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    Portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus

    Date
    1776
    Sitter
    Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 - 1543, German, Polish) , Mathematician
    Creator
    Friedrich Anton Lohrmann (1730, German) , Painter
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (painting): 420mm
    width (painting): 330mm
    Subject
    Description
    Head and shoulders portrait of Copernicus, wearing dark, natural hair and dressed in a dark coat with a fur collar with a white shirt beneath.
    Transcription
    NOCHOLAS COPERNICUS (1473-1543). Copy by LORMAN of Berlin
    N.Copernicus
    Sent as a present to the Royal Society from N.Wolf of Danzig...presented the 6th day of July 1776
    D.NICOLAO COPERNIC.
    Object history
    Presented by Nathaniel Matthew Wolf FRS (1724-1784), 1776 [see L&P/6/213 for original presentation letter].

    The work is based upon a lost original painting. [Owned by The Collections of the Czartoryski Princes in Gołuchów (Division of the National Museum in Poznań), lost 1940. Catalogue of paintings removed from Poland by the German occupation authorities during the years 1939-1945. 1, Foreign paintings, comp. Władysław Tomkiewicz (Ministry of Culture and Art, Warsaw, 1950)]. Upon the presentation of this copy to the Royal Society, an article was published in the Society’s Philosophical Transactions, outlining the commissioning of the work and the history of the original. The copy was made at the order of Nathaniel Wolf, from a work then possession of “Chamberlain Hussarzewski”. [“An account of a portrait of Copernicus, presented to the Royal Society by Dr Wolf of Dantzick...”, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol.67 (1777) pp.33-37].
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > Poland
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > Germany
    Credit
    ©The Royal Society
    Image number
    RS.9669
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