The image of a bearded and a mustachioed man in a beret wearing a hat with ear flaps are two of 30 preserved wooden heads adorning the ceiling of the Envoys’ Room of the Polish Wawel Royal Castle. The current arrangement of this ceiling is a creation from the beginning of the 20th century.
The only source of information about its original appearance is the contract concluded with Master Sebastian Tauerbach in 1535. The contract mentions 194 carved heads and 194 rosettes, which the master was commissioned to fashion. There are no clues as to how they were to be arranged. The first ceiling burned down in 1540. It is not known whether the preserved heads were made before the fire – thus belonging to the original decoration – but there was no time to mount them, or whether they were carved after the fire and intended for rebuilding the Envoys’ Room.
The heads preserved to this day are only a small percentage of the original ceiling decoration.
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