory XIII declares the feast of St. Anne. The Pope sent the queen a gift of Agnus Dei through Stanisław Hozjusz, which he had consecrated, supported her during the royal elections and with her efforts at the Spanish court concerning the Neapolitan sums. With the help of the queen and her sister Catherine, Queen of Sweden, he secretly sent several priests and Jesuits to Sweden. In 1580, Paweł Uchański delivered a sacred sword (Wawel Royal Castle) and a hat from Gregory XIII to Anna's husband Stephen Bathory in Vilnius and in about 1578 the pope offered the king the coral rosary (Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest, E 65.76). Gregory also established a personal correspondence with Constantine Vasily (1526-1608), Prince of Ostroh, a leder and a promoter of Eastern Christian culture in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. On June 6, 1583 the Pope granted his son Janusz (1554-1620), who after education at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna converted from Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism in 1579, the privilege of a portable altar. In a letter of July 8, 1583, Prince Constantine Vasily wrote to the Pope that he met the nuncio Bolognetti in Kraków and discussed with him the problem of "some people who with all zeal seek only disagreement" (after "Unia Brzeska z perspektywy czterech stuleci" by Jan Sergiusz Gajek, Stanisław Nabywaniec, p. 33) and he sent to the Pope "Chyzycen, the archbishop of the Greek rites; asking him for a copy of the bible, written in Slavic language, which he could reprint for the benefit of the people of the Greek religion". Constantine Vasily also favored the introduction of the Gregorian calendar (introduced in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII), however the Patriarch of Constantinople "severely reprimanded the Prince of Ostroh for recommending the change of the calendar to the Ruthenian people". Numerous portraits of the ruling popes undoubtedly belonged to Queen Anna Jagiellon and the catholic magnates of the Commonwealth. Nicolaus Christopher Radziwill "the Orphan" (1549-1616) had oil portraits of Popes Sixtus V and Paul V and Cardinals Francesco Sforza, Charles Borromeo and Alessandro Farnese (after "Monumenta variis Radivillorum ..." by Tadeusz Bernatowicz, p. 18) and according to Latin poem "Paintings in the hall in Zamość" (Imagines diaetae Zamoscianae) by Szymon Szymonowic (Simon Simonides), published in Zamość in 1604, Hetman Jan Zamoyski had a portrait of Sixtus V (To Sykstus Piąty - chlubny z tego miana). The portrait of Pope Clement VIII (Ippolito Aldobrandini) in the National Museum in Kielce (inv. MNKi/M/1651), painted in about 1592, could be a gift to Anna Jagiellon or her nephew Sigismund III Vasa. It is highly possible that the portrait in Lviv also comes from magnate or royal collection. The sitter is identified as Sixtus V, however, he resemble more the effigies of his predecessor Gregory XIII - portrait by Bartolomeo Passarotti (Friedenstein Palace in Gotha), a small portrait with inscription GREGORIVS. XIII P. M. (The Antique Guild), engraving with inscription GREGORIVS. XIII. PAPA. BONONIEN. (Fototeca Gilardi) and especially a portrait attributed to Scipione Pulzone. The features, pose and costume are very similar, the only noticeable difference is only the color of the eyes, however Anna Jagiellon also has a different eye color in her portraits by workshop of Cranach (Czartoryski Museum) and Kober (Wilanów Palace). Also the style of this portrait is very interesting and close to that of Venetian painters Francesco and Leandro Bassano. The painter simplified the composition, probably intentionally he omitted the back of the Pope's chair, which indicate that the portrait was part of a series of similar portraits, some of which were intended for the Polish-Lithuanian market. The portrait of Constantine Vasily, Prince of Ostroh with a crucifix (unknown location, possibly lost during World War II) from the 1590s, was painted in the same style. Comparable to this portrait of the Pope, not only in the composition and pose of the model, but also in the Venetian style and colors, is the portrait of Piotr Myszkowski (ca. 1505-1591), Bishop of Płock and Kraków and Vice-Chancellor of the Crown, preserved in the Franciscan Monastery in Kraków. The author of this painting is unknown, but he must have been familiar with the late works of Titian and Tintoretto, as these influences are particularly visible in the parts of the model's hands and the green cloth on the table. It can be dated from 1577 to 1591, when Myszkowski held the bishopric of Kraków (sources confirm that later, on February 7, 1604, a certain Stanisław Stawicki painted a portrait of Bishop Myszkowski for the chapter house of the Wawel Cathedral). A good manager, Myszkowski amassed an immense fortune and was recognized as a patron of the arts, notably of the poet Jan Kochanowski. In 1580, Nuncio Giovanni Andrea Caligari (1527-1613) called him the richest, most cunning, and most mendacious man in Poland. He suspected him of atheism, accused him of selling benefices, of striking priests with his own hands in a fit of anger, and of showing no moderation or decency at banquets. He loved to live in luxury, but his primary concern was the splendor and enrichment of his family. He was to bequeath 8 million zlotys to his nephews (the Gonzaga Myszkowskis). Bishop Myszkowski's fortune was so famous that King Stephen Bathory borrowed money from him for the war against Gdańsk (after "Galerya portretów biskupów krakowskich ..." by Stanisław Tomkowicz, p. 54-55). He enlarged the Kraków bishops' palaces in Kielce and Bodzentyn, and his splendid Renaissance Mirów Palace in Książ Wielki was designed by the royal sculptor and architect Santi Gucci. It is therefore possible that the bishop had at his court a painter trained in Titian's studio or that he commissioned his portrait in Venice. Two paintings attributed to the Vicenza painter Giovanni Battista Maganza (ca. 1513-1586) are particularly close to the portrait of Bishop Myszkowski. One is a small painting of Christ Carrying the Cross, from the collection of Ferruccio Peruzzi in Venice (Dorotheum in Vienna, December 11, 2018, lot 46), the other is Saint Ursula and the Virgins before Pope Siricius, held at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem (inv. B58.05.0156). Giovanni Battista's son, Alessandro Maganza (1556-1632), painted several portraits of Sarmatian monarchs and nobles according to my attributions. 
Portrait of Pope Gregory XIII (1502-1585) by workshop of Francesco or Leandro Bassano, 1572-1585, Lviv National Art Gallery.
Portrait of Constantine Vasily (1526-1608), Prince of Ostroh with a crucifix by Leandro Bassano or follower, 1590s, location unknown, possibly lost during World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Piotr Myszkowski (ca. 1505-1591), Bishop of Kraków and Vice-Chancellor of the Crown by Giovanni Battista Maganza, ca. 1577-1586, Franciscan Monastery in Kraków.
Portraits of Jadwiga Sieniawska, Voivodess of Ruthenia by the Bassano workshop and Jacopo Tintoretto
"You equated the state with the shy Diana, / You equated the face with the rosy Venus. [...] / Adornment of the earth! happy, happy, / To whom God has appointed you kind, / To whom Hymenaios in the steady words / And with eternal torches joined you", wrote in his poem entitled "To Miss Jadwiga Tarłówna, (later voivodess of Ruthenia)", a Polish poet of the late Renaissance Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński (ca. 1550 - ca. 1581). It is considered an epithalamium, a wedding song for the wedding with the lord of Berezhany (Brzeżany), Hieronim Sieniawski (1519-1582), who married Tarłówna in 1575.
Jadwiga was the fifth child of Jan Tarło, standard-bearer of Lviv, and Regina Malczycka. She came from the ancient Tarło family from Szczekarzowice. Her parents owned Chapli (Czaple nad Strwiążęm) near Sambir (Sambor) and a part of Khyriv (Chyrów) in the Ruthenian Voivodeship (Ukraine). "Lords of Hungary and Wallachia" wanted to marry her and King Sigismund Augustus promised her hand to Bogdan IV (1555-1574), Prince of Moldavia in 1572, but he was deposed that year (after "Brzeżany w czasach Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej: monografia historyczna" by Maurycy Maciszewski, p. 78-80). After death of her father (died in 1570 or 1572) and before marriage, she most probably lived at the very Italianized court of king's sister, Infanta Anna Jagiellon. Jadwiga received from father as a dowry only 3,000 zlotys and 1,500 zlotys in jewels, and from her mother 2,000 zlotys. It was a considerable amount for those times, but far from being a magnate's fortune. In June 1574, Hieronim buried his third wife, Anna née Maciejowska, and ordered a beautiful marble tombstone for her. Just few months later, in 1575, at the age of 56, he married Jadwiga who was about 25 years old (born in about 1550). The bridegroom bequeathed 14,000 zlotys to her as a dower. The next year (1576), she gave birth to Hieronim's only son, Adam Hieronim. Her husband died in 1582 and was buried in the family chapel in Berezhany. The young widow founded a beautiful tomb monument for him and his father and dedicated herself to raising her only son and did not remarry. She was glorified on a marble plaque in the castle church in Berezhany for restoring the weakened fortune to good condition after her husband's death: "These monuments were laid to her father-in-law and to her sweet husband by Jadwiga née Tarło, both with her powerful virtue, which she shines in her homeland, and with the sharpness of her mind. May our ages produce more of likewise matrons here and everywhere! The Republic would flourish if each of them would restore lost goods in this way after her husband's death" (Haec socero et dulci posait monumenta marito / Tarlonum Hedvigis progenerata domo, / Virtate omnigena patrio quae claret in orbe, / Nec minus ingenii dexteritate sui. / O utinam similes illi praesentia plures / Saecula matronas hic et ubique ferant ! / Publica res floreret abi post fata mariti / Quaelibet amissas sic repararet opes). According to the sculptor's monogram (H.H.Z.) hidden behind the statue of Hieronim, the monument was created by Hendrik Horst (d. 1612), a Dutch sculptor from Groningen, active in Lviv since 1573. The overall design of this tomb monument, destroyed during World War II, resemble the monument to King Sigismund II Augustus in the Wawel Cathedral, founded by Queen Anna Jagiellon and created between 1574-1575 by Santi Gucci, and monument to Doge Francesco Venier (1489-1556) by Jacopo Sansovino and Alessandro Vittoria in San Salvador in Venice, created between 1556-1561. Until 1939 in the armoury of the Berezhany Castle in the western tower, there was a large painting depicting the funeral procession of Mikołaj Sieniawski (ca. 1489-1569), Jadwiga's father-in-law, in Lublin in 1569 with king Sigismund Augustus and lords of the kingdom. The deathbed conversion of Hieronim Sieniawski, a definitive Calvinist, was also influenced by his fourth wife, Tarłówna, a zealous Catholic according to papal nuncio, with the aid of Benedictus Herbestus Neapolitanus (Benedykt Zieliński or Benedykt Herbest), educated in Rome. Also Hieronim's sisters converted shortly after his death, closing numerous Calvinist churches on their estates (after "Calvinism in the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth 1548-1648" by Kazimierz Bem, p. 181). In 1584 she issued a location privilege for the new town of Adamówka, named in honor of her son, later a suburb of Berezhany and most probably founded the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. Her only son, who most probably, like all his three sons later, studied in Padua before 1593, employed at his court Venetian engineer and architect Andrea dell'Aqua. A painting by workshop of Jacopo Bassano (1515-1592) of unknown provenance in the Odessa Museum of Western and Eastern Art, shows a wealthy lady in the mythological scene of Abduction of Europa (oil on canvas, 108 x 90 cm). In the same museum there is also a portrait of Princess Elizabeth Radziwill (d. 1565) by Lambert Sustris, identified and attributed by me. In the 1560s Jacopo Bassano created several versions of Adoration of the Magi (Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, The State Hermitage Museum) with a man in a costume of a Polish-Lithuanian nobleman depicted as Melchior, the old man of the three Magi, comparable to effigies of Constantine (ca. 1460-1530), Prince of Ostroh by Lucas Cranach the Elder. He wears a green kaftan with sweeping floor-length sleeves and a fur collar, very similar to those visible in the effigy of a Polish horseman by Abraham de Bruyn, published in 1577 (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam) or in his Twelve Polish and Hungarian types, published in 1581 (also in the Rijksmuseum) or in the picture of a Polish-Lithuanian noble in "Theatrum virtutum ac meritorum D. Stanislai Hosii" by Thomas Treter, created between 1595-1600 (National Library in Warsaw). The effigy of the old man represented as Melchior, possibly intentionally or unintentionally, bear a resemblance to the effigy of Jadwiga's father-in-law, Mikołaj Sieniawski, Voivode of Ruthenia (and a Calvinist), from the tomb monument founded by her. According to some sources Mikołaj also converted to the Catholic faith shortly before his death (died in 1569), therefore he could commisson a series of his effigies as one of the Magi, or the painter just inspired by the images of Mikołaj commissioned in his studio. Bassano also dressed a kneeling man at the center of the Vision of Saint Eleutherius from the high altar of the church of Sant'Eleuterio in Vicenza (Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, inv. 401) in a similar costume. Such costumes are also seen in two Adorations of the Magi by the circle of Jacopo Bassano in the private collection in Sweden (Stockholms Auktionsverk, January 13, 2017, number 432919; August 25, 2019, number 669586). In the myth, the god Zeus (Jupiter) assumed the form of a bull and enticed Europa to climb onto his back. The bull carried her to Crete, where Europa became the first Queen and had three children with Zeus. Unlike the earlier, very erotic version of the scene painted between 1560-1562 by Titian for King Philip II of Spain (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston) with Europa sprawled helplessly in open-legged posture and her face not visible, in Bassano's painting the woman's face is clearly visible. This portrait-like historié picture was therefore commissioned by this woman. In the 17th century Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673), Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in a large painting attributed to Jan Mijtens (La Suite Subastas in Barcelona, May 26, 2023, lot 26) and Madame de Montespan (1640-1707), chief royal mistress (maîtresse-en-titre) of King Louis XIV of France, and her children, in another large composition from the studio of Pierre Mignard (Kurpfälzisches Museum Heidelberg, L39), were represented in such historié paintings in the guise of Europa. In the foreground there is a rabbit as an allegory of fertility, a duck, associated with Penelope, queen of Ithaca, as a symbol of marital fidelity, and a small dog, allegory of fidelity and devotion. A Cupid sitting on a tree in the upper right corner is prepared to aim an arrow at her heart. The island of Crete is visible in the far background, but the landscape around is similar to topography of Berezhany as depicted on the Austrian map of 1779-1783. There is a large lake (regulated in the 18th century) and two hills, which were depicted by the painter as rocky Alpine hills. Another, horizontal version of this composition, from private collection in Rome and attributed to circle of Francesco Bassano (1549-1592), was sold in 2021 (oil on canvas, 96 x 120 cm, Finarte, November 16, 2021, lot 73). In both paintings the woman has a fashionable hairstyle from the late 1570s or early 1580s and the painting in Rome was most probably sent as a gift to the Pope or one of the cardinals (this woman managed to convert to Catholicism the Voivode of Ruthenia!). A number of paintings by Francesco Bassano and his workshop are also in Poland (Adoration of the Magi with a Polish nobleman and Forge of Vulcan in the National Museum in Warsaw, Forge of Vulcan in the National Museum in Poznań or Annunciation to the shepherds in the Wawel Royal Castle and another in the Museum of the Warsaw Archdiocese). The same woman was also depicted in a portrait of a lady in a green dress (a color being symbolic of fertility), attributed variously to Jacopo and Leandro Bassano, in the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California (oil on canvas, 78.7 x 65.4 cm, inv. F.1965.1.002.P). The picture was previously in the Edward Cheney collections in Badger Hall in Badger, near Wolverhampton, England (demolished in 1952). A pendant on a gold chain around her neck is a jewel in which two different stones and a pearl are set, each with its own precise meaning: the ruby indicates charity, the emerald indicates chastity, and a pearl is a symbol of marriage fidelity. The woman's dress and hairstyle are very simular to those visible in a self-portrait with madrigal by Marietta Robusti in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, dated to about 1578 (inventory 1890 n. 1898). A signed painting by Leandro Bassano (signature: Leandro) from Jan Gwalbert Pawlikowski collection is in the Wawel Royal Castle and Lamentation of Christ, attributed to him is in the Vereshchagin Art Museum in Mykolaiv, close to Odessa. Interestingly, in 2005, the Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania acquired a copy of the Mykolaiv painting from a private collection in Rome, probably made by the workshop of Palma il Giovane (oil on canvas, 85 x 79 cm, inv. VR-7). Resurrection of Lazarus from the altar of the Mocenigo family in the church of Santa Maria della Carità in Venice (today in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, oil on canvas, 416 x 237 cm, inv. 252), another signed work by Leandro Bassano (LEANDER / BASSANE.is / F.), dated to between 1592-1596, shows a man in a costume of a Polish-Lithuanian noble. The architecture of a villa and a peasant's hat in Sheep Shearing (Autumn?) by the imitator of the Bassanos, a painting from the Sułkowski collection painted at the beginning of the 17th century (National Museum in Warsaw, inv. 232153), indicate that the painter may have created the work in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The early provenance of these paintings is now impossible to establish, but their number, given the enormous destruction of the heritage of the former Commonwealth, indicates that the Bassano workshop was actively engaged in the "production" of paintings for the Sarmatian market. She was also depicted as a widow in a portrait by Jacopo Tintoretto in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden (oil on canvas, 104 x 87 cm, inv. Gal.-Nr. 265 A). This painting was probably acquired in Venice by Duke Francesco I d'Este (1610-1658) and listed as "Portrait of a woman dressed in black - Titian" (Ritratto di donna vestita de nero - Tiziano) in the inventory of 1744 of the Galleria Estense in Modena, then sold to Augustus III of Poland-Lithuania-Saxony in 1746 (as portrait of Caterina Cornaro). This portrait is dated to early 1550s, however similar costume of a Venetian widow (Vidua Veneta / Vefue Venetiene) is visible in an engraving representing Ten women dressed according to Italian fashion by Abraham de Bruyn, created in about 1581 (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam). The style of this picture can be compared with portrait of the Procurator Alessandro Gritti in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, dated to between 1581-1582, and portrait of Piotr Krajewski (1547-1598), żupnik of Zakroczym in the Masovian Museum in Płock, dated "1583" (oil on panel, 102 x 83.5 cm, inv. MMP/S/7). The latter painting is generally attributed to circle of Martin Kober, however the man's face is painted in the same style as the widow in Dresden. Krajewski, a nobleman of Leliwa coat of arms, was the owner of villages Mochty and Smoszewo and a manager (żupnik) which oversaw the salt storehouse in Zakroczym near Warsaw, the seat of Infanta Anna Jagiellon. His portrait was most probably commissioned in Venice and a court painter in Warsaw added coat of arms and inscription (painted in different style). A miniature copy of this portrait was photographed around 1880 by Edward Trzemeski in the Yellow Room of Pidhirtsi (Podhorce) Castle near Lviv, opposite another miniature, a copy of portrait of Catherine Jagiellon, Duchess of Finland in white. Due to the layout, both were probably copies of prints by Pierre-François Basan based on the original paintings, published in the Recueil d'Estampes d'après les plus célèbres Tableaux de la Galerie Royale de Dresde in 1753 (number 11 and 12), when the two paintings were attributed to Titian, however, this selection and placement above the door might suggest that in the 18th century there were still clues to the identity of the two women and their connection to Poland-Lithuania. In the Zhytomyr Region History Museumin Ukraine there is a portrait of Giovanni Francesco Sagredo (1571-1620), a Venetian mathematician and close friend of Galileo, painted by Gerolamo Bassano (oil on panel, 78 х 65 cm, inv. ЖМ-2, inscription on the back: GIOVANNI FRANCESCO SAGREDO VENEZIANO). The painting comes from the nationalized collections of barons de Chaudoir (the family may come from a line of French Protestant emigrants who fled in 1685 from Belgium and one de Chaudoire worked at the court of King Stanislaus Augustus). In the 1590s Sagredo studied privately with Galileo in Padua and in 1596 at the age of 25 he became a member of the Great Council of Venice. His portrait attributed to Gerolamo Bassano in the Ashmolean Museum depict him in the robes of the a Procurator of Saint Mark, therefore the portrait from Zhytomyr like the effigy from private collection, attributed to circle of Domenico Tintoretto, should be dated to before 1596, therefore could be acquired by Adam Hieronim during his potential studies in Italy. Sagredo was depicted in a crimson tunic similar to Polish-Lithuanian żupan. It is possible that all mentioned paintings by Venetian painting workshops, in Odessa, Mykolaiv and Zhytomyr, originate from the same collection - "the Eastern Wawel": Berezhany Castle, dispersed among several museums in Ukraine. Despite that no signed likenesses of Jadwiga Sieniawska née Tarło or her close relatives have preserved, basing on all these facts the mentioned potraits should be indentified as her effigies. 
Abduction of Europa with portrait of Jadwiga Sieniawska née Tarło, Voivodess of Ruthenia by workshop of Jacopo Bassano, 1578-1582, Odessa Museum of Western and Eastern Art.
Abduction of Europa with portrait of Jadwiga Sieniawska née Tarło, Voivodess of Ruthenia by workshop of Francesco Bassano, 1578-1582, Private collection.
Portrait of Jadwiga Sieniawska née Tarło, Voivodess of Ruthenia in a green dress by Jacopo or Leandro Bassano, ca. 1578, Norton Simon Museum.
Lamentation of Christ by Leandro Bassano, late 16th century, Vereshchagin Art Museum in Mykolaiv.
Portrait of Jadwiga Sieniawska née Tarło, Voivodess of Ruthenia in mourning by Jacopo Tintoretto, ca. 1582, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.
Portrait of Piotr Krajewski (1547-1598), żupnik of Zakroczym by workshop of Jacopo Tintoretto, 1583, Masovian Museum in Płock.
Portrait of Giovanni Francesco Sagredo (1571-1620) by Gerolamo Bassano, 1590s, Zhytomyr Region History Museum.
Portrait of a man in Sarmatian costume from the Resurrection of Lazarus by Leandro Bassano, ca. 1592-1596, Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice.
Portraits of king Stephen Bathory by Venetian painters
"I was chosen to be your king, at your request and urging I have come here; you have placed the crown on my head: I am therefore your real and legal king, not imaginary or painted; I want to reign and command and I will not tolerate being commanded. Be the guardians of your freedom, but do not want to become my tutors. Be such guardians that freedom does not become an abuse" (Dum in regem vestrum sum electus, vobis postulantibus et instantibus huc veni; per vos est corona capiti meo imposita: sum igitur rex vester non fictus neque pictus, sed realis et legalis; volo regnare et imperare, nec sinam ut mihi quis imperet. Custodes libertatis vestrae estis, non igitur vos volo paedagogos meos fieri; tuemini et servate libertates vestras, sed prudenter cavete, ne haec libertas vestra in abusum vertatur), declared Stephen Bathory (1533-1586) at the Sejm in Toruń in 1576 to the lords of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. According to Tadeusz Ulewicz (1917-2012), this statement was the first in Polish culture allusion to Venetian painting, and the king was familiar with the decoration of the Higher Council Hall (Sala del Maggior Consiglio) of the Doge's Palace in Venice, where the frieze running along the ceiling of the walls of the great hall depicted portraits of the Doges (compare "Dolabella. Wenecki malarz Wazów. Katalog wystawy", ed. Magdalena Białonowska, p. 42). It is even more likely, however, that the king was referring to state portraits commissioned on the occasion of his accession, most likely also in Venice, and probably similar to the effigies of the elected doges, who were glorified in splendid paintings by local painters. The king therefore wanted to emphasize to the nobility that, although he was elected by them, he is a powerful ruler of the kingdom not only in paintings.
