Forgotten portraits - Introduction - part B

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Italian influences, economy and political system

The successors of the Jagiellons, the Vasas, shifted the focus of artistic patronage north, supporting Flemish and Dutch painters and acquiring luxury goods and art in the Netherlands, but Italian influences were still strong. "The Italian nation, from which we received the religion, literature, good arts, and the equipment of the more elegant life of the Sarmatians, is the most deserved" (Natio Jtalica optime de nobis merita est, a qua religionem, literas, bonas artes, ac elegatioris vitae apparatum Sarmatae accepimus), wrote in a letter of 1601 the Grand Chancellor Jan Sariusz Zamoyski (1542-1605) to Pope Clement VIII. 

The Venetian envoy Pietro Duodo (1554-1610), appointed ambassador extraordinary to Poland-Lithuania in 1592, describes in his report to the Venetian Senate the economy and customs of the country, as well as the members of the ruling family. About the wealth of the city of Gdańsk, he adds: "King Philip II of Spain draws great reinforcements from this city, not only in grain, but also in wood for shipbuilding and in war munitions, the inhabitants of Gdańsk even build ships for his fleet. Elizabeth, Queen of England, tried by all means to prevent this trade, but the inhabitants of Gdańsk know how to protect themselves from the vigilance of the English, moving away from the coasts of England, bypassing the very borders of northern Scotland in their navigation. Elizabeth has demanded that the King of Denmark close his straits to them, but this monarch, having the greatest revenues from the straits, does not want to give them up just to please the Queen. Moreover, the King of Denmark is related to the King of Scotland, who, according to all appearances, will ascend the throne of England. The kingdom of Poland is abundant in all things necessary for life, and the only thing lacking is wine, which only the rich can drink: an oxeft costs 200 scudos. This wine comes from Hungary, Austria, Friuli, Candia [Crete], and is transported the one through Gdańsk, the other through Tsargrad [Istanbul] via the Danube. 
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[...] 

The war forces of this Kingdom are immense, for all the nobility are obliged to serve on horseback in time of war; whoever cannot go himself must send someone capable to his place. The number of this cavalry amounts to 250,000.

[...]

The former Kings wanted to fortify Kraków, but the Poles opposed this, saying that their breasts would become a fortress, and they did not want to be locked up anywhere.

As far as religion is concerned, the legitimate Holy Catholic Faith has the largest number of followers, all others however have a certain shelter here. The common people, namely in Lithuania and the southern provinces, follow the Greek rite. There are many Calvinists and Lutherans, but the most numerous are Jews, because the nobility is ashamed of trade, the peasants are too ignorant and oppressed, the townspeople are too lazy, the whole trade of Poland is in the hands of Jews. [...] I was told that in Vilnius, there are 72 different denominations, in Lithuania and on Samogitia you will still find remnants of idolatry: they worship a small black snake there.

[...]

The income of the King of Poland brings him 950,000 scudos, that is 500,000 from Poland, 450,000 from Lithuania. From this money the King maintains the embassies, fortresses, bridges and roads.

[...]

The Poles have their own dress, close to Hungarian, they live luxuriously, but they always carry weapons. As for the Royal Person [King Sigismund III], this lord is of medium height, majestic authority, he is 24 years old, has light hair, sensible, cautious, but not very skilled in the art of ruling. He is the grandson of Gustav Vasa, he comes from the Jagiellonian blood after his Mother [Catherine Jagiellon]. The royal aunt, Queen Anna, wife of Stephen Bathory, is still alive, she demands to have priority over the reigning Queen. From this it came that when I went with my obeisance to the young Queen, several courtiers met me and wanted to take me to the Queen aunt, but I did not go, which was very pleasing to the King, who wants his wife to receive great honor. From this it comes that the understanding between the aunt and the niece is not the best" (after "Zbiór pamiętników historycznych o dawnej Polszcze ..." by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Volume 4, p. 69, 71, 75, 76).

The great influences of Italians and Italian culture in Poland-Lithuania have led to increased interest in the Polish-Lithuanian royal elections on the Italian peninsula, which is now largely forgotten. In 1573, Alfonso II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara dispatched the celebrated poet Giovanni Battista Guarini to Poland-Lithuania, to perorate his cause before the Diet (Sejm). Guarini failed in his mission and on his return to Ferrara was criticized for diplomatic ineptitude (after "Politics and Diplomacy in Early Modern Italy ..." by Daniela Frigo, p. 167). Other important Italian candidates in the first free election of 1573 also included Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza and Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. The latter was also considered in the third free election of 1587, when son of Catherine Jagiellon Sigismund Vasa was elected, and he had strong support.

Simone Gengi of Urbino, an architect and military engineer in the service of the late King Stephen Bathory, believed that among the many candidates put forward, he had a good chance of success (...et quanto ella per parere de più principali potessi più d'ogn'altro aspirare a questa corona), as he states in a letter dated January 7, 1587 from Riga (dal nuovo forte di fiume Dvina), addressed to the Grand Duke and his ambassador to the imperial court in Prague Orazio Urbani. He asked to the director of the royal post of Poland-Lithuania Sebastiano Montelupi to spare no effort and money so that the courier with letters to the Grand Duke would reach Vienna as soon as possible. It was Montelupi, who in a letter of December 18, 1586 informed the court in Ferrara about the death of Bathory. He recommended hiring a special messenger dressed in German clothes and fluent in German. From Vienna, through the Tuscan ambassador, the letters were to be sent to Florence. 

The candidature of the Florentine ruler was supported, among others, by Stanisław Karnkowski, Archbishop of Gniezno, Olbracht Łaski, voivode of Sieradz and by Chancellor Jan Zamoyski. At the beginning of February 1587, they sent an embassy to Florence, which included, among others, the brother-in-law of the voivode of Sieradz, Wincenty de Seve, provost of Łask, who was ordered to invite the Grand Duke to take part in the upcoming election. His candidature was supposedly presented in the Sandomierz voivodship by Chancellor Zamoyski himself, who, according to Urbani, sincerely favored Francesco. According to the Tuscan diplomat, the Dukes of Ferrara and Parma had little chance in the upcoming election as petty and insignificant rulers.

The fact that the Florentine milieu in Kraków was also keenly interested in the upcoming election is evidenced by a letter of January 7, 1587, from Filippo Talducci, addressed to Marco Argimoni in Florence, in which, listing the candidates for the Polish Crown, he mentioned the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who, if he wanted to mobilize appropriate financial resources, would have a chance to be elected (il figliuolo del Re di Svetia, il Cardinale Batori, il Duca di Ferrara et il nostro Serenissimo Gran Duca, il quale se volessi attendere con li mezzi sapete, sarebbe cosa riuscibile. Dio lasci seguire il meglio). The aspirations to the Polish crown of the Dukes of Ferrara, Parma and even Savoy are mentioned in the correspondence of the Tuscan ambassadors in Madrid, Bongianni Gianfighacci and Vincenzo Alamanni (letters of February 21, March 27 and April 4, 1587) (after "Dwór medycejski i Habsburgowie ..." by Danuta Quirini-Popławska, pp. 123-126). The portrait of the Grand Duke, today kept in Wilanów Palace (Wil.1494), could refer to this candidacy. It most likely comes from a series of similar small portraits from Ros near Grodno in Belarus, attributed to the 18th century Italian school. This "portrait of a man" is considered a copy of Angelo Bronzino, but it closely resembles the portraits of Francesco made by his court painter Alessandro Allori (1535-1607).

In the early 17th century the Tuscan court was certainly one of the best informed about Polish-Lithuanian affairs, but Grand Duke Ferdinando I de' Medici (1549-1609) did not even consider the proposal made to him in 1598 by the Lucchese merchant Lorenzo Cagnoli to give his niece Maria de' Medici (1575-1642), future Queen of France, in marriage to Sigismund III, who had become a widower after the death of Anna of Austria (compare "La trama Nascosta - Storie di mercanti e altro" by Rita Mazzei). ​

Italian costumes, food, gardens, music, language and books, paintings, crafts and dances were most popular in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, even the hours were still counted in Italian style under the reign of the elected monarch Sigismund III Vasa - 24 hours from sunset one day to sunset the next day. In two letters, probably from 1614 and 1615, Sigismund III expressed his gratitude to the nuncio Claudio Rangoni for the paintings he sent from Italy. Two years later, in 1617 and the following year, Rangoni again sent two paintings and "some [other] paintings" (alcuni quadri) to the king, then to the queen. According to the nuncio, the king loved paintings and willingly purchased the works of the best masters and demonstrated a passion for expensive jewelry and tapestries. The king was not only an art lover, but also an amateur artist. What is very meaningful is that during the Zebrzydowski rebellion in 1606, he was mocked by his opponents as a "Venecist/Venetian" (wenecysta), who prefers to "ride with the Italians in a gondola, paying richly for their folly, instead of mounting a horse in armor" (after "Odrodzenie w Polsce ...", Volume 5, ed. Bogusław Leśnodorski, p. 358).

The great demand for Italian specialists at the beginning of the 17th century is illustrated by Zamoyski's letter of 1601 to Montelupi, asking him to find him an Italian who would lay out two gardens for him. Montelupi did not find a specialist gardener, but recommended to the chancellor an entire Italian family, a 60-year-old father, a 35-year-old married son and father of a family. He said that they were drapers by profession and had been brought as such by merchants from Poznań, that they also knew how to make wax and preserves in the Italian style, but that in the absence of other work they also took on the task of working in the gardens (after "Antoni Nuceni - polski malarz XVII wieku" by Monika Panfil, pp. 264-267).

While Italians who settled in Poland-Lithuania sometimes Polonized their names, such as a branch of the Montelupi family, who translated their surname to Wilczogórski or a painter Antoni Nuceni, who was most likely born in Kraków to Italian parents as Antonio Nozeni, some Poles Italianized their names, as in the case of Sebastian Nuceryn (1565-1632), a scholar who Italianized his surname Orzeszek to Nucerini during his stay in Italy, and after his return to Poland used the forms Nucerinus and Nuceryn.

Marcin Bielski (d. 1575) in his satire "Conversation of the New Prophets, Two Rams with One Head" (Rozmowa nowych proroków, dwu baranów o jednej głowie) published in 1566/1567, criticizes the "stupid Poles" who buy velvet and clothes from Italians at very high prices, just because they are Italian (Nie dawajcie też tanio aksamitu Włoszy, Wszak was o to żaden pan z Polski nie wypłoszy, Kiedy głupi Polacy, iż o to nie dbają, Jako najdrożej mogą, niechaj przedawają. Już lada strój najdroższy, by jeno rzekł, włoski, By się też nań zastawić, kupi naród polski) and Gabriel Krasiński (d. 1676), castellan of Płock in his "Dance of the Republic of Poland" (Taniec Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej), criticize the rich Italians who came poor to Kraków, fleeing with their wealth to their country during the Deluge (A co pierwej w tłumoczku miał i w pluderhozach Trochę czego, to z mego Krakowa na wozach Wyprowadzi pan szalbierz do swojej ojczyzny).

Many Sarmatians were aware that dependence on imports was detrimental to the economy. Jan Jurkowski (1580-1635) left an exceptionally insightful understanding of this state of affairs in his poem "Lech awakened and his mournful complaint ..." (Lech Wzbudzony Y Lament Iego Zalosny ...), published in Kraków in 1606: "But what about poverty, Pole? You rot from excess. Accept the steward of modesty, enrich your dwellings; you, fattening foreign pigs with golden chaff, inadvertently drown your homeland in consumption. The Hungarian tears your treasures with wine, India with flavors, the Englishman and the German with fabrics, the Turk with carpets, the Italian with musk, paint, silk, pearls, glass, stones, tears you in two, and the whole world throws you into desolation" (after "Cnoty i wady narodu szlacheckiego ..." by Antoni Górski, p. 168)

As in the previous century, the Italians also possessed paintings related to Sarmatia. The "Inventory of the Gallery of paintings and other art objects of the Court of the Dukes of Mantua, compiled in the year 1627" (Inventario della Galleria di quadri, e di altri oggetti d'arte della Corte dei Duca di Mantova, compilato all' anno 1627) mentions "A portrait of a young king of Poland" (Un ritratto d'un giovanetto rè di Polonia - scut. 2. L. 12.), perhaps a portrait of the young king Sigismund II Augustus, crowned at the age of nine, King Sigismund III or his son Prince Ladislaus Sigismund Vasa, and "One portrait of the king of Poland" (1. ritratto del ré di Polonia - L. 6., after "Delle arti e degli artefici di Mantova ..." by Carlo D'Arco, p. 154, 157). A catalogue of paintings for sale at an unknown location in Italy, probably made in the late 17th century, lists "A portrait of the engineer of the King of Poland, a friend of the said painter, dressed in a bizarre style, half life-size, 5 1/4 high, 4 1/2 wide, in a walnut frame", painted by Domenico Fetti (ca. 1589-1623), an Italian painter who was active mainly in Rome, Mantua, and Venice (Feti: [...] Un ritratto dell'Ingegniero del Re di Polonia, amico di detto pittore, vestito alla bizzarra, mezza figura al naturale, alto quarte 5. 1/4, largo 4. 1/2, in cornice di noce). Judging from the context, this painting probably depicted Andrea dell'Aqua (1584–1656), a Venetian architect and engineer, active in Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia from around 1608, most likely depicted in Sarmatian costume. The inventory of paintings belonging to Queen Christina in Rome dating from around 1689 mentions a "Portrait of the King of Poland in armour and wearing a cloak, on canvas", possibly a copy of the portrait of King Michael Korybut by Daniel Schultz (Ritratto del re di Polonia armato e con sopra il manto, in tela in piedi alto p.mi tre e due dita, largo dui p.mi e mezzo senza cornice, after "Raccolta di cataloghi ed inventarii inediti di quadri, statue, disegni ...", ed. Giuseppe Campori, p. 364, 448). 

