Instytut Historii Sztuki <Danzig> [Hrsg.]; Zakład Historii Sztuki <Danzig> [Hrsg.]: Porta Aurea: Rocznik Instytutu Historii Sztuki Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego (7-8.2009)

Marcin
Kaleciński

confronted by Acteon, a mortal being in the allegorical painting showing the painful
effects ot the lack of respect of the deities’ laws.
It is probable that the creators of the eighteenth-century programme of Artus’
Court were acąuainted with the idea of viri ilustres and Neuf Preux\ perhaps they also
knew its iconographic codification by Hans Burgmair, a pioneering work on repre-
sentations of heroines .The decoration programme was cyclically completed till the
end of the 19th century, consistently referring to subjects connected with the ethos of
knighthood and pagan and Christian morał exempli.
The decoration programme of the bench of Saint Reinhard was multi-layered: the
human sphere appears on the chapiters of the back of benches as scupltured heads
personifying human passions and signs of the Zodiac, further, the Roman triumph
introduces the glorification of alfantica. The mentioned positive and negative exempli
were associated with the astrological (the figures of seven planets) and allegorical
content (the personification of virtues). The figurę of the patron of the Saint Rein-
hard, stands above the scene, adding to it the element of ethos of knighthood. Such an
elaborated programme was without precedent outside Italy.
The cycle was executed at a time of uncertainty and expectation, a time of the
„underground” of the religious evolution of the Gdańsk inhabitants, on the eve of the
great religious and cultural transgression of the urban population. The inhabitants of
Gdańsk in 1534 A.D. found łasting values in the period of Republican Romę which
became for them the Golden Age and the source of Gdańsk humanitas.