200 Zlotych 2017, Poland
| in Krause book | Number: 177 |
| Years of issue: | 2017 |
| Edition: | 6 500 000 |
| Signatures: | Prezes: Marek Belka, Glowny Scarbnik: Marek Oles |
| Serie: | Modification 2016 |
| Specimen of: | 30.03.2015 |
| Material: | Cotton fiber |
| Size (mm): | 144 x 72 |
| Printer: | Polska Wytwornia Papierow Wartocziowych, Warszawa |
* All pictures marked 
are increased partially by magnifying glass, the remaining open in full size by clicking on the image.
** The word "Specimen" is present only on some of electronic pictures, in accordance with banknote images publication rules of appropriate banks.
Description
Watermark:
Sigismund I the Old. Denomination in numeral.
Avers:
The engraving on banknote is based after this portrait of Sigismund I the Old by polish painter Aleksander Lesser. He also did about forty other portraits of Polish kings in the historical-biographical edition of Dzvonkowski’s “Wizerunki Kròlòw Polish” (Warsaw, 1860).
Sigismund I of Poland (Polish: Zygmunt I Stary, Lithuanian: Žygimantas I Senasis, Belarusian: Жыгімонт I Стары, romanized: Žyhimont I Stary; 1 January 1467 – 1 April 1548), of the Jagiellon dynasty, reigned as King of Poland and also as the Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1506 until 1548. Earlier, Sigismund had been invested as Duke of Silesia. A successful monarch and a great patron of arts, he established Polish suzerainty over Ducal Prussia (East Prussia) and incorporated the duchy of Mazovia into the Polish state, securing the nation's wealth, culture and power.
Sigismund I, the fifth son of Casimir IV and Elisabeth of Habsburg, had ruled Głogów, Silesia, since 1499 and became margrave of Lusatia and governor of all Silesia in 1504. In a short time his judicial and administrative reforms transformed those territories into model states. He succeeded his brother Alexander I as grand prince of Lithuania and king of Poland in 1506. Although he established fiscal and monetary reforms, he often clashed with the Polish Diet over extensions of royal power. At the Diet’s demand he married Barbara, daughter of Prince Stephen Zápolya of Hungary, in 1512, to secure a defense treaty and produce an heir. She died three years later, however, leaving only daughters. In 1518 Sigismund married the niece of the Holy Roman emperor Maximilian, Bona Sforza of Milan, by whom he had one son, Sigismund II Augustus, and four daughters. His daughter Catherine later married John III of Sweden, from whom the Vasa kings of Poland were descended.
In 1521 Sigismund made peace with his nephew Albert, Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, a paramilitary religious order that ruled East Prussia. Albert became a Lutheran and converted the Teutonic state to Protestantism in 1525, defecting from both the Papacy and Holy Roman Emperor and agreeing to do public homage to Sigismund in return for being granted the title of secular duke of Prussia and Ducal Prussia coming under Polish suzerainty. Sigismund added the Duchy of Masovia (now the province of Warsaw) to the Polish state in 1529, after the death of Janusz III, the last of its Piast dynasty rulers. Under the command of Jan Tarnowski, Sigismund’s army defeated the invading forces of Moldavia at Obertyn in 1531 and of Muscovy in 1535, thereby safeguarding Poland’s eastern borders.
Sigismund, influenced by his wife, brought Italian artists to Kraków and promoted the development of the Polish variety of the Italian Renaissance. Although a devout Catholic, he accorded religious toleration to Greek Orthodox Christians and royal protection to Jews. At first he vigorously opposed Lutheranism but later resigned himself to its growing power in Poland.
Sigismund I was a member of the Order of the Golden Fleece. 
Polish coat of arms is on top.
The White Eagle (Polish: Orzeł Biały) is the national coat of arms of Poland. It is a stylized white eagle with a golden beak and talons, and wearing a golden crown, in a red shield.
The White Eagle emblem originated when Poland's legendary founder Lech saw a white eagle's nest. When he looked at the bird, a ray of sunshine from the red setting sun fell on its wings, so they appeared tipped with gold, the rest of the eagle was pure white. He was delighted and decided to settle there and placed the eagle on his emblem. He also named the place Gniezdno (currently Gniezno) from the Polish word gniazdo ("nest").
On the right is an inset with the letter S, signifying King Sigismund I the Old, on a shield with a crown (monogram). Taken from the King's chapel in Wawel Castle, in Krakow.
On the left side, a fragment of the portrait frame is bound by a ribbon. Offset printing light yellow, beige, brown, olive, pink, gray.
Below, on the left, Braille symbol for the visually impaired (triangle). (mojebanknoty.cba.pl .pol)
Denomination in numeral is on the left side and in top right corner, in words also on the left side.
Revers:
In the center is a hexagon shield with an eagle intertwined with the letter S (Sigismvndvs) from the chapel of Sigismund I the Old in Wawel Cathedral, one of the first works of the Renaissance in Poland, called the "Pearl of the Renaissance from this side of the Alps".
