Gottlander (possibly identical with Peter Soutman, a pupil of Rubens), the Germans, Jacob Troschel of Nuremberg and Hans Lange, sometime in the Emperor's service, and a Pole, John Szwankowski. The education the king had had in youth, could not but definitely direct his sympathy to the artists of the North; thus it is quite natural that, in the end, we find a Dutchman, Paul Tomturn, called Thurn for short, in the King's employment, and that a countryman of his, Jacob Mertensy, found plenty of work to do at Cracow during his stay from 1598 to 1606. In the town of Wisnicz, not far from Cracow, there stayed, about 1539, another Low-Country man, Matthew Ingermann, a Belgian.
Of seventeenth-century Polish artists, John Ziarnko, known abroad under the name of J. A. Grano or Le Grain (which is a translation of his Polish name), attained high fame both as painter and engraver, He had originally learned the goldsmith's art and painting at Cracow. In 1598 he went to Paris and there continued his work. Thomas Dollabella, mentioned above, was born in 1570 at Belluno in Venetia, and died at Cracow in 1650, after having served three Polish Kings, viz., Sigismund III, Ladislaus IV, and John Casimir (all of the Vasa dynasty). He is among the most productive artists of his period. His most characteristic feature inherited,—in fact, from his master, Aliense—was a certain decorative grandeur, united with a rather superficial treatment of the canvas. He cared little for nature, but aspired to excellence in brilliant compositions which he threw off with magnificent ease. He found many pupils and imitators; the most eminent among them is Zacharias Zwonowski, who died young in 1639, and whose pictures are to be found in St. Catherine's Church. Of the Cracow paintings of this period, a picture of St. Sebastian in the convent of the Camaldulenses at Bielany (on the Vistula near Cracow), with subtle modelling, silvery tones of colour, beautiful landscape and fine figures of Polish knights, may be called the best. We know nothing of the works of a family of painters in the seventeenth century (John, Martin, and Adalbert Proszkowski), and of one Luke Porebowicz (d. 1637) except that