​The 1753 inventory of the Medici collections lists a chest with the Medici coat of arms surmounted by a Polish saint, Saint Casimir (no. 77), and a small box with a portrait of King Sigismund on the lid (no. 44) in addition to numerous amber objects, which are reasonably assumed to be gifts from Poland because of the family connections of Maria Magdalena of Austria (1589-1631), whose sister Constance of Austria (1588-1631) was Queen of Poland (afer "Due altari in ambra al Museo degli Argenti" by Kirsten Aschengreen Piacenti, p. 158).

It is unimaginable today that in 1615, the "Annals or Chronicles of the Famous Kingdom of Poland" (Annales seu Cronicae incliti Regni Poloniae), the best-known work of Jan Długosz (1415-1480), chronicler and tutor to the sons of Casimir IV Jagiellon, was subject to censorship. The openness and severity of the judgments of the writer, a lover of truth, which in his works, and especially in the books of this History, seemed to offend certain classes, families and persons, aroused envy and slander against them, keeping them for a long time as if under the seal of silence. During the reign of Sigismund III, a royal edict was issued prohibiting the publication of Długosz's chronicle. Only Jan Szczęsny Herburt (1567-1616) managed to forestall this ban by publishing the first six books of History in Dobromyl (Ukraine) in 1614 and 1615 under the title Historia Polonica Ioannis Dłvgossi ... (after "Jana Długosza, kanonika krakowskiego, Dziejów Polskich ksiąg dwanaście" by Karol Mecherzyński, Volume 1, Przedmowa tłumacza). Herburt hoped to receive a subsidy from the Doge and the Republic of Venice. He wrote a dedication note and even sent a copy of this publication to the Venetians through an envoy (after "Cnoty i wady narodu szlacheckiego ..." by Antoni Górski, p. 132). However, even the dedication to the Venetian Doge did not save the edition from complete confiscation after the publication of Sigismund III's ban of December 20, 1615.

Society, education and travels

​17th-century Sarmatia was still a very egalitarian country (especially among the nobility). Thus, as in the case of Florentine cook Allamani, sent as ambassador to Sweden in 1582, less attention was paid to the private status of the official ambassador of the Commonwealth. In 1655, the declaration of war on Poland by Charles X Gustav, the "Brigand of Europe," may have been provoked, among other things, by resentment at the fact that John II Casimir had sent as his envoy, not a senator, but "a certain Morsztyn", as Charles Gustav put it (after "Cnoty i wady narodu szlacheckiego ..." by Antoni Górski, p. 52, 95-96, 99-102, 132-133). This ambassador was Jan Andrzej Morsztyn (1621-1693), a young man and courtier of the king at the time. 

Life at the royal court was, in many ways, comparable to that in many other European countries. Frequent references to Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) in known texts indicate that his works were well known in Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia in the 17th century. Piotr Łaszcz refers to Machiavelli during the Zebrzydowski rebellion in 1606, King Sigismund III in his letter to Żółkiewski in 1619, Andrzej Koryciński (ca. 1582-1652) in his Perspectiva politica Regno Poloniae elaborat ..., published in 1652, and to Wespazjan Kochowski (1633-1700) in his epigrams. The works of the Florentine writer were known to Chancellor Jan Zamoyski, as confirmed by Boniface Vanozzi in his reports to the papal legate. Lithuanian Grand Chancellor Albert Stanislaus Radziwill (1632-1656) also knew them well.

Ewaryst Bełżecki, royal courtier in the years 1640-1659, had been in litigation with his brother for many years over the Dobromyl Library. Even a simple Kraków spice merchant, Jan Markiewicz or Markowicz (died before 1691), possessed an impressive Latin library.

Besides the positive aspects of education abroad, such as learning about new cultures, ways of life, technological improvements, the exchange of new ideas, the ability to learn a foreign language faster or establish valuable connections, and many others, the residents of Sarmatia also noticed negative aspects. Stanisław Żółkiewski (1547-1620) stood up for the Zamość Academy. In his will from 1606 he addresses his wife: "In Zamość, education worthy of noble children has begun and I would rather have you teach our son here in Poland than in a foreign land, because it is obvious that the number of those who travel to foreign lands for practice brings more bad than good customs". A stay abroad absorbed also large sums. Prince Christopher Radziwill (1585-1640) writes to his son's tutor Mr Przypkowski: "I have already left you over a hundred thousand in the two years since you left Poland. With that money, I could buy a property or live more comfortably".

Sarmatian students abroad sometimes stayed there and married there. In the 17th century, the marriage of Stanisław Franciszek Koniecpolski, son of Stefan Koniecpolski (d. 1629), caused a stir and gave rise to diplomatic correspondence with the Dutch Republic. In 1647, he married Maria Matilda de Bökop in Utrecht, spent several years with her abroad, and in 1655, in the midst of the Deluge, burdened with debts, he returned to Poland to fight the enemy. He then announced the death of his wife and his second marriage to a noblewoman Elżbieta Dunin-Borkowska. Maria Matilda, abandoned, learned of this, went to Gdańsk, and in 1660 filed a lawsuit against Koniecpolski for bigamy. He was sentenced by a decree of the Crown Court to the punishment of infamy and beheading, but in 1670 he was freed from this punishment by the castellan of Połaniec, Stanisław Dunin-Borkowski. This famous case inspired a novel written in German by Aleksander Bronikowski.

In many places in Italy, especially in Padua and Rome, one can find several funerary monuments and epitaphs commemorating the Sarmatians who died during the journey to the peninsula, testifying to the high level of their artistic patronage. The epitaph of Giovanni Battista Vertema (Joannes Baptista Vertema, 1543-1588) from Piuro, north of Milan, with the portrait of the deceased, in the Franciscan Monastery in Kraków, commemorates a foreigner who died unexpectedly while traveling to Poland. Vertema came from a noble family that had settled in Zurich and then Basel. He died in Kraków on March 25, 1588, at the age of 45. According to the inscription on his epitaph, he "departed for Poland to transact his business, but, not having completed it, was struck by a sudden and unexpected death. He is buried here with the care and piety of his family and friends". The epitaph, richly decorated in Mannerist style, is attributed to a master known as the Master of the Provana Tombstone.

Religion

​The first half of the 17th century was marked by the growing influence of the Counter-Reformation, and many Sarmatians, especially those educated at Catholic universities in Western Europe, such as that of Bologna in the Papal States, became ardent propagators of the resolutions of the Council of Trent (1545-1563). Although some Protestants and even Orthodox converted to Catholicism during this period, including aristocrats educated abroad eager to pursue careers at the royal court, those who remained in the "dissident" religion felt the increasing pressure, a fact reflected in a painting now in the National Museum in Kraków (oil and tempera on canvas, 105 x 86 cm, inv. MNK XVIII-458). The painting is generally dated to the first half of the 18th century and depict the Ark of the Church under attack by enemies or an allegorical representation of the persecution of the Orthodox Church. The armed horsemen galloping behind the ship include Roman emperors known for their persecution of Christians. The Antichrist sits on a throne, a turbaned Turk holds a drawn bow, and a Polish nobleman points a rifle at the Church. The Cyrillic inscriptions, as well as the overall style of the painting, indicate that it was painted in Ruthenia, then part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The costume of the man in the center is typical of Western European fashion in the 1630s, while the work shows influences of Venetian painting, particularly in the landscape and the depiction of waves. Another version of this composition, from Trostianets, is in the Museum of Ukrainian Art (formerly the National Museum) in Lviv, however, the man in the center is wearing a ruff and a costume more typical of early 17th-century European fashion. The Kraków canvas was acquired in 1975 from a private collection in Wrocław. It is interesting to note that the Calvinist Princess Louise Charlotte Radziwill (1667-1695), who died in Brzeg near Wrocław, owned such a Ruthenian painting, as confirmed by the inventory of her possessions drawn up in 1671 (Łódkę Chrystusową usiłują zatopić). On August 25, 1708, a certain Christian Hensel, a Wrocław merchant, donated a "Russian painting" (rusissches Bild) painted on canvas from the Cabinet of Princes Radziwill, which he had acquired, to the Rehdiger Library in Wrocław. Thus, the Kraków painting most likely comes from the collection of the Calvinist princess Radziwill, who also owned several other Ruthenian paintings (after "Śląskie losy kolekcji dzieł sztuki księżnej Ludwiki Karoliny Radziwiłłówny ..." by Piotr Oszczanowski, p. 195-196). 

Venetian links, costumes and languages

"These are the advantages of the city of Venice, namely that it is beautiful, that it is convenient, that it is almost unconquerable, that it is wonderful," praised the Queen of the Adriatic Paweł Palczowski, a courtier of Sigismund III, in his work on the political system of the Venetian Republic Statvs Venetorvm, published in Kraków in 1605 (Jagiellonian Library in Kraków, BJ St. Dr. 50862 I). Palczowski's book was dedicated to Count Sebastian Lubomirski (ca. 1546-1613) and was largely based on the work of Gasparo Contarini (1483-1542), although he knew Venice from his own experience (after "Defining the Identity of the Younger Europe", ed. Miroslawa Hanusiewicz-Lavallee, Robert Aleksander Maryks, p. 38-39). Polish studies, written at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, provided the anti-absolutist Polish nobility with arguments in favour of the thesis that the Venetian system should be considered a model for Poland, even if what mattered to them above all was ​libertas Venetiana (Venetian freedom), as confirmation that they had chosen the right path.

In his "Sejm Sermons" (Kazania sejmowe),  published in 1597 in Kraków, Piotr Skarga, the court preacher of Sigismund III, metaphorically appealed to parliament not to further restrict the king's power in favor of a more Habsburg absolutism: "Good Lords! Do not make the kingdom of Poland a [free] city of the German Reich, do not make a painted king as in Venice. Because you don't have Venetian mindset and you don't live in one city" (Sermon 6). He also scolded the great wealth and luxurious life of the nobility, their expensive clothes of velvet and silk, cellars full of wine, gilded carriages: "See what abundance and riches and joyful life this mother has brought you, and how she has gilded you and granted so much that you have enough money, plenty of food, clothes so expensive, such crowds of servants, horses, carts; so much money and income multiplied everywhere" (Sermon 2), and neglecting the defence of the Commonwealth: "No one living in abundance like this watches the castles and city walls" (Sermon 8). 

References to Venice are common among the 17th-century Sarmatians. Prince Jerzy Zbaraski (1574-1631), known for his libertine lifestyle, deplores Stefan Pac's engagement in a letter addressed to him and adds: "I summon you to Venice so that you can say goodbye to freedom where freedom lives". In 1619, Jan Zrzenczycki, writing about Bohemia, declares: "in Venice there is nothing more precious than poison". According to Sarbiewski, John Stanislaus Sapieha (1589-1635) said of himself: "I prefer to be a Veronese than a Piacentino". This is an allusion to the proverb: Verona paucos, plurimos Placentia ad Aulae honores promovet ("Verona promotes a few, Piacenza promotes many to the honors of the court"). "It is ugly for a young man to stay at home for nothing. Leave this fireside happiness to the simple Veronese peasants, who will grow old in the cottage where they were born", adds Franciszek Poniński (1661-1714), a Jesuit preacher in Kraków. Hence the word "Veronese" (Werończyk) was considered a symbol of simplicity (after "Cnoty i wady narodu szlacheckiego ..." by Antoni Górski, p. 19, 44, 96).​

In 1589, the Italian architects Paolo Romano Dominici (Paulo Romano muratore de Leopoli, Paweł Rzymianin) and Paolo de Ducato Clemenci (also known as Paul the Italian "the Happy", Paweł Italczyk Szczęśliwy in Polish) rebuilt in the Renaissance style an old Gothic house on the market square of the old town of Lviv, at no. 14, for the Dalmatian merchant Antonio de Massaro (or Antonio di Massari), who served as consul of the Republic of Venice in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The façade is decorated with diamond-shaped bossage. The main portal was decorated in 1600 with a bas-relief with the coat of arms of Venice - a winged lion with an open book and the inscription of the city's motto: "Peace be with you, Mark, my evangelist" (PAX TIBI MAR/CE EVA/NGEL/ISTA MEVS DIXIT 1600). This building is known as the "Venetian House". There is also the Venetian House in Kraków, also known as the House of the Grey Carp, on the Main Market Square - no. 11. Since 1527, it housed a pharmacy belonging to the families of apothecaries: Alantsee, Zajdlicz (1607-1646) and Pernus (until 1678). The name "Venetian House" refers to the undocumented stay of the envoys of the Venetian Republic and the sculpture of the winged lion of St. Mark, which was embedded in the courtyard wall until the beginning of the 20th century. Italian architects Pietro di Barbona and Paolo Romano Dominici were also the creators of the ornate Lviv Tower erected in the years 1572-1578 at the expense of Konstantinos Korniaktos (d. 1603) from Candia (today Heraklion) in Crete, then part of the Venetian Republic. Paolo de Ducato Clemenci and Paul the Italian "the Kind" were the architects of the Golden Rose Synagogue erected in 1582 on the foundation of Izaak Nachmanowicz, while Ducato, together with Ambroggio detto Przychylny, was the designer of the reconstruction of the Church of the Dormition in Lviv, historically known as the "Wallachian Church", between 1591 and 1629. This church was built in the years 1547-1559 by Pietro di Lugano on the site of the previous one, dating from the 15th century, destroyed in a fire in 1527. The bell tower of the Armenian Cathedral founded by Andrew of Kaffa (1571), was designed by Pietro chiamato Krasowski (compare "Dzieje Lwowa" by Leszek Podhorodecki, p. 50).

