Józef Łepkowski (1826–1894), in 1866 founder of the first Prehistoric Archeology Department at the Cracow University, also established the Archeological Room (1968), the predecessor of the present Museum of the Jagiellonian University. However, much earlier Łepkowski had become an active cooperator of the Cracow Scientific Society (in 1847), and since 1852 he had been its member. In the years 1858 and 1861 he held the position of the Secretary of the Archeology and Fine Arts Department, in the years 1862–1870 he was its vice – chairman. One of the issues he paid a lot of attention to was the protection of archeological and historical monuments, providing proper means and facilities and ensuring the fact that they would be used in scientific research, and later as educational material at university. Fulfilling his task, in 1859 Łepkowski found himself in Kielce where he was to compile a catalogue of the archeological part of Tomasz Zieliński’s collection. Tomasz Zieliński, an eminent collector of art, died in 1858. The catalogue entitled The Collection of Late Tomasz Zieliński in Kielce. The Antiquities Department, written by Łepkowski, was published in print already in 1860. The oriental and classical antiquities (pp. 1–6) include 16 items (part II, much more numerous, encompasses “Pagan and Slavic Antiquities”). The information included in this catalogue constitutes an important source which is very useful in reconstructing the history of some of the ancient monuments, or establishing their provenience. It turned out that some of the objects had been passed to Zieliński’s collection from the collection of Michał Sołtyk (1742–1815). What is more, sometimes the circumstances in which they were found or purchased are described. Łepkowski persuaded Duke Władysław Czartoryski to buy a considerable number of the ancient objects from Zieliński’s collection and after some time (1871–1872) he acquired most of them as Duke’s gift for the University Archeological Room (now the collection of the Faculty of Archeology of the Jagiellonian University). Thanks to Łepkowski’s catalogue, published in 1860, four Egyptian objects have been identified (a granite statuette, a bronze figurine of Osiris, an ushabti figurine, a lime stele from the period of the New Kingdom of Egypt) and a marble relief with the image of Attis, not to mention some other objects of a lesser display significance (e.g. olive lamps).

Konstanty Tyszkiewicz, son of Pius and Augusta née Plater, was born in Łohojsk in 1806. Influenced by his brother Eustachy, he got interested in archeology, conducting research within the area of old castles and digging into kurgans. He established a museum in the Łohojsk palace, in which, apart from the objects from his digs, he gathered a rich collection of art and a valuable archive. He is the author of a few works based mainly on his own archeological and ethnographic research. In the interest of modernization of his estate, he introduced new solutions in soil cultivation and established factories and a bank. In 1858, he visited Cracow and got in touch with the Cracow archeologists, inter alia with J. Łepkowski. In the following years he made several donations to the Cracow Scientific Society. In 1860, he was appointed a member correspondent of the Cracow Scientific Society. He died in Minsk in 1868.

Aleksandra Apolonia Czechówna (1839–1923) was a daughter of Tomasz Czech and Aleksandra née Zielińska. Her Diary of the entire life... written for 65 years (1856–1923) without almost any breaks is kept in National Archives in Cracow, reference number 29/428/1–29/428/44 (previous reference numbers IT 428/1–428/44). It is an excellent source depicting cultural, social and moral life in the city of Cracow in the second half of the 19th century and during the first two decades of the 20th century as it includes the accounts of the author’s everyday life as well as the information about the celebrations, national ceremonies or the jubilees of the meritorious people. The passage presented below comes from the successive two volumes of Aleksandra Czechówna’s Diary, volume 4 and volume 5. It includes the entries in which the author describes the exhibition of the antiquities which she visited. Organised by the Cracow Scientific Society in September 1858, the exhibition of antiquities and art monuments became a big cultural event, not only for Cracow but also for the entire partitioned country. It gained unabated interest of the local public, but also of the fellow – countrymen coming from abroad. Initially, the visitors had access to the hall and three rooms on the first floor. As more and more exhibits were being brought, gradually more rooms were being opened. Eventually the exhibition was held in six rooms and a large vestibule. It was also decided to prolong it – till the 8th of January 1859. At that time Aleksandra Czechówna was almost 19. Together with her sister Izabela she participated in Cracow’s social and cultural life. Thus, it does not come as a surprise that Aleksandra and her family visited the exhibition of antiquities. She saw the exhibition twice. For the first time just after its opening and then, when it was enriched with new objects, right before its closing.

