Władysław Bartynowski’s collections of religious medallions and crosses - originals and bartynotypes

Abstract

The article is devoted to the subject of religious medallions, a topic which is rarely discussed. Its subject is Władysław Bartynowski’s collection of religious medallions and crosses and the bartynotype: his method of making copies of numismatic items, primarily coins, but also medals and religious medallions. 

Władysław Bartynowski is an important figure in the history of 19th-century Kraków as a well-known collector and an outstanding expert in several fields. He was a numismatist, collector of prints, bibliophile, creator of facsimiles of old prints, conservator of books and numismatics, and editor of the journal Wiadomości Numismatyczno-Archaeologiczne.  

He donated his collections primarily to the National Museum in Kraków. The only collection that has survived in the family archive is a collection of 182 religious medallions and crosses, mainly from the 19th century, from various European countries as well as from China. In the same home archive, another similar memento has been preserved: an album of 493 bartynotypes of another collection of medallions, in this case Polish ones.