Official portraiture showed Bathory as he should look like and as he was perceived, imagined by average and less educated subjects, i.e. a strong, powerful, masculine monarch in rich national costume, a man capable to protect the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from Tsar Ivan the Terrible, a brutal tyrant, who used terror and cruelty as a method of controlling his country and who invaded the Commonwealth during the second royal election after Henry of Valois's sudden return to France in mid-June 1574 through Venice. The Tsar had captured Pärnu on July 9, 1575, took as many as 40 thousand captives (according to Świętosław Orzelski) and devastated much of central Livonia. Anna Jagiellon and Bathory were elected just few months later on December 15. In private effigies or these dedicated to his European colleagues Bathory could allow himself to be depicted as educated in Padua lover of astronomy, in a cloak of a simple soldier in his army or as an old, tired man. The portrait by Tintoretto from the Spanish royal collection, now in the Prado Museum in Madrid (oil on canvas, 54 x 43 cm, inv. P000374), shows Bathory in a toga-like attire similar to the costume of a Venetian magistrate. It is a kopieniak a sleeveless raincoat of Turkish origin (kepenek), popular at that time in Hungary (köpenyeg). According to Stanisław Sarnicki's "Księgi hetmańskie", published in 1577-1578, kopieniak was a sort of Gabina (gabìno), a toga in ancient Rome, while according to Encyklopedja powszechna ("Universal encyclopedia", vol. 15, 1864, p. 446) in Poland the attire and a word were popularized by Bathory, "who used the kopieniak in hunting and during war expeditions". After king's death some of his robes valued at 5351 zlotys were given to his courtiers. The inventory made in Grodno on 15 December 1586 includes many kopieniaks, made by his Hungarian tailor Andrasz, like the most valuable "scarlet kopieniak lined with sables with one silk button and a loop, 1548 zlotys worth", "12 navy blue half-kopieniaks lined with sables, with gold buttons" or "4 kopieniaks of different colors" (after "Pamiętniki do historyi Stefana króla polskiego ..." by Edward Raczyński, p. 143, 152-153, 157). The king's face was similarly depicted in the beautiful engraving with his portrait by Giacomo Franco included in Antiqvitatvm Romanarvm (Treatise on Roman Antiquities) by Paolo Manuzio (Paulus Manutius, 1512-1574), published in Bologna in 1585 (Czartoryski Library of Kraków, 2335 III Cim). The earliest known provenance of this painting is the 1772 inventory of the collection of Charles III of Spain at the Royal Palace of Madrid, where it was listed with two other "Venetian men" and as an "original by Paolo Veronese" (Tres retratos poco mas de las cabezas de vnos varones venecianos de a dos tercias de caida y media vara de ancho originales de Pablo Verones, item 97). The powerful King Philip II of Spain (1527-1598) must have received a portrait of Bathory, but since he was only an elected king of a distant land, and moreover he did not demonstrate his status by rich clothing, it is understandable that the portrait was listed as "A Venetian man" in the 18th century, when the rich and influential Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the Renaissance was a vague memory. Portraits were part of the diplomacy of the time, reflecting the complex relationships in Europe, alliances and friendships. The portrait of the procurator Vincenzo Morosini (1511-1588), one of the leading senators of his time, prefect of Bergamo and general responsible for continental affairs of the Republic of Venice, now in the Wawel Royal Castle (oil on canvas, 101 x 85 cm, inv. PZS 47), could be another reminder of these relationships. On December 15, 1578, Morosini was appointed procurator of San Marco, after the death of Tommaso Contarini, and it was probably on this occasion that he commissioned Tintoretto to paint a series of his portraits, one of which could potentially have been sent to the notables of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as early as 1578 or shortly after. The Wawel painting comes from the collection of Count Leon Jan Piniński (1857-1938) in Lviv, donated to the State Collections in 1931. The portrait of a bearded man with hourglass and astrolabe by Francesco Bassano from Ambras Castle in Innsbruck (oil on canvas, 106.3 x 89.8 cm, GG 5775), is very similar in style and composition to the portrait of Anna Jagiellon in Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum, GG 33). The painting is documented in the Ambras collection in 1663. Before February 1, 1582 Bathory offered to Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria many items captured during the Siege of Pskov to his large collection of armaments in Ambras, including his armor accompanied by a portrait and resume. On March 10, 2020, a "portrait of King Ladislav VI of Hungary", whose style resembles works from the workshop or circle of Jacopo Bassano, was auctioned (oil on canvas, 65 x 47.5 cm, attributed to Italian school, inscription in Latin: LADISLAVS VNG. BOE / REX.). This portrait is almost a direct transposition of a print by Venetian printmaker Gaspare Oselli (Osello) after a drawing by Francesco Terzio from Bergamo, a pupil of Giovanni Battista Moroni, representing Ladislaus the Posthumous (1440-1457), King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia and Duke of Austria. This engraving, created in 1569, was a part of a series of 58 prints with portraits of 74 members of the House of Austria, dedicated to Ferdinand II, who was a son of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), Queen of Hungary, Bohemia and Croatia. The portrait of Ladislaus is further confirmation that Venetian painters did not need to see the real model to create a good effigy. In Ambras painting, the king's features resemble the portrait in Madrid, engraving by Franco and an anonymous engraving in the Austrian National Library in Vienna (PORT 00059876 01). Among the things given in deposit to king's courtier Mr Franciszek Wesselini (Ferenc Wesseleny´i de Hadad) in the inventory of king's belongings, there were "A gold carriage chest with the coat of arms of His Highness Augustus, in which there are various small things. Golden saddle of the deceased king Sigismund Augustus. A casket with small things and crane feathers" and also "A leaky watch (water hourglass)" and "Large old Turkish carpets, which were brought by Mr. Grudziński from Hungary from Machmet Basha", most probably offered by Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. The inventory does not include any Western, black costumes, however since the king used many items of his predecessor Sigismund Augustus, he undoubtedly had access to his extensive black Italian wardrobe. Interestingly, the black Italian hose with protruding codpiece were at that time in Poland considered by some people as more effeminate than the dress-like żupan of colorful Venetian fabric. "The nation is effeminate [...] Franca [syphilis], musk, lettuce, with them it came, These puffed hose, stockings, mostardas, The Italian haughty nation has recently brought here" (269, 272-274), wrote Marcin Bielski in his satire "Conversation of the New Prophets, Two Rams with One Head" (Rozmowa nowych proroków, dwu baranów o jednej głowie), published in 1566/1567. His interest in astronomy is confirmed by his support to the sorcerer Wawrzyniec Gradowski from Gradów and with a sojourn at his court of John Dee, an English mathematician, astronomer and astrologer and Edward Kelley, an occultist and scryer in March 1583 and April 1585, who were paid 800 florins by the king. He also transformed the Jesuit gymnasium in Vilnius into an academy (1578), where astronomy, poetry and theology were taught. Leaving Transylvania for Poland in 1576, he consulted astrologers, with whom he also set the date of his wedding with Anna Jagiellon. Therefore Bathory was maybe more effeminate in his private life then in his public appearance, he was however one of the most eminent monarchs of this part of Europe, a wise and brave king who led the Polish-Lithuanian Republic to its greatest glory and power. After 50 his health rapidly declined. As Sigismund Augustus, Bathory most probably suffered from syphilis, treated by his Italian physicians Niccolò Buccella and Simone Simoni. "The king his grace had on his right leg two fingers below the knee, up to the ankle, a kind of rash, in which there were sometimes shallow, flowing wounds. On that leg, lower than the knee, he had an apertura [ulcer]: and when little was leaking from it, he had no appetite, the nights were restless and sleepless." The portrait in Budapest by Leandro Bassano (Museum of Fine Arts, oil on canvas, 116 x 96 cm, inv. 53.477), which is very similar to other effigies of Bathory, undeniably show him in the last year of his life. His facial features in this likeness resemble the miniature portrait by Lavinia Fontana kept in the National Museum in Kraków (inv. MNK I-290), attributed by me, or the portrait that was in Burg Kreuzenstein in Austria before World War II. Interestingly, the Budapest portrait was previously assigned to Tintoretto. It was listed as a work by Jacopo Bassano when it was in the collection of the Duchess of Berry at the Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi in Venice in the mid-19th century. This palace belonged to the Venetian Loredan family in the 16th century, but also to Eric II (1528-1584), Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and Guglielmo Gonzaga (1538-1587), Duke of Mantua, while Maria Carolina of Bourbon-Sicily (1798-1870), Duchess of Berry, who bought the palace in 1844, was a descendant of Augustus III (1696-1763), King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, on both her mother's and father's side. 
Portrait of Stephen Bathory (1533-1586), elected co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in kopieniak coat by Tintoretto, ca. 1576, Prado Museum in Madrid.
Portrait of the procurator Vincenzo Morosini (1511-1588) by workshop of Tintoretto, ca. 1578, Wawel Royal Castle. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Stephen Bathory (1533-1586), elected co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, with hourglass and astrolabe by Francesco Bassano, ca. 1580, Ambras Castle in Innsbruck.
Portrait of Stephen Bathory (1533-1586), elected co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, sitting in a chair by Leandro Bassano, ca. 1586, Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.
Portrait of Primate Jakub Uchański by Jacopo Tintoretto
In the 14th century BC, Akhenaten, the pharaoh of the 18th dynasty of Egypt and his wife and co-ruler Nefertiti closed the temples of the gods of Egypt introducing monotheism by promulgating the worship of a single universal deity, the solar god Aten. They decided to found a new capital Akhetaten (horizon of the Aten) near present-day Amarna. The strong position of women in ancient Egypt was increased under Akhenaten and Amarna period is considered as one of the finest in the art of Ancient Egypt. Not long after Akhenaten's death, his successors reopened the state temples to other Egyptian gods and the name of the "heretic pharaoh" was removed from all of his statues and monuments. His radical move destabilised the social and economical system of Egypt. Temples were key centers of economic activity and charity and continue to uphold maat, the divine order of the universe, a principle that embraced diverse peoples with conflicting interests. People were expected to act with honor and truth in matters that involve family, the community, the nation, the environment, and the gods. Local courts known as Houses of Judgment were associated with local temples and resolved disputes at the gates of the temples.
As in Jerusalem and Mesopotamia, temples cared for the needy or marginalized in society, including the poor, widows, orphans, elderly and homeless, provided hospitality, food, and asylum (after "Mending Bodies, Saving Souls" by Guenter B. Risse, p. 45). Similar was the role of the Roman church in Poland-Lithuania during Renaissance. Catholic hierarchs understood the need for tolerance in a multi-religious country, especially during Reformation, which was often misunderstood abroad, and they were frequently accused of indifferentism. They also understood the role of institutions, social order and hierarchy inherited from medieval times when a single religion dominated in certain regions, financed through taxes and tithes. The bishop of Kraków, Andrzej Zebrzydowski (1496-1560), a student of Erasmus of Rotterdam, also educated in Paris and in Padua, was then attributed with a saying: "You can believe even in a goat if you like, so long as you pay the tithes". His episcopate took place during the mass conversion of the nobility to Calvinism and the bourgeoisie to Lutheranism. In 1556 Zebrzydowski also stood before an ecclesiastical court together with Bishop Jan Drohojowski after rumors of heresy. Papal nuncio Luigi Lippomano headed this investigation. He was charged with maintaining a friendship with Jan Łaski, a well-known Protestant leader, possessing heretical books and inappropriate conduct, including maintaining a relationship with a young Jewess (after "Sinners on Trial" by Magda Teter, p. 145). The Counter-Reformation and foreign invasions changed everything in Poland. After partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by the Habsburg monarchy, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Russian Empire, the Catholic church was one of the few public institutions where people could speak Polish freely (after "November 1918" by Janusz Żarnowski, p. 31) and some Russian writers from the late 18th century stressed degeneration of Catholic Poland and the need to "civilize" it by its neighbors (after "The Russo-Polish Historical Confrontation" by Andrzej Nowak). In the spring of 1578 Paweł Uchański (d. 1590), beloved nephew of other "heretic" hierarch of the Catholic church in the Commonwealth, advocating religious tolerance, Jakub Uchański (1502-1581), archbishop of Gniezno and primate of Poland, was sent on a mission to the Pope in Rome and to the Spanish Viceroy of Naples. It was customary in Catholic countries that each new monarch, after his accession to the throne, sends an envoy to the Pope with a declaration of obedience to the head of the Church. Uchański received this mission from king Stephen Bathory in 1577, but under various pretexts he delayed the journey. The embassy reached Venice on September 23, and stayed there until November 28, 1578, under the pretext of seeking permission to travel to Rome. Then the legation arrived in Padua. It was only at the beginning of February of the following year that it was decided to return to Venice and go by sea to Ancona, to reach Rome via Loreto. After a month's stay there, they went to Naples for a month, then returned to Rome for the next six months. Like all the missions in Naples, this one also had a lot to do with the inheritance of Queen Bona, mother of Queen Anna Jagiellon and a loan made by Bona to Philip II of Spain, which was never repaid. In the first days of March 1580, Paweł was in Łowicz received by the archbishop, who lend him 30,000 zlotys to pay off debts incurred in Italy. According to Giovanni Andrea Caligari (1527-1613), papal nuncio to Poland, "as always malicious towards the Uchańskis", Paweł borrowed 10 thousand in Rome and 6 thousand in Padua. He offered and received gifts, he gave Cardinal Farnese his own horses brought from Poland together with the carriage and he received a gold chain worth 500 ducats from the signoria of Venice, and 6,000 ducats from the pope. He probably also bought and ordered many luxury goods in Italy. The debt was so great that it was not yet repaid in 1586 (money borrowed from the Duke of Tuscany). The creditors claimed their dues in various ways, they even disturbed the secretary of state in Rome, so in March 1583 Paweł delegated a certain Jerzy Polit to settle the matter and buy the silverware and other items pledged in Rome (after "Uchańsciana seu collectio documentorum ..." by Teodor Wierzbowski, p. 49). In 1575 Primate Uchański, who was Archbishop of Gniezno from 1562 and interrex, a short-term regent, of the Commonwealth twice (1572-1573, 1575-1576), joined the pro-Habsburg camp and together with other senators proclaimed Emperor Maximilian II, cousin and brother-in-law of Philip II of Spain, the king. Due to the opposition of many other nobles, Maximilian lost, and Anna and her husband become the co-rulers of the Commonwealth. The Primate was a patron of arts and in 1573 at the archbishops' castle in Łowicz he began the construction of a magnificent Renaissance palace worthy of a king. From 1580 or possibly earlier he employed an eminent mannerist sculptor for the decoration of his residence, Jan Michałowicz of Urzędów (d. 1583), who also created the archbishop's mausoleum at the Łowicz cathedral. The palace was completed in 1585 after death of Uchański and Michałowicz by Primate Stanisław Karnkowski (blown up by retreating Swedish forces in 1657). Alabaster tomb monument of Uchański in the Łowicz Cathedral, created by Michałowicz between 1580-1583 in the Italian style (rebuilt between 1782-1783), and marble tombstone of Calvinist Piotr Tarnowski (died before 1597), father of Primate Jan Tarnowski, by Willem van den Blocke in the style of the Netherlandish mannerism in the same temple, were made from imported Belgian limestones and English alabaster. Similar to tomb monuments of the Tarnowski family by Giovanni Maria Padovano and to the Ostrogski family by Willem van den Blocke in the Tarnów Cathedral, they perfectly illustrate the main influences of art in Poland at that time and great diversity. D. Basilii Magni [...] De moribvs orationes XXIIII [...] by Stanisław Iłowski (Ilovius), dedicated to Primate Jakub Uchański, was published by Giordano Ziletti and Giovanni Griffio in Venice in 1564. Uchański sent a volunteer group to the war with Moscow, and ordered full armours for his soldiers from Brunswick craftsmen through Sophia Jagiellon, Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg (after "W służbie polskiego króla ... " by Marek Plewczyński, p. 288). In the Prado Museum in Madrid, there is a portait of an archbishop (El arzobispo Pedro) by Jacopo Tintoretto from the second half of the 16th century (oil on canvas, 71 x 54 cm, inventory number P000369). It comes from the royal collection, mentioned in the collection of Queen Elisabeth Farnese (1692-1766) in the palace of La Granja (fireplace room, 1746, no. 523), most likely sent to Spain already in the 16th century. According to inscription in Latin it depicts Archbishop Peter (PETRVS. / ARCHI EPVS). The characteristic tilde above v in EPVS, could indicate that the inscription was added much later in Spain and that the person who added the inscription had vague knowledge of who was depicted. From the times of Saint Lawrence Justinian (Lorenzo Giustiniani, 1381-1456), Catholic bishops of the Archdiocese of Venice are known as Patriarchs (Latin: Patriarcha Venetiarum) and the only Peter in the second half of the 16th century, Pietro Francesco Contarini (1502-1555), died after just a few months in the office. Among the Archbishops of Seville and Archbishops of Toledo there is no Pedro in the second half of the 16th century and their effigies are not similar to the described portrait. The portrait of Gaspar de Quiroga (1512-1594), Archbishop of Toledo, created cardinal in 1578, in Prado (P000401) is attributed to follower of Tintoretto, however it is also close to the style of the Bassanos. It was ordered in Venice from Spain and the sitter was identified mainly basing on "his unquestionable resemblance to the portrait that Luis de Velasco painted of him in 1594 for the chapter house of the Toledo Cathedral" (after "The artistic relations of Cardinal Quiroga with Italy" by Cloe Cavero de Carondelet). The portrait of king Stephen Bathory by Tintoretto in the same collection (P000374) is stylistically very close to the effigy of the "Archbishop Peter", the two portraits were therefore probably created around the same time. The archbishop from the Prado painting resemble greatly the effigies of Primate Uchański, especially the lithography in the catalogue of archbishops of Gniezno by Julian Bartoszewicz (Arcybiskupi gnieźnieńscy ...), published in 1864 and his statue in Łowicz. Philip II of Spain was unquestionably interested in having a portrait of Primate of Poland and Archbishop of Gniezno who ruled the Commonwealth during the interregnum and proclaimed his cousin Maximilian the king. 
Portrait of Primate Jakub Uchański (1502-1581), Archbishop of Gniezno by Jacopo Tintoretto, 1562-1580, Prado Museum in Madrid.
Portrait of Cardinal Gaspar de Quiroga (1512-1594), Archbishop of Toledo by workshop of the Bassanos, after 1578, Prado Museum in Madrid.
Portrait of Cardinal Henry I, King of Portugal by Domenico Tintoretto
In 1579 brothers of Nicolaus Christopher Radziwill "the Orphan" (1549-1616), George (1556-1600), future cardinal, and Stanislaus (1559-1599), arrived in the capital of Portugal. "The coadjutor of Vilnius Radziwill, wrote to me from Lisbon on April 3 that he greeted the king dressed in cardinal's robes, but holding pleasantly a scepter in his old and weakened hand", wrote in a letter from Rome on June 6, 1579 the royal secretary Stanisław Reszka (1544-1600) about the audience before Cardinal Henry I (1512-1580), King of Portugal (after "Z dworu Stanisława Hozjusza: listy Stanisława Reszki do Marcina Kromera, 1568-1582" by Jadwiga Kalinowska, p. 221). Then, via Turin and Milan, the Radziwill brothers arrived in Venice in September 1579. From there they set off via Vienna to Poland and finally reached Kraków by the end of the year (after "Radziwiłłowie: obrazy literackie, biografie, świadectwa historyczne" by Krzysztof Stępnik, p. 298).
In 2022 the portrait of Cardinal-King of Portugal from private collection, created in Venice, Italy, was sold at the auction in Munich, Germany (Hampel Auctions, December 8, 2022, lot 238). It was painted by Domenico Tintoretto in 1579 as according to Latin inscription it depict the Cardinal-King at the age of 67 (HENR.S CARD.S / REX. PORTV / GALIAE. ETCZ [...] /. AETATIS / SVAE. LXVII.). Cardinal Henry, born in Lisbon on January 31, 1512, become the king of Portugal at the age of 66 (coronation in Lisbon on August 28, 1578) after death of his great-nephew King Sebastian, who died without an heir in the Battle of Alcácer Quibir that took place in 1578. In January 1579 Jerónimo Osório da Fonseca (Hieronymus Osorius, 1506-1580), Bishop of the Algarve, Portuguese historian and polemicist, wrote a letter in Latin to "to the invincible Stephen Bathory, king of Poland" (inuictissimo Stephano Bathorio regi Poloniae) expressing his gratitude for reading his books (scripta namque mea tibi usque adeo probari ut in castris etiam, quotiens esset otium, otium illud te libenter in libris meis assidue uersandis consumere) (after "Opera Omnia. Tomo II. Epistolografia" by Sebastião Pinho, p. 214). Osório was a member of the royal council (Mesa da Consciência e Ordens), who advised the Cardinal-King on political matters. It cannot be excluded that the portrait of the Cardinal-King was commissioned in Venice by the Radziwill brothers, or by the Cardinal-King through their intermediary, as a gift to the royal couple of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Queen Anna Jagiellon and her husband Stephen Bathory. The painting was acquired by the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon (inventory number 2224 pint). 
Portrait of Cardinal Henry I (1512-1580), King of Portugal, aged 67 by Domenico Tintoretto, 1579, National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon.
Portrait of Stanislaus Radziwill by Alessandro Maganza
The younger of the two Radziwill brothers who visited Portugal in 1579, Stanislaus (1559-1599), was considered a very religious person, hence his later nickname Pius, meaning pious in Latin. He was a thoroughly educated person and, apart from Lithuanian, he knew several foreign languages. He translated from Greek into Polish part of the work of the Patriarch of Constantinople Gennadius Scholarius, which was published in 1586. He was also the author of a work on the main truths of the faith entitled "The Spiritual Arms of the Rightful Christian Knight" (Oręże duchowne prawowiernego rycerza chrześcijańskiego), published in Kraków in 1591.
Although the capital of Spain, Madrid, did not impress the prince ("here in Madril, apart from the royal court, there is nothing to see, a vile and filthy village", wrote Stanislaus to one of his brothers in the country), during this half-year stay on the Iberian Peninsula he and his brother were undoubtedly deeply marked by the highly religious and chivalric culture of the 16th century Spain and Portugal. The Orders of chivalry - Santiago, Calatrava, Alcántara, and Montesa in Spain and Order of Christ and Order of Avis in Portugal, originally dedicated to the warrior knights of the crusade against the Moors, served to create an elite of specially favoured nobles. Admission to these aristocratic military brotherhoods was restricted and required purity of noble blood as well as the support of former noble members, thus all Spanish and Portuguese nobles proudly display the characteristic crosses of the great chivalric orders on their portraits. Foreigners were admitted to the order as honorary knights, however they were not subject to the statutes and were excluded from the participation in the revenues (after "The British herald, or Cabinet of armorial bearings ..." by Thomas Robson, p. 88). They were not permanent members of the order, therefore, for example in the Catalog of Knights of the Order of Christ (Catálogo dos cavaleiros da ordem, published in "La bibliografía de la Orden Militar de Cristo ..." by Juan de Ávila Gijón) between 1579-1631, there is no foreign name. From Madrid, the Lithuanian travelers and their companions went on foot to Santiago de Compostela (one hundred Spanish miles), a major place of Catholic pilgrimage. Although there is no confirmation of this in the available sources, the reception of two Radziwill brothers by the King of Portugal was undoubtedly accompanied by an exchange of gifts and foreign noble guests were often honored in a special way, such as Jan Amor Tarnowski, knighted by King Manuel in Lisbon in 1516, together with two Polish companions (after "Jan Tarnowski ..." by Zdzisław Spieralski, p. 82). Stanislaus died in Passau in Germany, in 1599, during his pilgrimage to Loreto in Italy. According to his last will, he was buried in the Bernardine Church in Vilnius. His tombstone was however created much later, between 1618-1623, most likely in the workshop of the Flemish sculptor Willem van den Blocke, who worked in Gdańsk. His funerary statue was therefore based on some earlier effigies sent to Gdańsk. This tombstone was heavily damaged during the Deluge (1655-1660), when Vilnius was occupied by Russian forces, who burned down the church and killed the monks and civilians hiding in the monastery. In the National Museum of Art in Kaunas in Lithuania there is a portrait of a man with a cross of a chivalric order on his chest (oil on canvas, 61 x 48.5 cm, inventory number ČDM MŽ 139). His costume clearly dates from the 1570s and resembles some effigies of King Henry of Valois, elected monarach of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and his courtiers - tall black hat with a feather and a ruff, thus the portrait was initially considered to be his likeness. A similar cross is seen on a leaf from the Book of scriptures of the Order of Christ (Livro das escrituras da Ordem de Cristo) with the crowned coat of arms of King Sebastian of Portugal, created between 1560-1568 (Convent of Christ in Tomar) and closely resemble the badge of the order, the motto of which was "the Christian army" (Militia Christiana), gold and enamelled cross, today in the National Palace of Ajuda in Lisbon (inventory number 5190). Very similar crosses were depicted in several portraits, notably the portrait of a knight of the Order of Christ, presumed to be Vasco da Gama (1469-1524) by Portuguese or Flemish painter (Corneille de Lyon?), from the second quarter of the 16th century, and another by Portuguese painter from the second quarter of the 17th century, both in the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon (697 Pint, 71 Min). The painting can be attributed to the Flemish, Spanish or German school, however, its style is strikingly similar to the portrait of Marie de' Medici (1575-1642), Queen of France by Alessandro Maganza (1556-1632) in the Lithuanian National Museum of Art in Vilnius (LNDM T 4018), identified by me. Similarities with the likeness of Bianca Cappello (1548-1587), Grand Duchess of Tuscany (private collection) and the Virgin and Child with Saints (Nationalmuseum in Stockholm) by Maganza, can also be indicated. Like the portrait of the Queen of France, the portrait of a knight in Kaunas probably also comes from the Radziwill collection, a powerful family with extensive possessions in many countries of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1572, Maganza moved to Venice, following the advice of his friend the sculptor Alessandro Vittoria. After his marriage in 1576 he returned to Vicenza, between Padua and Verona in the Venetian Republic. Assisted by his flourishing family workshop - in which his four children were employed - he worked for clients in the Venetian cities including Verona, Brescia and Padua and in Florence - portrait of a man with his son, from the collection of Leopoldo de' Medici (1617-1675) where it was attributed to Tintoretto (1588, Uffizi Gallery, inventory 1890, n. 940) or the Feast of Herod (Pitti Palace, Palatina 387). Based on all these facts, the portrait could be identified as an effigy of a Portuguese knight by Maganza, if not a striking resemblance of the sitter to the portrait of Stanislaus Radziwill in the Wilanów Palace in Warsaw (Wil.1222). This portrait is an 18th century copy of an earlier effigy that has not been preserved, possibly by a Venetian painter, and was signed in Latin (STANISLAVS RADZIWILL D.G.DVX IN OŁIKA ET NIESWIEZ ...). He was depicted in a ruff and armor engraved with gold, as in his other known likenesses - a drawing in the State Hermitage Museum (ОР-45854) from the mid-17th century and a painting in the Lviv Historical Museum from the late 18th century. The painting was most likely created or commissioned in Vicenza in 1579 during Stanislaus' trip from Milan to Venice. If from that date Maganza and his workshop worked mainly for customers from Poland-Lithuania, many of his works were destroyed due to the wars and invasions that the country experienced in the following eras. 
Portrait of Stanislaus Radziwill (1559-1599) with the cross of the Portuguese Order of Christ by Alessandro Maganza, ca. 1579, National Museum of Art in Kaunas.
Portraits of Katarzyna Tęczyńska by Francesco Montemezzano and workshop of Alessandro Maganza
Another portrait of the member of the Radziwill family close to the style of Alessandro Maganza (before 1556-1632) is now in the National Museum in Warsaw (oil on canvas, 133 x 88.5 cm, 128854 MNW). It depict Katarzyna (Catherine) Tęczyńska (1544/5-1592), daughter of Stanisław Gabriel Tęczyński, voivode of Kraków, and Anna Bogusz. The family of Count Tęczyński was one of the most influential and wealthy families of the Polish kingdom (Imperial counts from 1527). At the age of 14 or 15, in May 1558, she married Ruthenian Prince Yuri Olelkovich-Slutsky (ca. 1531-1578). Yuri was Orthodox, and Katarzyna, although Catholic, was well versed in Orthodox worship, as her mother was also Orthodox. Faith was not an obstacle in Poland-Lithuania before the Counter-Reformation. She received a rich dowry of 20,000 zlotys including silverware, pearls and jewelry worth 13,000 zlotys and 10,000 in cash. She bore 3 sons to her husband and when he died in 1578 she managed principalities and many estates until her sons come of age. In addition, she received additional lands from the king.