In 1599, a very important book from the point of view of Venetian links and Sarmatian-Italian relations was published in Venice. This was Pietro Bertelli's Theatrum Urbium Italicarum, created at the initiative of the Bishop of Kuyavia Hieronim Rozdrażewski (ca. 1546-1600) and also dedicated to him (Ad Ill'mum et Reu'mum D. D. / Hieronymvm Comitem a Rozrazew / Episcopum Vladislauiensem et Pomeraniæ. / Regni Poloniæ Senatorem). In the book, Bertelli presents views and brief descriptions of fifty-seven Italian cities that the Polish bishop had visited or wished to visit during his travels. Thus, in addition to the largest metropolises, such as Rome, Venice, Milan, Florence, and Naples, the collection also included smaller cities, such as Bergamo, Padua, and Cremona. Raised at the French court (he called Queen Catherine de Medici his tutor and guardian) and educated in Ingolstadt and Rome, Hieronim was regarded by his contemporaries as a great lover of books. The bishop had a keen interest in history and geography and commissioned this publication on the occasion of his pilgrimage to Rome for the Great Jubilee of 1600. The publication was a great success, as evidenced by the numerous reissues and imitations of the book (after "Theatrum urbium italicarum Pietra Bertellego ..." by Sebastian Dudzik, p. 113). The bishop owned effigies of Kings Stephen Bathory and Sigismund III on silver, and 38 antiques (antiquitates), probably acquired during his travels or imported to Poland. The inventory of his treasury at Wolbórz Palace (from 1599) lists a considerable quantity of silver and gold objects, including a gilded basin presented by the emperor and a silver-gilt statue of Saint George fighting the dragon, four carriages, one covered with green velvet, made in Lublin, one German, and one Italian. In his palace in Włocławek, the bishop had 21 complete suits of armor and a large armory. The inventory mentions only two paintings, possibly a Byzantine or Ruthenian (or Russian) icon: an image of Our Lady framed in silver and stones (Obraz P. Maryi srebrem i kamieniem oprawny), probably mentioned solely because of the value of the frame, as well as an image of the Virgin Mary set in silver. It probably also mentions a portrait of the bishop painted on canvas and rolled up (Obraz JEM. w trąbę zwiniony 1). In 1597, Rozdrażewski presented his portrait, framed in a gold frame, to the papal master of ceremonies, Giovanni Paolo Mucante (d. 1617), who took it with him to Italy (after "Biskup Hieronim Rozrażewski jako humanista i mecenas" by Stanisław Librowski, p. 31-32).

The comparisons between Kraków and Rome are very interesting. Giovanni Paolo Mucante, who visited Kraków in 1596 in the company of the papal legate Enrico Gaetani (or Gaetano, 1550-1599), noted in his diary: "if Rome were not Rome, Kraków would be Rome" (Se Roma non fusse Roma, Cracovia saria Roma). However, he wanted to emphasize the international commercial and cultural importance and the multinational character of the city and not its religious aspect. Martin Gruneweg (1562-ca. 1618), a merchant from Gdańsk born into a German Lutheran family, who converted to Catholicism in 1588 in Lviv and became a Dominican monk, left a detailed description of Kraków between 1587 and 1603, focusing on its many religious buildings (according to estimates, there were 53 religious buildings here, including 32 churches and 21 monasteries). Martin, who also visited the Eternal City around the same time and described it in detail, also compares Kraków to Rome, claiming that it was a "second Rome" (gleich were sie ein anderes Roem). His patron was Obiedziski, a courtier of the elected queen Anna Jagiellon, and he also had an audience with the queen, which is confirmed in his notes. Gruneweg also describes the Jewish city (oppidum iudaeorum, Judenstatt) with many brick houses, Wawel Castle with carved gilded ceilings, marble floors and window frames and walls covered with silk woven with gold thread, as well as the lion house in the royal garden with four lions and the excellent arsenal built by Sigismund I on Grodzka Street (after "Kraków w zapiskach dominikanina Martina Grunewega ..." by Piotr Hapanowicz, p. 39, 42, 44, 45, 55). 

As in the previous epoch, in the 17th century, foreign costumes were still very popular among the nobility. Franciszek Siarczyński in his "Image of the reign of Sigismund III ...", published in Poznań in 1843, claims that he "saw paintings in Kraków in which Zebrzydowski looked like a Sultan, Zborowski like a Roman knight, in Krosno Stanisław Oświęcim, has all the clothes of a Swede, Tarnowski of an armed Greek, etc. Niesiecki described the portrait in Topolno of Krzysztof Konarski, from 1589, in guise of a German knight". A nobleman in Spanish parade outfit, who took part in Prince Ladislaus Vasa's expedition to Moscow in 1612, was ridiculed by other soldiers: "[go back] to Salamanca, to Compostela, Mr. Spaniard" (after "Obraz wieku panowania Zygmunta III ...", p. 73-74). 

Zofia Osmólska, wife of the royal secretary Stanisław Przedbór Koniecpolski (died after 1594), lost her life because of her, most likely, Spanish-style dress with a long train - she was killed by horses frightened by the sight of camels near Zamość; she jumped out of the carriage, but her dress caught on the outer end of a carriage axle and the horses dragged her away. "King Gustavus Adolphus put the sword to our necks. How many volunteers rushed onto the battlefield? More stayed at home with soap and a mirror", reprimanded the courtiers preacher Jakub Olszewski (ca. 1586-1634), referring to the Livonian War of 1625-1629 (after "Unia: sceny z przeszłości Polski i Litwy" by Henryk Wisner, p. 221). The author of "Perspective after the Deplorable Defeat at Kostiantyniv" (Perspektywa krótka po żałosnej klęsce rozproszenia wojskowego za Konstantynowem [after July 1648]), probably Szymon Starowolski (1588-1656), laments that landowners have abandoned horses and armours, preferring to buy clothes for their ladies. The latter, for their part, dress exclusively in Italian and French style, "wearing neither Polish nor Ruthenian clothes" (szat polskich nie masz ni po rusku). During the hearings on the causes of the defeat at Pylyavtsi (September 1648), the Crown Chancellor claimed that the cause of the defeat was the "long peace, during which we learned German management, Italian festivals, and how to perfume clothes in the French manner" (after "Cnoty i wady narodu szlacheckiego ..." by Antoni Górski, p. 43, 58, 70, 74).​

Members of different ethnic groups of Sarmatia traveled to different Western European countries, primarily for doing business, as the country was a major supplier of many important goods, but also to pursue their studies, for a better climate or for health, to make a pilgrimage or simply to visit other countries. After completing studies at the Kraków or Vilnius Academy or other important schools of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it was customary to continue studies abroad, in Padua, Bologna, Leuven, Leiden or Ingolstadt, among others. Abroad, Sarmatians frequently adopted local costumes, which is confirmed by numerous sources, but some, decided to travel in their traditional costumes - usually a crimson żupan, delia coat and kolpak hat. These costumes were frequently captured by different artists from Italy, Flanders, the Netherlands and France in their works.

Some foreigners were also depicted in Sarmatian costumes, such as the painter Martin Ryckaert in his magnificent portrait painted around 1631 by Anthony van Dyck (Prado Museum in Madrid). Nicolas Lagneau (National Library of France), Stefano della Bella, Guercino (Nationalmuseum in Stockholm) and Rembrandt left numerous drawings and engravings representing characters dressed in typical Sarmatian costumes. Such costumes can also be seen in the paintings by Mattia Preti (Capitoline Museums in Rome), Giuseppe Maria Galeppini (private collection in Sweden) and David Teniers the Younger (Louvre and Neuburg State Gallery). 

The Florentine painter Sigismondo Coccapani (1585-1643), one of the best students of Ludovico Cardi known as Il Cigoli, dressed one of his Eastern sages or Magi in a kolpak hat lined with expensive lynx with two feathers - white and crimson (symbols of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), as well as a white and crimson doublet lined with fur, in his painting Adoration of the Magi made before 1617 (Chiesa Prioria di Santa Maria nel Castello di Signa). This painting was commissioned in 1616 by Maria Felice Palmieri, a nun of the Augustinian monastery of San Baldassarre in Coverciano and most likely illustrates the common notion among Italians of the time about the rich eastern kingdom, as the man opens a chest full of treasures that he wishes to offer to Madonna. Coccapani also dressed his flautist in an eastern fur costume (Uffizi Gallery in Florence, inv. 1890 / 6034). Around 1660, Giovanni Maria Viani (1636-1700), a Baroque painter active in Bologna, faithfully depicted the costume of the Polish ambassador kneeling before Saint Pius V (1504-1572) on a side altar of the Sanctuary of the Madonna of San Luca in Bologna. The man, with the moustache and czupryna typical of the Sarmatian nobility of the second half of the 17th century, wears a blue żupan ​​and a yellow delia mantle lined with fur. The painter also very faithfully rendered the features of the pope who had died almost a century earlier, undoubtedly drawing inspiration from other portraits.

Johann Heinrich Schönfeld painted around 1653 his "Sarmatians at the tomb of Ovid" (Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest and Royal Collection), which could be an illustration of one of the many Renaissance accounts of tomb-finding expeditions, such as that described by Stanisław Sarnicki in 1587 (Annales, sive de origine et rebus gestis Polonorum et Lituanorum, p. 73), and Philips Wouwerman produced between 1656 and 1668 a painting representing the Polish-Lithuanian cavalry fighting the army of the "Brigand of Europe" during the Deluge (National Gallery, London).

Sarmatians like Stefano Ubaldini della Ripa (1585-1621) from Lviv in Ruthenia, who died in Padua, probably also travelled to Italy in national costume - his splendid epitaph erected by the "Polish nation" near the first Polish chapel is located in the Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua.

​The preserved poetry, created before the Deluge, confirms the image of a wealthy Commonwealth, concerned with various social problems, and not a country ravaged by constant wars and invasions of neighbors, fighting for its independence. The collection of manuscripts by Polish poets, mainly members of the community of Polish Brethren, compiled in 1675 by Jakub Teodor Trembecki (1643-1719/1720), published in 1910-1911 by Aleksander Brückner ("Jakuba Teodora Trembeckiego wirydarz poetycki", volume I), includes the following poems by unknown poets: 27. On an Italian feast, 28. Polish prosperity, 29. Polish playfulness, 165. On foreign costumes in Poland ("Nowadays, you can barely recognize Poles, there are Italians, French, in great number at the courts"); by Jan Gawiński of Wielomowic (ca. 1622 - ca. 1684): 215. On Venus ("Displeased Venus makes no one rich; She has a naked son; pleased, when you pay her"), 262. A girl without shame ("And your beautiful nature and wonderful senses, my Lady, have been spoiled by these oddities of your costumes"), 263. Today's wives ("Among the pagans, wives died for their husbands, and today they would dance on his grave"), 325. The concept of a Ruthenian painter under the painting of Judith beheading Holofernes; by Hieronim Morsztyn (ca. 1581 - ca. 1622): 368. Court disease ("Syphilis, ulcers, buboes, were brought from France and they were accommodated in a brothel"), by Jan Andrzej Morsztyn (1621-1693): 471. To the Italian ("You, Italian, sell Venetian products and you profit greatly from it") and by Daniel Naborowski (1573-1640): 617. To one hermaphrodite ("You have a female form but you have a prick, so you are both [woman and man]"), 643. On nude images in the bathhouse ("It's decent to wash naked in the bathhouse"). For his obscene epigram about female breasts, Hieronim Morsztyn most likely took inspiration from an Italian model: "Cazzo [an Italian vulgarism for phallus], stuck in the crotch, couldn't do its job" (Cazzo w kroku pojmane nie mogło się sprawić) (after "Poeta i piersi" by Radosław Grześkowiak, p. 18). 

