MARTYNOWSKI F. K. Na przełomie sztuki polskiej [author's autograph, 1882].

Warsaw, published by Teodor Paprocki & S-ka Bookstore, pp. 77, form. 20 x 20, publisher's softcover. Cover soiled, edges ragged, small losses at corners. On the pre-title page, dedication by the author dated 1882.

Franciszek Ksawery Martynowski (1848-1896), journalist, art historian and critic, theoretician of restoration of monuments, antiquary. He postulated the creation of a textbook on the history of art in Poland. Of the fine arts, he attached the highest importance to artistic craftsmanship. He analyzed and described old guild organizations, seeing in these descriptions a means to improve the crafts of his contemporaries. In evaluating art from the Polish territories, he attached great importance in his assessment to national guilds. In painting, he valued works from the Italian Trecento period and paintings by Raphael, and devoted much time to Krakow's illuminated manuscripts. In architecture, he was a promoter of the Vistula-Baltic style as a variant of Slavic-Polish Gothic, which he saw as a model to follow in contemporary buildings (especially sacred ones). He misjudged contemporary architecture as subject to foreign influences and overloaded with ornamentation. He pointed to folk wooden architecture as an inspiration for the national style.