Three years later, in 1581, Katarzyna remarried. The wealthy widow chose younger Christopher Nicolaus Radziwill (1547-1603), nicknamed "the Thunderbolt", Field Hetman of Lithuania. She became his third wife and gave birth to two of his children. She died on March 19, 1592. The Warsaw painting most likely comes from Tęczyn (Tenczyn) Castle and, like other portraits of members of the Tęczyński family kept in the same museum (128851, 128850, 139537), it passed after 1816 to the Potocki collection in Krzeszowice where it was enlarged and repainted. These modifications were removed during the conservation of the painting in 1986-1991. The painting was attributed to local painters from Slutsk (anonymous) or Kraków (Martin Kober) or an unknown Polish-Lithuanian workshop, but its style with blurred lines is evidently Venetian and closest to Maganza. It is not as elaborate as other paintings by the master, indicating that it was probably from a series of paintings commissioned from his workshop. Stylistically, it can be compared to the work signed by Alessandro's son, Giovanni Battista the Younger (IO: BAPT. MAGAN. / P.) in the church of Santa Corona in Vicenza, depicting the League against the Turks in 1571. It was painted in the late 16th century or early 17th century, hence the portraits of King Philip II of Spain, Pope Pius V and Doge Alvise Mocenigo were modeled on other effigies. Tęczyńska is dressed as a widow in a Polish-style black dress with white sleeves and a transparent veil called rańtuch or rąbek. She also wears a ruff, very similar to that in the portrait of Queen Anna Jagiellon in Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum, SK-A-3891). The large Latin inscription above her head: "In the year of the Lord 1580. Catherine, Countess of Tęczyn, by the grace of God, Princess of Slutsk, 35 years old" (ANNO DOMINI M.DL XXX. / CATHERINA COMES A THENCZN DEI / GRATIA DVCISSA SLVCENSIS ÆTATIS / SVÆ XXXV AÑO.) and the coat of arms were probably added later. The painting was most likely commissioned by the widow as a gift for her relatives. Although in the majority of her surviving effigies she is dressed as a widow (a drawing in the Hermitage Museum, ОР-45851 and a print from Icones familiæ ducalis Radivilianæ ...), similar to some effigies of Queen Bona Sforza and of Queen Anna Jagiellon, this does not mean that she was always a widow or that she always dressed as such. The list of jewels of Princess Olelkovich-Slutska written on April 16, 1580 in Slutsk (AGAD, 1/354/0/26/949), lists many of her jewels such as six necklaces, including "a necklace in which rubies twenty eight, diamonds seven, pearls twenty" and 21 pendant crosses set with precious stones. She undoubtedly also had more exquisite dresses. Some surviving inventories of the Radziwill family indicate that they possessed the most elaborate works of art created in Europe and imported from the Orient. Silverware, weapons and fabrics prevail as the most valuable, but sometimes female dresses and paintings are mentioned. Register of armours and jewels belonging to Katarzyna's second husband Christopher Nicolaus Radziwill from 1584 (Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw - AGAD, 1/354/0/26/5) contains only one portrait - the image of his third wife Katarzyna Tęczyńska (Obraz Jey Mći), as well as 10 large Venetian tapestries (Opon weneczkich wielkich iedwabnych - Dziesieć) and 12 tapestries "with faces", made in Poland-Lithuania (Opon s twarzami domowey roboty - dwanaseci). It also includes the dresses of two of his deceased wives Katarzyna Sobek - 4 black velvet dresses, one embroidered with silver thread (snurkiem srebrnym obwiedziony) and many other exquisite dresses of his second wife Katarzyna Ostrogska, daughter of Zofia Tarnowska, including a red velvet dress (Hazuka Axamitna wzorzysta czyrwona), Spanish dress of red gold cloth (Hazuka Hiszpanska złotogłowowa czyrwona), a Spanish robe of red gold cloth with a smaller pattern and 52 gold clasps (Szata czyrwonego złotogłowu drobnieyszego Hispanska ... w niey feretow zlotych piecdziesiat dwa) and 7 for summer, one of white satin embroidered with gold thread (Lietnik Atłassowy biały z bramami drobnemi ... złotym snurkiem obwiedzione) and two of silver and gold cloth - blue and dark brown (Lietnik srebrogłowowy blekitny czałowity, Lietnik złotogłowowy bronatny czałowity). Register of a part of belongings of the same Christopher Nicolaus, made in 1600 (AGAD, 1/354/0/26/7), lists 2 large Venetian tapestries (Opon weneckich wielkich II) and 3 small tapestries made in Poland-Lithuania (oponek domowey roboty ... 3), several old tapestries "with faces" (opon staroswieckich stwarzami) and female dresses (Szaty białogłowskie). Register of property of Prince Boguslaus Radziwill (1620-1669) from 1657 (AGAD, 1/354/0/26/79.2), lists many paintings from his collection including several by Cranach, Italian and Dutch paintings and Ruthenian icons (Siedm obrazow ruskich). The mentions about the paintings are very general which confirms their lesser value: "Two Paintings of Saints on Copper", "23. Long Drawer with a picture of Susanna, a picture of a naked woman, the second picture also of a woman", "24. A drawer with different paintings in frames 28 pieces ...", "33. A drawer with five paintings", "34. A drawer with a battle painted on copper", "25. A drawer with a large painting of a woman on canvas, ebony frame", "19. A drawer with ten Italian paintings in frames and one of Queen Barbara [Radziwill], nine various paintings without frames", "45. A drawer with two small old paintings", "53. A drawer with six paintings of women without frames, one of a male Radziwill without frame, four paintings with frames", "57. A drawer with thirteen Italian paintings", "58. A drawer with fourteen different paintings", "Two images", "Nine pictures" ... etc. An effigy of "Katarzyna Tęczyńska, wife of Prince Christopher" (111) is mentioned among the paintings from the collection of Princess Louise Charlotte Radziwill (1667-1695), inventoried in 1671 (after "Inwentarz galerii obrazów Radziwiłłów z XVII w." by Teresa Sulerzyska). Tęczyńska's face can also be identified in another painting from the Venetian school. She has larger lips as in the Icones familiæ ducalis Radivilianæ ..., but the general resemblance of the face to the Warsaw painting is striking. She is dressed in a Venetian summer dress of very expensive gold cloth and holds a small dog, a symbol of marital fidelity. The landscape behind her probably symbolizes her vast lands. This painting, now in the Harvard Art Museums - Fogg Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts (oil on canvas, 125.5 x 105.8 cm, inventory number 1917.220), was donated in 1917 by Edward Waldo Forbes (1873- 1969), American art historian and the director of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University from 1909 to 1944. Its earlier history is unknown. The work is dated around 1580 and was previously attributed to Antonio Badile (1516-1560), Paolo Caliari, called Veronese (1528-1588) and now to Francesco Montemezzano (1555 - after 1602), who painted the portraits of Queen Anna Jagiellon, identified by me. The same workshops (Maganza and Montemezzano) also painted the effigies of Princess Elizabeth Euphemia Radziwill née Vyshnevetska (1569-1596). 
Portrait of Katarzyna Tęczyńska (d. 1592), Princess of Slutsk, aged 35 by workshop of Alessandro Maganza, 1580, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of Katarzyna Tęczyńska (d. 1592), Princess of Slutsk with a dog by Francesco Montemezzano, ca. 1580-1584, Harvard Art Museums. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portraits of Count Stanisław Górka by Anthonis Mor and Adriaen Thomasz. Key
On February 14, 1580 a synod of the Protestants was held in Poznań, presided over by Count Stanisław Górka (1538-1592), voivode of Poznań (Stanislaus Comes a Gorka Palatinus Posnanienis - according to inscription on his tomb monument), one of the leaders of the Lutherans in Greater Poland. German Paulus Gericius and Polish Jan Enoch, ministers of the Lutheran church in Poznań, opposed the merger and any unity with the Bohemian Brethren, the so-called Sandomierz Consensus (Consensus Sendomiriensis), an agreement reached in 1570 between a number of Protestant groups in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. At the synod, the Sandomierz Consensus was confirmed again, and the voivode rebuked the troublemakers (after "Wiadomość historyczna o Dyssydentach ..." by Józef Łukaszewicz, p. 103).
Stanisław was a son of Barbara Kurozwęcka (d. 1545) and Andrzej I Górka (1500-1551), an envoy who has studied and traveled abroad and made a close friendship with Duke Albert of Prussia (1490-1568), who visited him in Poznań during his meeting with Duke Frederick II of Legnica (1480-1547). The Górkas were Imperial counts (title granted by Emperor Charles V in 1520 or 1534). Between 1554-1555 Stanisław studied at the University of Wittenberg. In 1557 he participated in the campaign of the Polish-Lithuanian army against the Livonian Order and in 1565 he took part in the Livonian War. After death of Sigismund II Augustus in 1572 he supported the candidacy of the High Burgrave of Bohemia William of Rožmberk and then the French prince Henry of Valois during the royal election. In 1573, after the death of his elder brother Łukasz III (d. 1573), Stanisław received the post of voivode of Poznań. In 1574 he met Henry of Valois on the border of the Commonwealth and he entertained him in Kórnik. He initially stongly opposed the the camp of "Cezarians" (imperial supporters), and sided with the nobles shouting that they prefer the devil to a Habsburg (after "Infuły i szyszaki ..." by Amelia Lączyńska, p. 188), but eventually he sided with them (from about 1578) and in 1588 he fought at Byczyna against Jan Zamoyski. From then on, he was in opposition to the king until the end of his life. His marriage to Jadwiga Sobocka remained childless and as a result the Górka family died out in the male line. His huge estates together with Kórnik became the property of his nephew Jan Czarnkowski (d. 1618/19). Stanisław maintained contacts with leaders of the Lutheran community, like Philip Melanchthon and Duke Albert of Prussia and during the second interregnum, he was even considered as a candidate for the throne. In 1573, he came into conflict with the chapter of the Poznań cathedral. It was about refusing the burial of his brother Łukasz III, an ardent Lutheran, in the family chapel in the Poznań cathedral. He decided to build a new chapel in the family seat in Kórnik, a Protestant mausoleum modelled on royal Sigismund Chapel in Kraków (after "Rezydencja Stanisława Górki ..." by Katarzyna Janicka, pp. 93, 103, 105). Eight years before his death, in 1584, he signed a contract with Dutch sculptor Hendrik Horst (d. 1612), active in Lviv, to whom he commissioned the execution of marble-alabaster tombstones for himself and his brothers Łukasz (d. 1573) and Andrzej II (d. 1583) and an alabaster crucifix. At that time, Horst and his workshop also worked on tombstones of voivodes of Ruthenia in Berezhany (1582-1586). Large quantities of Lviv alabaster were imported to Poznań and Kórnik - only in 1592 three coachmen from Skierniewice delivered to "Stheinszneider [stone cutter] Henryk [Hendrik Horst]" 30 pieces of "Ruthenian marble" for the mausoleum (after "Mauzoleum Górków w Kórniku" by Jan Harasimowicz, p. 290). This commission, completed after the death of Stanisław Górka by his nephew Jan Czarnkowski, has not survived in its original form as Kórnik suffered particularly severely during the Deluge (1655-1660), when the army of the Elector of Brandenburg stationed there. Later the mausoleum was transformed into a Marian chapel between 1735-1737. The count was one of the richest men of that time in the Commonwealth. His fortune consisted of the property of the Górkas in Greater Poland, Lesser Poland and in Ruthenia. Stanisław and his brother Andrzej also actively participated in the grain trade in the 1570s by sending transports to Pomerania (after "Studia z dziejów Ziemi lubuskiej" by Władysław Korcz, p. 116). Almost throughout the 16th century, Poland enjoyed an excellent grain boom, therefore Venice and the Duchy of Tuscany, affected by crop failures and famine in the western Mediterranean, became directly interested in import of Polish grain, however, the transport was organized by the Dutch (after "Ceny, płace i koszty utrzymania ..." by Antoni Mączak, p. 763), who also controlled the grain trade in Pomerania. Much of the grain also went to the Netherlands, so luxury goods were acquired and ordered there. Already in the Middle Ages, wealthy patrons from Poland recognized the quality of Netherlandish craftsmanship. Janusz Suchywilk (d. 1382), Chancellor and Archbishop of Gniezno and Andrzej Bniński (1396-1479), Bishop of Poznań, ordered their tomb slabs in Flanders (after "Polskie nagrobki gotyckie" by Przemysław Mrozowski, pp. 47, 90). The monument to Andrzej I and Barbara Górka née Kurozwęcka in Poznań Cathedral, founded by Andrzej II, was created in Kraków by Girolamo Canavesi from Milan and transported to Poznań. The Latin inscription on the cornice at eye level is an advertisement of his workshop in Kraków - "The work of Girolamo Canavesi, who lives in Kraków at St. Florian's Street, in the year of the Lord 1574" (Opus Hieronimi Canavexi qui manet Cracoviae in platea S. Floriani A.D. 1574). The residences of the Górkas in Poznań and Kórnik were also filled with exquisite works of art. "The house was decorated with so much gold, silver, and [Flemish?] tapestries that it would not easily be inferior to any prince's [abode] in all its ornamentation", describes the Górka Palace in Poznań a chronicler after the meeting concerning the situation of Protestants in Prussia, Germany, Greater Poland and Silesia in November 1543. Following the example of the kings, Stanisław maintained his own music band and his house in Poznań was called "the house of weddings and music" (dom godów i muzyki). German composer Hermann Finck (1527-1558) dedicated his five volumes of Practica Mvsica on musical theory and the performance of vocal music, published in Wittenberg in 1556, to Górka brothers (DOMINIS COMITIBVS A GORCA MAGNIFICO DOMINO LVCAE PALATINO BRZESTENSI, ANDREAE & Stanislao Buscensibus ...) and addressed a separate dedication to Stanisław (Fuit eximia erga me quoque liberalitas Celsitudinis tuae, Ilustris Domine Stanislæ). In the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, there is a portrait of a man by Adriaen Thomasz. Key (oil on panel, 86 x 63 cm, inventory number 3621). It was signed by the painter (monogram on the book: ATK) and comes from the bequest of painter Paul Hamman, purchased from Thomas Agnew & Sons gallery in London in 1902. The man in a strict pose and attire, like a judge, holds his hand on a book, possibly a bible, as if indicating that what is written in it is the most important. There are several rings on a pointing finger of his left hand one of which is clearly a signet ring with his coat of arms (indistinct), so the man is a wealthy aristocrat. According to Latin inscription in upper part of the painting he was 42 in 1580 (1580. / ÆTA.42.), exaclty as Count Stanisław Górka, when he presided the synod of the Protestants in Poznań. Exact, reduced copy of this painting was sold in New York in 2003 (oil on paper on panel, 82 x 48.5 cm, sold at Christie's on January 24, 2003, lot 52). The same man was depicted in a "Portrait of a gentleman" (Retrato de caballero) in a Dutch-style frame in carved, ebonized and polychromed wood imitating tortoiseshell, sold in Seville (oil on canvas, 44 x 33 cm, Isbilya Subastas, June 22, 2022, lot 80). The shape of his small ruff is typical of Western European fashion in the 1560s, similar to that seen in a portrait of a gentleman with a hunting dog by Anthonis Mor dated '1569' (signed upper left: Antonius mor pingebat a. 1569, National Gallery of Art in Washington, 1937.1.52). The painting is attributed to the Italian school of the 17th century, however, stylistically the closest is the portrait of Martín de Gurrea y Aragón (1526-1581), Duke of Villahermosa and count of Ribagorza, attributed to circle of Anthonis Mor, which was before 1935 in Vienna (Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, NM 3233). Similar soft brushstrokes are also seen in other works attributed to Mor - portrait of Giovanni Battista di Castaldo (Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum) and portrait of Alfonso d'Avalos (Czartoryski Museum). The shape of the man's ear from the Seville portrait is slightly different from Key's paintings, however comparison with the portraits of King Philip II by Mor and his studio indicates that even the same painter and his entourage were not so strict in this regard. The portrait sold in Seville is in fact a copy of a painting attributed to Mor, the existence of which was notified to me by ArteDelToro on February 2, 2024. This "Portrait of a Gentleman, bust-length, in a dark slashed doublet and ruff" was sold in 1998 in London (oil on panel, 42.5 x 32.4 cm, Christie's, auction 5944, April 24, 1998, lot 44). The monogram incised on the reverse testifies that it belonged to Don Gaspar Méndez de Haro (1629-1687), 7th Marquis of Carpio. The marquis, who died in Naples, was an important art collector and acquired many splendid paintings in Italy, including several works by Tintoretto, Christ Crowned with Thorns by Antonello da Messina (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 32.100.82) or the Adoration of the Child by Lorenzo Lotto with disguised portrait of Catherine Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus as Saint Catherine (National Museum in Kraków, MNK XII-A-639). He also owned the portrait of John Sigismund Zapolya, King of Hungary by Tintoretto and the portrait of Clara of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1550-1598), Duchess of Pomerania by Giovanni Battista Moroni, identified by me. Anthonis traveled widely and painted the most important monarchs and aristocrats of Western Europe. Perhaps his visit to Poland or Stanisław Górka's stay in Antwerp are yet to be discovered, but as with many of his portraits of monarchs, the painter and his studio had to rely heavily on preparatory drawings, similar to sculptors creating tombstones with carvings of the deceased. Wanting and expecting high quality, the count could send drawings by local or court artists, similar to Clouet's crayons, to Antwerp or painting workshops to sent their pupils to different places (including to Poznań), as Cranach and most likely Canavesi did, to create initial drawings. The man in the described portraits bears a strong resemblance to the voivode of Poznań from his funerary monument in Kórnik, effigy of his great-grandfather Andrzej Szamotulski (d. 1511), voivode of Poznań as a donor (Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, Saint Andrew and Saint Jerome, ca. 1521, Collegiate Church in Szamotuły) and his grandfather Łukasz II Górka (1482-1542), general starost of Greater Poland as a donor (Annunciation by Master of Szamotuły, 1529, Kórnik Castle, founded by Łukasz II to the Górka Chapel at the Poznań Cathedral). 
Portrait of Count Stanisław Górka (1538-1592) by Anthonis Mor, 1560s, Private collection.
Portrait of Count Stanisław Górka (1538-1592) by circle of Anthonis Mor, 1560s, Private collection.
Portrait of Count Stanisław Górka (1538-1592), voivode of Poznań, aged 42 by Adriaen Thomasz. Key, 1580, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels.
Portrait of Count Stanisław Górka (1538-1592), voivode of Poznań by Adriaen Thomasz. Key, ca. 1580, Private collection.
Portraits of Nicolaus Christopher Radziwill "the Orphan" by Domenico Tintoretto and Francesco Bassano
Around 1550 in Lukiškės, a part of the city of Vilnius, located to the west and southwest of the Old Town, Nicolaus "the Black" Radziwill (1515-1565), cousin of Queen Barbara, built a magnificent renaissance villa or a summer manor house, beautifully located in the bend of the Neris river, surrounded by the steep banks of the river and a pine forest. The estate was owned by the Radziwill family from 1522 and called Radziwill Lukiškės, later Vingis in Lithuanian or Zakręt in Polish, both meaning a bend or a curve.
Lukiškės (Łukiszki in Polish) took its name from the name of a merchant, Łuka Pietrowicz, most probably a Ruthenian, who founded a settlement here in the 14th century in the land given to him by Vytautas the Great. It was also here that Vytautas settled the Tatars, who had their mosque in Lukiškės, and in the 15th century the district was also called Tatar Lukiškės (after "Przewodnik po Wilnie" by Władysław Zahorski, p.83). Nicolaus "the Black", the strongest supporter of the Reformation in Lithuania, arranged a chapel for the Calvinists in one of the rooms. Protestants were active in the manor in the years 1553-1561, and the estate became the cradle of the Reformation in Lithuania. "In a room covered with a pall, in front of a table on which there were branched candlesticks with three Graces of Greek mythology, Czechowicz with Wędrychowski, Catholic priests in the past, taught from the pulpit the Lithuanian nobility", wrote Teodor Narbutt in his work published in Vilnius in 1856 ("Pomniejsze pisma historyczne szczególnie do historyi Litwy odnoszące się", p. 66). In 1558 a reformed school also started operating in the palace. Nicolaus "the Black" died in Lukiškės in May 28/29, 1565 and the estate was inherited by his sons. The eldest, Nicolaus Christopher Radziwill "the Orphan" (1549-1616), received his primary education in Lukiškės in the Protestant gymnasium founded by his father. "In the 1550s and the 1560s the palace in Lukiškės was one of the most important centers of political, religious and cultural life of the then Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth" (after "Miles Christianus et peregrinus: fundacje Mikołaja Radziwiłła "Sierotki" w ordynacji nieświeskiej" by Tadeusz Bernatowicz, p. 139). Between 1566-1574, the sons of Nicolaus "the Black" converted from Calvinism to Catholicism. According to legend, Nicolaus Christopher received the nickname "the Orphan" in early childhood. Allegedly, once the King Sigismund Augustus found the child left unattended in one of the rooms of the royal palace, he caressed the child saying: "poor orphan". On June 20, 1569 he was granted the post of Court Marshal of Lithuania. Soon "the Orphan" became close to the king and carried out his personal assignments until his death. In 1567, Nicolaus Christopher "the Orphan" inherited his father's estate and became the guardian of his younger brothers and sisters. He was a capable diplomat and in 1573, he headed the embassy to Paris to Henry of Valois. The journey at the turn of 1573 and 1574 lasted six months. After returning to the Commonwealth, he fell seriously ill and vowed to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land as soon as his health allowed. It is believed that Nicolaus Christopher was ill with gout and some kind of venereal disease. He set out in the autumn of 1580 and after treatment near Padua and Lucca, he spent the entire spring of 1581 in Venice, also visiting Padua and Bologna. There was a plague in the Middle East at that time, so "the Orphan" changed his plans and returned the Commonwealth in April 1581. In 1582 he again left for Italy, from where in 1583 he went to the Holy Land. Together with his brothers Albert (1558-1592) and Stanislaus (1559-1599), he created the Nesvizh, Kletsk and Olyka entails in 1586, becoming the first Nesvizh ordynat. He was also Grand Marshal of Lithuania from 1579 and castellan of Trakai from 1586. In 1584 Stanislaus, nicknamed "the Pious", first ordynat of Olyka, offered part of the Lukiškės estate to the Jesuits and in 1593 he also donated the remaining part of the Lukiškės estate with the palace and other buildings. Jesuit Lukiškės became the intellectual and cultural center of Vilnius at that time. In the years 1593-1774, traditional ceremonies of conferring academic degrees were held there. From 1646, there was a garden of medicinal herbs, and tinctures and mixtures were sold in the Jesuit Academic Pharmacy. In March 1647 the Jesuits offered a sumptuous feast in the villa in Lukiškės to the royal couple, Ladislaus IV and Marie Louise Gonzaga, who visited the academy. Between 1655 and 1660, during the Deluge, like much of the capital of Lithuania, Lukiškės and Tatar estates were destroyed. In the place of a manor house or near to it, in the years 1757-1761, the Jesuits built a baroque three-story palace to design by Johann Christoph Glaubitz. According to Teodor Narbutt ("Pomniejsze pisma historyczne szczególnie do historyi Litwy odnoszące się", p. 66-67), in the chapel in the left wing of the palace there was a beautiful painting of the "Three Marys going to the tomb of the Savior, painted by the Italian school", possibly from the Radziwill collection, lost after 1793. During his stays in Venice in 1580 or 1582 "the Orphan" commissioned a marble altar of the Holy Cross, created in 1583, which was originally intended for the parish church in Nesvizh, built in the years 1581-1584, later moved to the new Corpus Christi Church, constructed between 1587-1593 by Gian Maria Bernardoni. The altar is attributed to Girolamo Campagna (1549-1625), a sculptor from Verona and a pupil of Jacopo Sansovino, and a signature of his collaborator Cesare Franco (Franchi, Francus, Francho) from Padua is visible on the base: CESARE DE FRANCHI PATAVINO OPVS FEC ... /...CHI LAPICIDA VENETIIS 1583. The sculptures were probably transported to Nievizh in 1586, and the permit issued by the Doge of Venice, Pasquale Cicogna (1509-1595), for the transport of marbles probably concerns the altar of the Holy Cross (after "Rzeźby Campagni i Franco w Nieświeżu a wczesny barok" by Tadeusz Bernatowicz, p. 31) or other sculptures commissioned in Venice. Marble bust of a painter Francesco Bassano the Younger (1549-1592), the eldest son of Jacopo and brother of Leandro, from his tombstone in the church of San Francesco in Bassano (today in the Museo Civico di Bassano del Grappa), created in about 1592, is also attributed to Campagna as well as bust of Christopher Nicolaus Radziwill (1590-1607), Nicolaus Christopher's son, in the Corpus Christi Church in Nesvizh. Letter from courtier Rafał Kos of February 1, 1594 (AGAD reference number: 1/354/0/5/7374) written from Venice, which mentions a painter named Mazzuola, confirms that paintings were imported from Venice by Nicolaus Christopher "the Orphan" (after "W poszukiwaniu utraconej tożsamości" by Jolanta Meder-Kois, Izabella Wiercińska). Portrait of young man in a black coat lined with lynx fur and with a landscape visible in the distance through a window, was acquired by the Pushkin Museum in Moscow in the 1930s from an unknown source as the work of the painter from the Bassano circle (inventory number 2842). It is today attributed to Domenico Tintoretto (1560-1635), the eldest son of Jacopo, who from 1578 was already involved in Tintoretto's Gonzaga cycle and participated in the redecoration of the Doge's Palace between 1580 and 1584. The man presents his estate which resemble greatly the topography of the Vingis estate (Radziwill Lukiškės) in Vilnius, depicted on a map created in 1646 (collection of the Vilnius University), as well as on watercolor paintings by Seweryn Karol Smolikowski created in 1832 (National Museum in Warsaw, inventory number Rys.Pol.14339 MNW and Rys.Pol.14340 MNW), and by Marceli Januszkiewicz created in 1836 (National Museum of Lithuania). The architecture of his Italian-style villa is similar to the pavillons of the Radziwill Palace in Vilnius, the larger palace of the Calvinist branch of the family, depicted in 1653 medal by Sebastian Dadler. There is a church or a chapel far in the background with high tower, similar to that visible on 1646 map of Lukiškės (F), undoubtedly a Catholic temple. It can be assumed that it symbolizes the triumph of Catholicism over the cradle of the Reformation in Lithuania. The young man from the portrait is therefore the eldest son of Nicolaus "the Black", Nicolaus Christopher "the Orphan". He was depicted in very similar costume and in similar compositon (window, table) in a print created by Tomasz Makowski in Nesvizh in 1604 - Panegyric of the Skorulski brothers (Jan, Zachariasz and Mikołaj) on the occasion of receiving the office of voivode of Vilnius by Nicholaus Christopher (National Museum in Kraków, inventory number MNK III-ryc.-36976). The same man, in similar costume, was also represented in another painting which was attributed to Domenico Tintoretto - Portrait of a man holding his right hand on his heart. This work comes from the collection of Géza von Osmitz (1870-1967) in Bratislava (sold in Vienna, 12 March 1920, lot 68). The style of this painting is more close to the Bassanos, especially portrait of King Stephen Bathory by Francesco Bassano the Younger from the Ambras Castle, identified by me. The man from both described portraits bear a great resemblance to effigies of Nicolaus Christopher, all created in his later age, like engraving by Lukas Kilian, created in Augsburg in about 1610 (National Library in Warsaw, inventory number G.10401) or engraving by Dominicus Custos, published in 1601, after a drawing by the Veronese painter Giovanni Battista Fontana (1541-1587), who decorated the walls of the Spanish Hall at Ambras (Lithuanian Art Museum, inventory number LDKVR VR 667). A two sided miniature in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (inventory number 1890, 4051, oil on copper, 10.2 cm) is on one side a reduced and simplified version of the painting by Bassano, showing the man in a similar pose but with a different hairstyle. Both portraits, although close to miniatures by the Bassanos in the Uffizi (1890, 4072, 9053, 9026), also relate to works of Sofonisba Anguissola, who moved to Sicily (1573), and later Pisa (1579) and Genoa (1581). 
Portrait of Nicolaus Christopher Radziwill "the Orphan" (1549-1616) with a view of the Vingis estate (Radziwill Lukiškės) in Vilnius by Domenico Tintoretto, 1580-1586, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.
Portrait of Nicolaus Christopher Radziwill "the Orphan" (1549-1616) by Francesco Bassano the Younger or workshop, 1580-1586, Private collection.
Miniature portrait of Nicolaus Christopher Radziwill "the Orphan" (1549-1616) by workshop of the Bassanos or Sofonisba Anguissola, 1580-1586, Uffizi Gallery.
