ABSTRACT
The mechanisms of constructing art historical surveys are signs of the times in the development of the discipline. With that in mind, this chapter explores the survey of art history published by Józef Łepkowski, appointed to the first academic chair of archaeology in Poland at the Jagiellonian University, Kraków, in 1866. Łepkowski’s survey offers a good starting point both for investigating his narrative strategies and historical presuppositions and as a focal point for the history of the discipline in Poland. Throughout his career, Łepkowski adopted a specific strategy of transferring or ‘self-translating’ the methodological and factual achievements of Western art history to Poland. Creating a survey means selecting a particular type of historiosophy and applying a chosen concept of periodization to the history of art. Łepkowski’s outline is no exception. He divided art history into the most generally defined periods of development, whose rhythm was determined by stylistic changes. This approach proved to be problematic, especially with regard to the proper positioning of, among other things, Islamic, Byzantine and Post-Byzantine art. Łepkowski shared his perspective with German allgemeine Kunstgeschichte (general art history) textbooks by Karl Schnaase, Franz Kugler, Anton Springer and Wilhelm Lübke, which were his main reference points. Importantly, his was the first and only Polish survey of this kind, as the next generation of academic art historians discarded surveys in favour of monographs on particular monuments.