After the death of his first wife, Sigismund I the Old decided to build a mausoleum for his family. The project was entrusted to the Florentine artist Bartolomeo Bereci. The first plans were developed in 1517. The foundations were laid in 1519, and the building itself existed from 1524 to 1531.
Starting from Sigismund the Old, the ashes of kings began to be placed in underground crypts, leaving only the tombstones of the monarchs in the cathedral and its chapels. In the chapel of Sigismund, decorated with bas-relief ornaments on biblical and mythological scenes, there are the silver altar of 1530, the tomb of King Sigismund I of the Old (Bartolomeo Berecci) and the gravestone of his two children - King Sigismund II of August (Santi Gucci, 1575), and the headstones of Augustus II (Santi Gucci, 1575), and the headstones of Augustus II (Santi Gucci, 1575), and the headings of Anigus II Augusta (157), 1775, and the ad hocs, Antirius, 1575, and the headstones of Augustus (St.Guchchi, 1575), and the headstones of Augustus II (Santi Gucci, 1575), and the headstones of Augustus (St.Guchchi, 1575), and the tombstone of Augustus and the clocks, which are already used for 1575 Of the jewels of the chapel, it is worth mentioning the silver altar (1531-1538) made by the Nuremberg master Melchior Bayer from the sketches of Peter Fleutner.
In the background is the inner arcade courtyard of the Wawel Castle in Krakow, where Sigismund I the Old is buried.
The Wawel Courtyard is one of the largest square objects of the Renaissance in Europe. As a result of the growing importance of the Wawel Castle and the functioning of the royal castle, it was necessary to expand the palace. Already during the reign of Alexander Yagellonchik, reconstruction of medieval renaissance foundations began. After his death, Sigismund I Old continued his work.
The Italian, Francis of Florence, the reconstruction manager, has been working in Krakow since 1502. At the first stage, the works were directed to the north and west wings, where there is an entrance gate to the courtyard. In the course of the work, an idea arose to create a system of arcade monasteries decorated with motifs taken from the Apennine Peninsula. At the next stage of reconstruction, the monumental east wing and the south wall were created, covering the courtyard.
After the death of Francis of Florence, in 1516, Bartlomieu Berrecci led the further work. Thanks to the diligent execution of the project outlined by Francis, the royal castle received an integral spatial form, despite the change of the head of the work. The corner of the courtyard is sloping from the west and south, and the shorter wings of the square extend from the north and east. Located in the west wing, the entrance gate presented the guests with the most representative part of the courtyard.
The huge square is surrounded by open-air galleries running along three levels of the gallery. At the level of the first and second floors of the building consist of semicircular proportional arcades, based on separate columns. The sequence of arcades is interrupted by the corners of the courtyard and the strips of the wall, one arcade wide, located in the middle of the galleries of the north wing and twice from the east. This treatment was of a construction nature, because the arcades themselves would not have been able to maintain the highest floor of the building. On the second floor, the eaves of the roof are based on thin columns, which in the middle of their length are decorated with spiral rails.
Above the columns, under the wooden cornice, were used vessels for collecting water, in the form of jugs. The style of the buildings on the second floor is an original solution that has no analogues anywhere. Renaissance researchers see the connection with the representative character of the rooms on the top floor, which could not be hidden by the low arcades. In addition, this solution is present in the ancient architecture (the Colosseum) and the Italian architecture of the Renaissance (the new wing of the papal palace in the Vatican). The crown of arcades was a decorative frieze, painted under the eaves, by Dionysius Stuba in 1535-1536. It consisted of medallions representing the heads of emperors and empresses from antiquity to the German monarchs of the middle ages. Initially, the frieze surrounded the entire courtyard, but only a small part of this remarkable work has survived to this day. In the last days of the Jagiellonian, the roof was covered with tiles of yellow, white, green and blue. The Wawel monasteries were undoubtedly inspired by Italian buildings of this type. They provided communication between the palace rooms and were an amphitheater during the ceremony. Sigismund I the Old, thanks to the impulse and monumentality of the Wawel Castle courtyard, wanted to emphasize his position in modern Europe. (mojebanknoty.cba.pl .pol)
Banknote data - my banknote was issued in 2017.
On the reverse of the left side of the eagle on the roof we can see a mysterious string of one letter and five numbers. As it turns out, the letter indicates the number of the column in the sheet in which the given copy was located (eg the letter D stands for the fourth column). The next two digits indicate the banknote printing year (eg 16 means 2016). The next two numbers indicate the number of the disc used to print the banknote. The last digit indicates the row number in which the value held was on the sheet.
Print in olive color and in several shades of brown - gravure and typooffset.
Denominations in numerals are in top right and lower left corners, lower right also in words.
Comments:
Designer: Andrzej Heidrich.
Engraver: Terry Chipper.
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