Portrait of Gustav Eriksson Vasa by Sofonisba Anguissola
In 1575 another inconvenient royal child was sent to be raised abroad, this time from Sweden to Poland. In August 1563 King Eric XIV of Sweden imprisoned Catherine Jagiellon, Duchess of Finland in Gripsholm Castle. She was released in 1567, but during this four-year imprisonment she gave birth to a daughter and a son, future Sigismund III. Catherine was crowned queen of Sweden in spring of 1569, when Eric was deposed. In March 1575, the Swedish Council of State decided to separate the seven-year-old boy Gustav Eriksson Vasa, the only son of Eric XIV, from his mother Karin Månsdotter, as king John III feared that the deposed Eric's followers in Sweden would use Gustav to be able to carry out their reinstatement plans. At Catherine's request her sister Anna agreed to take care of him.
He was well educated, attended the best Jesuit schools in Toruń and Vilnius and Collegium Hosianum in Braniewo. He knew many languages as well as astrology, chemistry and medicine. He travelled to Rome in 1586 and to Prague to meet Emperor Rudolf II, who learned about his chemical talent. As education and travel at that time were far more expensive than nowadays, he was not living in poverty as a prisoner or even a slave in chains in a poor and barbaric country, as some people want to believe. A small portrait of a child by Sofonisba Anguissola in profuse mannerist frame from private collection in Switzerland (oil on wood, 37 x 28 cm, Van Ham Kunstauktionen in Cologne, June 2, 2021, lot 926), shows a boy wearing an elegant black velvet doublet trimmed in gold, black hose and a black cape, like an attendant of the Jesuit school. The boy's features are very similar to these known from portraits of Eric XIV, his daughter Sigrid and to the portrait of a woman from Gripsholm Castle from about 1580, which is identified as Eric's step-sister Princess Elizabeth or his wife Karin Månsdotter. His pose and costume are almost identical with these visible in portrait of king John III of Sweden, husband of Catherine Jagiellon and Gustav Eriksson's uncle, in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, a copy of original portrait by Johan Baptista van Uther from 1582. Anguissola's portrait can be threfore dated to 1582, a year when Gustav Eriksson reached his legal age of 14, and it was commissioned by his foster mother, proud of her boy starting education, most probably as one of a series for herself, her friends in Poland and abroad. 
Portrait of Gustav Eriksson Vasa (1568-1607) by Sofonisba Anguissola, ca. 1582, Private collection.
Portrait of the Beautiful Nana and her husband by Sofonisba Anguissola
Another mysterious portrait by Anguissola from the 1580s was acquired in 1949 by the National Museum in Warsaw from private collection (oil on canvas, 60 x 48.5 cm, inventory number M.Ob.1079 MNW). It was previously attributed to Giovanni Battista Moroni and it shows a man with his daughter.
The girl is holding a flower with four petals, similar to a primrose considered as a symbol of true (faithful) love, just as in "The Primrose" by John Donne (1572-1631), to white Caucasian rockcress (Arabis caucasica) or myrtle, consecrated to Venus, goddess of love and used in bridal wreaths - Pliny call it the "nuptial myrtle" (Myrtus coniugalis, Natural History, XV 122). She wears a coral necklace, a fertility symbol in ancient Rome (after Gerald W. R. Ward's "The Grove Encyclopedia of Materials and Techniques in Art", 2008, p. 145), as in portraits of young brides by Florentine painter Domenico Ghirlandaio and in Polish folk costumes, and a symbol of protection, meant to bring good luck, as in portraits of court dwarf Magdalena Ruiz. The red-haired man with blue eyes holds firmly a hand of young blue-eyed blond girl, this is not her father, this is her husband. In 1581 Anna Jagiellon sent to her friend Bianca Cappello, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, one pretty, graceful female dwarf who could dance and sing. Monsignor Alberto Bolognetti, Bishop of Massa Marittima organized a travel for her from Warsaw through Kraków and Vienna. She was accompanied by "a Polish Gentleman named Mr. Giovanni Kobilmiczhi, and I [...] lingua Cobilnisczi, who is setting off in a carriage. I believe that the girl will feel comfortable, being highly recommended to the gentleman, and provided with whatever she needs to protect her from cold" (un Gentilhuomo Polaco nominato Signore Giovanni Kobilmiczhi, et mi [...] lingua Cobilnisczi, Il quale mettendo a viaggio in carozza. Mi credo che la fanciulla si condurrà comodamente, havendola lo massime al gentilhuomo molto raccomandata, et provista di qual che suo bisogno per difenderla dal freddo), according to the letter of February 15, 1581. The man was most probably Jan Kobylnicki, a courtier of king Stephen Bathory. Beautiful Nana (Italian for female dwarf) was probably married after her arrival to Florence, possibly even with Kobylnicki or other Pole, and it was probably the Queen who commissioned her portrait with her husband from Anguissola, who moved from Pisa near Florence to Genoa in 1581. Consequently a two-sided portrait miniature of a female dwarf and her husband in the Uffizi Gallery (oil on copper, 7.2 x 5.6 cm, Inv. 1890, n. 4086) painted in the style of Sofonisba from the same period, should be considered as effigy of parents of beautiful Nana. 
Portrait of the Beautiful Nana and her husband by Sofonisba Anguissola, ca. 1581-1582, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait miniature of mother of the Beautiful Nana by Sofonisba Anguissola, ca. 1581-1582, Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Portrait miniature of father of the Beautiful Nana by Sofonisba Anguissola, ca. 1581-1582, Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Portrait of Cardinal Alberto Bolognetti by Lavinia Fontana or studio
In a letter dated April 12, 1581 addressed to King Stephen Bathory, Pope Gregory XIII announced the appointment of Alberto Bolognetti (1538-1585), Bishop of Massa Marittima, as nuncio to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Shortly after his arrival in April 1582, Bolognetti was welcomed by Queen Anna Jagiellon at her rich wooden palace of Jazdów (Ujazdów) in Warsaw, where he admired the tapestries "made of silk and gold" left to her by her brother king Sigismund Augustus, the garden with "vines and other plants that the king had brought from Hungary", and a dining room "entirely decorated with beautiful arrases with plants and animals made of gold and silk, at the top of which was a royal canopy and under it two small tables joined together and covered with the same tablecloths" (mi condusse ad una parte ornata tutta di razzi bellisimi di boscaglie et animali pur d’oro et di seta, in capo della quale era un baldachino regale et sotto quello dui tavolini congiunti insieme et coperti dalie medesime tovaglie), which he described in a letter to Cardinal Tolomeo Gallio (1527-1607).
Alberto, born and educated in Bologna, where he obtained a doctorate in law on May 23, 1562 at the university, became a clerk and professor of civil law there. In 1574, he moved to Rome and was appointed apostolic protonotary by Pope Gregory XIII. Then he was nuncio to Grand Duke Francesco I in Florence from February 25, 1576 to September 10, 1578 and in the Republic of Venice from September 10, 1578. His departure from Venice, at the end of March 1581, was quite sudden and soon after he arrived in Rome, he left for Poland. In 1582, Bolognetti persuaded King Stephen to implement the bull of Gregory XIII which established the Gregorian calendar and to found the first Jesuit house in Kraków. Pope Gregory XIII made him a cardinal during the consistory of December 12, 1583. However, he never received the red hat or a titular church since he died before he could come to Rome for the ceremonies. In its pride at the elevation of Cardinal Alberto, the Senate of Bologna granted him an annual pension of 500 gold scudi. The cardinal died of fever at Villach in Carinthia in May 1585, while returning from Poland to participate in the papal conclave of 1585. He was buried in his family tomb in the church of Santa Maria dei Servi in Bologna. In the Wilanów Palace in Warsaw there is a portrait of Cardinal Bolognetti (oil on canvas, 125 x 92 cm, Wil.6185) presenting a letter addressed to him (All Illmo. et Rev. Mons/re / Il S. Card. Bolognetti mio sig/re Oss./mo / In Polonia), most probably the letter of appointment to the cardinalate from the pope. Therefore, it must have been created in 1583 and before 1585. The painting is mentioned in the 1893 description of the palace - "Abelardus Bolognetti, cardinal and nuncio, in Poland in 1583 under Stephen Bathory" ("Willanów, Czerniaków, Morysin ..." by Wiktor Czajewski, item 807, p. 155), after a portrait of Cardinal George Radziwill (article 804). It is possible that it was initially in the collection of Queen Anna Jagiellon in Warsaw. The painting is attributed to an Italian painter. Its style most closely resembles the portrait of Raffaele Riario, which was most likely in the Riario-Sforza collection in Rome (sold at Dorotheum in Vienna, April 24, 2018, lot 52). Raffaele holds a letter from the Duke of Bavaria in his hands and the writing style is also very similar. Riario's portrait was initially attributed to the Lombard school, then to Lavinia Fontana, a painter active in Bologna and Rome, who created the miniature portrait of King Stephen Bathory (National Museum in Kraków, MNK I-290). The pose of the model and the style of the painting are also comparable to two works signed by Lavinia - portrait of a man with a book, said to be senator Orsini, from 1575, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux (signed and dated: LAVINIA FONTANA DE ZAPPIS FACIEBAT MDLXXV, inventory number Bx E 197) and portrait of a young man at a table from Rohde-Hinze collection in Berlin, dated 1581 (LAVINIA FONT: DE ZAPPIS FAC. MDLXXXI). It is also similar to the unsigned work - portrait of Pope Gregory XIII with inscription GREGORIVS.XIII.PONT. OPT. MAX (sold at Christie's, May 18, 2017, lot 563). Therefore, as in the case of the portrait of King Bathory, the Bolognetti portrait was most likely painted by Fontana from study drawings sent from Poland. 
Portrait of Cardinal Alberto Bolognetti (1538-1585), Apostolic Legate to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by Lavinia Fontana or studio, ca. 1583, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
Portraits of Tomasz Treter by Lavinia Fontana
In 1583 Tomasz Treter (1547-1610), secretary to Cardinal Stanisław Hozjusz, published in Rome his major work Romanorvm imperatorvm effigies ... with effigies and short biographies of Roman emperors ending with Rudolf II, grandson of Anna Jagiellonica (1503-1547). He dedicated his book to King Stephen Bathory (1533-1586), elected co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as husband of Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596). The engravings in this work, among which the magnificent coat of arms of the king, were made by Giovanni Battista de Cavalieri, very probably after drawings by Treter. He was also a poet, philologist, heraldist, engraver and translator. His prints he sent to various European monarchs, including Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. He is the author of two famous engravings related to the Polish-Lithuanian monarchs - Castrum doloris of Sigismund Augustus in Rome from 1572 and Eagle with the galaxy of Polish kings also called Eagle of Treter with 44 medallions of Polish monarchs from Lech to Sigismund III, created in 1588. Together with Stanisław Pachołowiecki he developed a map of Polotsk (Descriptio Dvcatvs Polocensis), during the campaign of King Stephen Bathory in 1579, engraved by Giovanni Battista de Cavalieri (Joa. Baptista de Cauallerijs tipis aeneis incidebat Anno Domini 1580).
Treter was the son of Jakub, a bookbinder from Poznań, and Agnieszka née Różanowska and after studies in Poznań and Braniewo, he went to Rome in 1569, where he studied theology and law. Tomasz obtained a doctorate in canon law and stayed in Rome for 22 years. He was the secretary of the bishops of Warmia: Stanisław Hozjusz and Andrew Bathory. He was a canon at the Lateran and the first superior of the Polish Hospice in Rome founded by Hozjusz and between 1579-1593 he was a canon at the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome and a canon in Olomouc in Moravia. In July 1584 he returned to Poland and in December 1585 he was elected canon of Warmia. In 1586 Treter become secretary to Queen Anna Jagiellon. He then returned to Rome and was responsible for the construction of the mausoleum for queen's mother Bona Sforza in Bari. In a letter of May 26, 1590, Queen Anna informed Father Tomasz that a portrait of Bona had been sent to his address, according to which the sculptors were to recreate the features of the deceased. Father Treter was also an artistic agent of the Polish-Lithuanian monarchs. Together with Stanisław Reszka and Andrzej Próchnicki, he bought paintings for the queen and the king, collected information about their prices and new painting talents that appeared in Italy (after "Zamek Królewski" by Jerzy Lileyko, p. 113). Between 1595 and 1600 he created beautifully illustrated manuscript with 105 drawings - Theatrum virtutum ac meritorum D. Stanislai Hosii, showing the episodes in the life of Cardinal Stanisław Hozjusz (National Library of Poland, Rps BOZ 130), in some of which he probably took part, like 70. Cardinal Stanisław Hozjusz dining with his courtiers (ABSTRACTIO A SENSIBVS), 76. Cardinal Stanisław Hozjusz at the Lublin Council before King Sigismund Augustus (PRAESENTIA IN COMITIIS LVBLINENSIB) or 77. Departure for Rome (PROFECTIO ROMAM SVSCEPTA). Treter died on February 11, 1610 in Frombork in Prussia. In the collection of Michelangelo Poletti in the Castello dei Manzoli in San Martino in Soverzano near Bologna there is a portrait of a man holding a letter by Bolognese painter Lavinia Fontana (oil on canvas, 98 x 82 cm), who in about 1585 created a miniature portrait of King Stephen Bathory (National Museum in Kraków, MNK I-290). The model in the black costume sits next to a desk with an inkwell, pen and clock. The Latin inscription on the chair indicates that the painting was created in 1583 (LAVINIA FONTANA DE / ZAPPIS FACIEBAT / MDLXXXIII), when Treter published his Romanorvm imperatorvm effigies ..., at the age of 36 and shortly before his return to Poland. That year, Lavinia also painted Antonietta Gonsalvus (Antonia González), daughter of Petrus Gonsalvus ("The Hairy Man"), who was staying with her family in Bologna or Rome. The same man was also depicted in another painting by the same artist, as the style indicates. This painting is now in the Lithuanian National Museum of Art in Vilnius (oil on canvas, 36.5 x 27 cm, LNDM T 3991). It is attributed to the Venetian school of the 17th century. He also wears a black outfit, but this portrait is a less formal, private, and therefore less idealized. He has an unbuttoned collar and his ruff is smaller and more comfortable. This portrait, the owner could easily take with him to the north. 
Portrait of secretary Tomasz Treter (1547-1610) by Lavinia Fontana, 1580s, Lithuanian National Museum of Art.
Portrait of secretary Tomasz Treter (1547-1610) by Lavinia Fontana, 1583, Castello dei Manzoli.
Portraits of King Stephen Bathory in national costume by Italian painters
The majority of the surviving effigies of the king are attributed to the only painter (or his entourage/workshop) whose stay in Poland-Lithuania is confirmed - a Silesian Martin Kober from Wrocław, although stylistically some of them are very far from his confirmed works. Kober arrived in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in about 1583 from Magdeburg and became court painter to elected Queen Anna Jagiellon and her husband Stephen Bathory of Transylvania.
Only two signed works by Kober are known, but the late 16th century portraits of Sigismund III and his family, painted in a very distinctive style, can fairly be attributed to him. The signed works are a life-size portrait of King Stephen Bathory, signed with a monogram and date (MK / 15.83, Museum of the Missionary Fathers in Kraków) and a miniature likeness of Sigismund III from 1591, signed on the reverse in German (MARTINVS KÖBER RÖ : KEI : MAI : / VNDER- THENIGSTER BEFREITER MALER / VON BRESSLAV . VORFERTIGET / ZV WARSCHAV . DEN 30 APRILL . 1591., Wawel Royal Castle). After Bathory's death in 1586, Kober went abroad - from about 1587 he worked for Emperor Rudolf II in Prague and returned to Poland around 1589. In 1595 he went to Graz. The miniature portrait of King Stephen in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence is attributed to Kober (oil on panel, 17.5 x 14 cm, inv. 1890 / 8855). It was probably made in 1583 and sent to the Medicis. It is one of two known portraits of the Polish-Lithuanian monarch in this collection, the other, with the inscription: STEPHAN: / BATTORI / POL:REX, was painted by Cristofano dell'Altissimo in 1587 from an original effigy, probably by the Swiss-German artist Jost Amman (oil on panel, 59 x 42, inv. 1890 / 411). This last portrait is most likely equivalent to the mention in the general inventory of the Medici collection of 1595-1597: "N. 31 Paintings on wood with walnut frames around 1 ell high [Florentine ell - approx. 58.4 cm], that is, portraits of ordinary size [...] the Grand Captain King of Poland Stephen Bathory" (N. 31 Quadri in tavola con cornicie di nocie atorno alti braccia 1 incirca, cioè ritratti di misura ordinaria, entrovi in ciascuno li appresso ritratti, cioè [...] il Gran Capitano Re di Polonia Stefano Battorio, Inventario della Guardaroba Generale, ASF, GM 190, c. 132) among the portraits of members of the Medici family, portraits of the Duke of Bavaria, General Cappello, Pietro Aretino, Vittoria Colonna, "a prince in armor" (um Principe grande armato), a Sultana and Bianca Cappello. Among the works attributed to Kober and his circle there is also a miniature of King Stephen Bathory in the National Museum in Kraków (oil on copper, 17.4 x 14.8 cm, MNK I-290), purchased in 1909. This undated portrait was made around 1585 because it shows the king at age of 52, according to the Latin inscription at the top left in the frame (STEPHAN[US] BATORİ DE / SCHVMLAİ ∙ REX POLO/NİÆ ∙ M:[AGNUS] DVX ∙ LITHVA/NİÆ ∙ PRİNCEPS ∙ TRAN/SİLVANİÆ ∙ ANNO ∙ÆTA/TİS Lİİ). The style of this painting is very distinctive and characteristic of Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614), a woman painter active at that time in Bologna in the Papal States and particularly close to her self-portrait in the studio, painted in 1579 (oil on copper, diameter 15.7 cm, Uffizi Gallery in Florence, inv. 1890, 4013). Even the inscriptions on both miniatures were created in the same style. Since Lavinia's stay in Poland-Lithuania is not confirmed, she probably received a miniature by Kober to copy. A miniature sold in 2024 in Bonn (oil on copper, 18 x 15 cm, Von Zengen Kunstauktionen, November 22-23, 2024, lot 1471), very similar in style and composition, should also be attributed to Fontana. The way in which the tablecloth and the king's shoe in his small-format portrait in Wawel Castle (oil on panel, 80.3 x 37.7 cm, inv. ZKnW-PZS 1784) were painted is also very characteristic of Lavinia and similar to the miniature in the National Museum in Kraków. The small dots of paint give a glittering impression. As in the portrait in the National Museum, the king is depicted with fair hair. This painting was probably painted after 1584, because Bathory proudly presents his new crown and the matching sceptre ordered that year in Gdańsk according to the design by Willem van den Blocke. The preparatory design for this crown is jealously guarded by the Museum of Prints and Drawings (Kupferstichkabinett) in Berlin. A very similar painting was probably in Warsaw before World War II and the National Museum in Warsaw has an old photo of it (inv. DI 40077 MNW). As we can judge from this photo, it was painted by other painter and the closest one seems to be works by another Italian female painter, Sofonisba Anguissola. Particularly comparable is Sofonisba's portrait of a lady holding a zibellino kept in the National Art Gallery in Lviv (inv. Ж-821), which, according to my identification, is a portrait of the king's niece Griselda Bathory (1569-1590), wife of Jan Zamoyski. Another portrait of Bathory in Italian or more specifically Venetian style is in Wilanów Palace in Warsaw (oil on canvas, 108.5 x 73.8, Wil.1163, earlier 570), mentioned for the first time in an inventory from the mid-19th century. Its style is very close to the portrait of Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) kept at the National Museum in Warsaw (MP 5323) and portrait of Bianca Cappello (1548-1587), Grand Duchess of Tuscany, a friend of Anna (sold at Capitolium Art in Brescia on October 17, 2018), both by Alessandro Maganza (before 1556-1632). Also Francesco Bassano the Younger, in 1586, the eldest son of Jacopo Bassano, who worked in the Bassano family workshop in Venice with his three brothers, received a portrait of the monarch by Kober to copy. This miniature, close in style to the earlier effigy of the monarch in Italian costume (Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, GG 5775) and the portrait of a Knight of Malta in the Civic Museum in Bassano del Grappa, both attributed to Francesco Bassano the Younger, was acquired by the Wawel Royal Castle in 2013 from a private collection. It bears the Latin inscription STEPHANVS I / REX POLONIE / ANNO / 1586 and because it reproduces the same known effigy of the monarch is it also linked to Kober or his circle. This was a universal practice and two engraved effigies of Bathory by Italian engravers were created from such effigies, most likely by Kober or another artist permanently or temporarily active in Poland-Lithuania. An engraver and goldsmith active in Venice and Padua Domenico (Zenoi) Zenoni (inscription: Stepano Battori Re di Polonia ...) and another anonymous engraver, active in Italy (inscription: Questy in 2 giornate uenuto d'Alba iulia, fece solenne entrata in Cracouia ...), received such effigy in 1576 to reproduce it in their prints. Several splendid books published in Italy during Bathory's lifetime were dedicated to him. For example, Gnomonices libri octo ... by Christophorus Clavius (1538-1612), published in Rome in 1581, a treatise on gnomonics by a German Jesuit mathematician, head of the mathematicians at the Collegio Romano; Viridarivm Poetarvm ("In praise of the most serene and powerful D. D. Stephen, King of Poland") by Ippolito Zucconelli (Hippolytus Zucconelli), published in Venice in 1583; Romanorvm imperatorvm effigies ... by Tomasz Treter with engravings by Giovanni Battista de Cavalieri, published in Rome in 1583; Bernardini Parthenii Spilimbergii In Q. Horatii Flacci Carmina ... by Bernardino Partenio (1498-1588), complete text of the annotated works of Horace published in Venice in 1584; Antiqvitatvm Romanarvm (Treatise on Roman Antiquities) by Paolo Manuzio (Paulus Manutius, 1512-1574), published in Bologna in 1585, with a beautiful engraving with the portrait of the king made by the Venetian engraver Giacomo Franco (1550-1620); Iacobi Zabarellae Patavini Opera Logica in hac Secunda Editione ... (collected logical works) by Jacopo Zabarella (1533-1589), published in Venice in 1586. Based on lectures by the Italian philologist, physician and professor at the University of Padua Girolamo Mercuriale (1530-1606), Wojciech Szeliga of Warsaw (Albertus Scheligius Vbarschauiensis, d. 1585) developed a textbook of toxicology De venenis et morbis venenosis tractatvs ..., which was published in Venice in 1584, and was also dedicated to King Stephen Bathory. Presumed portrait of Mercuriale, which, besides Szeliga, also counted among its disciples Jan Hieronim Chrościejewski of Poznań (Iohannis Chrosczieyoioskii, d. 1627/28), was painted by Lavinia Fontana around 1589 (The Walters Art Museum, inv. 37.1106). 
Portrait of Stephen Bathory (1533-1586), elected co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in national costume by workshop of Alessandro Maganza, ca. 1583, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
Miniature portrait of Stephen Bathory (1533-1586), elected co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, at the age of 52, in national costume by Lavinia Fontana, ca. 1585, National Museum in Kraków.
Miniature portrait of Stephen Bathory (1533-1586), elected co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in national costume by Lavinia Fontana or studio, ca. 1585, Private collection.
Portrait of Stephen Bathory (1533-1586), elected co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in national costume by Lavinia Fontana or studio, ca. 1584-1586, Wawel Royal Castle.
Portrait of Stephen Bathory (1533-1586), elected co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in national costume by Sofonisba Anguissola, ca. 1584-1586, lost during World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Miniature portrait of Stephen Bathory (1533-1586), elected co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in national costume by Francesco Bassano the Younger, 1586, Wawel Royal Castle.
Portrait of Queen Anna Jagiellon in coronation robes and portrait of King Stephen Bathory in armour
The full-length portrait of the elected queen of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) in coronation robes in the burial chapel of the last Jagiellons - the Sigismund Chapel of Wawel Cathedral, is one of the best-documented portraits of the Jagiellon period. Two letters from the queen with several detailed information concern this portrait, it bears a detailed inscription in the lower part and can also be found in the inventories of the royal chapel. Despite that there are many ambiguities concerning this painting. In particular, the date of execution is unclear and the name of the painter is unknown.