In the early period of its activity, the Cracow Scientific Society passed the numerous gifts it obtained to the University Library. However, since 1856 they remained in the Society and the newly established library. In the course of years the cartographic collection grew bigger; however, its size was not known until 1912 when it encompassed “760 numbers”. Undoubtedly, the atlases and maps gathered came mainly from the donations. Donors passed them from Cracow and its neighbourhood, Galicia, Lviv, Warsaw, Paris, Vienna and other places. They were librarians, booksellers, archivists, builders, members of the Cracow Scientific Society and sympathizers, common people and generals, people who cared for culture and science. All this proves that the Cracow Scientific Society extended over a vast area, far beyond the boarders of the partition and deeply anchored in the conscience of the society.

The botanic studies carried out in the Tatra Mountains, especially on the northern slopes situated on the Polish side of this mountain range, inspired by the Cracow Scientific Society, and later by the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, impress with their size and thematic range. This issue should become a subject matter of an extensive monograph, even if it would be for the contribution of both Cracow institutions into the work of scientific exploration of the highest range of the Carpathian Mountains.
The present article provides a historical outline of these issues but does not exhaust the topic. The content of the article is arranged according to the subject matter and chronology.
The biggest contribution was made by the Physiographic Committee and its Botanic Section. The scientists carried out field research, often in very hard conditions, and compiled the collection. They concentrated on the issues connected with, inter alia, floristics, bryology, lichenology and mycology, through several years phytophenological observations were carried out. Thanks to the scientists and private donors, the botanic collection of the Cracow Scientific Society was considerably enriched and later passed by the Society to the museum collection of the Academy.

In 1859, Pelagia Morelowska, a widow of a head teacher and member of the Cracow Scientific Society, bestowed upon the collection of the Society an oil portrait of Jędrzej Kitowicz (1728–1804), a famous historical writer, diarist, participant in the Bar Confederation, finally – a clergyman and longterm parson in Rzeczyca. At present the portrait is kept in the Scientific Library of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow and in 2013 underwent a complete restoration conducted by Małgorzata Chmielewska, a restorer from the Czartoryski Museum. The article presents the history of the portrait of Kitowicz, which Pelagia Morelowska inherited from her mother Apolonia Dunin Brzezińska. Apolonia was a granddaughter of Jedrzej Kitowicz’s sister.
Thus, through four generations of women from the family of Jedrzej Kitowicz, the portrait passed to the Cracow Scientific Society, which gave rise to the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2015 we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Society and so does the present text describing the history of one of the early bestowments.

December 2015 marks the 200th anniversary of the foundation of Cracow Scientific Society. Adopted by the Board of Rectors of Cracow Academy, the first statute of the Society, closely connected with the university in the early stages of its existence, was approved 200 years ago – on the 9th of December 1815 by the authorities of the Republic of Cracow. Kept in the Archive of Science of Polish Academy of Sciences and Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cracow, preserved almost intact, the archival material of one of the first scientific societies founded on Polish lands, due to its completeness, constitutes a unique fonds. Thus, the objective of the actions of the archivists, initiated over 50 years ago, has been to grant the researchers the fullest possible access to the archival legacy of the Society, and now in a digital form on-line share it with the broadest possible circle of recipients. At the same time, due to the digitization programme (combined with the conservation) it will be possible to prevent these precious materials from deteriorating. The article describes the road from the first works of Danuta Rederowa, the author of the inventory of the records of the Society, to the ongoing actions to digitize the unique archival materials and create a new version of the inventory in a digital form.

