ABSTRACT
This chapter establishes the cultural framework of Poland and how this may have facilitated active reception of Renaissance art and culture, and encouraged patronage in general and that of funerary monuments to children in particular. It examines the role of Poland within European humanistic scholarship and Italian Renaissance culture, which predisposed it to be receptive to Italian artistic forms in particular, funerary monuments; and how and why they were extended to the commemoration of Polish children. The case studies demonstrated in the chapter discusses cultural interactive practices, and how Italian sculpture and architecture in Poland was reworked and transformed, rather than passively received. However the chapter explains follow the views of Burke and Bialostocki, who regard the Renaissance as a movement, rather than as an event or a period; a movement characterised by an enthusiasm for antiquity and the revival, reception and transformation of the classical tradition.