On March 22, 1586, the Queen sent a letter from Warsaw to Father Stanisław Zając, the superior of the Rorantists at Wawel Cathedral, in which she wrote: "We are sending to Y.R. [Your Reverence] the image of our face through Czeleiowski [Celejowski, probably a member of the Celli family from Venice], Łobzów [royal palace] official. When you take this image, Y.R., without giving it anywhere from your home or showing it, but to craftsmen and at your home, not elsewhere, you will have frames made for it as shapely as possible". The Queen asked to add the coat of arms and an inscription at the bottom, a faithful reproduction of the inscription sent on a separate card with the letter. She also asked for a curtain (velum) protecting the portrait from dust and "for other reasons" (dla prochu i dla innych przyczyn), suspended from a golden rod and golden rings to be added in the upper part. All this must be done quickly (jakoby to wszystko dobrze, porządnie, grzecznie a rychło, after "Kaplica Zygmuntowska ..." by Antoni Franaszek, Bolesław Przybyszewski, p. 55). In a letter dated June 19, 1586, the queen concludes: "The image that we sent, that it is ready, we see with pleasure; and what Y.R. spend for it, Sebastian Montelupi, to pay, we send him a letter. This image, as we have previously announced, we want it to be placed in the same place where we have ordered it. And so that no one bows before it, let it always be well covered, and never uncovered, unless someone insists very much to see it" (after "Jagiellonki polskie w XVI. wieku ..." by Alexander Przezdziecki, Volume 4, p. 303-304). The work of several "craftsmen" lasted almost three months. The mentioned inscription, which is visible in the lower part of the painting, states that "she looked like this" at her coronation on May 1, 1576 (TALİS APARVIT. / ANNO CHRISTI DOMİNİ M. D. LXXVI KAL. MAII. HORA, XVII.). Based on this, it is believed that the queen sent her portrait made in 1576 from Warsaw to which coat of arms and an inscription were added. However, all this information can also be interpreted to mean that a faithful portrait of the queen's face was sent to Kraków, on the basis of which a full-length portrait was made. The Latin inscription under the portrait could refer only to the costume and not to the face of the model. Another portrait of the queen has been preserved in the chapel, depicting her kneeling in widow's dress, made after the death of Anna's husband, Stephen Bathory (December 12, 1586). This portrait is similar to the painting now in Wawel Castle attributed to Martin Kober and purchased in 1936 from the Imperial collection in Vienna (inv. ZKnW-PZS 1424). While in the kneeling portrait and in the portrait from the Imperial collection the queen has blue eyes, in the portrait in coronation dress, as in the miniature by Lucas Cranach the Younger in the Czarotyski Museum (inv. MNK XII-545), her eyes are brown. Moreover, in the kneeling portrait, which was undoubtedly painted later than the coronation portrait, her face is fuller and she looks younger. A copy of the coronation portrait, probably from the 19th century, with several differences, including in the face of the model, the colour of the fabric in the background and the colour of the coat of arms, is in the National Museum in Wrocław (inv. MNWr VIII-270). In contrast to the Italian school, where portraits of rulers, such as those of ancient Roman emperors, were often idealized, the German school and more generally the Northern school focused on the realism of the representation. The letters of the young Prince Barnim of Pomerania (1549-1603) to his brothers, sons of Philip I (1515-1560) and Maria of Saxony (1515-1583), about King Sigismund Augustus' plans to marry him to his sister Anna, indicate that the majority of portraits of the princess were idealized. In a letter dated November 4, 1569, Barnim writes that the princess is no longer so young (she was 46 at that time), but mentions her virtues and good character. He also adds that he would also like to receive a faithful image (wahrhaftig Conterfey) of his future wife, as soon as possible. The addition of the word "faithful" indicates that the portraits belonging to the Pomeranian dukes do not meet these requirements. The queen's demands that her "faithful" coronation portrait be shown only with a few exceptions are further confirmation that this was indeed the case. Another interesting aspect of the coronation portrait is the obvious inspiration from Cranach's works, which is visible not only in the composition and technique, but also in the great realism of the depiction. The painter depicted the wrinkles on the queen's face, the veins on her temple, shaved forehead and rendered the details of her jewellery with great precision. It is because of this realism and certain resemblance to the signed and dated full-length portrait of Stephen Bathory kept in the Museum of the Missionary Fathers in Kraków (oil on canvas, 236 x 122 cm, signed and dated bottom left: MK / 15.83), that the painting has been attributed to the Wrocław painter Martin Kober. The portrait of the king was painted more softly and with less chiaroscuro, which is particularly visible on the hands in both portraits. The attribution to Kober is now rejected. The coronation portrait was probably painted in Kraków and similar contrasts between light and dark can be noticed in a painting attributed to the Kraków school - the epitaph of Jan Sakran (Sacranus, 1443-1527), created around 1527 and inspired by an original by Lucas Cranach the Elder. The queen's garments are typical for the Sarmatian national fashion of this period, however her shaved forehead and the composition of the painting recall the full-length portraits of Anne of Denmark (1532-1585), Electress of Saxony, painted by Lucas Cranach the Younger in 1564, known from three versions preserved in the Armoury Chamber in Dresden (inv. H 0095), in the City and Mining Museum in Freiberg (inv. 79/14) and in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (inv. GG 3241). The portrait of the Electress preserved in Vienna was probably given to Emperor Maximilian II (1527–1576), son of Anna Jagellonica (1503–1547), but in the inventory of the imperial collection in the Stallburg in Vienna from 1772 it is mentioned as "Life-size portrait of a woman" (Ein Frauen Portrait in Lebens-Grösse). Since her Habsburg relatives received a copy of the portrait of the Electress, it is possible that Anna Jagiellon also had one. Another characteristic element of the coronation portrait, compared to that of the Electress of Saxony, is the Queen of Poland's corpulent posture, contrasting with her emaciated face. In this context, it seems very likely that her silhouette was inspired by an effigy from 1576, while her face reflects her appearance ten years later, in 1586, the anniversary of her coronation. If Anna was ill at this time, this would explain why, after her husband's death, she did not wish to impose her exclusive rule over the country, but supported her nephew in the election to the throne. We do not know why the queen decided to commission such a portrait in 1586. The motives for such an order are explained by two portraits now preserved in Florence and Siena. One of them, now in the Palatine Gallery of the Pitti Palace in Florence, depicts the Queen's beloved nephew Sigismund Vasa (1566-1632), Duke of Finland (oil on canvas, 185 x 94 cm, inv. 1890, 2436). The young prince is depicted in a richly embroidered doublet and hose in the French style. The painting is attributed to the Dutch painter Johan Baptista van Uther, who was active in Sweden from 1562 as a court painter. This painting is undated, but depicts the prince at the age of 18, so it was most likely painted around 1584 (SIGISMVNDYS DVX FINLANDIÆ / REGNI SVECIÆ HARES ET ELECTVS / REX / ÆTATIS SVÆ XVIIII.). A similar portrait of Sigismund's father, King John III of Sweden (1537-1592), depicting him at the age of 45 (ÆTATIS SVÆ XXXXV), so painted in 1582 (or after the original from that date), is in the Royal Palace of Siena (former Medici Palace). The portraits of the Swedish monarch and his son are mentioned in the Medici Guardaroba generale as early as 1596, so it is likely that they were sent to Francesco I (1541-1587), Grand Duke of Tuscany, and his Venetian wife Bianca Cappello (1548-1587), at the initiative of Anna Jagiellon. The queen probably also owned copies of these portraits. It was mainly thanks to her support that Sigismund won the royal election after Bathory's death. A leaflet published in 1587 and entitled Newe Zeitung Von der Wahl des newen Königes in Polen ... concerning the election takes up the rumours circulating in the country about the corruption of the primate Stanisław Karnkowski (1520-1603) by Queen Anna Jagellon. The primate had always been a supporter of the Habsburgs, but after receiving a rich gift from Anna, he changed his position overnight and proclaimed Sigismund king (after "Prasa ulotna za Zygmunta III" by Konrad Zawadzki, p. 51). Already in June 1586, the queen sent her envoy, the Jewish merchant Mandl, to Austria with the mission of marrying the eldest daughter of Archduke Charles II of Austria (1540-1590) to Sigismund in order to strengthen his position in the upcoming royal elections. The merchant arrived in Graz on July 12. He assured that Sigismund would inherit the Swedish crown and that his aunt had the opportunity to place him on the Polish throne (after "Polskie królowe: Żony królów elekcyjnych" by Edward Rudzki, p. 49). It was also the queen who, after his death, donated the full-length portrait of Bathory to his funeral chapel in Wawel Cathedral, from where it passed to the Missionary Fathers in the 18th century. Seeing the naturalistic portraits of her nephew and brother-in-law in sumptuous costumes, as well as of the recently deceased Electress of Saxony, the queen probably wanted something similar for her funeral chapel. At that time, the cathedral was filled with portraits of various monarchs (including disguised portraits). The royal portraits of Sigismund I, Sigismund Augustus and Anna Jagiellon hanging in the Sigismund Chapel above the doors are first mentioned during the visit of Bishop Jakub Zadzik in 1638 (A Ecclesia maiori eadem capella crati aurichalcea eleganti distinguitur. Supra fores ab intra est imago pieta Sigismundi primi et contra Sigismundi Augusti, a parte vero Evangelii imago Ser[enissi]mae Annae Jagielloniae exposita habentur). The portrait of Sigismund Augustus was probably destroyed during the Deluge and replaced by the kneeling portrait of Anna, since such a group of portraits is mentioned during the visit of Bishop Andrzej Trzebicki in 1670 (after "Marcin Kober i portrety z jego kręgu" by Elżbieta Błażewska, p. 69-70, 84). In summary, the coronation portrait includes influences from the Kraków school of painting as well as inspirations from the works of Cranach and Kober. The painter who perfectly combines all these aspects is the Kraków painter Dorota Koberowa (1549-1622), who married Martin Kober in 1586. Dorota's husband moved to Kraków around 1583 and in 1585 he was probably again in Wrocław, mentioned as Martinus Chober Magideburgensis. After the death of the king in December 1586, the couple left Kraków and settled in Wrocław, where Dorota gave birth to their two children, Melchior (1587) and Esther (1589). Martin was temporarily active in Prague, where he received the title of painter free of guild rights from Emperor Rudolf II on April 18, 1587. In 1589 the painter returned to Kraków, where he was appointed court painter to Sigismund III and received his share of the court fabrics. During Kober's absence and after his death, Dorota ran his painting workshop, and she was also mentioned as a court painter to Sigismund III in 1599. Unfortunately no signed work by Dorota has been preserved or perhaps it is waiting to be discovered. Similarly, no paintings by Martin Kober made for Rudolf II are known, but since he was employed as a portrait painter, the portraits he made for the Habsburgs are probably waiting to be rediscovered. Very interesting in this respect is the horizontal portrait of King Stephen Bathory in armour, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (oil on canvas, 62 x 100 cm, inv. GG 4505). The painting is part of a series of similar portraits of mainly Habsburg rulers, documented at Ambras Castle near Innsbruck in 1621, all painted in the same style, evidently by the same painter. The inclusion of the portrait of Bathory indicates that the series was created after his coronation as monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, i.e. after 1576. The painter must have been familiar with the king's effigies because the portrait is very precise. Among the portraits are images of Emperor Maximilian I (inv. GG 4495), Emperor Charles V (inv. GG 4496), King Philip II of Spain (inv. GG 4497), Emperor Ferdinand I (inv. GG 4498), Emperor Maximilian II (inv. GG 4499), Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol (inv. GG 4500) and King Francis I of France (inv. GG 4506). With the exception of Philip II and Ferdinand II of Tyrol, all the monarchs mentioned had died before 1576, so the painter must have based them on other effigies. Although the fabrics in these portraits are painted with Venetian boldness and colouring, the faces and hands were painted in a style comparable to the mentioned portrait of Bathory in Kraków, painted by Kober, who both in Sarmatia and Prague had the opportunity to admire the works of the Venetian painters. 
Portrait of King Stephen Bathory (1533-1586) in national costume by Martin Kober, 1583, Museum of the Missionary Fathers in Kraków.
Portrait of Sigismund Vasa (1566-1632), Duke of Finland at the age of 18 by Johan Baptista van Uther, ca. 1584-1586, Pitti Palace in Florence.
Portrait of Queen Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) in coronation robes by Dorota Koberowa (?), ca. 1586, Sigismund Chapel of Wawel Cathedral.
Portrait of King Stephen Bathory (1533-1586) in armour by Martin Kober, ca. 1587-1589, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portraits of Griselda Bathory and Elżbieta Łucja Gostomska by Sofonisba Anguissola
To strengthen the influence of the Bathory family in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, king Stephen planned the marriage of his Calvinist niece Griselda (née Christine) with the widowed Grand Chancellor of the Crown, Jan Zamoyski, one of the most powerful men in the country.
They were married on June 12, 1583 at the Wawel Cathedral in Kraków. Griselda came to Kraków with a retinue of 1,100 people, including six hundred soldiers guarding the her dowry. The wedding celebration with truly royal splendor lasted ten days. After Bathory's death in 1586, Zamoyski helped Sigismund III Vasa gain the Polish throne, fighting in the brief civil war against the forces supporting the Habsburgs. Griselda died four years later on 14 March 1590 in Zamość, an ideal city designed by Venetian architect Bernardo Morando. The city was not far from the second largest city of the Commonwealth, Lviv, dominated by a Royal Castle. The portait of a young lady by Sofonisba Anguissola from the National Art Gallery in Lviv (oil on canvas, 115 x 92 cm, inventory number Ж-821) is very similar to the portrait of Anna Radziwill née Kettler from about 1586 in the National Museum in Warsaw. Anna Radziwill was a wife of a brother of first wife of Zamoyski. Their headdresses or bonnets are very much alike, as well as the dress, ruff, jewels and even the pose. The woman in Anguissola's painting is holding a zibellino, a symbol of a bride, and a small book, most probably a Protestant bible. The features of the woman's face are very similar to portraits of Griselda's uncle, cousin and brother. The painting comes from the collection of Countess Eleonora Teresa Jadwiga Lubomirska née Husarzewska (1866-1940) and was exhibited in Lviv in 1909 as "Portrait of a lady in Spanish dress" (after "Katalog ilustrowany wystawy mistrzów dawnych ..." by Mieczysław Treter, item 53, p. 19). According to the catalogs of this exhibition, the painting was signed and dated 1558 in the upper left corner (Sofonisba Angusciola F. MDLVIII.), but this date is unreliable because the model's costume is much later. A miniature in Sofonisba's style in the Uffizi Gallery (oil on copper, 6.7 x 5.1 cm, Inv. 1890, 9048, Palatina 778), shows a girl in very similar dress inspired by Spanish fashion to that in Lviv portrait. Her jewelled headdress is not Western however, it is in Eastern style and similar to Russian kokoshnik (from the Old Slavic kokosh, which means "hen" or "cockerel"). Such headdresses carried the idea of fertility and were popular in different Slavic countries. In Poland they preserved in some folk costumes (wianek, złotnica, czółko) and become dominant at the court of Queen Constance of Austria in Warsaw in the 1610s and 1620s. The girl is therefore Elżbieta Łucja Gostomska (later Sieniawska), who in about 1587 at the age of 13 (born 13 December 1573), entered the court of Anna Jagiellon and whose miniature the Queen could send to her friend Bianca Cappello in Florence. She was the child of a Calvinist Anzelm Gostomski (d. 1588), voivode of Rawa. Her mother, Zofia Szczawińska, fourth wife of Anzelm, who raised her in Sierpc was affraid that her beautiful and wealthy daughter would be abducted by suitors. In 1590, despite her aversion to marriage, she married the Calvinist Prokop Sieniawski, then the court cupbearer, whom Queen Anna and her relatives chose for her. The Queen had a reputation for caring for her people. Many young girls and boys at her court received an elementary education. Later, some boys were sent to school and received financial support to continue their studies (after "The Court of Anna Jagiellon: Size, Structure and Functions" by Maria Bogucka, p. 103). Before World War II, in the Society of Friends of Learning in Poznań, there was another interesting tondo miniature of a child from the same period (oil on panel, 22 cm, inv. k 82, Catalog of Wartime Losses, number 6111). This "Portrait of a Young Man from the Royal Family", as the work is titled, was attributed to the French painter François Clouet (ca. 1510-1572) and came from the collection of Seweryn Mielżyński (1804-1872) in Miłosław. The Latin inscription on the left near the boy's head indicated that he was 12 years old (ÆTATIS 12). It was followed by a date, probably added at the same time, but perhaps also later, since the numbers visible in the old photograph look most like "1656", which could be the date of the model's death. Due to the attribution to Clouet, this date is considered "1556", however the costume with the characteristic ruff is rather from the 1580s, so the date "1586" is more probable. The possible model for this miniature could therefore be Prince Jerzy Zbaraski, born on April 22 or 23, 1574 (Georgius Zbaraski nascitur anno Domini 1574 die 22 Aprilis feria quarta in vigilia S. Georgil post meridiem), because the boy resembles the later effigies of this Ruthenian magnate. Most interesting, however, is the style of the painting, which closely resembles works attributed to Anguissola, such as the portrait of a boy, said to be a member of the Gonzaga dynasty, in the Museo Urbano Diffuso in Mantua. Consequently also other portrait, depicting a lady with a pendant with Allegory of Abundance, and attributed to Spanish school (Alonso Sánchez Coello) could be a work of Anguissola and identified as a court lady of Anna Jagiellon. She could be Dorota Wielopolska, lady-in-waiting of the Queen who in May 1576 married Piotr Potulicki, Castellan of Przemyśl. The queen organized for her a lavish feast and a tournament at the Wawel Castle. The painting was aquired by the National Museum in Kraków from a private collection in Gdów near Wieliczka, which was owned by the Wielopolski family (oil on canvas, 73 x 57 cm, inv. MNK I-929). In the 1596 painting by Alonso Sánchez Coello, whose works are sometimes confused with those of Sofonisba Anguissola, depicting King Philip II of Spain banqueting with his family and courtiers (The Royal Feast, signed and dated: ASC / ANNO 1596), the Spanish monarch is dining with his two deceased wives, Elizabeth of Valois (1546-1568) and Anna of Austria (1549-1580), his father Emperor Charles V (1500-1558), and his mother Isabella of Portugal (1503-1539). Thus, for a talented painter, it was not difficult to create a good effigy by drawing inspiration from other portraits. This painting comes from the Antoni Kolasiński collection and was purchased by the National Museum in Warsaw in 1928 (inv. M.Ob.295 MNW, earlier 73635). Even if Sofonisba's stay in Sarmatia will never find confirmation in reliable sources, she was a very talented portraitist, so creating effigies inspired by other portraits was certainly one of her main skills. 
Portrait of Griselda Bathory (1569-1590) by Sofonisba Anguissola, ca. 1586-1587, National Art Gallery in Lviv.
Miniature portrait of Elżbieta Łucja Gostomska (1573-1624) by Sofonisba Anguissola, ca. 1586-1587, Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Miniature portrait of a 12-year-old boy, probably Prince Jerzy Zbaraski (1574-1631) by Sofonisba Anguissola, ca. 1586, Society of Friends of Learning in Poznań, lost during World War II. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of a young woman with a pendant with Allegory of Abundance, most probably Dorota Wielopolska by Sofonisba Anguissola, 1580s, National Museum in Kraków.
Portraits of Elizabeth Euphemia Radziwill by Francesco Montemezzano and Alessandro Maganza
Ruthenian Princess Elizaveta Yevfimiya (Elizabeth Euphemia) Vyshnevetska or Elżbieta Eufemia Wiśniowiecka, also known as Halszka, was born in 1569 in the Calvinist family of the voivode of Volhynia and starost of Lutsk, Prince Andriy Vyshnevetsky (1528-1584) and his wife Eufemia Wierzbicka (1539-1589), as the firstborn child. After her father's death, she inherited large estates near Minsk and according to her mother's decision, on November 24, 1584 in Dzieraunaja (Derewna) in present-day Belarus, she married Nicolaus Christopher Radziwill "the Orphan" (1549-1616). She was 20 years younger than Radziwill and only 15 years old. Radziwill, who had just returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1582-1584 (via Venice), succeeded in convincing the future wife and her mother to abandon Calvinism and convert to Catholicism. A few months after the wedding, in a letter dated February 25, 1585, he personally informed Pope Gregory XIII about this fact. The formal conversion may have taken place later, since in 1587 in a letter of April 18, Cardinal Alessandro Peretti di Montalto (1571-1623), congratulates him for having made her change her faith. "The Orphan" became a staunch, not to say fanatical Catholic, when he contracted a venereal disease (probably syphilis) during his stay abroad and the intensive treatment that the prince underwent both in Poland and abroad (mainly in Italy) has proven to be effective (after "Elżbieta Eufemia z Wiśniowieckich ..." by Jerzy Flisiński, Słowo Podlasia).
Elizabeth Euphemia bore her husband 3 daughters and 6 sons and their firstborn child Elizabeth was born soon after the marriage in 1585. In the spring of 1593 the prince and his wife went to Italy for treatment in the hot springs near Padua in the Venetian Republic. The place was also symbolic as the Radziwill family claimed lineage from an ancient mythical nobleman Palemon (Publius Libon) of Colonna (Column) coat of arms, who is sometimes described as a Roman or a fugitive from the Venetian lagoons. Medical advice was also at stake, which was sought from famous doctors in Padua and Venice. After few months of treatment, in October 1593, they returned directly to the country, disappointing Cardinal Montalto, Cardinal Protector of the Kingdom of Poland (from 1589), who was expecting a visit from Radziwill and his wife in Rome. Together with her husband Elizabeth Euphemia founded many churches and monasteries, some of which were designed by an Italian architect and a Jesuit Giovanni Maria Bernardoni (1541-1605). Very little information preserved about other members of the Radziwill court or the artists. In 1604, the prince's court physician was paid 400 zlotys a year, and the equerry, the Italian Carlo Arigoni, was paid 124 zlotys a year. Another Italian Bartol Faragoi was a page in 1604. In 1597, Nicolaus Christopher wrote a letter to the city council of Riga about Cornelius de Heda, a Dutch painter (as his name suggests) brought from Italy, who was to carry out painting work in Niasviz (Nesvizh), but he fled with money not fulfilling his obligations. In his last will "the Orphan" ordered foreign craftsmen to be paid and sent away (after "Lituano-Slavica Posnaniensia", Volumes 8-10, p. 202). The most important sculptures related to Radziwill and his wife were all imported from Venice - marble altar, marble epitaphs of Nicolaus Christopher, Elizabeth Euphemia and their son Christopher Nicolaus Radziwill (1590-1607) in Corpus Christi Church in Nesvizh were all created in Venice by Girolamo Campagna and Cesare Franco. Elizabeth Euphemia died on November 9, 1596 in Biała Podlaska at the age of 27. She was buried in the church of Corpus Christi in Niasviz, in the crypt of the Radziwill family. After her death, Nicolaus Christopher decided to remain a widower for the rest of his life. In the Gösta Serlachius Museum of Fine Arts in Mänttä, Finland, there is a portrait of a noblewoman in elaborate Venetian costume (oil on canvas, 120 x 92.5 cm, inventory number 286). Based on the painting style, it was initially attributed to Giovanni Antonio Fasolo (1530-1572), a painter of the Venetian school, active in Vicenza and surroundings, thus dated to around 1572. It was believed that the woman depicted was the artist's daughter, Isabella, who married in 1572 and that the painting was a wedding portrait. New research claims that it was created around 1580 in the workshop of Paolo Veronese. The painting comes from the collection of a Finnish industrialist and art collector Gösta Michael Serlachius (1876-1942). It is not known where and when he acquired the painting. The possible location seems to be St. Petersburg, where his family owned a brewery and which at the time was the largest art market in the nearest region and where many art collections from the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were transferred after the end of the 18th century. Comparison with Venetian costumes from the last quarter of the 16th century indicates that the portrait was created around the turn of the 1580s and 1590s and that this woman was a noble, as the closest similar costume was depicted in Cesare Vecellio's De gli habiti antichi, e moderni ..., published in Venice in 1590 (Spose nobili moderne, plate 310). Similar costumes were also depicted in the Book of Italian Costumes by Niclauss Kippell, painted in about 1588 (Walters Art Museum, W.477.15R) and in Pietro Bertelli's Diversarum nationum habitus, published in 1589. According to the Latin inscription in the upper right corner of the painting, the woman was 18 when the painting was created (Ao. ÆTATIS SVE. / XVIII.), exactly like Elizabeth Euphemia when her conversion was confirmed in Rome. The woman in the portrait bears a strong resemblance to Princess Radziwill from her partially imaginative portrait by the Polish-Lithuanian painter Wincenty Sleńdziński from 1884 (Mir Castle complex in Belarus), her effigy published in 1758 in Icones familiæ ducalis Radivilianæ ... as well as the facial features of her third son Albert Ladislaus Radziwill (1589-1636) from his portrait in the National Museum in Warsaw (MP 4431 MNW). The style of the painting is very similar to the portrait of Elizabeth Euphemia's brother-in-law Stanislaus Radziwill (1559-1599) in the National Museum of Art in Kaunas in Lithuania (ČDM MŽ 139) and the effigy of Bianca Cappello (1548-1587), Grand Duchess of Tuscany (private collection), attributed to Alessandro Maganza (d. 1632), a pupil of Giovanni Antonio Fasolo. Maganza obviously worked for the Radziwills and many other clients from Poland-Lithuania, as many other paintings of a similar style exist in the former territories of the Commonwealth. The same woman in a similar costume was depicted in another painting by the eminent Venetian painter Francesco Montemezzano (oil on canvas, 91.4 x 74.3 cm), who between 1575 and 1585 created Allegorical portrait of Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596), elected co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Czartoryski Museum, XII-227). The painting comes from a private collection and was sold in 2019 in New York (Christie's, May 1, 2019, live auction 17467, lot 303). She wears a crown of a princess and her hair is loose like on the effigies of young brides. Like for another Radziwill Princess, Katarzyna Tęczyńska (d. 1592), the effigies of Elizabeth Euphemia were painted by Maganza and Montemezzano from sketches sent from the Commonwealth. Similar to the sculptures for their mausoleum that the Radziwills commissioned in Venice, their effigies and other paintings were therefore mostly created there as well. 
Portrait of Princess Elizabeth Euphemia Radziwill née Vyshnevetska (1569-1596) as a bride in Venetian costume by Francesco Montemezzano, ca. 1584-1587, Private collection.
Portrait of Princess Elizabeth Euphemia Radziwill née Vyshnevetska (1569-1596), aged 18, in Venetian costume by Alessandro Maganza, ca. 1587, Gösta Serlachius Museum of Fine Arts in Mänttä.
Portrait of Anna Kettler by workshop of Alessandro Maganza
Another Venetian-style portrait of the member of the Radziwill family from the same period is in the National Museum in Warsaw (oil on canvas, 156 x 103 cm, MP 2472, earlier 233159). It is a portrait of Anna Radziwill née Kettler (1567-1617), daughter of Gotthard Kettler, Duke of Courland and Semigallia (vassal state of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) and Anna of Mecklenburg. On 20 January 1586, in Jelgava, she married Albert Radziwill (1558-1592), the younger brother of Nicolaus Christopher Radziwill "the Orphan". Her husband was a frequent guest at her father's court, and he also traveled frequently. In 1582 he was in Polotsk with King Bathory, at the beginning of July 1582 he left for Italy, and from January to May 1583 he stopped in Venice. In January he was in Kraków, from there he went to Kaunas and at the end of July 1584 to Lublin. In December he appeared at the royal court in Grodno and probably went to Warsaw (after "Polski słownik biograficzny", Volume 30, p. 137).
In her portait Anna is dressed in more Northern fashion and holds a small dog, a symbol of marital fidelity. The style of this painting closely resembles the portrait of Katarzyna Tęczyńska (died 1592), Princess of Slutsk in the same collection (128854 MNW), therefore it should be attributed to the workshop of Alessandro Maganza. The painting was donated in 1969 by Stanisław Lipecki and Róża Lipecka from Kraków and comes from Silesia. It was correctly identified by Janina Ruszczyc in 1975 because, according to an inscription in German, most likely dating from the end of the 18th century, it depicts the unknown Duchess Ludemilla of Legnica and Brzeg (Ludemilla! / Herzogin Vo: / Lieg: Bri: u Woh: / Mutter des Lezten / Herzog u Bau / erin der Fürsten / Gruft). The painting was probably part of the dowry of Anna's sister, Elizabeth Kettler, who on September 17, 1595 married Adam Wenceslas, Duke of Cieszyn or it was moved to Żagań in Silesia after 1786 when Peter von Biron, the last Duke of Courland and Semigallia, bought the Duchy from the Lobkowicz family. A painting from the same period and painted in the same style also bears an incorrect inscription. It comes from a private collection in England and is attributed to an English school of the 17th century (oil on canvas, 76.2 x 63.5 cm). According to mentioned inscription the man in Italian or French costume from the 1580s is Edward VI (1537-1553), King of England, portrayed in 1553 at the age of 15 (EDWarD VI ÆTATIS . SUÆ . 15 / ANNO. DOMINO . 1553). This unusual mixture of English and Latin was probably added in the late 19th or 20th century to sell the painting more profitably. The original indications of his identity, if any, have most likely been removed, so perhaps we will never know his true identity. The man could be a nobleman from Poland-Lithuania or an Italian courtier at the court of elected Queen Anna Jagiellon or the Radziwills, painted like his patrons by the Venetian workshop of Maganza. 
Portrait of Anna Radziwill née Kettler (1567-1617) with a dog by workshop of Alessandro Maganza, ca. 1586-1587, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of a man in a ruff with a false inscription identifying the model as Edward VI (1537-1553), King of England by workshop of Alessandro Maganza, 1580s, Private collection.