This article presents the figure of Józef Bartłomiej Gherardyni (1681–1743), Cracow merchant and member of the Cracow patriciate. It also describes an interesting history of a Polish branch of the family whose roots went way back to Florence in Tuscany. Basing on his last will and an inventory, completed with the information from other sources, it was possible to retrace the alliances of the Polish branch of the Gherardyni family whose representatives, although not in any Cracow municipal offices themselves, allied with the families belonging to Cracow’s power elite and with the representatives of the nobility. In addition, the article discusses a very fast process of the polonisation of the Polish branch of the Gherardyni family whose third generation – the children of Józef Bartłomiej Gherardyni – could not speak the language of Petrarch and Boccaccio.

Thanks to his exploratory studies, Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768) is believed to be the father of two disciplines of science: classical archaeology and art history. He was mainly interested in Greek art which he put on the pedestal of the highest perfection, naming it an unattainable model of excellence. He was the first to show the past of art as a historical process, and through the application of the category of style enabled setting the artistic phenomena in a specific context, also chronological. It was Winckelmann who shaped the method and language of the description of the work of art, until today an essential element of our set of scientific tools and methods. The book that established his fame and strengthened his achievement is a ground-breaking Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (Dresden 1764). In Poland he was admired by Stanisław Kostka Potocki (1755–1821), a lover of antique and collector, who in order to acquire original antiques carried out digs in Italy. Potocki’s great contribution is sharing Winckelmann’s main work with Polish readers in the form of an artistic adaptation entitled On the art of the ancient or Polish Winckelmann (Warszawa 1815).
From 1755 Winckelmann stayed in Rome, from 1758 as a librarian and a guardian of Cardinal Alessandro Albani’s collection. In 1763 he took over the duties of commisario delle antichitá della camera apostolica and the office of scriptor lingue teutonicae in the Vatican Library. In the spring of 1768 Winckelmann decided to go to Germany, his mother country, which he had left a couple of years before. At a certain moment of his journey he suffered from some kind of a psychological breakdown and he decided to immediately return to Rome. However, he managed (via Münich and Regensburg) to visit Vienna, where he was received with honours by the Empress Maria Theresa. From Vienna he irrevocably set off on a journey back to Rome. On the 1st of June 1768 he reached Trieste with the intention to get to Ancona by ship and then follow the overland route to Rome. Despite the hurry, in view of lack of a suitable connection, he was forced to spend a whole week in Trieste waiting for a ship. Unfortunately, on the 8th of June he was brutally murdered in a hotel room. The motives of the murder have never been found out. It is not known whether it was a random robbery murder, or an element of a big conspiracy in which Winckelmann was entangled in Vienna, or whether there was a homoerotic background to the crime.
Wickelmann’s body was buried in Trieste, in a common grave of one of the religious fraternities. Thus, when, on the initiative of Domenico Rosetti (1774–1842), the inhabitants of Trieste decided to honour Wickelmann in a proper manner, the only possible way to do it was to erect a cenotaph. After many efforts, a proper monument, designed by Antonio Bosa (1780–1845), was placed in Orto Lapidario near San Giusto Cathedral, initially in a special niche (1832), then in a Corinthian temple, also functioning as glyptothek (1934). This building was renovated in the 90s of the 20th century. This is the present state of the complex housing Winckelmann’s monument, located in the upper part of the Trieste lapidarium (Civico Museo di Storia ed Arte – Orto Lapidario).

Manuscript notes of Julian Aleksander Bałaszewicz (born 1831 – the earliest date of death 1877) on the theatre repertoire staged in Warsaw in the period prior to the outbreak of the January Uprising and during the Uprising, available in the Scientific Library of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow, are published as a source material. In 1861 the author of the manuscript became a spy for the Russian authorities and an instigator operating in the circles of Polish and Russian immigrants in Paris and later London. In the latter he ran an antique shop with historic objects. He passed the acquired information to his superiors in his espionage reports. He recorded the titles of the plays staged in Warsaw in three lists: years 1862, 1863, 1864. In his lists he mentioned premieres and revivals dividing them according to the type of production. In addition, he differentiated between Polish dramas and those translated into Polish from other languages. The information about each staging was supplemented with the number of performances. Most of the plays from the Polish and foreign repertoire were staged very few times due to the boycott of the theatres by Polish audience in the years 1861–1864 and the curfew.