The great diversity of languages ​​spoken in the Vasa era is reflected in the great popularity of Italian and English theatre troupes. At the wedding celebrations of Sigismund III with Anna of Austria in Kraków in 1592, three Italian actors performed. In a letter from Nysa of March 18, 1617, Archduke Charles of Austria, Bishop of Wrocław, brother of Queen Constance of Austria, to Cardinal Dietrichstein, Governor of Moravia, recommended the English actors who came to Nysa from Poland-Lithuania "with royal recommendations and a valuable testimony" (mit Königlichen recommendationen vndt quethen Zeügnus) from King Sigismund III, at whose court they spent several months. They most likely belonged to a theatre troupe led by John Green. In 1636, English actors performed in Vilnius and Warsaw at the court of Ladislaus IV Vasa (according to a letter from Aaron Asken/Arend Ärschen of July 1636 to the Mayor of Gdańsk). In May 1640, several English actors asked the Gdańsk City Council for permission to perform, however, they were refused, despite a letter of recommendation from Ladislaus IV, at whose court in Warsaw they had recently performed. Joachim Posselius (died 1624), court physician to Sigismund III, in his chronicle Historia rerum Polonicarum ..., mentions that at the royal court there were theatrical performances in German or Italian (after "Notatki do dziejów teatru w dawnej Polsce" by Adam Fischer, p. 267-275). 

In the 17th century, Italian was still considered an international language in diplomatic relations. In a letter from prison to the Bishop of Saint-Malo in 1639, John Casimir Vasa declared that he did not know French; he corresponded with his wife Marie Louise Gonzaga in Italian. Kazanowski responded to French envoys in this language during the election of 1648.

The French-born queen Marie Louise Gonzaga is generally considered to have introduced more daring, not to say inappropriate, female costumes to Poland, mainly due to the marked contrast between effigies of the queen and portraits of her predecessors from the Habsburg dynasty - Cecilia Renata of Austria, Constance of Austria and Anna of Austria. However, many authors seem to forget that these queens preferred the fashion of the imperial or Spanish court which did not allow bare breasts described by Wacław Potocki (1621-1696). The popularity of daring French, Venetian and Florentine costumes was confirmed much earlier by Piotr Zbylitowski in his "Reprimand of Women's Extravagant Attire" (Przygana wymyślnym strojom białogłowskim), published in Kraków in 1600, and Italian fashion dominated at the court of the Jagiellons. Although in fact the fashion introduced by Marie Louise "revealed" more to the public gaze. 

In a letter from Gdańsk dated February 15, 1646 addressed to Cardinal Jules Mazarin (1602-1661), the queen wrote that "the Polish ladies are dressed how people dressed in France fifteen years ago: hastily sewn dresses, with very short waists and very wide sleeves. They all rush as fast as they can to imitate our clothes. Their materials are extremely expensive and covered with precious stones. The daughter-in-law of Great Crown Chancellor [Katarzyna Ossolińska née Działyńska] changes her outfit every day". The French courtier Jean Le Laboureur (1621-1675) also reports that many members of the nobility dressed in French style for the queen's reception. Szymon Starowolski (1588-1656) in his "Reform of Polish Habits" (Reformacya Obyczaiow Polskich), published before 1653, laments that "almost all of Poland became French, and probably all stricken with the French disease [syphilis]" (wszytka już prawie Polska sfrancuziała, a podobno sfrancowaciała) and Krzysztof Opaliński (1609-1655) could not refrain from ridiculing exaggerated costumes and excessive use of cosmetics by the ladies in his Liryki (donkey milk to brighten the complexion, roasted almonds to darken the eyebrows, crushed corals with sea foam-sepiolite as a powder for the cheeks). "The rich ladies here are very fond of sumptuous clothes, so they order various delicate works from the nuns and pay them well", wrote one of the French nuns of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary, who visited Poland in 1654. She also adds that she saw in several monasteries wonderful silver, gold and silk embroideries, most perfectly finished, decorated with jewels with great splendor, sometimes even luxury. Queen Marie Louise, who had just left Paris, wrote in the mentioned letter to Cardinal Mazarin that: "The splendor is extraordinary [...] In short, I had no idea, despite the best thoughts that I had created to take courage during the journey. Everything exceeded my expectations, so you will have no doubt that I am very satisfied" (after "Studya historyczne" by Wiktor Czermak, p. 75-76, 98-99, 101-102, 123-125, 127). 

The register of the rich trousseau of an unspecified princess dated April 19, 1650, lists numerous dresses, including "Black dress, French fabric and work", Flemish, Dutch and Turkish fabrics and laces and also "French silver watch", "Small box of French portraits for costumes", "Bottle of French water for washing", "French powders for sprinkling hair", as well as an agate rosary bought in Rome for 100 ducats, but only one picture "Picture on copper framed in silver, of Saint Catherine" (a disguised portrait of the owner?), probably listed here because of the expensive material on which it was painted and framed (compare "Ubiory w Polszcze ..." by Łukasz Gołębiowski, p. 284, 289-292)​.

Sometimes foreign ladies also adopted something from Polish fashion. A Frenchwoman and lady-in-waiting to the queen, Marie Casimire de La Grange d'Arquien, confided in one of her letters to Jan Sobieski that she used Polish caps instead of French hairstyles and that she was already tired of the bra she had been wearing so far, and she ordered a new one to be made: "it is more Crimean style, fastened to the side" (il est un peu z krymska zapięty na bakier) with Polish words in a French letter. Although her new garment was not purely Polish, because the word "Crimean style" also indicates the original Tatar pattern.

Ladislaus IV purchased and ordered many luxury fabrics from Italian merchants for himself and the queen. In 1637, the sum of 11,281 zlotys was paid to the Kraków merchant Wincenty Barsotti for silk and bed linen intended for the king's wedding and a year later, in September 1638, Ladislaus purchased, through Hieronim Pinocci in Italy, "five pieces of gold cloth" for an amount of 7,265 zlotys, and a few years later, in November 1645, he again owed 4,000 thalers to Pinocci for fabrics brought from Venice and Vienna. According to the king's letter to his treasurer dated December 7, 1634, when the envoy of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth went to Moscow, there was in his entourage a courtier with a royal commission to purchase "various and fine furs" for 20,000 zlotys. According to the registers of 1652-1653, John Casimir purchased satin, velvet, fine silk, gold lace, ribbons, etc., as well as lynx, ermine, sable and dormouse fur, mainly from Jews. In 1667, Miss Ruffini, apparently Italian or of Italian descent as her surname indicates, was paid between 2,318 and 2,528 zlotys per month for the needs of the queen's kitchen. ​

Works of art and palaces

"Thus, the more a woodcarver or painter paints a figure that resembles a living person, the more we praise him, and rightly so, because imitatus est naturam", asserts Father Jacek Mijakowski (d. 1647) in his sermon of December 26, 1637, delivered in Kraków (Kokosz wprzód p[anom] krakowianom w kazaniu za kolędę dana ...). The Dominican preacher, educated in Bologna and Milan, concluded his sermon with an Italian proverb: La vivanda vera è l’afetto e la cera ("A true dish is an affection and a face", after "Jacek Mijakowski ..." by Roman M. Mazurkiewicz, p. 95, 123).

Besides Dolabella, another important painter from the Venetian Republic, active in Kraków during the first quarter of the 17th century, was Astolfo Vagioli, originally from Verona, who according to Mieczysław Skrudlik (1887-1941) "took the coloring from Tintoretto" (after "Tomasz Dolabella", p. 58). From 1590, he worked at the court of Cardinal Andrew Bathory (d. 1599) in Transylvania. In Kraków, he collaborated with Dolabella and painted, among other things, several altar paintings for the Basilica of Corpus Christi in 1617. Among his students was Zachariasz Dzwonowski. Another painter of Venetian or generally Italian origin was Antonio Nozeni (Antoni Nuceni, Nuceryn), active in the late 1640s and, most likely, Andrzej Wenesta or Weneta (Andrea Venosta vel Venesta, Venusta?), author of the painting on the high altar of St. Catherine's Church, painted in 1674. Members of the Venosta family were sculptors and stonemasons in Chęciny during the first half of the 17th century.

While according to the list of debts of Ladislaus IV, he owed 39,412 zlotys for Italian, French and Hungarian wines imported from Vienna in the years 1636-1639, and 90,000 zlotys to a jeweler and John Casimir paid to the watchmaker approximately 17,500 zlotys between 1652-1653, approximately 13,000 zlotys for his clothes and 74,726 zlotys in total for the beautiful clothes for his servants, the purchase and the execution of several paintings (to Salomon Schindler for the paintings, to Father Karwat for the paintings painted in Rome, to a painter from Elbląg) resulted in an expenditure of only 2,026 zlotys between 1652 and 1653.

This lower value does not mean that they were not splendid paintings. We should remember that "Old Masters" became such much later and eminent painters for whose works some are today willing to pay a fortune, sometimes found it difficult to sell their works during their lifetime or their paintings were undervalued, as in the case of El Greco, an eminent Greek-Spanish painter trained in Venice. El Greco received only 350 ducats for the Disrobing of Christ (El Expolio), completed in the spring of 1579 for the high altar of the sacristy of the cathedral of Toledo, although his own expert had valued it at 950 and the Martyrdom of Saint Maurice, painted for El Escorial in 1580 did not satisfy King Philip II. El Greco's only masterpiece in Poland, probably from the Lubomirski collection, was discovered by chance in 1964 in the parish church of Kosów Lacki, east of Warsaw, and was therefore forgotten for several centuries. It cannot be excluded that its "Venetian" style was recognized by the young Jerzy Sebastian Lubomirski (1616-1667) and that it was purchased during his visit to Spain in 1634. 

Nuncio Mario Filonardi (1594-1644) in a letter dated July 11, 1637 to Cardinal Bartolini mentions that to decorate his palace in Ujazdów, Ladislaus IV imported from Florence a large number of bronze statues, marble tables and statuettes. These sculptures were to cost 7,000 thalers, and their installation was carried out by the architect Agostino Locci, trained in Rome. The name of the author is not mentioned, but the main sculptor active at that time in Florence was Pietro Tacca (1577-1640), who worked for Ladislaus' cousins from the Medici family and created equestrian bronze statues of king's uncle King Philip III of Spain and his son of Philip IV, both in Madrid. In 1625, during his visit to Florence or Livorno, from where the prince was to embark for Genoa, Ladislaus also had the opportunity to personally meet the sculptor. There is no trace of these statues anywhere, indicating that they were probably melted down by the invaders to make cannons.

Although the land connection with Italy had been used frequently since the Middle Ages, since the end of the 16th century maritime trade relations also intensified and ships from Gdańsk transported grain and other goods to Italy and brought back luxury objects and works of art. Charles Ogier (1595-1654), secretary of the French envoy Claude de Mesmes, Count of Avaux, who visited Poland between 1635 and 1636, wrote in his diary that in the house of a Gdańsk patrician, Karl Schwartzwald, he admired a silver horse, the work of an eminent Florentine sculptor, whom he claimed to be the creator of the equestrian statue located in Paris, on the Pont Neuf. The bronze equestrian statue of Henri IV (1553-1610) on the Pont Neuf was erected in 1614 (demolished in 1792 during the French Revolution), commissioned by Queen Marie de Medici in her native Florence in 1604. The originally commissioned artist, Giambologna, died before its completion, and Pietro Tacca took over the commission. They must have relied on drawings or paintings, sent from France, depicting the king to recreate his features. Schwartzwald also owned a statue of a swimming boy, sculpted in silver after a wax original by Michelangelo and paintings brought from Italy, such as Saint Mary Magdalene "completely naked" and Judith and her servant with the head of Holofernes. In the house of Elisabeth Giese, the widow of mayor Arnold von Holten, in April 1636, the Frenchman saw portraits of Luther and Melanchthon by Lucas Cranach and portraits of the Italian poets Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) and Jacopo Sannazaro (1458-1530), both most likely by Titan, as well as smaller portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam. He also admired a picture "painted in England" (compare "Życie codzienne w Gdańsku ..." by Maria Bogucka, p. 108). 
​
In the house of Johann Ernst Schröer he saw an excellent painting by Albrecht Dürer of a man holding paper in his hand and four paintings by Cranach - portraits of Erasmus, Luther and Melanchthon, and a fourth, slightly larger, depicting Venus with Cupid stealing honey. "This Venus represents a certain mistress of the Saxon Elector Frederick, whom he placed in a rather deserted place among the rocks and forests, and after whose loss he never found peace. These rocks and the castle are represented in this painting signed: Kein Lieb ohn Leid [We have no love without suffering]" (Tres alias habet Lucae Kranic, qui fuit præconsul Wittenbergensis: Erasmi, Lutheri et Melanchtonis; sunt illæ ad vivum expressæ. Habet et quartam maioris paulo voluminis, nam aliæ pedem non excedunt. Venus est nuda, quæ sinistra manu elatoque brachio ramum arboris prehendit auditque Cupidinem suum, qui flens de apibus conqueritur, quæ illum pupugerunt [...] Exprimit illa Venus amasiam quandam Frederici electoris Saxoniæ, quam in loco satis solitario inter rupes ac silvas collocaverat, quam cum deperiret, animus illi conquiescebat nunquam: rupes illæ et castellum in tabula expressæ sunt cum hac inscriptione: Kein Lieb ohn Leid, after "Biblioteka gdańska: Seria źródeł historycznych", Volume 1, 1953, p. 124-125).

