Description

EXCEPTIONAL COAT OF ARMS OF THE KOSTROWITZKY FAMILY FROM THE COLLECTION OF GUILLAUME & JACQUELINE APOLLINAIRE.

Guillaume Apollinaire, whose real name was Guillaume Albert Vladimir Alexandre Apollinaire de Kostrowitzky, was born in Rome on 26 August 1880, the product of the adulterous union of a whimsical mother, born in the Russian Empire to a family of minor Polish nobility, and an Italian officer father, Francesco Flugi d'Aspermont. Maria Kostrowicka Dabrowa, a descendant of a collateral branch who gave a precise history of Guillaume Apollinaire's ancestors going back almost three hundred years, explains the legend surrounding the coat of arms as follows:

"The Kostrowicki family takes its name from the hamlet of Kostrowicze, twenty kilometres from Slonim and one hundred and twenty kilometres from Grodno. According to oral tradition, it was ennobled at the time of King Jagellon. Its coat of arms, "Baybousa", also known as "The Arrow", depicted an arrow surrounded by a snake with its head turned downwards and three mushrooms underneath. According to the old legend, our grandfather killed the snake that was about to bite a Lithuanian prince with an arrow. As a reward for saving his life, the Lithuanian prince gave the coat of arms to our ancestor, who was then called Hrybun-Bakunowicz (Hrybun means 'mushroom' in white Russian).

(Maria Kostrowicka-Dabrowa. Apollinaire's maternal ancestors in Magazine - le flâneur des deux rives, n°1 - March 1954)

This large gouache on paper pasted on strong cardboard is reproduced from theAlbum Apollinaire de la Pleïade, page 11.