Czartoryski Museum

Historic private art collection including Leonardo da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine

The Czartoryski Museum holds one of Poland's greatest private art collections, assembled by Princess Izabela Czartoryska in the early 19th century as a deliberate act of cultural preservation during the period when Poland had been partitioned and ceased to exist as an independent state. The museum reopened after an extensive restoration in 2019 with new display spaces in the renovated arsenal buildings adjacent to the original palace.

The collection's supreme prize is Leonardo da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine (1490), one of only four paintings by Leonardo in existence and widely considered one of the finest portrait paintings ever made. The subject is Cecilia Gallerani, the young mistress of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. The painting is displayed in a dedicated room under ideal lighting conditions. Beyond the Leonardo, the collection includes ancient Greek and Roman antiquities, medieval art, European decorative arts, and paintings by Rembrandt, Giorgione, and other European masters. The museum is on the northern edge of the Old Town, a short walk from the Main Square.

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A story
Leonardo da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine was hidden from the Germans during the Second World War and survived intact, but the collection's other Old Master — Raphael's Portrait of a Young Man — was stolen from the museum by Hans Frank, the Nazi governor of Poland, and has never been recovered. It is considered one of the most significant missing artworks in the world. The empty wall space where it once hung is sometimes marked with a reproduction and a notice about the theft.