OBRAZ 'ŁABĘDŹ I KACZKA' ZE ZBIORÓW MUZEUM NARODOWEGO W KRAKOWIE: NIEZNANE DZIEŁO HOLENDERSKIEGO ANIMALISTY ABRAHAMA BISSCHOPA

At last year’s exhibition Rembrandt’s World. Artists. Townspeople. Explorers. held at The RoyalCastle in Warsaw, a spectacular and extraordinary animalistic scene was presented depictinga swan and a duck against the background of a ‘romantic’ landscape. The painting comesfrom the collection of the National Museum in Kraków. In the post-war period, this work wasattributed to the Dutch ‘Italianist’ painter Jan Asselijn, based on a comparison with his famouspainting: The Swan Defending Its Nest, from around 1650 (now in the collection of theRijksmuseum in Amsterdam). This article is an attempt at a new attribution of the image fromthe Kraków Museum collection, this time to the Dutch animalist Abraham Bisschop (1670–1729/1731) from Dordrecht, and in addition – a proposal to find the author of the picture,combined with a rereading of the content and iconography of the work from Kraków.