Jagiellonian tapestries

The Jagiellonian tapestries are a collection of tapestries woven in the Netherlands and Flanders, which originally consisted of 365 pieces assembled by the Jagiellons to decorate the interiors of the royal residence Wawel Castle. It is also known as the Wawel arrasses, as the majority of the preserved fabrics is in the possession of the Wawel Castle Museum and the French city of Arras was a large center of manufacturing of this kind of wall decoration in the beginning of the 16th century. The collection become a state property of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland according to the will of Sigismund II Augustus.

The first tapestries were brought by Queen Bona Sforza as her wedding dowry. Then in 1526 and 1533, Sigismund I the Old ordered 108 fabrics in Antwerp and Bruges. Most of the tapestries, however, were commissioned by king Sigismund II Augustus in Brussels in the workshops of Willem and Jan de Kempeneer, Jan van Tieghem and Nicolas Leyniers between 1550-1565. Initially, there were about 170 tapestries in the royal collection, among them 84 black-and-white tapestries with the royal crest and the letters SA, 8 tapestries which Sigismund I the Old had been received from the Emperor Maximilian I, and others, gifts from foreign delegations. The gifts include one tapestry with the Polish eagle bearing the date 1560, the royal initials and the letters CKCH (Christophorus Krupski Capitaneus Horodlo) next to the Korczak coat of arms and the inscription SCABELLVM PEDVM TVORVM (the footstool under your feet, Psalm 110, A Psalm of David), a gift from Krzysztof Krupski, starost of Horodło for Sigismund Augustus. The tapestries had been displayed publicly for the first time during the wedding of king Sigismund Augustus with Catherine of Austria. To this day, preserved about 138 of which exposed are about 30. They were matched in size to the walls and some of them reach the size of 5 × 9 m (5.47 × 9.84 yd). The tapestries were made of wool strands, silk and gold and woven on looms with a density of about 8 - 10 warp threads per centimeter.

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