ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to show the linguistic mechanisms that governed Polish writing about the history of painting in the first half of the nineteenth century. Particular attention will be given to the surveys and dictionaries of painters and Polish artists written by scholars such as Franciszek Maksymilian Sobieszczański, Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, Gwalbert Pawlikowski and Edward Rastawiecki. In the initial phase of material recognition, antiquarians, historians and writers made use of the Vasarian tradition they had absorbed from the German reception of the Italian historiographer. This approach presented the individual profiles of Polish painters through the convention of mythological biographies and also attempted to identify and capture the essence of the so-called Polish School of painting (comparable to, for example, the Sienese School or Florentine School). Additionally, the approach impacted the ways in which researchers attempted to define the characteristics of the work of contemporary nineteenth-century painters.
