Marcin Zaleski

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Marcin Zaleski (1796–1877) was a Polish painter and a leading figure in Neoclassicism. He is considered the greatest Polish vedutist of the 19th century, known for detailed city views of Warsaw, Kraków and Vilnius. He was born in Kraków and studied there and in Warsaw. From 1817 to 1822 he worked as a theatre decorator in Warsaw while copying paintings. In 1828 he first exhibited his own work and earned a scholarship to study in Germany, France and Italy. He was among the first daguerreotypists in Warsaw and took early photographs around 1840, though none survive. In 1846 he became a professor of perspective at the School of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He died in Warsaw in 1877 and was buried at Powązki Cemetery.

Zaleski’s cityscapes remain his most famous works and can be found in the National Museum in Warsaw and other institutions such as the Adam Mickiewicz Museum and Gomel Palace. He also painted scenes from the November Uprising in Warsaw, drawing on his firsthand experience. His paintings, along with those by Bernardo Bellotto, were used to help reconstruct Warsaw after the Second World War. In 2019 the National Museum in Warsaw recovered his oil painting Interior of the Cathedral in Milan, which had disappeared after the Warsaw Uprising; it had been found in Vienna in 2018 and returned in a ceremony with the country’s culture minister.