Title of Product:

The Baltazar Behem’s Code-the workshop labour’s dedication

Image of the product:

Name of Author(s): Net information source: “wikipedia.org”

Name of Producer: Net information source: “wikipedia.org”

Language/s of Product: Polish

Website of the product: pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodeks_Baltazara_Behema

Target Group: General audience

Overall Evaluation: excellent

Availability of community:
Newsgroup

Objectives & Structure:
Aspects to consider:
- Website gives the systemic elaboration of the masterpiece
- Students get more conscious of the empiric art expression by the side of the discipline of legal regulations, statues, etc.
- Appraisal of workers in art, city workers’ kind of artistic memorandum/ calendar, etc.
- Possibility of constructing a plan of the “history movable calendar of professional identities, expositions and glorifications”

Description of contents:
The Baltazar Behem's Code comes from the beginning of the XVI century. It entailed the privileges and statues of the Town of Cracow and the acts regulating the factories' activities. It was written in 1505 in 3 languages: Polish, German and Latin by the town conveyancer Baltazar Behem. The text amounted 372 cards of the size: 32,7x24,3 centimetres. It was decorated by means of 27 coloured miniatures of an anonymous artist, who presented a day to day reality of activities referring to the Cracow's craftsmen and tradesmen. At present the Code is situated in the Jagiellonian University of Cracow.
Empirically speaking, the object was a very important legal document, and besides a market& cultural record. Probably, it was put forward by a candidate to the Town's Board, who wanted to praise the addressed noblemen and get their precious support. The evidence seems to be illustrated by the attached names of the noblemen. The masterpiece was not completed by Behem himself, as he died after fulfilling the 247 cards. The further pat of the Code was followed by somebody other- not known by name, probably he succeeded to the post Behem had been nominated before him.
The decoration of the handwork is adorned by the 27 miniatures entailing both the exposed and glorified Cracow's crests and the ones of chosen factories, and besides the characters' postures by work, plotted in their workshops' figurative environment, town streets and the characteristic town like scenery with a remarkable caring for realism's record. .
Not all the miniatures represent the same artistic level, since some of the exposures were made by Behem's workers, the result being their worse quality.
The most beautiful exposures are those dedicated to: the Goldsmiths, the Workshop of the Swordfish, the Workshop of the Carpenter, etc.
The miniatures of the Code- the handwork are the initial Polish document demonstrating the regular life and professional activities among the labour's people.
The decorum of the handwork refers to the trend of the late Gothic books' decoration, featured by asymmetry purpose effects and their development at the margins. The waves and turns of the letters looked very extraordinarily and they added a caricature like reception of the expressions, e.g. in a kind of the fish, lizards, grotesque heads, etc.
Many tiny initials were recorded by single brush's movements- the colour dominating gold and blue by the author himself.

Evaluation and Comments:

Description of how the website can be used with the students::
- The website gives the students’ self- control of moving inside the notions of illustrative guideline of the epoch discovered and then refreshed.

Comments::
- Students are satisfied with the more intimate and specialized atmosphere of the realistic side of the epoch discussed and researched.

Evaluation Date: 01.09.2008.

Name of teacher: Gabriela Kurowska

Name of School: The Academy of Art in Gdansk

Country: Poland

Subjects Taught: Fine Arts