"It is impossible to assume that a Florentine or Venetian living in Lviv, such as Gucci, Bandinelli, Ducci, Massari, or Ubaldini, did not possess an innate sense of connoisseurship, or that Alembek, Kampian, or Wilczek, who spent many years in Italy and made frequent trips to Germany, hung on their walls coarse and clumsy attempts at brushwork. Lviv always had good or rather average painters, as evidenced by the portraits of patricians preserved today. However, alongside portraits, one finds compositions in inventories and often clear explanations as to the Italian or Dutch origin of the paintings. In any case, the inventories confirm that the Lviv burghers were fond of painting, and anyone who now owns as many canvases as many 16th and 17th century Lviv burghers left behind would probably be considered an amateur and collector", says Władysław Łoziński (1843-1913) in his book on Patricians and Burghers of Lviv in the 16th and 17th Centuries (after "Patrycyat i mieszczaństwo lwowskie ...", p. 205-207). The author lists that Piotr Hrehorowicz left 12 paintings, Grzegorz Jakubowicz 22, Mikołaj Bernatowicz about 50, among which 18 large canvases, 17 smaller Netherlandish, and in addition a marble bas-relief, representing an allegory of the five senses; Erazm Syxt 50, Wolf-Szolcowa 27, the Armenian Iwaszkiewicz 48, among which paintings of Roman emperors and Polish kings (6) and Ottoman sultans (Turkish emperors, 16); Stanisław Castelli 25, among which four Muscovites and a portrait of His Majesty the King on gilded leather; Konstanty Mezapeta 51, among which 7 Muscovites; goldsmith Siedmiradzki 21, Filip Ducci 40 paintings on parchment, councilor Jan Lorencowicz 40, municipal clerk Wojciech Zimnicki 18 paintings, among which two portraits of Sigismund III, a portrait of the queen, a portrait of King Sigismund Augustus, a portrait of "Mr. the scribe", "Mrs. the scribe's wife" and a portrait of his brother; Krzysztof Głuszkiewicz 20 large paintings, two silver images, 3 paintings on metal plates, Moscow paintings in silver riza and without riza, a painting of St. John the Evangelist of Russian or Ruthenian work, 6 "Cortesian" paintings (most likely depicting courtesans), Hołub Awedykowicz had seven paintings of Polish kings on boards and 5 allegories of the senses; Stanisław Józefowicz 60 paintings, doctor Kosnigiel 69, Waleryan Alembek 102, doctor Jakub Sebastian Kraus owned several religious and secular paintings, including the painting spei cum anchora, the painting Reipublicae afflictae et infelicis, etc. Several paintings kept at the Lviv National Art Gallery, such as the Madonna by the workshop of Andrea del Sarto from the collection of Józef Bilczewski (1860-1923), Latin Archbishop of Lviv (inv. Ж-1632), the Visitation of Mary by Jan van Scorel from the Lubomirski collection (inv. Ж-760), the Holy Family with Saints by workshop of Bonifazio de' Pitati (Bonifacio Veronese) from the collection of the Lviv City Gallery (inv. Ж-96), Judith over the body of Holofernes by Alessandro Turchi from the Lubomirski collection (inv. Ж-2420) and Sleeping Venus by the Flemish painter after Giorgione from the collection of the Lviv City Gallery (inv. Ж-494), as well as paintings attributed by me Christ Carrying the Cross by workshop of Bernardino (d. 1510) and Francesco Zaganelli (d. 1532) from the collection of Leon Piniński (inv. Ж-1920), Cleopatra by the Florentine painter Domenico Puligo (1492-1527) from the collection of Władysław Kozłowski (1832-1899) (inv. Ж-3853) and Saint Agatha by the Neapolitan painter Andrea Vaccaro (1604-1670) from the Dzieduszycki collection (inv. Ж-155), were probably imported into Ruthenia already in the 16th and 17th centuries. The patricians of Lviv were particularly fond of wall hangings, tapestries, carpets and rugs, especially oriental ones, but they also owned what was called coltrina or coltre (kołtryna in Polish), a wall hanging or curtain made of fabric or paper, usually made in Naples (koltryny neapolitańskie) or Bergamo (obicia malowane bergamskie), fabrics with animals and birds, tapestries with horses and figures, such as the Netherlandish tapestries (opony niderlandzkie) mentioned in the inventories of the Armenian Mikołaj Bernatowicz and the townswoman Wolf-Berndtowa.

As in the previous period, valuable objects were acquired during voyages; for example, Jan Sobiepan Zamoyski (1627-1665) purchased hard stone (pietra dura) tables for over a thousand piastres during a stopover in Florence in 1644 (compare "La trama Nascosta - Storie di mercanti e altro" by Rita Mazzei). 

Besides the well-known large brick residences of Warsaw, Kraków, Vilnius and other major cities, the Polish-Lithuanian Vasas owned several large wooden palaces of which nothing survives today. The most important was Nieporęt, near Warsaw. The palace was built by Sigismund III and later belonged to John Casimir. It had a large courtyard, a beautiful garden and a magnificent chapel. Le Laboureur praises the splendid carpentry work of the building and writes that it had a large number of comfortable rooms, all very beautiful and that it leaves nothing to be desired except that it was made of a more durable material. There were also several wooden mansions built in Warsaw and other cities for different family members and several hunting palaces, such as the one in Białowieża Forest, built before 1639 to the design by Giovanni Battista Gisleni.

​The palaces and manors of numerous nobles of the Republic of nobles were filled with portraits. Adam Jarzębski noticed in the Kazanowski (Radziejowski) Palace in Warsaw: "Likenesses of different men, / Both monarchs and hetmans", Wespazjan Kochowski wrote about nobles: "He decorated the walls with pictures of his ancestors" and Wacław Potocki concluded: "Darkened images of the ancients mean / Your ancestors ... / Weak proof of nobility a painting" (after "Życie codzienne w Warszawie za Wazów" by Jerzy Lileyko, p. 186). The portraits of the monarchs in the richly decorated royal rooms of the Jasna Góra Monastery burned during the great fire on July 16, 1690 (after "Wiadomość historyczna o starożytnym obrazie Boga-rodzicy ...", p. 71). ​

Portraiture and the role of women

​Triumphal arches for King Sigismund III Vasa's entry ceremonies into Kraków in 1587 were to be dressed in images of the Jagiellons as the ancestors of the new king. As their faces were almost totally unknown because of their antiquity (Effigies enim eorum, cum plerisque fere vetustate ignotae essent), the aforementioned Chancellor Zamoyski had them extracted from the oldest monuments (ex antiquissimis quibuscumque monumentis eruerat) and provided with them appropriate inscriptions. These inscriptions were printed separately and some are quoted by David Chytraeus in his Chronicon Saxoniae ..., published in Leipzig in 1593 (after "Listy Annibala z Kapui ..." by Aleksander Przezdziecki, p. 107). It is thanks to the efforts of later generations that the identity of many important personalities has been preserved. They added inscriptions to the paintings, created copies or published them as engravings. In the former territories of the Commonwealth, this continuity has been dramatically interrupted by wars and invasions. ​

The 1913 catalogue of portraits and paintings of the Jagiellonian University (Kraków Academy) mentions portraits of personalities connected with the oldest Polish university, but also paintings from old collections, donated to the academy, which gives an impression not only of the nature of the painting and portrait collections, but also of the culture of the country in old times. Among the portraits of the academy's professors are the portraits of Queen Jadwiga (Hedwig of Anjou) and her husband Jogaila of Lithuania, who renewed the academy at the end of the 14th century (items 34, 35, 42, 43, 186), all from the 17th century and painted by Jan Tricius, Silvestro Bianchi and Tommaso Dolabella, as well as the portraits of King Sigismund III, his son Ladislaus IV, Chancellor Jerzy Ossoliński (items 16-18), King John III Sobieski and Marshal Jerzy Sebastian Lubomirski (items 32, 33), there are also the portraits of Cardinal Piccolomini and Francesco Petrarca (items 44, 45), also from the 17th century, and the portrait of "HL [Her Ladyship] Mrs. Regina Paprocka, secretary of HMK [His Majesty the King], benefactress of this place", painted in 1758 (item 54, "Katalog portretów i obrazów będących własnością Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego ..." by Jerzy Mycielski).

​Wespazjan Kochowski, commenting on the portrait of a lady or a lady posing for a portrait in his epigram "To the Painted Lady" (Do malowanej), jokes that her makeup skills are comparable to those of Apelles who painted Venus (Ty nie Apellesowej winnaś gładkość sztuce, / Ale własnej w bieleniu Murzyna nauce). In the epigram "On the painting of His Lordship Mr. Jan Kochowski ..." he refers to the portrait of his father, who "succumbed to death, leaving his memory in a painting" and in his "The Triple Lie" (Kłamstwo trojakie) he criticizes sycophants - sculptors and painters, who flatter their clients and idealize their effigies (Pierwsze kłamstwo w statuach z drzewa snycerz robi, / Pochlebnemi cieniami drugie malarz zdobi).
​
Baroque poetry also referred to the position of women in society and the value of paintings. "If there were more such [women] in Poland, much more would be achieved!" (O gdyby takich w Polszcze było siła, Daleko by się więcej dokazało!), comments Wacław Potocki in his poem "Judith" (Judyta) after the defeat of the Commonwealth forces at the Battle of Pyliavtsi in September 1648, praising the wisdom, strength and courage of women and criticizing the ineptitude of male leaders. "Why do you refuse such a trivial thing?" (Czemuż mi rzeczy tak lichej żałujesz?), asks the poet, most likely Jan Andrzej Morsztyn (1621-1693) in his "On the Refused Image" (Na obraz odmowiony), commenting on his beloved's refusal to offer him her portrait. This passage confirms that painted effigies were popular and inexpensive. 

Between 1624 and 1631, Fedor Sienkowicz, a very popular painter from Lviv, received 5 zlotys for copies of portraits and 10 zlotys for original portraits (compare "Polskie malarstwo portretowe" by Tadeusz Dobrowolski, p. 176). This painter, described as of the Armenian nation, received a sum of 2,000 zlotys for work for the Wallachian church (Dormition Church) in Lviv, but it was for larger works, perhaps an iconostasis. In the inheritance order with his wife Anastazya Popovna, he bequeathed 100 zlotys to the Ruthenian church, where he was to be buried. He worked for the starost of Lviv Stanisław Bonifacy Mniszech (d. 1644), and according to his will, he made 50 copies of paintings for him (Mam też u Jegomości pana starosty lwowskiego, Stanisława Mniszcha za 50 kopij po złotych piąci złotych półtrzecia sta). 

An anecdote from the beginning of the 17th century from an inn in Gdańsk refers to painted effigies commissioned by nobles - a certain nobleman sent a painter to his friend's house to make a portrait of his wife, famous for her beauty, but the husband chased away the painter saying that if the noble liked the portrait, he would also want to see the original every day (after "Mówią wieki", Volume 19, 1976, p. 13). Before 1623, Krystyna Lubomirska (d. 1645), whose famous full-length portrait is in the Wilanów Palace, sent to her husband, hetman Stanisław Koniecpolski (1591-1646), held prisoner in the Yedikule Fortress in Istanbul, a portrait of his son Alexander (1620-1659), born when his father was held captive by Ottoman forces (after "Historyczne pamiątki ..." by Tomasz Święcki, Volume 1, p. 111). 

​A wealthy widow of Paweł Dorofiewicz, a townsman and merchant from Vilnius, Aquilina Stryludzianka, in her last will dated November 24, 1651, left numerous donations to the Orthodox churches of Vilnius, as well as "The image of the Blessed Virgin Mary painted on wood, framed in silver, which I loved during my life, I ask my children to have it properly framed, and placed on a suitable place instead of a tombstone, which I entrust to the executor". "Finally, I also declare that my silk garments, worn during my husband's life, have all been given over to church vestments, leaving only widow's and mourning garments to be worn", she adds (after "Documents issued by the Vilnius Archaeographic Commission ...", 1878, p. 486-488). 

As in the previous era, women were engaged in painting activities, which is indicated by their nicknames, such as Regina Malarka, wife of the Leżajsk painter Piotr Mleczko, mentioned in 1622, or Anna Malarka Cedrowa, who on November 10, 1640, donated the tablecloth to the Collegiate Church in Kielce, or Katarzyna Zbonowska, widow of the Kraków painter Zacharyasz Zwonowski (Zbonowski, Dzwonowski, died in 1639), who in 1643 appears under the name Malarka (woman painter) in a lawsuit, sued by the royal pharmacist Bonifatio Cantelli. Women painters were undoubtedly also patronized by the royal court.

Among the many female illuminators of the holy books, we know only one name, that of Zofia Borawińska (d. 1655), a 17th-century miniaturist from Staniątki. Zofia was the daughter of Jan and Anna, née Zarzycka. She was a Benedictine nun at the Staniątki Monastery from 1629. In 1649, she completed the Antiphonary and in 1651 the Gradual.

