Market Square in Kazimierz Dolny

The Lubelskie Album is a work created in 1857-1859 on the basis of watercolours made in 1852 by Adam Lerue. With his drawings and watercolours, the artist contributed to the inventory of historical monuments in Lublin and the region - as he himself wrote in the introduction to the work - which was close to his heart because of his birthplace, Dubienka. Julian Cegliński and Władysław Walkiewicz, who made the lithographs in Adolf Pecq's lithography workshop in Warsaw, also contributed to the work. Several characteristic features of the images in the Lubelskie Album can be distinguished: the combination of romantic style with realism, sparse staffage, often backstage composition.

The print depicts the market square in Kazimierz Dolny with its representative buildings: the Przybyłów tenement house, the Reformed Church and Gdańska tenement house. As Alfred Lauterbach wrote: “Kazimierz is actually a market square and Senatorska Street. New life has to come out of the market square, which is the meaning of the entire town”.

The historic buildings inscribed in the landscape, the characteristic hilly terrain and the location near the Vistula River all contributed to the picturesqueness of Kazimierz. Both the charming ruins and monuments, which did not suffer during the wars, were presented by artists in many ways, and thanks to graphic art they became available to a larger audience.

The name of the town was attributed to Casimir the Great, although the time of its establishment is two centuries earlier and falls under the rule of Casimir the Just. Before that, there was a settlement called Wietrzna Góra or Skowieszyn, owned by the Norbertine monastery in the 12th century, but it soon came under royal rule. The name Kazimierz appeared in 1249.

Klara Sadkowska