Portrait of Jan Tomasz Drohojowski by Leandro Bassano
Jan Tomasz Drohojowski (1535-1605) from Drohojów, near Przemyśl, was a son of Krzysztof Drohojowski, a nobleman of Korczak coat of arms, and Elżbieta Fredro. He had five sisters and two brothers, Kilian and Jan Krzysztof (died before December 12, 1580), the royal secretary. He studied at the University of Wittenberg (enrolled on June 21, 1555), with his brother Kilian in Tübingen, then alone in Basel in 1560. Well educated, knowing French, Italian and Latin, he began to serve the king Sigismund Augustus. He was sent by him with a mission to Italy. According to Krzysztof Warszewicki (1543-1603), he brought the king as a gift a horse of wonderful color and virtue (equum admirabilis coloris et bonitatis Regi donavit). After return he became the royal secretary and in 1569 in this capacity he signed three privileges. At the time of the king's death, he was in Knyszyn and prevented the royal property from being looted and at the Sejm of 1573, Jan Tomasz called for a punishment of those guilty of looting royal valuables.
Shortly thereafter, Jan Tomasz went to Kraków to participate in the reception ceremony of king Henry of Valois. He stayed in Kraków, performing his duties as secretary and courtier of the king, and he even borrowed a certain amount to king Henry. Then he was sent on several ambassadorial missions, including to France. He was present at the anointing of king Henry at Reims on February 13, 1575. On March 2, 1575 in a letter from Prague to Infanta Anna Jagiellon he reported to her about the coronation of Henry and his marriage with Louise of Lorraine. The Infanta, in a letter of April 10, 1575, written from Warsaw to her sister Sophia, calls Jan Tomasz a courtier of the King. After returning from the mission in Courland in 1578, he hosted king Stephen Bathory for 5 days in Przemyśl (for which he spent 911 zlotys) and become the starost of Przemyśl. Also in 1578, he founded octagonal chapel of St. Thomas (Drohojowski Chapel) at the Przemyśl Cathedral, built in the Renaissance style. To put up one tower at the Przemyśl castle he spent 180 zlotys. At the end of January 1579 he was sent by the king to Constantinople (Istanbul). In a letter of January 13, 1581 from Warsaw to Andrzej Opaliński (1540-1593), Court Crown Marshal, Mr Bojanowski calls Jan Tomasz, Gian Tomaso in Italian. In May 1583, princess Griselda Bathory, niece of the king, stayed in Drohojowski's Palace in Voiutychi, designed in Renaissance style by Italian architect Galeazzo Appiani from Milan, with her entire retinue of 500 infantry soldiers and 78 mounted knights. In 1588 he escorted to Krasnystaw, Archduke Maximilian of Austria (1558-1618), who stood as a candidate for the throne of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, taken captive at the Battle of Byczyna (24 January). Before December 20, 1589 Jan Tomasz was appointed the crown referendary because the letter of king Sigismund III from that date already gives him this title. His career was facilitated by family ties with Jan Zamoyski, Great Hetman of the Crown, who entrusted the guardianship of his son Tomasz to him in 1589. He became friends with Mikołaj Herburt (1524-1593), castellan of Przemysl and he married his daughter, Jadwiga Herburt. From this marriage he had a son, Mikołaj Marcin Drohojowski, most probaly born in the late 1580s (he loses a trial in 1613 and in 1617 he sold Rybotycze estate to Mikołaj Wolski (1553-1630)). Jan Tomasz died in the Przemyśl castle on November 12, 1605 at the age of 70. The portrait of a nobleman in a black French style costume lined with fur by Leandro Bassano, was offered to the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm in 1917 (oil on canvas, 119 x 98 cm, inv. NM 2059). The aristocratic tone of this portrait is accentuated by the verticality of the figure, his pose and gloves. The date in upper left corner of the canvas was not added very skillfully, therefore we can assmue that it was added later by the owner or at his request, not by the original painter. According to this inscription in Latin, the man was 53 in June 1588 (AET . SVAE . / LIII / MĒS . VI / 1588), exactly as Jan Tomasz Drohojowski. Below there is also another date in Latin: March 27 (27 mês martij), which could be the date of birth of Jan Tomasz's son Mikołaj Marcin. The man's costume and pose as well as facial features bears a striking resemblance to a portrait of Jan Tomasz's brother Jan Krzysztof (d. 1580), the royal secretary, in the Przemyśl Cathedral. This portrait, created in the first half of the 18th century, is a copy of other effigy and is a pendant to a portrait of his brother Jan Tomasz, who as a starost (capitaneus) of Przemyśl, administrative official, equivalent to the County Sheriff, was depicted in an armor and holding an axe. 
Portrait of Jan Tomasz Drohojowski (1535-1605), starost of Przemyśl aged 53 by Leandro Bassano, 1588, Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.
Portrait of Sigismund III Vasa at a young age by Domenico Tintoretto
After the death of Stephen Bathory in December 1586, when 63 years old elected Queen Anna Jagiellon, could finally rule on her own, she was most probably too sick and too tired to do this. She supported the candidature of her niece Anna or her nephew Sigismund, children of her beloved sister Catherine, Queen of Sweden as candidates in next election. Sigismund was elected the ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on 19 August 1587.
Raised in Protestant Sweden, where Flemish Domenicus Verwilt and Dutch Johan Baptista van Uther with their stiff realism were chief portraitists at the court of his father and his predecessor, he found "degenerated", frivolous style of the Venetians not very appealing to him, at least initially. Although, he commissioned paintings in Venice, all most probably destroyed, no portrait is mentioned in sources. He supported Martin Kober, a Silesian painter trained in Germany, as his main court portraitist. It was therefore his aunt Anna Jagiellon, who could order a series of portraits of her protégé from Tintoretto for her and for her Italian friends. The portrait of a blond hair young man, wearing a tight black doublet in El Paso Museum of Art is very similar to other known portraits of the king, especially his effigy in Spanish costume by Jakob Troschel from about 1610 (Uffizi in Florence) and a portrait holding his hand on a sword, attributed to Philipp Holbein II, from about 1625 (Royal Castle in Warsaw). Chronologically this portrait fit perfectly known portraiture of the king: portrait as a child aged 2 from 1568 (AETATIS SVAE 2/1568), created by Johan Baptista van Uther as gift for his aunt (Wawel), as a Duke of Finland aged 18 (AETATIS SVAE XVIIII), consequently from 1585, also created by van Uther in Sweden (Uffizi), next this portrait by Domenico Tintoretto from about 1590, when he was 24 and was already in Poland and then the miniature at the age of 30 (ANNO AETATIS XXX) from about 1596 by workshop of Martin Kober or follower (Czartoryski Museum). The painting was inscribed on the column (AETATIS…X…TORET), now mostly effaced. His left hand looks like if was posed on a sword at his belt, however no object is present. It was probably less visible in a drawing or miniature sent to Tintoretto, hence he left his hand strangely in the air, a proof that the sitter was not in painter's atelier. Forgetting of such an important object in the 16th century male portraiture, could be also a result of a rush to accomplish some big royal commission. The Order of the Golden Fleece, basing on which some of Sigismund's portraits were identified, was granted to him in 1600. It is highly probable that the painting showing the Baptism of Christ by John the Baptist in the National Museum in Warsaw, created by Domenico Tintoretto around that time (after 1588) was also commissioned by Anna. It was bequeathed to the School of Fine Arts in Warsaw by Piotr Fiorentini in 1858 and later purchased by the Museum. Its earlier history is unknown, therefore Fiorentini, born in Vilnius, who later lived in Kraków and Warsaw, could have acquire it in Poland or Lithuania. Anna was engaged in embellishment of the main church of Warsaw - Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist and she also built 80-meter-long corridor (covered passage) connecting the Royal Castle with the Cathedral. 
Portrait of Sigismund III Vasa at a young age by Domenico Tintoretto, ca. 1590, El Paso Museum of Art.
Baptism of Christ by Domenico Tintoretto, after 1588, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of princess Anna Vasa in Spanish costume by Domenico Tintoretto
In about 1583, after her mother's death, Anna Vasa like her aunt Sophia Jagiellon in 1570, converted to Lutheranism. Already in 1577, papal diplomacy proposed to marry her to an Austrian archduke, Matthias or Maximilian.
She arrived to Poland in Ocober 1587 to attend her brother's coronation and she stayed until 1589, when she accompanied Sigismund to meet their father John III of Sweden in Reval and then followed John to Sweden. Anna returned to Poland to attend the wedding of Sigismund with Anna of Austria in May 1592. When just few months later, on 17 November 1592, John III died, Sigismund was willing to abdicate in favor of Archduke Ernest of Austria, who was about to marry his sister Anna. This was also intended to alleviate the Habsburgs, who already lost in two royal ellections. Archduke Ernest, the son of Emperor Maximilian II and Maria of Spain, together with his brother Rudolf (Emperor from 1576), was educated at the court of his uncle Philip II in Spain. To announce this turn in country's politics, where Anna Vasa become a focal point, her aunt most probably commissioned a series of portraits of her niece. The portait by Domenico Tintoretto from the collection of Prince Chigi in Rome, now in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, shows a woman in black saya, a Spanish court dress, from the 1590s, similar to that visible in the portrait of the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia by Sofonisba Anguissola in the Prado Museum from about 1597. However the white ruff collar, cuffs and her gold necklace are definitely not Spanish, they are more Central European and very similar to garments visible in portraits of Katarzyna Ostrogska from 1597 in the National Museum in Warsaw and in the portrait of Korona Welser by Abraham del Hele from 1592 in the private collection, they are not Venetian. The features of the woman's face are the same as in Anna Vasa's portrait from about 1605 and her miniatures from the 1590s identified by me. A book on the table beside her is therefore Protestant Bible, published in the small octavo format and landscape with rivers and wooded hills is how Tintoretto imagined her native Sweden. The portrait of a man with a red beard from the same period in the National Museum in Warsaw and attributed to Tintoretto's workshop is almost identical in composition, techinique and dimensions. He is holding a similar book. It is therefore an important royal court official. The royal secretary from 1579 and a staunch Calvinist Jan Drohojowski (d. 1601) fit perfectly. From 1588 he was also a castellan of Sanok, hence one of the most powerful protestants in the country. Drohojowski was the son of Stanisław Drohojowski, the promoter of Calvinism. His mother Ursula Gucci (d. 1554), also known as Urszula Karłowna, was also a protestant. She was a lady-in-waiting of Queen Bona and a daughter of Carlo Calvanus Gucci (d. 1551), a merchant and contractor, who arrived in Kraków in the retinue of Queen Bona and was later made Żupnik of the Ruthenian lands. 
Portrait of princess Anna Vasa (1568-1625) in Spanish costume by Domenico Tintoretto, ca. 1592, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
Portrait of Jan Drohojowski, castellan of Sanok by workshop of Domenico Tintoretto, ca. 1592, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portraits of Anna of Austria and Anna Vasa by Sofonisba Anguissola
In 1586, to strengthen her nephew's chances in royal election, Queen Anna Jagiellon proposed a marriage between Sigismund and Anna of Austria (1573-1598). The Habsburgs had strong influences in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and their claims to the throne were supported by part of the nobility. Due to the political instability and Maximilian of Austria's desire for the Polish crown, Anna's parents, preferred the match with Henry of Lorraine.
Already in 1585, the queen sent the first unofficial marriage proposals to Graz via Rome. In June 1586, she sent her envoy, the Jewish merchant Mandl, to Archduke Maximilian with a request for advice on whether it was worth negotiating with Graz regarding the engagement of her nephew to the eldest Archduchess. Maximilian immediately informed his uncle of the arrival of this unusual emissary, who ordered that Mandl be brought to Graz (July 12, after "Polskie królowe: Żony królów elekcyjnych" by Edward Rudzki, p. 49, 50). The plans resummed in 1590 when Anna's engagement with Duke of Lorraine was broken off. In Sarmatia, however, there were fears that Sigismund III would follow Valois' example and leave Poland to take the hereditary throne of Sweden. The expression of these fears and reluctance was the lament of an anonymous poet in 1591: "They are marrying the king with a German woman, they are sending him overseas" (Z Niemkinią króla swatają, za morze go wyprawiają). The marriage was opposed by Chancellor Jan Zamoyski and his powerful supporters, as well as by Stanisław Żółkiewski, but Sigismund Vasa was very pleased with the portrait of Anna sent from Graz. The portrait was then sent to Stockholm, where the Archduchess's appearance won the approval of her future father-in-law, King John III of Sweden. At this time, Sigismund's morganatic cousin Gustav Eriksson (1568-1607) also visited Graz. These efforts caused tensions in the multi-confessional Commonwealth, and particularly in Kraków. The nobility feared that the marriage of the Catholic couple would take place "in the Parisian style" (po parysku), meaning that Kraków would repeat the "Night of St. Bartholomew", that is, the massacre of Protestants (after "Najsłynniejsze miłości królów polskich" by Jerzy Besala, p. 143). In April 1592, the betrothal was formally celebrated in the Imperial Court in Vienna. Despite the opposition of the nobles, Sigismund and 18 years old Anna were married by proxy in Vienna on May 3, 1592. She arrived to Poland with her mother Archduchess Maria Anna of Bavaria and a retinue of 431 people. The young king welcomed his wife accompanied by the "old queen" Anna Jagiellon and his sister Princess Anna Vasa in Łobzów Palace near Kraków where four tents were set up, decorated in Turkish style for the feast. The young queen received rich gifts, including "Kanak necklace with large diamonds and rubies and oriental pearls, which are called Bezars 30" from the king, "a chain of oriental pearls and a diamond necklace, and two crosses, one ruby, the other diamond" from the "old queen" and "kanak necklace with a cross of rubies and diamonds pinned on one" from Princess Anna, among others. Also "the envoy from the Lords of Venice" brought gifts valued at 12,000 florins. Anna of Austria's Spanish connections become very important soon after her arrival, when after death of his father Sigismund left for Sweden and was willing to abdicate in favor of Archduke Ernest of Austria, who was about to marry his sister Anna Vasa. Two of Anna's effigies by Martin Kober from about 1595 were later sent to dukes of Tuscany (both Francesco I and Ferdinando I were half-Spanish by birth, through their mother Eleanor of Toledo). Three miniatures and a portrait, all in Sofonisba Anguissola's style, can be dated to around that time. One minature from the Harrach collection in Rohrau Castle in Austria, possibly lost, identified as effigy of Anna of Austria, shows de facto Anna Vasa with an eagle pendant. The other in the Uffizi Gallery (oil on copper, 9.1 x 7.3 cm, Inv. 1890, 8920, Palatina 650) depict Anna Vasa in more northern costume. The latter miniature is accompanied by very similar miniature of a lady in Spanish cosume with a necklace with Imperial eagle (oil on copper, 6.4 x 4.9 cm, Inv. 1890, 8919, Palatina 649), it is an effigy of Anna of Austria, the young queen of Poland and relative of the Holy Roman Emperors and the King of Spain. The portrait by Sofonisba from private collection in Italy (oil on canvas, 61 x 50.5 cm, sold with this attribution on October 1, 2019), which shows a blond lady with a heavy gold necklace is very similar to other effigies of Queen Anna of Austria, especially her portrait in Kraków, most probably by Jan Szwankowski (Jagiellonian University Museum) and engravings by Andreas Luining (National Museum in Warsaw) and Lambert Cornelis (Czartoryski Museum in Kraków). The miniature of a man from the collection of the Dukes Infantado in Madrid (oil on copper, Archivo de Arte Español - Archivo Moreno, 01784 B), painted in Sofonisba Anguissola's style, shows a man in eastern costume. His attire is very similar to these visible in a miniature with Polish horsemen from Albert of Prussia's "Kriegsordnung" (Military ordinance), created in 1555 (Berlin State Library) and in a portrait of Sebastian Lubomirski (1546-1613), created in about 1613 (National Museum in Warsaw). The features of the man's face are similar to miniature of Sigismund III Vasa (Bayerisches Nationalmuseum) and his portrait by Martin Kober (Kunsthistorisches Museum), both created in the 1590s. In the same collection of the Dukes Infantado, there is also a miniature attributed to Jakob de Monte (Giacomo de Monte) from the same period, showing king's mother-in-law Archduchess Maria Anna of Bavaria (1551-1608), as well as her miniature by Sofonisba from around 1580 (oil on copper, 01616 B), miniature of Emperor Rudolf II (oil on panel, 01696 B) and Sofonisba's self-portrait in Spanish costume (oil on canvas, 01588 B). All miniatures probably originally belonged to the Spanish royal collection. 
Portrait of Queen Anna of Austria (1573-1598) by Sofonisba Anguissola, ca. 1592, Private collection.
Miniature portrait of Queen Anna of Austria (1573-1598) in Spanish cosume by Sofonisba Anguissola, ca. 1592, Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Miniature portrait of Princess Anna Vasa (1568-1625) by Sofonisba Anguissola, ca. 1592, Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Miniature portrait of Princess Anna Vasa (1568-1625) with eagle pendant by Sofonisba Anguissola, ca. 1592, Rohrau Castle. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Miniature portrait of King Sigismund III Vasa in national costume by Sofonisba Anguissola, ca. 1592, collection of the Dukes of Infantado in Madrid. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Agnieszka Tęczyńska as Saint Agnes by Francesco Montemezzano
In October 1594, when she was just 16 years old, the eldest daughter of Andrzej Tęczyński, Voivode of Kraków, and Zofia nee Dembowska, daughter of Voivode of Belz, married the widower Mikołaj Firlej, Voivode of Kraków from 1589. The wedding feast with the participation of the royal couple took place in the "Painted Manor" of the Tęczyński family in Kraków, later donated to the barefoot Carmelites (1610). The groom, brought up in Calvinism, secretly converted to Catholicism during his trip to Rome in 1569. He studied in Bologna.
Agnieszka was born in the lavish Tenczyn Castle, near Kraków on January 12, 1578 as the fourth child. Both of her parents died in 1588 and most probably then she was raised in the royal court of Queen Anna Jagiellon. In 1593 she accompanied the royal couple, Sigismund III and his wife Anna of Austria, on their trip to Sweden. For some time, Tęczyńska's confessor was the Jesuit Piotr Skarga. After her husband's death in 1601, she took up the upbringing of her children, the administration of huge assets and she became involved in philanthropic and charitable activities. Widowed, Tęczyńska fell into devotion. She died in Rogów on June 16, 1644, at the age of 67, and was buried in the crypt at the entrance to the church in Czerna, she founded. In the preserved paintings, offered to different monasteries, she is depicted in a costume of a widowed lady or in a Benedictine habit, like in a full-length portrait in the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków from about 1640 (MNK XII-371), created by circle of royal court painter Peter Danckerts de Rij or in a three-quarter length portrait in the National Museum in Warsaw, created by Jan Chryzostom Proszowski in 1643 (129537 MNW). The latter portrait, very Italian in style, was most likely inspired by a portrait of Queen Anna Jagiellon by Sofonisba Anguissola. A portrait in the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (oil on canvas, 86.4 x 74.9 cm, BF.1982.14) depicts a lady with a lamb, an attribute of Saint Agnes, a patron saint of girls, chastity and virgins. "During the Renaissance, women who were soon to be married often associated themselves with this saint because Agnes chose to die rather than marry a man she did not love", according to MFAH catalogue. She is holding a Catholic book, most probably a volume of Saint Thomas Aquinas' "On the truth of the Catholic faith" (Incipit liber primus de veritate catholicae fidei contra errores gentilium). A rose-bush is in this context a symbol of the Virgin Mary and of messianic promise of Christianity because of its thorns (after James Romaine, Linda Stratford, "ReVisioning: Critical Methods of Seeing Christianity in the History of Art", 2014, p. 111). Woman's face is very similar to the effigies of Agnieszka Tęczyńska, later Firlejowa from the last decade of her life and to the portrait of her nephew, Stanisław Tęczyński in Polish costume, created by Venetian painter active in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Tommaso Dolabella (National Museum in Warsaw, inv. 128850 MNW). The portrait was in von Dirksen's collection in Berlin before 1932 and stylistically is very close to portraits of Queen Anna Jagiellon by Francesco Montemezzano (died after 1602), a pupil and a follower of Paolo Veronese. The model's hands are painted in the same way in the portrait of the queen attributed to Montemezzano, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 29.100.104). The very finely painted portraits of Tęczyńska preserved in the National Museum in Warsaw (inv. 129537 MNW), attributed to the Kraków painter Jan Chryzostom Proszowski, and especially the painting in the Czartoryski Museum (inv. MNK XII-371), indicate that the authors could have known the works of Paolo Veronese and the artists of his circle. Apart from the Allegorical portrait of Anna Jagiellon in the Czartoryski Museum (inv. MNK XII-227), no painting by Montemezzano appears to have survived in Poland. However, one painting in a private Polish collection could be attributed to him. It is a copy of the Choice between virtue and vice by Paolo Veronese, the probable original of which is now in the Frick Collection in New York (inv. 1912.1.129). The New York painting is dated around 1565 and comes from the collection of Emperor Rudolf II in Prague (mentioned in the 1621 inventory), from where it was looted by the Swedes in 1648. There are numerous copies of this composition. A copy, dated around 1600, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (inv. GG 108), was mentioned in the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria (1614-1662) in 1659. Another copy, possibly by Montemezzano, is in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (inv. 1890, 5929) and another in the Harvard Art Museums (inv. 1940.1), an anonymous gift in 1940. The copy in the Polish collection is also considered a later copy, from the 17th century, and bears in the lower part the number "63" and on the reverse a fragmentarily preserved paper label with the inscription "A. Caneru" (oil on canvas, 151 x 145.5 cm, Rempex in Warsaw, auction 294, October 12, 2022, lot 116). 
Portrait of Agnieszka Tęczyńska (1578-1644) as Saint Agnes by Francesco Montemezzano, ca. 1592-1594, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
The Choice between virtue and vice by Francesco Montemezzano, ca. 1600, Private collection (sold in Warsaw).
Portraits of Queen Anna Jagiellon by workshops of Alessandro Maganza and Sofonisba Anguissola
The new lifestyle came in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with the new young king Sigismund III arriving from Sweden with his sister and his courtiers. However, at her court in Warsaw, the aged Queen Anna Jagiellon still favored the Italians and Italian culture. From around 1590 her personal physician was Vincenzo Catti (or Cotti) from Vicenza, apothecary Angelo Caborti from Otranto, called Andzioł, ennobled in 1590 and rewarded by Sigismund III with an estate in Samogitia, gardener Lorenzo Bosetto (Bozetho) and sculptor Santi Gucci. On May 5, 1594, the Queen concluded an agreement in Warsaw "with Florentine Santy Guczy, our bricklayer [...] to make the grave of King Stephen". No painters are mentioned in the sources, indicating that probably all paintings, including the portraits, were commissioned from foreign workshops or in Gdańsk, which become the main commercial center of the Commonwealth. When in August 1590 Riccardo Riccardi, the envoy of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, came to Poland, Anna welcomed him warmly and gave him letters of recommendation to the authorities of Gdańsk, to facilitate the purchase of grain for Italy (after "Anna Jagiellonka" by Maria Bogucka, p. 155).
The newcomers from Italy spread the Counter-Reformation in the tolerant Commonwealth which gained popularity at Anna's court. Once two Capuchin fathers Francesco and Camillo appeared in the country with the intention of establishing a monastery in Poland. They showed letters of introduction from Ferdinand II (1529-1595), Archduke of Further Austria and recommendations of many bishops and abbots. They claimed to belong to the first Venetian families, Cornaro and Contarina, so they were welcomed everywhere. They preached, collected contributions, and distributed relics of the Holy Cross, which they allegedly had from Cardinal Farnese, but at the same time they behaved extremely indecently and even caused public scandals. During an audience with the queen, one of them undressed to show how thin his fasting had made him, so Anna, had to turn her face away, reports Alberto Bolognetti (1538-1585), papal nuncio in the Commonwealth (from 12 April 1581 to April 1585). Bolognetti ordered them to be imprisoned and placed temporarily in the Bernardine monastery in Warsaw. They soon confessed that they fled the Venetian province. They were visited by their compatriot, the royal physician, Lutheran Niccolò Buccella, who urged them to escape (after "Sprawozdania z posiedzeń Towarzystwa Naukowego Warszawskiego ...", Volumes 28-30, p. 40). Many Italians converted in the Commonwealth, such as Friar Hieronim (Girolamo) Mazza, a Venetian priest, who gave up his habit and married a woman with whom he had two children, a son and a daughter, and became an administrator of the Royal Post of the Montelupi in Kraków (after "Przegląd Poznański ...", Volume 27, p. 205). He is the author of the poem Epithaphium Ioannis Cochanovii from 1584. Anna, like her siblings and her mother, loved luxury and the items she owned or gave as gifts were of the finest local and foreign craftsmanship. In 1573 she ordered a pendant with "a large emerald, a smaller ruby, two small diamonds, a small sapphire and a small ruby". To the Wawel Cathedral, she offered many exquisite textiles and church vestments made from rich Italian fabrics. On a picnic at her estate in Ujazdów in 1579, she rode in a rich scarlet carriage covered with gold cloth inside and eight horses with a leopard complex (according to the letter from nuncio Giovanni Andrea Caligari to cardinal Como dated May 2, 1579). To the family mausoleum - Sigismund Chapel, she offered large quantities of silver objects, such as in 1586 "a pair of silver-gilt cruets" with the Polish eagle and her monogram A, in 1588 silver candlesticks with her coat of arms, in 1589 she sent from Warsaw a silver bell with the Polish eagle and her monogram and in 1596, shortly before her death, she donated a silver lectern with the eagle and the letter A and the text around the coat of arms: Anna Jagiellonia D.G. Regina Poloniae M.D. Lituaniae. The portrait of the queen in the National Museum in Warsaw (oil on canvas, 103.3 x 77.5 cm, MP 5323) was in the 19th century in the Wilanów Palace in Warsaw. It is considered to be a variant of a portrait of Anna, also from the Wilanów Palace (Wil.1160), attributed to Martin Kober, most likely created in 1595 for which he was paid 14 florins and 24 groszy on the basis of the receipt of payment for three portraits of Anna Jagiellon, Sigismund III and his wife Anna of Austria. The Queen was portrayed as a founder and protector of St. Anne's Brotherhood, established in 1578 at Warsaw's Bernardine church of Saint Anne, with a gold distinctorium of the Brotherhood (introduced in 1589 after being sancioned by Pope Sixtus V) in the form of a gold medaillion with depiction of St. Anne and inscription SANCTAE ANNAE SOCIETATIS. The style of this painting is very Venetian and resembles the effigy of Anna's husband, Stephen Bathory, at Wilanów Palace (Wil.1163) and the portrait of her friend Bianca Cappello (1548-1587), Grand Duchess of Tuscany (private collection), both by Alessandro Maganza or his studio. The portrait of the queen in the Royal Castle in Warsaw (oil on canvas, 97.5 × 87.5 cm, ZKW 64) is closest to the works attributed to Sofonisba Anguissola and her workshop, such as the "Three children with a dog" (Corsham Court in Wiltshire), portrait of Joan of Austria (1535-1573), Princess of Portugal (private collection) and especially portrait of Don Carlos, Prince of Asturias (1545-1568), son of Philip II of Spain (Museum of Fine Arts of Asturias in Oviedo). This painting comes from the collection of Schleissheim Palace near Munich in Bavaria and was donated to the castle in 1973 by the government of West Germany. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Sarmatians did much more than have a distinctive national workshop or school of painting, they financially supported Europe's greatest artists, and their effigies adorn the world's greatest museums and collections. 