Around 1599, the Bolognese painter Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614) received a commission from the Dominican Cardinal Girolamo Bernerio (1540-1611) to paint the Vision of Saint Hyacinth of Poland for the Chapel of Saint Hyacinth in the Basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome (completed before March 1600, the date of placing the painting on the altar). Fontana also created a similar painting, now preserved in the church of the diocese of Bologna. Saint Hyacinth was canonized on April 17, 1594 by Pope Clement VIII, and the rich theater of the saint's canonization was financed by King Sigismund III Vasa and the Dominican order.

The inventory of the Royal Palace in Wilanów from 1696 mentions in the "Chinese Cabinet" of King John III Sobieski (Gabinet Chynski Krola Ieo Mci.) under No. 113: "The image of Christ the Lord praying in the Garden of Olives painted by Lavinia, in carved gilded frames" (Obraz Chrystusa Pana w Ogroycu się modlącego Lavinij Malowania, wramch rznietych złocistych), valued at 30 thalers (compare "Na tropach pierwszych kobiet malarek w dawnej Polsce" by Karolina Targosz, p. 41-43 and "Inwentarz Generalny 1696 z opracowaniem" by Anna Kwiatkowska, p. 74). In 1660, King John II Casimir Vasa commissioned another renowned Bolognese painter, Elisabetta Sirani (1638-1665), through her godfather, Senator Saulo Guidotti, who was in his service, to paint a painting depicting Saint Anne and the Virgin Mary at the cradle of the Child and a painting of Christ the Savior (Vna B. V. col Bambino, e s. Anna, che cuopre la culla, & essa B. V. coglie la fascia per l'Illustriss sig. Senatore Saulo Guidotti, per mandarsi al Rè di Polonia, come anco vna testa di vn Saluatore). It is possible that the signed and dated Saint Jerome from the Wilanów Palace (E. Sirani 1661, inv. Wil.1615, previously 75) is connected to another royal commission.

"In Poland, women occupied a dominant position in society. The very fact that girls were called panna (from pan [Mr/Sir/Lord]), as opposed to chłopcy [boys] (from chłop [peasant]), is significant. Although our ancestors never dreamed of emancipating women, women played an important role in our country. Constant wars, dangers, frequent absence of husbands, the lack of larger cities, all this contributed to the development of independent, courageous and self-sufficient characters in women of that time. As a wife, she is socially equal to her husband. Her husband officially calls her his friend, just as today in many regions rural women call their husbands. For example, Janusz Radziwill, asking King Ladislaus IV to help him obtain the hand of Miss Potocka, implores him not to refuse, because 'this is not about an office, nor a vacant position, but an eternal friend'", comments Wacław Kosiński (1882-1953) in his publication on the social customs of old Poland and adds that "they also often gave their husbands a hard time" ("Zwyczaje towarzyskie w dawnej Polsce", p. 46-47). 

Women's education and activities

​Although many authors claim that 17th-century women in Sarmatia were mostly uneducated or poorly educated, the example of the female student at the Kraków Academy between 1414 and 1416 proves that "where there's a will there's a way". A poem by the poet Stanisław Serafin Jagodyński (1594/1595 - before 1644), educated in Padua and Bologna, is very interesting, though somewhat ambiguous, regarding the education of women and painters in Sarmatia: "For a long time, the question has been asked: Who is the most numerous craftsman in the world? Counting here only masters, the majority are painters, if not bunglers, not a few doctors, and female students" (Kwestye na niektóre groszowe rezolucye, v. 13).

Aron Aleksander Olizarowski (1610-1659) in his De Politica Hominum Societate Libri Tres, published in Gdańsk in 1651, asserts that the art of painting and embroidery is suitable for women, as shown by the example of the Lydian girl Arachne who rivaled Pallas, but that excessive makeup should be avoided. "For as they have false colors on their faces, they cherish false thoughts in their minds", they destroy the work of God and deceive the eyes of men (De Educatione Filiarum, p. 123). He also recommended music to women and music at that time in Sarmatia was of a very high standard thanks to the patronage of the royal and magnate courts. Around 1631, Krzysztof Ossoliński (1587-1645) placed an inscription above the fireplace in the great hall of the wealthy Krzyżtopór Palace: "Sweet peace reigns in this house, where the husband plays, the wife sings". Charles X Gustav and George II Rakoczi, meeting here in 1657, amidst the ruins of war, laughed at this rhyme (after "Cnoty i wady narodu szlacheckiego ..." by Antoni Górski, p. 61, 78, 80, 86, 88). 

The 17th-century "Letters from a Respectable Lady to Her Husband in Italy" prove that, despite the ban instilled in women on revealing their feelings in life and writing, they attempted to express not only their religious, but also their amorous longings. Anusia, whose surname is unknown, writes to her husband in beautiful prose, assuring him of her love and longing, and praising the pleasures of home, which were supposed to dissuade her husband from infidelity abroad.

Women also had a great influence on politics. The reports of foreign envoys and agents clearly indicate this. When calculating the chances of success of their missions, they also took women's opinions and sympathies into account. "What are the sympathies among the ladies?" Jan Sobieski (later John III) asked his sister Katarzyna Radziwill in 1666. The nobles were irritated by the queens' "gallery" in the Diet (Sejm) hall, which was extremely crowded with women during Diet sessions.

"Even in the 17th century, we still encounter enormous moral contrasts in Poland, an excessive devotion to the pleasures of life and, at the same time, severe religious devotion", said Łucja Charewiczowa (1897-1943) in her book "Woman in old Poland" (Kobieta w dawnej Polsce, p. 14, 31, 34, 38-41, 43-44, 49, 54, 73). Elizabeth of Poland (1305-1380), Queen of Hungary was fond of boisterous parties, and even her granddaughter, who is presented in later tradition only amidst sadness and mortification, Queen Jadwiga (Hedwig of Anjou), in the first moments of her stay in Poland took part with joy in the parties organized in the Franciscan refectory in Kraków. In 1637, Jadwiga Łuszkowska, a townswoman from Lviv and mistress of King Ladislaus IV Vasa, was given in marriage with great pomp to Jan Wypyski, so that the moment was commemorated in occasional publications. On June 24, 1646, another mistress of Ladislaus, the Austrian Rosina Margarethe von Eckenberg (1625-1648), married Prince Michał Jerzy Czartoryski (1621-1692).

Often, unable to survive in an ill-matched marriage, women fled from their husbands to convents and from there, with the help of family and friends, negotiated with their husbands for a divorce. Such separations of spouses sometimes had a strong echo throughout Poland, such as the request for the declaration of nullity of the marriage of Elżbieta Słuszczanka with her second husband Hieronim Radziejowski in 1651 or the divorce of Anna Stanisławska from the son of the castellan Warszycki in 1668. The consistorial courts heard numerous complaints from citizens regarding ill-assorted marriages and recognized them even within the limits of canon law, which is why the titles of woman uxor diuortiata, consors separata, that is, divorced wife, often appear in the acts.

A Sarmatian woman married to a foreigner raised her children as Sarmatians. Historian Andrzej Lubieniecki (ca. 1551-1623), a member of the Polish Brethren, states: "Not only in the royal houses, but also in our noble houses in Poland and Lithuania, it has become a custom that those born to Polish and Lithuanian women, although born to German, Italian, or Tatar fathers, are not called Germans, Italians, or Tatars, but Poles and Lithuanians". On the contrary, Bishop Paweł Piasecki (1579-1649), secretary to King Sigismund III Vasa, lamented the fact that Germans living in Poland were not getting closer to local society: "Many Germans who lived for a long time and, through affinities and kinship, became rich in Poland, did not lose their otherness, just as the Ethiopian did not lose the skin [color] even in his grandchildren". Which also indicates that several Africans married Sarmatian women.

No one awakened civic consciousness and responsibility for the nation's destiny among Sarmatian women, only mothers and prayers for the homeland influenced it. This message was also expressed by women of different faiths, as evidenced by the 17th-century prayer book of the Arian women - they asked God: "Give peace to our homeland, may you preserve it from disruption, unrest, and disorder, and keep the foreign enemy away from it".

Supposedly, the first figure of Polish Arianism was a woman, Katarzyna Malcherowa (Weiglowa) née Zalasowska or Zalaszowska, who in 1539 was sentenced for heresy in the Kraków market square and went to the stake "as boldly as to a wedding". The last Arian in Poland was also a woman, Zofia Mieczyńska, granddaughter of Zofia Potocka née Taszycka (d. 1693). Opponents mocked the alleged dominance of the "female nation", the "ladies' gang" in the Arian confession, in which "female doctors" and "female popes" were supposedly leading the way. Polemic literature from the Catholic side accused Arian women of freeing themselves too much from the power of their husbands, of aspiring to spiritual preaching after having read the Holy Scriptures and theological literature, while St. Paul ordered women to remain silent and listen in church.

History provides examples of many influential and courageous Sarmatian women, who equaled men in deeds and ambition. The noblewoman Marina Mniszech (ca. 1588-1614), daughter of the Sandomierz voivode Jerzy Mniszech and Jadwiga Tarłówna, was briefly Tsarina of Russia during the Time of Troubles. She was the first woman crowned in Russia (May 1606) before Catherine I (1684-1727), i.e. Marta Helena Skowrońska (May 1724). Marina supported false claimants to the throne by marrying two impostors: False Dmitriy I and False Dmitriy II. Her three-year-old son, Tsarevich Ivan Dmitriyevich, was publicly hanged on July 16, 1614 in Moscow near the Serpukhov Gate. She died shortly afterward in the Kolomna Kremlin, probably murdered. Splendid portraits of Marina, her mother and father, painted by various court painters, can be admired at the Wawel Castle, the National Museum in Warsaw and the National Museum in Wrocław.

The figure of Barbara Brezianka (1601–after 1661), the owner of Chalin, a small village near Sieraków in Greater Poland, is infamous. She married for the first time at a very young age in 1615. She lived with her first husband for only nine months, divorced the second after ten weeks, and is said to have murdered the third with a firearm, poisoned her father-in-law, and maintained "ungodly relations with men". Despite this, she found a candidate for her fourth marriage, the royal secretary Piotr Bniński. During the Deluge, Barbara led the partisans, harassing both the invaders and their supporters. Despite her advanced age, she armed her subjects and fought with all her might. When Bniński died in 1661, leaving Barbara, then 60, his entire fortune, she was reluctant to share it and came into conflict with her son Stanisław. She fought lawsuits until the end of her life.

Father Jacek Mijakowski (d. 1647) states in his sermon of 1637 that often the one who had defeated the Turks and Tatars had to hide from the woman, defeated by her like a knight from the queen on the chessboard. Katarzyna Zamoyska née Ostrogska (1602-1642), described by her mother as a kind of weakling, explodes in a letter to her husband with contempt for the cowardice of the military dignitaries who did not defend the country against the Tatars. Teofila Chmielecka née Chocimirska (1590-1650), wife of Stefan Chmielecki (d. 1630), voivode of Kiev, became a model wife of a borderland soldier because of her Spartan lifestyle and great courage. She was called the "she-wolf of the borderlands". When, in the absence of her husband, Helena née Krasicka Niemierzycowa and her son were captured by the Tatars in 1680, she bravely endured captivity and managed to return to her homeland. When Jan Błocki was taken captive, his energetic wife, Anna Moleniewska, decided that she would go find him, even if it was with the Sultan himself, and she also kept her promise. In 1675, Anna Dorota Chrzanowska, from the Courland house of von Fresen, gave a famous example of heroism to the entire Commonwealth during the siege of Terebovlia Castle by the Turks. She shouted: "Strike my breast rather than the fatherland!"

Historical collections and looting

"Poland is one of the most beautiful and richest countries. Nothing is lacking there; one can only hope that there are more [French] books, because they are very rare in this country. [...] Paintings and paper are twice as expensive here as in Paris", states in a letter to a priest living in Paris, Father Lambert aux Couteaux, superior of the missionary order in Warsaw (dated February 26, 1652 from Warsaw, after "Portfolio królowéj Maryi Ludwiki", ed. Edward Raczyński, p. 175).

​The inventories of the royal collections of the Jagiellons and the Vasas of Poland-Lithuania have not been preserved in their entirety, but information preserved in the townspeople's wills, as well as in the inventories of their property, and the patronage of their successors gives an impression of quality of their collections, when the country was one of the leading countries of Europe during the Renaissance and the beginning of the Baroque. Poland-Lithuania was also one of the richest on the continent. Even the lower strata of the Commonwealth's nobility owned the finest items produced in the best local and foreign workshops - such as the silver lavabo with the Rogala coat of arms of Jan Loka, starost of Borzechowo, created in Augsburg by Balthasar Grill, hidden in the ground during the Deluge (1655-1660). The attitude towards art in Brandenburg, which was one of the invaders during the Deluge, and at the royal court of Poland-Lithuania is best illustrated by the report of Andrzej Köhne-Jaski, a Calvinist amber merchant from Gdańsk, also active in diplomacy as envoy of Sigismund III and the electors of Brandenburg. Around 1616, Jaski commented on the destruction of paintings in Brandenburg: "I didn't pay much attention to it this summer, but I remember the magnificent paintings by Albrecht Dürer and Lucas [Cranach] hanging in churches. I wish HM [His Majesty] had such [paintings]" (Ich habe dießen sommer so genaue achtung nicht darauf gegeben, aber erinnere mich, das noch schöne bilder von Albrecht Dührer und Lucas vorhanden und in der kirchen hengen. Wolte wünschen, das EM solche hätten) (after "Das Leben am Hof ..." by Walter Leitsch, p. 2358). At that time, Italian and Flemish art, not German, dominated the royal court.