The article presents an episode from the Prussian-Austrian War, in which Polish soldiers fought on the side of Austria as members of the 5th Squadron under the command of Captain Maurycy von Lehman. On the 26th of June 1866 Colonel Friedrich von Ziegler received information that Prussian troops were moving from Mikołów in the direction of Oświęcim. At that time the Austrian outposts observed the enemy’s troops build-up in the area of Mysłowice. In the night between the 26th and 27th of June the commander of the Austrian forces received more reports informing that the enemy’s troops had appeared in Jedlin. On the 27th of June, at 6:00 a.m., the Prussian infantry and cavalry crossed the Wisła
River and started moving towards Brzezinka and the railway station in Oświęcim. Colonel Ziegler ordered the infantry to secure the railway station in Oświęcim. The Austrian artillery was located near the railway station and customs chamber. Stationed in Rajsk, the 5th Squadron of Cavalry under the command of Captain Maurycy von Lehmann started marching in the direction of Oświęcim at 5:00 a.m., after receiving the first report about the enemy’s army marching in. In Oświęcim the 5th Squadron joined two platoons of the 4th Squadron led by Captain August Bertoletti which were coming back from the reconnaissance. Despite the severe shelling, the Austrian forces chased the enemy footmen away and marched towards Soła, where soon they started fighting with the Prussian troops. During the fight Maurycy Lehman was pierced with a lance and died whereas the commander of the Prussian cavalry, Major von Busse, was wounded. The Austrian cavalry, shielded by half of the 4th Squadron and a squad led by Lieutenant Lobkovitz, withdrew along the Soła River to Oświęcim. The Prussian infantry marched out of Brzezinka towards the railway station but was repelled by a heavy gunfire from the side of the infantry and artillery. Two Prussian machine guns shelling the railway station were eliminated from the fight right at the beginning of the skirmish. Not being able to keep his position, Lieutenant Antoni Maucher moved his machine guns near the customs chamber, and then to the position on the road in the direction of Babice from where he was firing at the enemy infantry. Thanks to a great sacrifice of the Austrian defense of the railway station and the decision to move two machine guns to the Castle Hill, from where they could effectively shell the Prussian forces, the Austrian troops wan.

The growth of wealth and the improvement of the level of education of the society in the Kingdom of Poland in the second half of the 19th century, and the spreading phenomenon of free time, enabled the establishment of at least 99 amateurish organisations which ran theatre sections. 74 of them combined these sections with the music or choir societies, as well as the physical education societies. Only 22 associations were of solely theatrical character. According to the ethnicity: 53 societies were established by the Poles, 20 – Jews, 12 – Russians, 2 – Germans, 1 – French, 1 – Ukrainians, 6 were mixed, and there is no information about the founders and members of the 4 ones. Until the temporary regulations concerning the associations and unions were introduced in 1906, only 18 organisations had been legalised, and in the period of liberalisation (1906–1914) the remaining 71. In the respective governorates (within the boarders from the years 1867–1912) the following number of associations were established: Kalisz – 10 associations, Kielce – 6, Lublin – 10, Łomża – 4, Piotrków – 36, Płock – 1, Radom – 8, Siedlce – 7, Suwałki – 1 and Warsaw – 16. The fact that the greatest number of the organisations were created in the Piotrków governorate derives from its social and economic potential. According to the legal status of the places: 28 associations were created in the capitals of the governorates, 40 – the capitals of counties, 15 – other cities, 3 – craft and commercial settlements, 6 – industrial settlements, 3 – railway settlements and 4 – villages. The biggest number of the associations was registered in Łódź (11), Warsaw (8), Lublin (5), and 3 in: Kalisz, Kielce, Piotrków Trybunalski and Sosnowiec. It was due to a large number of their inhabitants with a high percentage of merchants, manufacturers, freelancers, civil servants and private clerks among them. They participated most actively in the establishment of theatre associations.

