The Deputies' Hall and the Wawel Heads
Sebastian Tauerbach and Jan Snycerz (heads) (active 1530s) · about 1531 to 1535
Look up. The ceiling of this hall is divided into deep square coffers, and from thirty of them carved wooden heads stare down at you. Men and women, young and old, a knight in a helmet, a lady in a fashionable cap, a bearded burgher, a laughing face and a solemn one. This is the famous ceiling of the Wawel Heads, and it is the reason the room is sometimes called the Hall Under the Heads. The chamber itself served the lower house of the Polish parliament, the deputies, who met here in the presence of the king, which explains its other name, the Deputies' Hall.
Originally there were one hundred and ninety four heads, carved in the fifteen thirties by Sebastian Tauerbach and Jan Snycerz for King Sigismund the Old. Each is a real portrait study rather than a type, with painted skin, individual expressions and carefully observed hats, veils and beards. Below the ceiling runs a painted frieze by Hans Dürer, brother of the more famous Albrecht, illustrating the story of human life in a series of allegorical scenes. Around the walls hang tapestries from the collection of Sigismund Augustus, which turns the room into a complete Renaissance interior.
Most of the heads were lost in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when the castle was stripped and used as barracks, and the thirty survivors were reinstalled during the restoration of the castle after Poland regained independence. A legend says that one head, a woman with her mouth bound, once spoke up during a royal judgment to remind the king of justice, and the king had her gagged. Whether or not you believe it, find her; she is still there among the coffers.
Did You Know? One of the carved heads has a band across her mouth, and legend says the king gagged her after she interrupted his judgment.
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