Portrait of Queen Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) as a widow by workshop of Alessandro Maganza, ca. 1595, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of Queen Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596) as a widow by workshop of Sofonisba Anguissola, ca. 1595, Royal Castle in Warsaw.
AI-generated view of the wooden villa of Queen Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596), elected co-monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, of Ujazdów (Jazdów) in Warsaw, based on my hypothetical schematic drawing and 1606 plan by Alessandro Albertini (Il sito della villa di Jasdovia).
Portrait of Andrzej Kochanowski by Sofonisba Anguissola
"To Mr. Andrzej Kochanowski, son of Dobiesław, heir of Gródek, famous for his birth and his own virtues, a man distinguished in life by God's great gifts, such as wisdom, diligence, temperance, piety towards God, kindness towards friends, immense generosity towards the poor, who, when with great sadness and pain of his relatives and noble people, at the age of 54, he ended his life in the year of the Lord 1596 on March 24, in this church, which he erected in the name and glory of God, according to the rite of the Catholic Church, whose principles he always followed in his life, he was buried. A monument, as a proof of love, was erected to him by Mr. Andrzej Kochanowski, nephew, son of Jan, vicecapitaneus of Stężyca", reads the Latin inscription on a late-Renaissance wooden epitaph in the Parish church in Gródek near Zwoleń and Radom in Masovia. The church was founded by the mentioned Andrzej from Opatki (de Opatki), son of Dobiesław, heir in Gródek and Zawada and his wife Anna Mysłowska, who completed the construction and furnished the temple. The permission to build the church was issued by cardinal George Radziwill on April 3, 1593 and the building was ready in 1595. It was consecrated by the cardinal two years after death of the founder in 1598 and the epitaph was erected in 1620. This church was plundered by the Swedes in 1657, the thieves in 1692, and again in 1707 from silver and more expensive apparatus. The second time, among other valuables, two thorns from Christ's crown were stolen, set in silver, which Cardinal Radziwill had left as a gift at the consecration. The village was burnt to the ground in 1657 (after "O rodzinie Jana Kochanowskiego … ", p. 161-168).
According to some sources Andrzej from Opatki had two sons – Eremian and Jan, according to other he died childless and as his heirs he named Kasper, Stanisław, Andrzej, Adam and Jerzy, sons of his brother. It was however not the heir in Gródek, but the brother of poet Jan Kochanowski (1530-1584), also Andrzej, who translated Virgil's Aeneid, published in 1590, and works by Plutarch (after "Wiadomość o życiu i pismach Jana Kochanowskiego" by Józef Przyborowski, p. 9-10). The younger brother of famous poet was born before 1537 and died in about 1599. In 1571 he married Zofia of Sobieszyn, daughter of Jan Sobieski, with whom he had 9 sons, one of whom, Jan from Barycz Kochanowski, was in 1591 transferred by his father from the queen's court in Warsaw to Jan Zamoyski. The village of Gródek passed to the Kochanowski family as a dowry of Anna Mysłowska, who later married Stanisław Plicht, castellan of Sochaczew and after his death Abraham Leżeński. Cardinal Radziwill's favor indicates that the couple was associated with his multicultural court in Kraków as well as the court of Queen Anna Jagiellon in nearby Warsaw. A document issued by the cardinal to Anna Kochanowska née Mysłowska in Stężyca on October 30, 1598 was signed in presence of the members of his court, some of them have Italian and even Scottish names, like Jan Fox (1566-1636), scholastic of Skalbmierz, who studied in Padua and in Rome after 1590, Kosmas Venturin, secretary, Jan Equitius Montanus, parish priest, Andrzej Taglia, canon of Sącz and Jan Chrzciciel Dominik de Perigrinis of Bononia, chaplain. Portrait of a man and two boys in the National Museum in Warsaw (oil on canvas, 80 x 66.5 cm, M.Ob.2484 MNW) is inscribed in Latin in the vicinity of each head. The first inscription above the head of the man indicate that the painting was made in 1596 and his age was 54 (AETATIS. 54: / ANNO 1596.), hence he was born in 1542, the older boy to the left was 10 and he died in 1594 (AETATIS. 10: / OBIIT 1594), thus born in 1584, and the younger was 10 in 1596 (AETATIS 10: / ANNO 1596), thus born in 1586. The dates concerning the man perfectly match the age of Andrzej Kochanowski from Opatki in 1596 and his effigy resemble greatly that of his relative Jan by Giovanni Battista Moroni (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam), identified by me. Therefore, the boys are either his sons or the sons of his brother and the painting was created shortly before his death or most probably commissioned by the widow to commemorate the death of all three. The convention of this portrait is very like an epitaph, additionally underlined by the postmortem effigy of the older boy, which was created two years after his death, but he was depicted living and embracing his father or uncle. It can be compared with mentioned painted epitaph of Andrzej from Opatki, created 24 years after his death and depicted sleeping in an armor. The described painting in Warsaw was acquired from Kraków as a result of the so-called restitution campaign in 1946 and it is attributed to a Flemish painter (after "Early Netherlandish, Dutch, Flemish and Belgian Paintings 1494–1983" by Hanna Benesz and Maria Kluk, Vol. 2, p. 40, item 817). Its style, however, is very much like in a portrait of Beautiful Nana and her husband by Sofonisba Anguissola in the same museum (M.Ob.1079 MNW) and another painting attributed to the Cremonese painter - portrait of Infanta Juana de Austria with female dwarf Ana de Polonia in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, both in terms of rather stiff Spanish composition and technique. We can conclude that similar to portraits of female court dwarfs of Queen Anna Jagiellon, also this portrait was created by Sofonisba, who on 24 December 1584 married sea merchant Orazio Lomellino and lived in Genoa until 1620. Lomellino's family had commercial contacts with Poland-Lithuania since the second half of the 15th century. Among the numerous names of Italian merchants who in the mid-15th century stayed temporarily or settled permanently in Lviv, capital of the Ruthenian Voivodeship, we can find the most eminent names from the history of Genoese or Venetian colonies, such as mentioned Lomellino (Lomellini), Grimaldi, Lercario and Mastropietro. The Lomellinos, one of whom was Carlo the Genoese admiral, the other Angelo Giovanni, podesta, i.e. the municipal chief of Pera, maintain relations with the Lindners in Lviv in the 1470s (after "Lwów starożytny", Vol. 1 by Władysław Łoziński, p. 126). Sofonisba's family who settled in Venice belonged to the patriciate of that city from 1499 to 1612. 
Portrait of Andrzej Kochanowski (1542-1596) from Opatki and his two sons or nephews by Sofonisba Anguissola, 1596, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of Queen Anna Jagiellon by Sofonisba Anguissola
In about 1550, a young Cremonese painter, Sofonisba Anguissola, created her self-portrait (private collection) in a rich dress and in a pose exactly the same as that visible in a portrait of Catherine of Austria, Duchess of Mantua and later Queen of Poland. Catherine's portrait, in Voigtsberg Castle, is attributed to Titian. Sofonisba either created this portrait, participated in its creation or saw it somewhere, as Mantua is not far from Cremona. It could be threfore Catherine, who introduced her to the Polish court, when in June 1553 she married Sigismund II Augustus. Around that time Sofonisba created her self-portrait at the easel, one of the best of her self-portraits, which she could sent to the Polish court as a sample of her talent. This portrait is now in the Łańcut Castle (oil on canvas, 66 x 57 cm, inv. S.916MŁ).
The portrait which was previously identified as effigy of Catharine Fitzgerald, Countess of Desmond and Duchess of Dorset (d. 1625) in Knole House (oil on panel, 41.6 x 33.7 cm, NT 129883), is very similar to effigies of Anna Jagiellon by Martin Kober and his workshop in coronation robes from the Sigismund's Chapel (1587) and in widow's clothing (1595) at the Wawel Castle. It was recently identified as portrait of Sofonisba Anguissola basing on a leaf from van Dyck's Italian Sketchbook (British Museum, inv. 1957,1214.207.110). The inscription in Italian was evidently added later, as the year 1629 is mentioned in the text (the painter was in Italy between 1621 and 1627). The drawing shows an old lady, similar to that from the Knole portrait. According to inscription it is an effigy of Sofonisba, whom the Flemish painter visited in Palermo: "Portrait of Lady Sofonisma painter made live in Palermo in the year 1629 on the 12th of July: her age 96 still having her memory and brain very prompt, very courteous" (Rittratto della Sigra. Sofonisma pittricia fatto dal vivo in Palermo l'anno 1629 li 12 di Julio: l'età di essa 96 havendo ancora la memoria et il serverllo prontissimo, cortesissima). However Sofonisba died on 16 November 1625 and according to sources she was born on 2 February 1532, hence she was 92 when she died. Van Dyck was in Palermo in 1624. If he could confuse the dates of Sofonisba's life, he could also confuse the portrait of Queen of Poland by her hand, created in about 1595, that she had, with her self-portrait (Keller Collection, 1610). He may also have seen the portrait elsewhere in Italy, or even in Flanders or England. The Knole portrait was most probably acquired from the English royal collection, therefore it is highly probable that Anna sent to Queen Elizabeth I her effigy, one from a series created by Anguissola. In July 1589, English envoy Jerome Horsey, wanting to see Anna, sneaked into her palace in Warsaw: "before the windows whereof were placed pots and ranks of great carnations, gillyflowers, province roses, sweet lilies, and other sweet herbs and strange flowers, giving most fragrant, sweet smells. [...] Her majesty sat under a white silk canopy, upon a great Turkey carpet in a chair of estate, a hard-favored queen, her maids of honor and ladies attendants at supper in the same room". Queen Anna allegedly asked him, how Queen Elizabeth could "'spill the blood of the Lord's anointed, a queen more magnificent than herself, without the trial, judgment and consent of her peers, the holy father the Pope and all the Christian princes of Europe?' 'Her subjects and parliament thought it so requisite, without her royal consent, for her more safety and quiet of her realm daily endangered.' She shook her head with dislike of my answer", reported Horsey. Anna died in Warsaw on 9 September 1596 at the age of 72. Before her death she managed to accomplish tomb monuments for herself (1584) and her husband (1595) in Kraków, created by Florentine sculptor Santi Gucci, and for her mother in Bari near Naples (1593), created by Andrea Sarti, Francesco Zaccarella and Francesco Bernucci. She was the last of the Jagiellons, a dynasty that ruled over vast territories in Central Europe since the late 14th century, when Polish nobles proposed to pagan Duke of Lithuania, Jogaila, to marry their eleven-year-old Queen Jadwiga and thus become their king. Counter-Reformation, that she supported, and foreign invasions destroyed Polish tolerance and diversity, greedy nobles destroyed Polish democracy (Liberum veto) and invaders turned much of the country's heritage into a pile of rubble. The only portrait of the Queen in the nest of the Jagiellons - Wawel Royal Castle in Kraków was acquired from the Imperial collection in Vienna in 1936, just three years before World War II broke out. It was created by Kober in about 1595 and sent to the Habsburgs. 
Self-portrait at the easel by Sofonisba Anguissola, 1554-1556, Łańcut Castle.
Portrait of Queen Anna Jagiellon by Sofonisba Anguissola, or a copy by Anton van Dyck, ca. 1595 or 1620s, Knole House.
Portrait of Queen Anna Jagiellon, a drawing by Anton van Dyck after lost painting by Sofonisba Anguissola, 1620s, British Museum.
Forgotten portraits of the Dukes of Pomerania, Dukes of Silesia and European monarchs - part III2/14/2022
Portraits of Bianca Cappello, Grand Duchess of Tuscany by Lavinia Fontana and Alessandro Maganza
During the third free election in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth after the death of Stephen Bathory (1533-1586), husband of Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596), two main camps, that of Jagiellons (Sigismund Vasa) and that of the Habsburgs (Archduke Maximilian), emerged as the strongest (others were supporters of Muscovy, those supporting a Piast, or native citizen of the Commonwealth, and supporters of Italian candidate). The Swedish candidacy in the person of Prince Sigismund (1566-1632), son of Catherine Jagiellon, was pushed by Queen Anna Jagiellon, who renounced her rights to the crown and who was supported by Jan Zamoyski. The Zborowski brothers, the voivode of Poznań Stanisław Górka, the bishop of Vilnius George Radziwill and Stanisław Sędziwój Czarnkowski supported the candidate of the Habsburg dynasty, Archduke Maximilian of Austria (1558-1618), grandson of Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547), and received significant funds from his brother Emperor Rudolf II to advance their candidate.
After two defeats in the royal elections, the House of Habsburg concluded that their candidate might this time have a chance of success if they could raise a sufficient sum of money. Therefore, on April 29, 1587, Archduke Maximilian directly approached Francesco I (1541-1587), Grand Duke of Tuscany, requesting a loan of 100,000 scudi to finance his efforts to obtain the Polish crown. On the same day, the Archduke sent a similar petition to Grand Duchess Bianca Cappello (1548-1587), asking her to persuade her husband to grant him the much-needed sum. On May 18, 1587, Francesco I responded courageously to this request. In the introduction, he mentioned his great hope that his exceptional virtues and personal advantages would undoubtedly enable the Archduke to win the next election. At the same time, he pointed out that the Austro-Spanish House of Habsburg had long owed him more than a million florins. He now claimed to have incurred significant expenses in purchasing the Capestrano estate in the Kingdom of Naples for his and Bianca's son, Don Antonio de' Medici (1576-1621), and that considerable sums had also been spent on strengthening the country's defenses. It is also worth mentioning that the Grand Duke of Tuscany's own candidacy for the crown was considered in Poland, as confirmed by a letter from an architect and engineer in the service of the late King Bathory - Simone Genga (1530-1596), who assured the Duke that his candidacy would certainly be supported by the Pope. In a letter addressed to the voivode of Sieradz, Olbracht Łaski, dated March 22, 1587, Francesco did not give a definitive answer regarding his candidacy. But was there another reason for refusing to grant Maximilian the loan? The Habsburgs must have been aware of the influence his Venetian wife had over the Grand Duke, since the Archduke, who had not yet corresponded with her, as his letter confirms, decided to write to Bianca to make this request (Serenissima Signora, Il non haver in tanto tempo fatto il debito mio in salutar et visitar la Altezza V(ost)ra con lettere mie [...] ho preso ardire di pregarla a favorirme apresso a deta Alteza in deto negocio acioche io possa ottener il mio intento). Bianca's friendly relations with Anna Jagiellon, who supported her nephew for the crown, provide a further explanation. On August 19, 1587, the majority of the nobility gathered in the electoral field voted in favor of Sigismund Vasa, nevertheless, on August 22, Archduke Maximilian was proclaimed king by his supporters. Emperor Rudolf II took feverish steps in this regard, addressing requests for loans to the electors of Brandenburg and Saxony, and then sending emissaries to the Pope, Spain, the Duke of Ferrara, and Urbino. At the same time, Archduke Maximilian again approached Grand Duke Francesco and sent Duke Alfonso Montecuccoli on August 28, 1587 to request a loan of 100,000 scudi. Since Maximilian's chances had increased significantly, Francesco decided to allocate a sum of 50,000 scudi, of which he immediately informed Archduke Maximilian in a letter dated September 10, 1587. The tone of the letter and the characteristic manner in which the transaction was settled are, however, significant. The Augsburg bankers, Hans and Markus Fugger, were to guarantee the return of the paid cash and through whom the Grand Duke of Tuscany was to receive the return of the paid sum at the beginning of the following year (after "Dwór medycejski i Habsburgowie a trzecia elekcja w Polsce" by Danuta Quirini-Popławska, p. 123, 128, 130-131). Francesco and Bianca died in mysterious circumstances over a month later, on October 20, 1587. Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici (1549-1609) refused a state funeral for Bianca, and her burial is therefore unknown. Francesco was buried in the Medici Chapels, alongside his first wife, Joanna of Austria (1547-1578), Maximilian's aunt. Francesco was also a candidate in the first free election of 1573, and the portrait of the Grand Duke, now preserved in the Wilanów Palace (oil on panel, 47.5 x 37 cm, inv. Wil.1494), could be a souvenir of his candidacy. The described relationships indicate that several portraits of the Grand Duke and his wife belonged to Anna Jagiellon and her nephew Sigismund III. Although the portraits sent to Polish monarchs may have been made by painters active in Florence, such as Alessandro Allori (1535-1607), some of Bianca's portraits are attributed to Scipione Pulzone (1544-1598), a Neapolitan painter active mainly in Rome (painting in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, inv. GG 1138), another is attributed to the Venetian painter Francesco Montemezzano (Auktionshaus Stahl, May 2013, lot 20) and the painting attributed to another Venetian painter Alessandro Maganza (Ritratto di donna con collana di perle, oil on canvas, 53 x 40 cm, Capitolium Art in Brescia, May 30, 2017, lot 288), is clearly another portrait of the Grand Duchess of Tuscany. The portrait of Bianca, from "an important Swedish private collection", is also closer to Venetian painting, although attributed to Pulzone (oil on canvas, 46.5 x 38 cm, Uppsala Auktionskammare, April 17, 2024, lot 606). Stylistically, it recalls the work of Maganza; who knows, perhaps it originally adorned the walls of a residence in Sarmatia. The traditional approach, according to which the painter and the model must have met during the creation of the painting, sometimes leads to strange conclusions. The best example is the Portrait of a Lady (Ritratto di dama), now preserved in the Municipal Art Collections of Bologna, in the Palazzo d'Accursio (oil on canvas, 97 x 79.5 cm, inv. P 9). This painting was long considered to be a work by the Bolognese painter Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614), as confirmed by the old plaque under the painting. However, when it turned out that the painting depicts Bianca Cappello, further confirmed by the inscription in the upper right corner: BIANCA CAPEL ... / DVCCESA DI T ..., it is now considered to be a work by a Florentine painter. It is unlikely that Lavinia met Bianca, but the way the Duchess's sumptuous dress and the little dog on her lap have been painted are very characteristic of Fontana, who could receive a portrait by Allori or Pulzone to copy. In the same collection there is another portrait of a lady from the same period, also previously linked to Lavinia and now generally to the Bolognese school (oil on panel, 68 x 54.5 cm, inv. P 26). Interestingly, this woman also bears a strong resemblance to the features of the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, as evidenced by her portrait in the Uffizi Gallery (inv. 1890, 1514) or in a private collection (Pandolfini, Auction 1163, October 12, 2022, lot 125). The case of the "self-portrait" of Lavinia in the Pitti Palace in Florence (inv. 1890, 1841) is somewhat similar: it is clearly a copy of the effigy of Margaret of Parma (1522-1586), illegitimate daughter of the Emperor Charles V. In reference to my discoveries concerning the portraiture of Anna Jagiellon and her husband, we can conclude that the Venetian Grand Duchess of Tuscany and elected Queen of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, used the services of the same painters. The fact that, despite the considerable resources and diplomatic efforts deployed by the Habsburgs in the third royal election, it was Anna's candidate who won, gives an idea of the queen's abilities and influence, her personal wealth, as well as patronage, which undoubtedly surpassed that of Bianca. 
Portrait of Francesco I de' Medici (1541-1587), Grand Duke of Tuscany by workshop of Alessandro Allori, ca. 1573, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
Portrait of Bianca Cappello (1548-1587), Grand Duchess of Tuscany by circle of Lavinia Fontana, ca. 1578-1580, Municipal Art Collections of Bologna.
Portrait of Bianca Cappello (1548-1587), Grand Duchess of Tuscany by Lavinia Fontana, ca. 1580-1587, Municipal Art Collections of Bologna.
Portrait of Bianca Cappello (1548-1587), Grand Duchess of Tuscany by Alessandro Maganza, ca. 1580-1587, Private collection (Sweden).
Portrait of Bianca Cappello (1548-1587), Grand Duchess of Tuscany by Alessandro Maganza, ca. 1584, Private collection (Brescia).
Portraits of Dukes of Savoy by Sofonisba Anguissola
The diplomatic contacts of Poland-Lithuania with the Duchy of Savoy in the 16th century date back with certainty to the year 1535, when Queen Bona planned to marry her eldest daughter Isabella Jagiellon with Louis (Ludovico) of Savoy (1523-1536), Prince of Piedmont, son of Charles III and Beatrice of Portugal. She wrote about this to the ambassador of King Ferdinand I, Sigismund von Herberstein, from Vilnius on December 14, 1535 and the matter was discussed earlier by her envoy Ludovico Alifio (after "Królowa Bona ..." by Władysław Pociecha, p. 206). As was customary, the portrait of the Jagiellonian princess was certainly sent to Savoy, while she received the portrait of Louis. Sadly the prince died in Madrid on November 25, 1536. Some informal contacts were much earlier, for example in February 1416 in Chambéry Janusz of Tuliszków, a knight of the Dryja coat of arms from Greater Poland and a diplomat, received the Order of the Collar (later Order of the Most Holy Annunciation) from Amadeus VIII (considered the last historical antipope). They undoubtedly increased around 1587 when the candidature of the Duke of Savoy in the third free election was discussed in Madrid (after "Dwór medycejski i Habsburgowie ..." by Danuta Quirini-Popławska, p. 123).
In the 16th and 17th centuries portraiture was part of diplomacy and monarchs of different countries in Europe frequently exchanged their effigies. Portraits were also sent to friends and family members. In 1558, Georgius Sabinus (1508-1560), a German poet and diplomat, was sent to Poland-Lithuania to win the support of Polish-Lithuanian lords, including Stanisław Ostroróg, Jan Janusz Kościelecki, Łukasz Górka, Jan Tarnowski and Jan Zborowski, to the candidacy of Sigismund of Brandenburg (1538-1566), son of Joachim II Hector, elector of Brandenburg from his second marriage with Hedwig Jagiellon (1513-1572), for the throne after his uncle Sigismund Augustus. In the name of young Prince Sigismund, he gave each of them a gold chain, from which hung the portrait of the prince. As he was only known to a few of them, he wanted to present his effigy to them "as a symbol of friendship" (als ein Symbol der Freundschaft). The Polish-Lithuanian lords reciprocated so that "hardly any other envoy sent to Poland has ever returned home with as much wealth and gifts as he does" (mit so vielem Reichtum und Gaben wie er, sei wohl kaum je ein zweiter nach Polen beordneter Gesandter heimgekehrt, after "Forschungen zur brandenburgischen und preussischen Geschichte ...", Volume 11, p. 156). The miniatures probably came from Cranach's workshop, like the portraits of Sigismund's father, although it cannot be ruled out that they were commissioned in Italy by the prince's mother Hedwig. Diplomatic missions were frequently accompanied by the exchange of valuable gifts and they generally represented the country's most valuable exports, so the Italians offered paintings, rich fabrics and luxury cosmetics and the Poles offered clocks, sables, horses and amber. Cardinal Enrico Gaetani, papal legate in Poland from April 1596 to June 1597, offered King Sigismund III Vasa some paintings by famous masters, the queen richly embroidered veils and a conch with musk set in a rich setting, all worth at least 800 scudi. The king gave the cardinal a beautiful temple-shaped clock with moving figurines showing the procession and blessing of the Holy Father worth over 3,000 scudi, and 40 sables worth 500 scudi. The Bishop of Kuyavia in Wolbórz gave the legate two horses with rich Turkish-style shabracks, and the cardinal distributed gold medals with his image to the courtiers. Boniface Vanozzi, sent from the same Cardinal Gaetani to Chancellor Jan Zamoyski, distributed beads, rosaries, medals, agnus dei, pictures on metal sheet in ebony frames and he received a horse with velvet Turkish-style shabrack, a large gold medal depicting King Stephen Bathory, an elk hoof, lots of game, vinegar, oil and sweets. To the king and queen Vanozzi presented paintings, tapestries woven in Spain (or more likely in the Spanish Netherlands), colorful gloves with scent, and musk. The king gave him very expensive sables and a clock worth 1,000 thalers and the queen, various utensils made of white amber for the chapel, a crucifix, a tray for altar cruets, a pax and a monstrance, all beautifully carved in Gdańsk. In 1597, the ambassador of the Spanish king, Don Francisco de Mendoza (1547-1623), Admiral of Aragon and Marquis of Guadalest, received from Sigismund III sables worth 2,000 scudi and his courtiers were offered golden cups (after "Domy i dwory ..." by Łukasz Gołębiowski, pp. 258-259). At that time, the elected monarch of the Commonwealth also sent his brother-in-law, the King of Spain, portraits of his children by Martin Kober, both dated '1596' (Monastery of las Descalzas Reales in Madrid) and in 1621, the Polish ambassador in London, Jerzy Ossoliński, was given portraits "att length" of the King and Prince Charles. The royal collections of the Commonwealth before 1655 were therefore comparable to those of the Spanish monarchs (Prado Museum in Madrid and El Escorial), Holy Roman Emperors (Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and Hofburg), Dukes of Tuscany (Uffizi Gallery in Florence and Pitti Palace) or Dukes of Savoy (Galleria Sabauda in Turin and Palazzo Madama). Unfortunately very little preserved today in the former territories of the Commonwealth, including inventories and other documents. In the National Museum in Warsaw there is a portrait of two boys, attributed to circle of Dutch painter Anthonis Mor, who worked for Spanish and Portuguese monarchs (oil on canvas, 56.5 x 46 cm, inventory number M.Ob.941 MNW, earlier 231117). It was purchased in 1962 from Romuald Malangiewicz. Its earlier history is unknown, so we cannot exclude the provenance from the royal or magnate collection in Poland-Lithuania. The painting was cut from a larger group portrait painting, as a fragment of a woman's dress, most likely the mother of the two boys, is visible to the right. Such portraits were particularly popular in Italy at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries - portrait of Maria di Cosimo Tornabuoni, a Florentine noblewoman, and her two little sons, one dressed in dominican habit, by Tiberio di Tito (Tiberio Titi) or a portrait of Bianca degli Utili Maselli surrounded by six of her children, painted by Lavinia Fontana in Rome. If the painting comes from the royal or magnate collection then the main part depicting the woman was destroyed when Commonwealth residences were ransacked and burned during the Deluge (1655-1660) or later, or it was cut into pieces to sell the picture more profitably when the country became impoverished due to wars and invasions. A portrait painted in a similar style and with a woman resembling the two boys in the Warsaw painting is now in Kensington Palace in England (oil on canvas, 42.3 x 33 cm, RCIN 402954, inscription: 305). It comes from the Royal Collection, possibly recorded in the King's Dressing Room next Paradise at Hampton Court in 1666 (number 60), and was previously thought to represent Elisabeth of Valois (1545-1568), Queen of Spain. Consequently, it was attributed to Spanish court portraitist Anthonis Mor and later to his pupil and successor under Phillip II, Alonso Sánchez Coello. It is now identifed to possibly depict Elisabeth's eldest daughter, Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia. A companion portrait is therefore thought to possibly represent her sister Infanta Catalina Micaela of Spain (oil on canvas, 42.2 x 32.6 cm, RCIN 402957, 306). These effigies indeed resemble other effigies of the infantas, however comparing with portraits of Isabella Clara Eugenia by Coello in the Prado Museum in Madrid, painted in 1579 (P01137) and by Juan Pantoja de la Cruz from about 1599 (P000717) and signed portraits of her sister Catalina Micaela from the Castle of Racconigi (0100399544) and attributed to Sofonisba Anguissola (sold at Christie's New York, October 14, 2021, lot 101), indicate that it should be the other way around - 305 is the portrait of Catalina Micaela and 306 of Isabella Clara Eugenia. In 1585, Catalina Micaela became Duchess of Savoy by marrying Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy in Zaragoza. A similar small portrait (oil on canvas, 55.9 x 45.7 cm) bearing the inscription: DVQUESA / DE.SAVOI, was sold at Period Oak Antiques. The style of the portrait of Catalina Micaela in the Royal Collection resembles the portrait of her mother in the Prado, attributed to Sofonisba Anguissola (P001031) and Sofonisba's self-portrait at the easel (Łańcut Castle). The composition and style of the portrait of two boys in Warsaw is in turn similar to the portrait of Infanta Juana de Austria (Joan of Austria) with female dwarf Ana de Polonia by Sofonisba (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, P26w15). The two boys should therefore be identified as the eldest sons of Catalina Micaela - Philip Emmanuel (1586-1605) and Victor Amadeus (1587-1637) and their known iconography matches perfectly. Both princes were frequently depicted in their youth and in many of their effigies, mostly created by the Dutch painter Jan Kraeck, known as Giovanni Caracca, they wear a similar smaller ruff (e.g. double portrait from private collection in Naples, sold at Blindarte, November 30, 2019, lot 153). Some of them were created in several versions, such as the triple portrait from 1589 (sold at Aste Bolaffi, September 25, 2013 and in Quirinale Palace in Rome). From around 1584 to 1615, Sofonisba resided in Genoa. Although in 1585 she met the Infanta Catalina Micaela on her arrival in Genoa and probably accompanied her on the way to Turin, all the portraits mentioned were probably made from sketches, study drawings or paintings by other painters, such as Kraeck. It was she who, around 1590, produced a miniature portrait of Charles Emmanuel I (sold in 2005, Christie's in London, lot 1009, as the effigy of Victor Amadeus I) and the portrait of the duke with his wife Catalina Micaela and their children (Palazzo Madama in Turin, 0611/D), as indicate the style of the two paintings. The portrait of two princes in Warsaw was therefore a gift to Sigismund III Vasa or his aunt Anna Jagiellon and was probably brought by the Spanish ambassador Mendoza or another envoy. 