The present installment of this series introducing letters and documents in Japanese and/or related to Japan left after Bronisław Piłsudski and preserved in the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow includes a corrected version of the transliteration in Roman characters (Hepburn system) of the texts of four documents (two letters from the pianist Itoe Tachibana addressed to Bronisław Piłsudski, a Polish political prisoner and katorga convict renowned for his outstanding studies and collected materials related to the languages and cultures of the aboriginal population of Sakhalin, Lower Amur Region and Northern Japan (Nivhgu~Gilyak, Uilta~Orok, Ulcha~Mangun, Nanai~Gold, but above all Ainu), and two travel documents issued to Piłsudski by the Consulate of Japan in Korsakov) introduced to the (primarily) Polish public in installments 1 (2007) and [2] (2008), respectively (cf. footnotes 1 and 2). Since minor amendments of minor importance have also been made in the transcript of the original calligraphy of Tachibana’s letters, the corrected transcripts have been printed anew.

The account of a kayaking expedition made by Zygmunt Grodziński and his wife Natalia on the Wilia River from Daniszewo to Vilnius in the summer of 1932 was published in the “Annual of the Scientific Library of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Polish Academy of Sciences’’ in 2014 (pp. 271–278). Two years later Grodziński and his young friend, Antoni Dziedzic, spent two weeks in Podolia kayaking on the Strypa and Dniester Rivers. The “Diary” of this expedition, written by Zygmunt Grodziński, constitutes a day – by – day relation of that long and difficult voyage on the rivers of Podolia. It provides ecstatic descriptions of the abundant wildlife, picturesque landscapes, and wild rivers. The author draws our attention especially to the variety and habits of birds. Grodziński’s remarks on the everyday life of the inhabitants of Podolia, diverse ethnically and morally, and their mutual relations are also very interesting. There are also recollections from World War I when in the years 1915–1916 Grodziński, a soldier of the Austrian Army, fought in that very area and became a captive of the Russians.

Cracow’s Monuments, a three-volume publication completed in 1904, holds a special place among numerous publications about the monuments erected in Cracow in the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century. The authors of the illustrations were the Cerchas, father and son – Maksymilian (1818–1907) and Stanisław (1867–1919). The text, which was the first history of Polish art, was written by Feliks Kopera (1871–1952). Maksymilian was one of the painters who after the fire of Cracow in 1850 documented Cracow’s monuments in their drawings. He co-operated with the Department of Archeology and Fine Arts of the Cracow’s Scientific Society and together with Józef Łepkowski published Cracow’s Antiquities and Monuments. Stanisław Cercha was the third child of Maksymilan and Leokadia née Burdzińska. He studied painting at the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts and Anton Ažbé’s school in Münich, where he was later employed (1891–1896). He was interested in archeology, ethnology and art history, he was a member of the Cracow’s History and Monuments Lovers’ Society and the Society for the Preservation of the Monuments of Art and Culture in Cracow, Committee of the Research into the Art History in Poland of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, he also co-operated with Committee of Anthropology and Archeology of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences. Basing its presentation on the letters of Leokadia Cercha, the article discusses the history of the preparations for the publication of Cracow’s Monuments, which was subsidized by the Austrian – Hungarian Ministry of Education, the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cracow, National Parliament and Cracow’s City Council, and private people. From 1900 Cracow’s Monuments were published in a form of magazine series, as a whole they constitute three volumes encompassing Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque. The core of the publication are the drawings depicting the tombstones from Cracow’s churches, there are also the images of churches and fragments of the old city buildings. They are printed with the use of Zink ink-free technology. The materials remaining after the publication were passed to the Archives of Old Files in Cracow (now National Archives, The Files of Maksymilian and Stanisław Cercha, classification number 29/1548: 1–1843). Some of the drawings included in Cracow’s Monuments are part of the collections of the National Museum in Cracow and Historical Museum of the City of Cracow.