Patricians of the royal city of Kraków, many of whom were of Italian descent as their names suggest, owned many paintings, sometimes by excellent foreign masters, as evidenced by the extract from the will of Jan Paviola (Joannes Benedictus Savioly, d. 1653), councilor of Kraków. The list and estimate of paintings, appraised by the elders of the painters guild Marcin Klossowski and Marcin Blechowski, painters from Kraków, include many portraits and paintings which could be from Italian, Venetian, Flemish, Dutch and German schools, but the author and the origin was not indicated. The word landscape - lanczaft in Old Polish, was used in a very similar form to Landschaft in German and landschap in Netherlandish, which could indicate that these paintings were Dutch/Flemish or German. "Picture of late King Ladislaus IV; Queen Her Highness Louise Marie; Image of the imperial son; his sister; the late Lord of Kraków Koniecpolski; [Picture] in which a crowned woman gives a mug to a soldier; Four pictures, representing the four parts of the world with people; four, depicting day and night, one damaged; three representing a part of the world; Landscape with fishing; Image of Bethsheba: bathing; [Picture] depicting the destruction of the city, with the army below fighting; Four pictures of Joseph's story, very demaged, among them one is whole; Landscape with highwaymen; Judith's painting, broken; female cook with venison; 12 images of Roman Emperors; two on which fish are painted, without frames; Image of King Ladislaus IV in elk skin; Judicium Parisis [Judgement of Paris] with three goddesses; Four images representing the parts of the year with maidens; Portrait of His Majesty King Ladislaus IV in a red coat; Queen Her Highness Cecilia [Renata]; King His Highness Sigismund III; Frederick Henry, Prince of Auraniae [Orange]; King Christian of Denmark; Duke of Saxony; Emperor His Highness Ferdinand III; His wife the empress; Leopold; the old empress; An image of a man with a mug and a scull; cavaliers playing cards with a lady; Orpheus with animals; Landscape with people eating in summer; robbers, on copper, in frame; on copper, without figures, with a column or pillar; Painting on copper, three Kings [Adoration of the Magi]; washing the feet of the apostles; Picture of a garden, on copper; Judith, on copper; Esther, on copper; on copper, Melchisedech offering bread and wine to Daniel; Saint Peter leaving the prison with the angel; the Samaritan on copper; Saint Francis; Five pictures with sea foam on gumi, made with paints on parchment; Picture on panel, a scull". This long and rich list of paintings was made on February 15, 1655. A few months later, in July 1655, two Swedish armies entered Greater Poland, one of the wealthiest and most developed provinces of the Commonwealth, which for centuries had been unaffected by any military conflict. They were soon followed by other countries and the invaders were not as sensitive to art as the patricians of the Commonwealth, precious materials, copper, silver and especially gold were the most important. Paul Würtz (1612-1676), governor of Kraków during Swedish-Transilvanian occupation of the city between 1655-1657 ordered wrought iron bars, marbles, precious wainscoting and floors to be ripped out, and silver sarcophagus of Saint Stanislaus, created in Augsburg in 1630 (founded by Sigismund III), silver altar of Saint Stanislaus, created in Nuremberg in 1512 (founded by Sigismund I), as well as statues and candlesticks from the Wawel Cathedral to be melted (after "Elity polityczne Rzeczypospolitej ..." by Marceli Kosman, p. 323). The true origin of looted items was often concealed or erased like coat of arms on the marble lions in front of Drottningholm Palace near Stockholm.

"The day before yesterday, news came to us that they had sacked all the churches of Kraków, and that only one chalice had been saved from which some monks were saying mass in secret", reported in a letter of December 4, 1655 from Głogów Pierre des Noyers, secretary of Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga. In a letter from Głogów dated December 12, 1655, to Mr. Bouilland in Paris he adds: "The churches in Poland were generally the richest in the world, as regards gold and silver vessels. The Pope allowed this silver to be used for war expenses, but no religious order would want to spend it. The Jesuit Fathers have here for about 50 thousand thalers gold and silver vessels and images, that they brought from their churches in Kraków" (after "Lettres de Pierre Des Noyers secrétaire de la reine de Pologne ...", published in 1859, p. 22, 26-27). ​

The situation was similar in other cities of the Commonwealth, particularly in Vilnius and Warsaw, where during the second occupation the royal residences were subjected to systematic looting by Swedish and Brandenburgian forces. "The Warsaw townspeople had to help in transporting the looted items to the Vistula bank, under pain of confiscation of their own goods. [...] On August 11, the commandant of the capital, General von Bülow [Barthold Hartwig von Bülow (1611-1667)], received an order to transport all valuables and works of art from the Castle. At that time, over 200 paintings were taken away, including plafonds from five castle rooms, royal silverware, furniture and 33 tapestries. The Swedes had already committed truly barbaric acts, scraping gold from the gilded paneling and ceilings, "of which they made at most three or four ducats, and the damage they caused exceeded 30,000 francs" [according to mentioned letter by des Noyers]. Everything of any value was transported by water towards Toruń and Königsberg, e.g. jasper columns from the royal garden" (after "Warszawa 1656" by Mirosław Nagielski, p. 262). "They generally killed everyone in Vilna [Vilnius], both men and women, except young people and children, whom they sent to Muscovy, and put Muscovites to live there. [...] In Vilna, the Muscovites have ruined the beautiful and sumptuous chapel of Saint Casimir, which cost more than three millions; and in the big church they put their horses; it serves them as a stable", adds des Noyers in letters of November 8 and December 28, 1655 (after "Lettres ...", p. 10, 40).

Maciej Vorbek-Lettow (1593-1663), a Lutheran activist, royal secretary and physician to King Ladislaus IV Vasa, educated in Louvain/Leuven, Padua and Bologna, recalled with regret the burning of his entire book collection during the Deluge. Nevertheless, several copper, tin and brass objects, walled up in the basement of his house in Vilnius, probably survived the occupation of the city by Muscovite and Cossack troops (compare "Society and culture in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania ..." by Maria Barbara Topolska, p. 224). 

Andrzej Kazimierz Cebrowski (ca. 1580-1658), a pharmacist and physician, describes the destruction of the wealthy city of Łowicz in his Annales civitates Loviciae ("The Annals of the City of Łowicz"), written in Latin in the years 1648-1658: "They [the Swedes] did not spare the churches either. First they completely destroyed the monastery of the Brothers Hospitallers, who cared for the sick, as well as the Church of St. John the Divine. Then they razed the Church of St. John the Baptist, as well as the hospital and the Chapel of the Holy Cross. Then they ruined the Dominican monastery, and finally they desecrated the recently rebuilt collegiate church, plundering its altars, glittering with gold and decorated with beautiful images of saints. They took away the liturgical vestments, chalices, crosses, candlesticks, etc., as well as the reliquary of Saint Victoria, beautifully made of pure and very precious silver, with her relics and those of other patrons of the city. They tore out the pipes of the organ, beat and robbed the people who were staying in the church, and finally burned half the city. [...] And Rakoczi [George II Rakoczi (1621-1660), Prince of Transylvania] with his army, returning, or rather fleeing from Prussia to Transylvania, committed many shameful acts in this and other cities, burning many towns and villages, and plundering churches. [...] But as misfortunes do not come alone, in September a very contagious plague broke out, from which 1,800 people died, many others died of hunger, so that almost the entire city was deprived of inhabitants. [...] The year 1658 came, during which the city was free from the external enemy until August, when we are writing these lines, but it suffered many wrongs and losses from Polish and imperial mercenary soldiers" (after "Historia Polski, 1648-1764: wybór tekstów" by Bohdan Baranowski, Volume 5, p. 48-49). 
​
In addition to wartime destruction, looting and evacuations, the painting collections suffered from occasional fires and sometimes from negligence or poor storage. In a letter of August 5, 1607 from Orla (between Białystok and Brest) to Christopher II Radziwill (1585-1640), Jan Głazowski informs him that "the paintings in the tenement house in the dining room and other rooms were all damaged [...] I immediately sent for the painter, wanting to know why they were damaged, he said that because of the humidity [...] the windows were not repaired for a long time, during this bad weather" (after "Studia bibliologiczne", Volumes 10-13, p. 125). 

The next significant inventory of paintings of a councilor of Kraków, Gerhard Priami, made on July 21, 1671, so few years after the destructive Deluge (1655-1660), is not that impressive: "Portraits of King Sigismund III with the Queen [...]; Image of flagellation [of Christ] [...]; Solomon, upwards [...]; St. Joseph on panel, old-fashioned [...]; Four landscapes [...]; Landscape with a fair [...]; Image of Lot [and his daughters] [...]; Two landscapes at elbow height; Picture of Judith [...]; Three pictures of the story of Tobias; Image of the Blessed Virgin in roses; Saint John the Baptist; Jesus falling [under the cross]; Image of the Blessed Virgin majoris; Two portraits of His Lordship Ossoliński, the second of His Lordship Lubomirski; coats of arms, imperial and royal; Two courtesans, one bigger the other smaller; Portrait of the late Priami, which stays with Mr. Jerzy Priami".

According to testament of Jan Pernus, councilor of Kraków, from 1672 he had a large painting of Præsentationis (Presentation), allegedly by Rubens. He collaborated with the Swedes during the invasion in the years 1655-1657 and took part in the shameful looting of the royal palace in Łobzów and the Wawel Cathedral by the occupants. Pernus looted valuable marbles from the Łobzów palace, and it is possible that he took the paintings decorating the royal residence (after "Galeria rajcy Pernusa" by Michał Rożek). "Two paintings of Roman work on copper, which are in my room, one of the Nativity of Christ, the other of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary of equal size; I want my nephew (Franciszek Pernus, heir) to offer them to His Majesty the King, the merciful Lord, from me, the lowest subject [...] To Mr. Reyneker, councilor of Kraków, my son-in-law, [...] I mark him a picture of Saint John Cantius, painted on a metal plate, from the worthy Master Strobel [Bartholomeus Strobel], asking him to accept this tiny gift as a sign of my love and as a souvenir. [...] Living in great friendship with Priest Adam Sarnowski, Canon of Warsaw and Łowicz, private scribe of His Highness, as a souvenir, I give him a painting of the Virgin Mary, of a prominent Roman craftsman. This picture is in the room in the garden, with Saint Joseph and Saint John, plus four paintings on canvas, with flowers on them, about three quarters of a cubit large, with golden frames". Four paintings with flowers of Roman work he donated to the Bielany Monastery and portraits of himself and his wife to the Pernus Chapel at the St. Mary's Basilica in Kraków (after "Skarbniczka naszej archeologji ..." by Ambroży Grabowski, pp. 61-68).

Mentioned Adam Sarnowski made provisions for his possessions and paintings in his will signed in Frombork on April 15, 1693, four months before his death. One painting he left to Queen Marie Casimire Sobieska (de La Grange d'Arquien): "To the Queen Her Majesty, My Lady, the original of Three Kings [Adoration of the Magi] by Rembrandt, in black frames, which is upstairs in the hall, and another beautiful that Mr. Locci will choose" (after "Testament Adama Sarnowskiego ..." by Irena Makarczyk, p. 167).

​Several paintings by Rembrandt, most likely from former royal or magnate collections that survived the Deluge, are mentioned in the 1696 inventory of the Wilanów Palace in Warsaw. Perhaps the earliest known confirmation of the popularity of Rembrandt's works in the Commonwealth is the 1643 letter from Krzysztof Opaliński (1609-1655), voivode of Poznań, to his brother Łukasz (1612-1662), in which he informs him that "Your Lordship will have Rymbrandt's copperplates from Sieraków". Krzysztof also collected prints after the works of Rubens, commissioned paintings based on these prints and acquired numerous paintings in the Netherlands. His correspondence indicates that he was a connoisseur of Flemish and Dutch painting of the period. Nevertheless, sometimes such distant acquisitions were not good. "Thesaurus cineres fuere [The treasure becomes ashes]. Such childish antics were bought, so that in Poznań you get all this and better. The paintings should not be hung on the wall, and these are only two of them, which would have been better painted by a painter from Sieraków", commented disappointed Krzysztof in a letter to his brother about paintings that arrived in Poznań from the Netherlands in 1641 (after "Krzysztofa Opalińskiego stosunek do sztuki ..." by Stanisław Wiliński, p. 195-196).

Jadwiga Martini Kacki, later Popiołkowa, in her will of 1696 says: "To Fathers Carmelites na Piasku, please give two paintings painted in Greek style on canvas, and the third one by Salwator". The 1696 property list of Kazimierz Bonifacy Kantelli (Bonifacius Casimirus Cantelli) from Carpineti in Campania, apothecary and royal secretary, who came to Kraków from Krosno, and obtained the city rights in 1625, includes a large number of paintings, mostly religious; but there are also portraits of notable people, such as king John III Sobieski, Ladislaus IV Vasa, Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga, Queen Cecilia Renata of Austria, King John Casimir, King Michael Korybut, Chancellor Ossoliński and many others.