Portrait of Infanta Catalina Micaela (1567-1597), Duchess of Savoy by Sofonisba Anguissola, ca. 1590, Kensington Palace.
Portait of Victor Amadeus (1587-1637) and Philip Emmanuel (1586-1605), sons of Infanta Catalina Micaela (1567-1597), Duchess of Savoy by Sofonisba Anguissola or workshop, ca. 1596-1597, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of Infanta Catalina Micaela (1567-1597), Duchess of Savoy with her sons by Sofonisba Anguissola or workshop, ca. 1596-1597. Possible layout of original painting. © Marcin Latka
Disguised portrait of Christina of Denmark by Engelhard de Pee
In the antechamber of the so-called Rich Chapel (Reiche Kapelle) of the ducal residence in Munich there is an interesting painting depicting the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (oil on canvas, 206.5 x 188.2 cm, inv. 3511). Anyone familiar with the portraits of the dukes of Bavaria and the rulers of neighbouring Austria at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries will immediately recognise that the scene is filled with numerous disguised portraits. The painting is attributed to Engelhard de (van) Pee (d. 1605), court painter to William V (1548-1626), Duke of Bavaria, and later to his son Maximilian I (1573-1651), for whom the Rich Chapel was magnificently decorated before 1607. The scene is supposed to commemorate the birth of Maximilian, depicted as the infant Jesus, presented in the temple by his parents and dated around 1580. The protagonists are therefore identified as members of the Bavarian ruling family at that time, including William and his wife Renata of Lorraine (1544-1602) in the roles of Joseph and the Virgin and William's brother Ernest of Bavaria (1554-1612), dressed as the high priest (compare "Prentwerk: 1500-1700" by Jan de Jong, p. 56).
On closer inspection, it seems that it is not the Wittelsbachs who dominate this scene, but the Habsburgs. It can be compared to the Communion of the Virgin in the Monastery of Las Descalzas Reales in Madrid, a painting attributed to Ottavio Zanuoli and painted around 1600. The Madrid painting shows the family of Archduke Charles of Styria (1540-1590), who was already dead when the painting was created, depicted as Saint John the Apostle, giving communion to his wife Archduchess Maria Anna of Bavaria (1551-1608) in the guise of the Virgin Mary and dressed as a nun. The effigy of a nun in the right corner of the Munich painting closely resembles that of Maria Anna in the Madrid painting. The man standing directly behind the high priest bears a strong resemblance to Archduke Charles in the aforementioned painting by Zanuoli as well as other portraits, such as the portrait by Bartolomé González y Serrano in the Prado (inv. P002433) or the portrait from the Medici collection at the Villa di Poggio a Caiano (OdA Poggio a Caiano 280 / 1911). The man standing behind Charles bears a strong resemblance to his brother Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria (1529-1595), Imperial Count of Tyrol, as in the engraving with his portrait by David Custos from around 1601 (Veste Coburg, inv. XIII,150,181). The man directly opposite Charles, on the right, depicted as the husband of the Virgin Saint Joseph, cannot be William V because he bears a striking resemblance to Charles, so he must be his son Ferdinand (1578-1637), later Holy Roman Emperor, King of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, as depicted in a full-length portrait from around 1604 by Joseph Heintz the Elder (Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, GG 9453). The Virgin Mary bears a strong resemblance to Maria Anna of Bavaria (1574-1616), daughter of Wilhelm and wife of Ferdinand, as depicted in her portrait by Heintz the Elder (Kunsthistorisches Museum, GG 3133 and Alte Pinakothek in Munich, inv. 3004). The woman depicted as the old prophetess Anna should therefore be identified with Maria Anna's mother, Renata of Lorraine, wife of William, while the high priest is not William's brother Ernest, but the duke himself, who abdicated in 1597 in favour of his son Maximilian I and and took up residence in a palace called Wilhelminische Veste (Herzog-Max-Burg), connected by a passage to the nearby Jesuit monastery, where he spent the rest of his life in contemplation and prayer. The duke's features are very similar in his portrait made by the circle of Hans von Aachen, now kept at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence (oil on canvas, 53.5 x 43.5 cm, in. 1911 / OdA Castello 273), identified by me. Like the Madrid painting, the canvas commemorates family relationships, in this case the ties between the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria and the Habsburgs of Austria when, on April 23, 1600, Maria Anna married her cousin Ferdinand and their first child, Archduchess Christina, was soon born (May 25, 1601). Christina died in infancy, just one month after her birth. She was named after her maternal great-grandmother Christina of Denmark (1521-1590), Duchess of Milan and Lorraine. All the people depicted in this painting were therefore direct descendants of Philip the Handsome (1478-1506) and Joanna of Castile (1479-1555). With the exception of Renata of Lorraine, they all descended from Emperor Ferdinand I (1503-1564) and Anna Jagellonica (1503-1547). The painting should therefore be dated to around 1601, the year when Engelhard de Pee created his masterpiece - Self-portrait as Saint Luke painting the Madonna. The painting, now in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (oil on canvas, 105 x 92.5 cm, inv. 41), comes from the Electoral Gallery in Munich. De Pee, who appears in the Landshut tax lists from 1570 to 1577 as a Brussels painter, had been a court painter in Munich since 1578. The canvas was dated and signed with a monogram on the cover of the book held by the Child in the centre of the painting: 1601 / E.V.P. The painter depicted himself as the apostle Saint Luke the Evangelist, while the image of the Virgin is based on the Byzantine icon Salus Populi Romani ("Protectress of the Roman People") in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, one of the so-called "Luke images" thought to have been painted from life by Saint Luke himself (including the Black Madonna of Częstochowa). The effigy of the Virgin is not an idealized image, but a personalized one and the model, like the painter, looks at the viewer with meaning. It is interesting to note that the woman bears a great resemblance to the mother of Renata of Lorraine - Christina of Denmark from her portrait by Antonis Mor, painted in 1554 (Hampton Court Palace, RCIN 405799), and especially the portrait by François Clouet from the collection of Antoine de Mailly, Marquis de Châteaurenaud, dated 1558 (Sotheby's Paris, June 21, 2012, lot 33) and a similar miniature portrait from the Medici collection (Uffizi Gallery, inv. 1890 / 4440). From 1567, Christine lived at Friedberg Castle in Bavaria. In August 1578, she decided to move permanently to Italy and spent her last years in her widow's residence in Tortona between Milan, Genoa and Turin, which she had inherited from her first marriage to Francesco II Sforza. She died in 1590 and was buried next to her second husband in the crypt of the ducal chapel of the Church of the Cordeliers in Nancy. In Tortona, she distinguished herself for her intense activity in the government of the city, reforms, ending the conflict with Ravenna, obtaining the restitution of some previously lost privileges and protecting the rights of the Tortonese against the unpopular Spanish rule. Queen Bona Sforza d'Aragona (1494-1557) sent her "Dearest and most illustrious Cousin" a letter of congratulations on her first marriage to Francesco II Sforza (from Kraków, July 15, 1534) and after Bona's death, when the castles of Tortona and Vigevano were not available, Christina petitioned Philip II of Spain through her Italian secretary, asking him to give her the Duchy of Bari and offering to repay the debt of 100,000 crowns to Bona's son Sigismund Augustus. In 1547 Christina's marriage with the King of Poland was seriously discussed at Augsburg. After the death of Christian II of Denmark in 1559, when her elder sister Dorothea made no claims to the throne, she claimed the Danish throne for herself. Between 1563 and 1569, Christina signed official documents with the addition "Queen of Denmark". In 1566, a medal was minted in which she was designated as Queen of Denmark with the motto: Me sine cuncta ruunt ("Without me all things perish", compare "Christina of Denmark ..." by Julia Cartwright, p. 95, 321, 453, 483), indicating that she saw herself as the salvation and protectress of the people. Considering the close and cordial relations between Sigismund III and William V, it is quite possible that copies of the paintings described were also in Warsaw and Vilnius. 
Portrait of William V (1548-1626), Duke of Bavaria by circle of Hans von Aachen, 1580s, Pitti Palace in Florence.
Presentation of Jesus in the Temple with disguised portraits of the Wittelsbachs and Habsburgs by Engelhard de Pee, ca. 1601, Alte Pinakothek in Munich.
Self-portrait as Saint Luke painting the portrait of Christina of Denmark (1521-1590), Duchess of Milan and Lorraine, as Madonna by Engelhard de Pee, 1601, Alte Pinakothek in Munich.
Portraits of Duke Joachim Frederick by Flemish painters
During the tenure of Andreas Jerin (1585-1596) as the Bishop of Wrocław the counter-reformation began in Silesia. The pressure of militant Catholicism made itself felt also in the Duchy of Brzeg, when, among others, the commander of the Joannites in Oleśnica Mała near Oława removed Lutheran pastors from his estates (1589), while Joachim Frederick's attempt to intervene become futile (after "Brzeg: dzieje, gospodarka, kultura" by Władysław Dziewulski, p. 59).
Joachim Frederick of Brzeg modeled himself on his father George II (1523-1586), but he was a better administrator than him. He confirmed former city privileges and supported the crafts. The castle in Oława was rebuilt and enlarged for Joachim Frederick in the years 1587-1600 by the Italian architect Bernard Niuron from Lugano. Thanks to his family connections and his good relations with the imperial court in Prague and the court in Berlin, he obtained a number of honorary positions. Since 1585 he was Lutheran provost of the chapter of Magdeburg, and in 1588 he was appointed general commander of the regular army of Silesia. After the death of his brother John George, who died without issue in 1592, Joachim Frederick inherited Wołów and after death of his mother and his cousin Frederick IV of Legnica (1552-1596), he become the sole Duke of Legnica-Brzeg-Oława-Wołów (Liegnitz-Brieg-Ohlau-Wohlau in German). Joachim Frederick gained great popularity for his gentleness and diligence. He liked science and he tried to improve the administration of justice in 1599. Since he ranked first among the Silesian princes, from 1592 until his death he had to deal with the matter of helping the emperor, who was at war with the Turks. In 1599, the Duke and his brother-in-law, Charles II of Ziębice-Oleśnica, refused to participate in the election of Bishop Paul Albert because he was not a Silesian and he acquired from Peter Wok von Rosenberg the towns of Złoty Stok (Reichenstein) and Srebrna Góra (Silberberg), rich in gold and silver mines. Joachim Frederick died on March 25, 1602 in Brzeg. The man from the portrait in the National Museum in Poznań (oil on panel, 47 x 38 cm, inv. Mo 855) resemble the man from the portrait in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (inv. GG 808). Many splendid paintings that once adorned the walls of the Silesian Wawel - the Piast Castle in Brzeg and survived the bombing in 1741, when the castle was destroyed by the Prussian forces in the First Silesian War, were moved to Berlin. Possibly also this picture. The image in Poznań was acquired in 1930 from private collection Karl von Wesendonk in Berlin. Both paintings, in Poznań and in Vienna, are attributed to Adriaen Thomasz. Key, however the man from Poznań version is much older. If he was around 25 when the Vienna painting was created in about 1575, then the Poznań version should be dated around 1600, which rules out Key's authorship, as he died in 1589 or after. The most important arts and crafts center in this part of Europe at that time was the imperial court of Emperor Rudolf II in Prague. Many Flemish artists worked for the Emperor and two of them, created very similar portraits of Rudolf. One with light blue eyes, bust-length, wearing a breastplate (sold at Christie's, 27 Jan 2010, lot 344), is attributed to circle of Frans Pourbus the Younger (1569-1622), a Flemish painter from Antwerp, who at the end of the 16th century worked for Archduke Albert and Infanta Isabella in Brussels. The other with dark eyes, attributed to Lucas van Valckenborch (d. 1597) from Leuven, is today in the Liechtenstein collection in Vienna (inv. GE 2484). The style of the image in Poznań resemble that of Pourbus, especially the portrait of a man in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest (inv. 5862). The same man was depicted in another painting created in about 1600, in which however his face resemble more the Warsaw portrait from 1574 (inv. M.Ob.819 MNW). His servant gives him a cup of wine. This painting titled sometimes "Two Fools", because of the old man's extravagant outfit, or "Emperor Rudolf II taking the cure", is today in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (oil on canvas, 175.5 x 109 cm, inv. GG 2773, verifiable in the gallery depot in 1868). It was attributed to Pieter Isaacsz (d. 1625), circle of Cornelis Ketel (1548-1616) or to Lucas van Valckenborch. The comparison with the painting in the Silesian Museum in Opava (inv. In 2036 A), which was created by Valckenborch, most probably together with his assistant or only by him - Georg Flegel (1566-1638) is the most accurate. In his only known so far painted effigy from a fresco by Balthasar Latomus, the court painter of George II, in the ducal study of the Brzeg Castle, painted in 1583-1584, Joachim Frederick was depicted in colouful red-brown striped doublet, while his father is wearing a black attire. The Duke of Brzeg is also wearing a ruff and heavy gold chains with a medallion, like in the described painting by Valckenborch or Flegel in Vienna. The man from a large gold medal, most likely minted from the Złoty Stok gold, resemble the most George the Pious (1484-1543), Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach. George, son of Sophia Jagiellon, was an early adherent of Protestantism. He maintained correspondence with Martin Luther and introduced the Reformation in his Silesian possessions - Krnov, Bytom, Racibórz and Opole, one of the largest centers of Silesian cloth weaving. His son George Frederick (1539-1603), who from 1577 was also Administrator of the Duchy of Prussia, maintained good relations with Poland-Lithuania. He minted coins with the official motto of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: "If God be with us, who shall be against us?" (Guldentaler, 1586, Königsberg), his tomb monument in the Heilsbronn monastery, attributed to Endres Dietrich Seidensticker, is adorned with coat of arms of Poland (White Eagle), repeated three times (after "Kloster Heilsbronn ..." by Graf Rudolph Stillfried-Alcántara, p. 163) and his portrait in the National Museum in Wrocław (inv. VIII-1514), was created by Silesian painter Andreas Riehl the Younger from Wrocław. The portrait of George Frederick was created in 1601 and he is wearing a medal of King Stephen Bathory with the inscription in Latin STEFANVS. REX. POLONIA. 1581 (after "Portret na Śląsku ..." by Ewa Houszka, p. 12). An earlier version of this portrait, painted in 1599 as a pendant to the likeness of George Frederick's wife, both from a private collection in Moscow, was sold in London in 2024 (Sotheby's, April 10, 2024, lot 7). Riehl is also the author of the portrait of King Stephen Bathory (National Museum in Wrocław, VIIl-2711). In 1571, the Regent of Prussia also commissioned a series of portraits of his father George the Pious in the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger (two are in the Grunewald hunting lodge in Berlin, GKI1192 and GKI1048) and for his wife Elizabeth of Brandenburg-Küstrin (1540-1578), who died while she was staying at the Warsaw court, where George Frederick was to be awarded the dukedom by the Polish king, he commissioned the Dutch sculptor Willem van den Blocke to construct the monument in Königsberg Cathedral, which was completed in 1582. His Silesian lands were close to Brzeg and Legnica, so the Margrave, who stayed mostly in Ansbach, entrusted George II od Brzeg with the implementation of the new laws in his Krnov domain. The bust of a bearded man in mentioned gold medal in the Vienna portrait resemble the portraits of George the Pious by Cranach the Younger and 1534 medal with his bust in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg. Joachim Frederick, a Lutheran and the most important among the Silesian princes, minted coins in Złoty Stok, like the gold ducat from 1602 (National Museum in Warsaw, NPO 350 MNW). It was therefore him who most probably ordered both the medal and the portrait in the workshop of Flemish painter. In 1582 41 representations of Dutch wars painted on canvas were purchased by the Brzeg city council (after "Op Nederlandse manier ..." by Mateusz Kapustka, p. 35), indicating that Netherlandish art was strongly represented in his domains. 
Portrait of Joachim Frederick (1550-1602), Duke of Legnica-Brzeg-Oława-Wołów by circle of Frans Pourbus the Younger, 1597-1602, National Museum in Poznań. Virtual reconstruction, © Marcin Latka
Portrait of Joachim Frederick (1550-1602), Duke of Legnica-Brzeg-Oława-Wołów with gold medal with bust of Margrave George the Pious by Lucas van Valckenborch or Georg Flegel, 1597-1602, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Portrait of Adam Wenceslaus, Duke of Cieszyn by Bartholomeus Strobel or circle
Another painting created by Prague school of painting of Joseph Heintz the Elder and Hans von Aachen is a small oval portrait of a man in a gorget. The man also wears a white silk doublet, a military tunic embroidered with gold and a wired reticella lace collar. The painting comes from a private collection in Warsaw and was sold in 2005 (oil on canvas mounted on panel, 69 x 59.5 cm, Agra-Art SA, December 11, 2005, lot 7831). The style of the painting is close to Bartholomeus Strobel, a Mannerist-Baroque painter from Silesia, born in Wrocław, who worked in Prague and in Vienna from about 1608. In 1611 he returns to Wrocław to help his father with work in the Augustinian church and in 1619, thanks to the support of King Sigismund III Vasa, he obtained the status of a court painter (servitor) of Emperor Matthias.
This portrait can be compared with signed works by Strobel, portrait of Władysław Dominik Zasławski-Ostrogski from 1635 in the Wilanów Palace in Warsaw (signed and dated: B. Strobell 1635) and the Crucifixion in the Church of St. James in Toruń (signed and dated: B. Strobel 1634). According to inscription in Latin (AETATIS SVAE 37 / ANNO 1611), the man was 37 years old in 1611, exaclty as Adam Wenceslaus (1574-1617), Duke of Cieszyn when he was appointed supreme commander of the Silesian troops by the new King of Bohemia Matthias, Emperor from 1612. Counting on imperial favors Adam Wenceslaus, raised in Protestantism, converted to Catholicism and expelled the pastor Tymoteusz Lowczany from Cieszyn on February 23, 1611. He accompanied King Matthias at the ceremonial entry to Wrocław with a retinue of almost three hundred horses. The portrait is similar to the effigy of Duke Adam Wenceslaus in the Museum of Cieszyn Silesia, attributed to Piotr Brygierski (ca. 1630-1718). The costume (gorget, silk doublet, military tunic and collar) and facial features are very much alike. 
Portrait of Adam Wenceslaus (1574-1617), Duke of Cieszyn, aged 37 by Bartholomeus Strobel or circle, 1611, Private collection.
Lamentation of Christ with disguised portrait Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia by workshop of Hendrick de Clerck
"The Most Serene Princess, our beloved cousin and relative. Called by the most illustrious castellan of Kraków, to Poland, a year before, Henricus Von Peene [Flemish military engineer Hendrik van Peene], who was engaged in the art of architecture, and an inhabitant of the dominions of Your Serenity, was bound by a great desire to see his wife and beloved child. [...] Wherefore, with his desire, and the most illustrious castellan of Kraków, the duke in Zbarazh [Prince Jerzy Zbaraski (1574-1631)], willingly supporting the request, we earnestly ask Your Serenity that his wife be permitted, by order of Your Serenity, together with her children and some of her servants from the domains of Your Serenity to emigrate to Poland via Amsterdam, because the journey by sea is shorter and more economical than by land" (Serenissima princeps domina cognata et affinis nostra charissima. Vocatus ab illustrissimo castellano Cracoviensi, in Poloniam, ante elapsum annum, in arte architectonica versatus Henricus Von Peene, dominiorum Serenitatis Vestræ incola, magno tenetur desiderio, videndi suam uxorem atque caram sobolem. [...] Quamobrem cum ipsius desiderio, tum illustrissimi castellani Cracoviensis, ducis in Zbaraz, postulationi libenter suffragantes, petimus diligenter a Serenitate Vestra liceat eius uxori ex mandato Serenitatis Vestræ unacum liberis et aliquot e famulatu ipsius personis ex ditionibus Serenitatis Vestræ in Poloniam per Amsterodamum commigrare, cum mari quam terra tulius sit atque compendiosius iter), wrote Crown Prince Ladislaus Sigismund Vasa (1595-1648) in a letter dated April 29, 1626 from Warsaw (Data Varsaviæ, die xxix mensis aprilis anno Domini Mo DCO XXVI) to Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia (1566-1633), sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands (after "Messager des sciences historiques, des arts et de la bibliographie de Belgique", Volume 24, p. 209-210).
This letter, as well as several others, such as the letter from Sigismund III to the husband of the Infanta, Archduke Albert of Austria (1559-1621), dated January 20, 1619 (Datum Varsoviæ, xx mensis januarii anno Domini M. DCXIX), concerning "the excellent Wilhelm [or Guillaume] Marten, citizen of Elbląg, stonemason, to bring us marble stones cut in the domains of Your Serenity for the construction of our castle" (egregio Vilhelmo Marten, civi Elbingen, lapiride, ut in ditionibus Serenitatis Vestræ lapides marmoreos pro structura arcis nostræ incisos ad nos adveheret), proves intensified contacts between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Spanish Netherlands in the artistic field. The inventories of the Infanta's splendid residence in Brussels - Coudenberg Palace, list several portraits of Sigismund III and members of his family. In addition to architects and stonemasons, many Flemish painters, such as Peter Paul Rubens or Jan Brueghel the Elder, worked for Polish-Lithuanian monarchs and aristocrats. The court painters of the Infanta, such as Gaspar de Crayer, were also employed by her relatives and friendly courts in Europe (Crayer created several portraits of monarchs and nobles of Spain and some of his paintings were also sent there during his lifetime). Polish-Lithuanian nobles, such as Christopher Michael Sapieha/Sapega (1607-1631), who studied in Leuven in 1627, brought to their country many effigies of the rulers of the Spanish Netherlands. The Infanta undoubtedly also sent her effigies to Poland-Lithuania, and Sigismund and his son commissioned portraits of their relatives and other European monarchs from the Spanish Netherlands. In 1625, the Frenchman Mathieu Rouault was commissioned to transport such portraits, including that of the Infanta and her husband, from Antwerp to Gdańsk (after "Świat polskich Wazów: eseje", p. 291). In the Lithuanian National Museum of Art in Vilnius there is a painting of The Lamentation of the Dead Christ, attributed to a Flemish painter from the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries (oil on copper, 147 x 89 cm, inv. LNDM B 485). It was probably donated to the museum of the Society of Friends of Science in Vilnius in 1931 by Marja Kiersnowska, because the report for the year 1931 (25 years of existence) mentions "'The Lamentation of Christ', an oil copy of a painting by Vans Dyck in Antwerp from the end of the 17th or beginning of the 18th century", offered by her (after "Zarys Stanu i Działalności Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk w Wilnie ...", 1932, p. 73). The three central figures of Christ, the Virgin Mary and an angel are directly taken from The Lamentation by Paolo Veronese, painted between 1576 and 1582 (Hermitage Museum, ГЭ-49), acquired from the collection of Louis Antoine Crozat, Baron of Thiers, in Paris in 1772. The style, however, closely resembles works attributed to Hendrick de Clerck (ca. 1560-1630), a Flemish painter active in Brussels, and his studio, such as the Pietà in the National Museum in Warsaw (inv. M.Ob.2168 MNW). In 1594 de Clerck entered the service of Archduke Ernest of Austria as court artist, and after his death in 1595 he worked for the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia and Archduke Albert. Before 1605, the painter produced his presumed self-portrait as Saint John the Apostle (Saint Paul's Church in Opwijk). Interestingly, the effigy of Saint Mary Magdalene on the right of the Vilnius painting also looks very much like a portrait. The characteristic features of a woman with loose blond hair indicate that this is most likely a disguised portrait of the founder of the painting. She bears a striking resemblance to the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia from her portrait in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (inv. GG 6345), formerly attributed to Rubens and now to Jacob Jordaens. The Vienna painting is dated around 1618 and, unlike her early portraits, such as Juan Pantoja de la Cruz's painting from around 1598-1599 (Prado Museum in Madrid, P000717), shows her with blond-red hair, indicating that she dyed her hair. The resemblance to the portraits of Isabella Clara Eugenia by Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder (Prado, P001684) and by Gaspar de Crayer (National Gallery in London, NG3819) from the same period is also great. 
Portrait Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia (1566-1633), sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands by Gaspar de Crayer, ca. 1615, National Gallery in London.
Lamentation of Christ with disguised portrait Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia (1566-1633), sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands, as Saint Mary Magdalene by workshop of Hendrick de Clerck, ca. 1615-1618, Lithuanian National Museum of Art in Vilnius.
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