The discovery of a photograph from Michał Greim’s collection in the collection of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences presenting the main altar in the Post Trinitarian church in Kamieniec Podolski gave an impulse to initiate the research into a little known oeuvre of a Vienna born Trinitarian painter, Johann Prechtl (in the convent Joseph of St. Theresa; 1737–1799). Most of his works from the monasteries located on the territory of today Ukraine were destroyed during the wars or in the times of a communist regime. Probably the earliest among those known works of the painter is the polychrome in the presbytery of the church of the Order of Friars Minor “Observants” (Bernardines) in Dubin, a small town located near Beresteczko. Prechtl did not finish the decoration of the church probably because he went to Cracow to complete the decoration made by a Moravian artist, Joseph Plitz, after the fire of the monastery. It is a polychrome in the vestry of the Church of the Order of the Holy Trinity in Cracow, created in 1765 and depicting the adoration of the Eye of Providence, a symbolic sign of the Holy Trinity, by John of Malta and Felix of Valois.
The paintings for the Trinitarian Church of the Holy Trinity in Beresteczko, where Prechtl settled down initially, were created in the second half of the 18th century. These were the polychromes on the walls and the vault of the church (the scene of the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles), 16 altar paintings and a historical painting outside presenting the Battle at Beresteczko.
The interior of the three – nave Church of the Holy Trinity in Brahiłów (Braiłów), financed by Franciszek Salezy Potocki and completed in 1778, included the illusionistic paintings by Johann Prechtl, which constitute one of the finest works of art in eastern parts of Poland. In the years 1776–1778 he created a large series of the polychromes covering the vault of the temple and its chapels (the well – known scenes The Adoration of the Shepherds, The Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, Ransoming of the Slaves from the Pagans by John of Malta and Felix of Valois, and The Healing of a Sick by Saint Cajetan). The polychrome in the church in Iwanków (Andruszówka region, Żytomierz) has also been attributed to the convent artist by J. Kowalczyk. The entire church was painted al fresco including five illusionistic altars. On the only surviving photograph one can see fragmentary paintings of the dome depicting Jesus cleansing the temple, which are enclosed in a quadrature. However, nothing is known about the murals in the Dominican Church of the Annunciation in Szarawka (Płoskirów county), Podolia, which was turned into an orthodox church in the first half of the 19th century, and those in the Czacki family’s palace in Boremel ( Równe region).
A unique photo of the interior of the Trinitarian church in Kamieniec Podolski as it was before the change of the big altar during a complete renovation of the church in 1907 shows the only work of Prechtl in this city that is known to us, although according to Edward Rastawiecki, in the second half of the 18th century Prechtl supposedly created painting decorations al fresco and paintings for the Kamieniec Podolski Cathedral as well as the decorations in the Trinitarian church.
According to the archival documents, the Trinitarian Church of St Michael Archangel and the Conversion of St Paul in Łuck was “all painted inside in different colours and images”, which were partially destroyed, especially in the chapels, during the march of Napoleon’s army in 1812. In the view of the archives, we can suppose that there were Prechtl’s paintings in the two-storey side altars. After the dissolution of the order in 1845 and the deconstruction of the church in 1869, the paintings depicting St Reces and St John Nepomucen were moved from the Trinitarian church to the Łuck Cathedral. From the altar paintings created by the Trinitarian artist one painting survived. Meant for the Church of St Peter and Paul in Antokol, Vilnius (moved to Dailes Muziejus, now in the Museum of Lithuanian Art in Vilnius), it presented the image of a reformer of the Order of the Trinitarians, John Baptist de la Conception (after 1770).
The skills of foreign painters working in eastern Poland, including Prechtl, Francis Gregory Eckestein and his son from Moravia, Jospeh Mayer and Łukasz (Charles) Hübel from Silesia, who used better techniques and new models contributed to the improvement of the level of our Polish art.

The Ex-Libris Gallery of the Cultural Centre Podgórze in Cracow is the only such institution functioning in southern Poland. Its basic objective is to gather, archive, compile and present bookplates. This objective, which Andrzej Znamirowski (the founder of the gallery) set for himself, is being achieved through numerous exhibitions, compiling catalogues, publications, lectures and meetings of the bookplates lovers. The article presents a twenty-four – year history and activity of the Cracow Ex-Libris Gallery. Since 1991, when the idea to establish the gallery was born, until the present year. The history of the Ex-Libris Gallery of the Cultural Centre Podgórze is preceded by a brief history of the bookplate in Poland. The text is supplemented with the bibliography including the catalogues of the exhibitions presenting the selected ex-librises. The article is based on source literature, and was written thanks to Andrzej Znamirowski’s co-operation.