ABSTRACT
Through remarks on early modern Polish portraiture, this chapter takes as a point of departure a particular goal related to the stated aims of an emerging field of art history, namely the development of a deeper and more accurate understanding of artistic and cultural dynamics across the entire field of Western art history. The case of early modern Poland is especially complex owing to its broadly-acknowledged status in the seventeenth century as the antemurale christianitatis on the one hand, and to the open political relationships and cultural exchange it cultivated along its southern and eastern borders on the other. In the seventeenth century, clarity—not confusion—about official political and religious identity across the Polish and Ottoman states, simultaneously elastic and mutable nature of Poland's other interregional relationships could also be the product of mutual respect and interest, as well as of political expediency and self-interest.