Occasionally there are also other objects of art in inventories, like "Amber effigy of King Sigismund III", mentioned in the will of Wolfowicowa, wife of the Kraków councilor in 1679. In 1647 a widow Anna Zajdlicowa née Pernus, in her last will stated: "To Mr Filip Huttini, secretary and decree scribe of the King His Majesty, Kraków councilor, I give and bequest my golden leather upholstery [cordovan], with pictures of Polish kings". There were also many paintings with mythological themes. In the register of property of councilor Kasper Gutteter (1616) there were paintings depicting Venus, Hercules and the mythical Labyrinth. The image of Mercury with Venus was in the house of Wojciech Borowski (1652). Rozalia Sorgierowa (1663) had a painting of Andromeda and the list of movables of Oktawian Bestici from 1665 contained: "Satyr on canvas", "Venus lying naked" and "Three Dianas". In the collection of Andrzej Kortyn (Andrea Cortini) there were six mythological paintings, including Venus and Cupid (after "Mecenat artystyczny mieszczaństwa krakowskiego ..." by Michał Rożek, p. 177).

According to the rich inventory of May 10, 1635, the municipal scribe of Poznań Wojciech Rochowicz owned a painting of Pallas Athena, Venus and Juno, as well as 5 small paintings in frames painted on oak boards depicting "Roman people". Several erotic paintings were mentioned in the very rich gallery of Poznań burgher Piotr Chudzic, who died in 1626, like a "naked picture for appetite", "3 paintings of courtesans" and "a very small round Venetian picture on tin of a courtesan" (after "Odzież i wnętrza domów ..." by Magdalena Bartkiewicz, p. 68 and "Inwentarze mieszczańskie Poznania", p. 407). Rochowicz in Poznań had one image of a courtesan and one of a wenetka (Venetian courtesan), Krzysztof Głuszkiewicz in Lviv had six paintings of courtesans and in Kraków paintings of courtesans were owned by: Franciszek Delpacy (1630), Anna Telani (1647), Oktawian Bestici (1655), Andrzej Cieski (1659), Gerard Priami (1671) and Stanisław Kłosowicz (1673), who had four paintings of courtesans (after "Sztuka a erotyka", ed. Teresa Hrankowska, p. 197). Hieronim Morsztyn (1581-1623), author of the "Worldly Pleasure" (1606) and many erotic poems, in his work "Actaeon. (To Polish Courtesans)" wrote that they would gladly "run naked". Nude and erotic paintings, such as "A round painting in a gilded frame, which represents the 3 Graces with the portrait of His Highness the King" (62), "A painting in a gilded and sculpted frame, representing the 3 Graces, giving the Books of Eternity with the portrait of His Majesty the King" (63) and "A painting that depicts a naked woman with a man, embracing" (65), are mentioned in the inventory of the bathing pavilion of King John III Sobieski in Zhovkva in 1690 (Regestr opisania łaźni w zamku żółkiewskim po odjeździe Króla Jmci na sejm do Warszawy in anno 1690 die 5 Januarii).

Diversified patronage

The Polish Vasas, descendants of the Jagiellons on the maternal side (through Catherine Jagiellon), were renowned patrons who commissioned many beautiful paintings and other objects locally and abroad in the best workshops, such as for example a series of 6 tapestries with the story of Diana, purchased around 1611-1615 by Sigismond III Vasa in the workshop of François Spierincx in Delft. In 1624, Peter Paul Rubens painted Prince Ladislaus Sigismund Vasa (future Ladislaus IV) during his visit to Brussels. According to available sources, Rubens and Ladislaus Sigismund's father, king Sigismund III, never met in person, but the beautiful portrait of the king is undoubtedly by his hand (attribution to Rubens by Ludwig Burchard, Heinz Collection Kisters in Kreuzlingen). Although not confirmed in surviving letters or inventories, this effigy of the king was beyond doubt created from some study drawings or miniatures sent from Warsaw.

Some works of art bear witness to the coexistence of Italian and Netherlandish influences in Vasa-era patronage, as well as to the fundamental elements of the economy of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during this period. The beautiful frontispiece of the section devoted to the Commonwealth with coat of arms of Sigismund III Vasa, made around 1600, from the so-called Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem, assembled in Amsterdam (Austrian National Library, inv. 389030-F.K. KAR MAG), is also very interesting because of its author. According to the signature on the left of the cartouche, this coloured copper engraving was made by an Italian engraver Francesco Villamena (1564-1624), who died in Rome (F Villamena F). A drawing by the Dutch painter and engraver Willem Schellinks (1623 or 1627-1678), showing the transport of goods on the Vistula to Gdańsk (Een gesigt op de Wijsel / en hoe de Poolse Kanen / naar Dantzick / afcomen), is another interesting work in this atlas. It was signed by the painter (W. Schellinkx F., lower right) and was probably made after the Deluge, in the early 1660s, which indicates the ruins of a house in the centre of the composition. The atlas also included several views of the Wieliczka Salt Mine, made by Willem Hondius in 1645.

In a small painting from the Bardisian collection in Venice, dating from around 1606, the Venetian painter Palma il Giovane (1549-1628) depicts himself in the habit of a monk, probably Franciscan (Dorotheum in Vienna, June 6, 2020, lot 78). However, on closer inspection, a halo around his head is clearly visible, suggesting that he intended to portray himself as a Christian saint, such as Saint Francis of Assisi. Around 1630, the painter from Pesaro, Simone Cantarini (1612-1648), painted a large painting of the Madonna and Child in glory with Saint Barbara and Saint Terence for the church of San Cassiano in Pesaro, where he was baptized in 1612 (now in the National Gallery of the Marches in Urbino, inv. Reg. Cron. 6002). The effigy of Saint Terence (Terentius), patron saint of Pesaro, is considered a self-portrait of the painter (after "Simone Cantarini: detto il Pesarese ..." by Andrea Emiliani, Anna Maria Ambrosini Massari, p. 85).​ The self-portrait of Peter Paul Rubens as Saint George and his two wives as holy women at his side (including most likely Isabella Brant as a half-naked Mary Magdalene) in the painting of Our Lady with Saints made by Rubens around 1639 for his sepulchral chapel in the Church of St. James in Antwerp (after "Twelve Etched Outlines Selected from the Architectural Sketches ..." by Charles Wild, p. 2), confirms the continued great popularity of disguised portraits in the Baroque period in Europe. The fact that the Roman courtesan Fillide Melandroni (1581-1614) is credited as the face behind three famous works by Caravaggio - Saint Catherine, Saint Mary Magdalene, and Judith beheading Holofernes, also illustrates the morality of this period.​

Elected king John III Sobieski (from 1674) consciously organized European opinion, commissioning appropriate works, paintings and engravings in Poland and abroad, in the Netherlands, Flanders, Paris and Italy (works by Romeyn de Hooghe, Reinier de la Haye, Caspar Netscher, Prosper Henricus Lankrink, Ferdinand van Kessel, Adam Frans van der Meulen, Jan Frans van Douven, workshops of Pierre Mignard and Henri Gascar, Jacques Blondeau, Simon Thomassin, Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi, Domenico Martinelli). Exquisite sculptures were also ordered abroad, like statues by Flemish sculptors Artus Quellinus II and his son Thomas II and Bartholomeus Eggers (Wilanów Palace and Summer Garden in Saint Petersburg, taken from Warsaw in 1707), jewellery in Paris (Sobieski diamond) and silverware in Augsburg (works by Abraham II Drentwett, Albrecht Biller, Lorenz Biller II and Christoph Schmidt).

The construction of his suburban residence, inspired by the Villa Doria Pamphili in Rome, Sobieski entrusted to Augustyn Wincenty Locci, son of the Italian architect Agostino Locci. The best local and foreign artists, architects and scientists participated in the decoration of the residence and the glorification of the monarch, his wife and the Commonwealth.

The 1713 inventory of the splendid Krasiński Palace in Warsaw - built in 1677-1683 for the voivode of Płock, Jan Dobrogost Krasiński, according to design by Tylman Gamerski (Tielman van Gameren), lists "Rembrandt's portrait, original, in a white frame" (Konterfekt Rembrandta orginał w ramie białej, Wtóra skrzynia w której obrazy N° 2, item 3), along some Dutch landscapes (Lanczawt), "A painting of a Dutchman with a Dutch woman in a black frame" (item 13), "A landscape with Venus and Cupid in a golden frame" (item 16), "A painting of a wanton naked woman, after a painting by Correggio" (item 35), Italian religious paintings, "Dürer's painting representing the Pharisees reprimanding a woman [most likely Christ and the adulterous woman with historié portrait of Laura Dianti - compare with the painting in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, inv. 1411] in a frame black in its box", two small paintings of Galatea by Annibale Carracci (Item obrazy różne stojące i na ścianach, items 1-2), "Painting of kings Ladislaus and [John] Casimir with [Marie] Louise, copy" (item 3), perhaps a copy of a historié portrait in the guise of Roman gods, painted by Justus van Egmont for Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga in Paris in 1650, "Portrait in profile of King Casimir" (item 9), "Painting of Venus, aka some naked woman" (item 10), "Painting of Herodias with the head of Saint John" (item 11), "A large portrait of King Casimir" (item 12), "A large and beautiful painting, original by Rubens, the story of a fish caught in which money was found to pay the tax [Saint Peter Finding the Tribute Money]" (item 34), possibly another version of the painting now in the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI.38) and "The painting of the three kings [Adoration of the Magi], Netherlandish original, beautiful" (item 36, compare "Inwentarze pałacu Krasińskich później Rzeczypospolitej" by Ignacy Tadeusz Baranowski, p. 5-8, 13-14). None of the paintings appear to have survived Warsaw's turbulent history. It is therefore difficult today to determine the reliability of this inventory, however, the inclusion of names indicates that many of these paintings were true originals or signed works. The character of paintings, comparable to those known from previous inventories, indicates that Krasiński acquired them in Poland-Lithuania.

The inventory of the Picture Gallery of the Radziwill Palace in Biała Podlaska, called Radziwiłłowska (Alba Radziviliana), from November 18, 1760, provides an interesting insight into the quality and diversity of painting collections in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The palace was built by Alexander Louis Radziwill (1594-1654), Grand Marshal of Lithuania after 1622 on the site of old wooden mansions. The inventory lists 609 positions of mainly religious and mythological paintings of which nothing preserved in Biała: (52) Painting of Diana, painted on tin with two arrows without frames, (53) Picture of Adonis sleeping with the Goddess Hera [Venus and Adonis], painted on glass in gilded frames, (84) Painting of Diana's hunt, painted on a panel in a gilded frame, (113) Sleeping Venus lying on a bed, without frames, (117) Face of Pallas [Athena], painted on canvas without frame, (128) Venus standing in water [Birth of Venus], painted on copper in gilded frames, (157) Portrait of King Sigismund Jagiello and Grand Duke of Lithuania [Sigismund I] on tin without a frame, (158) Portrait of King Sigismund of Poland and Sweden [Sigismund III Vasa], [...], painted on tin, without frame, (165) Portrait of Henry Helesius [Henry of Valois], King of Gallia and Poland, Grand Duke of Lithuania, painted on copper in frames, (166) Portrait of King Stephen Bathory, painted on tin in black frames, (181) Diana holding a trumpet, painted on canvas in old gilded frames, (192) Story of Vulcan and Venus, painted on canvas, without frames, (193) Second story, also of Venus, also with Venus and Vulcan, large painting on canvas, without frames, (206) Male portrait, painting by Rubens, on canvas in black frames, (210) Picture of Baceba [Bathsheba] at her bath, painted on canvas without frame, (213) Painting of Lucretia, expressive, with a dagger, a fine painting painted on canvas, no frame, (217) Picture of Herodianna [Herodias] with the head of Saint John, painted on canvas without frames, (224) Picture of Hercules, painted on canvas without frame, (233) Painting of Venus descending from the clouds, a large painting on canvas, without frames, (234) Picture of Lucretia pierced with a dagger, painted on canvas, without frames, (235) Painting of nude Venus reclining with Cupid, painted on canvas, no frame, (258) Story of Venus with Adonis, large painting on canvas, without frame, (259) Portrait of a knight, full-length, Rabefso [Rubens?], on canvas without frame, (283) Painting of Bacchus, painted on canvas without frame, (284) Painting of Judith, painted on canvas, without frame, (296) Picture of Lucretia, painted on panel, without frame, (302) Half-naked person, painted on canvas, without frame, (303) Meditating Lucretia, painted on canvas, without frame, (335) Landscape with dwarfs and fruits, painted on canvas, (336) Landscape with dying Diana and the nymphs, on canvas, (348) Painting of Venus sleeping naked, painted on canvas, without frame, (349) Painting of Adonis with Venus enjoying, painted on canvas, without frame, (376) Painting of Venus with Cupid and Zefiriusz with Hetka [most likely homoerotic Zephyrus and Hyacinth], two pieces of similar measure and N°, painted on canvas, without frames, (390) Story of Dyanna on which golden rain falls [Danaë and the shower of gold, possibly by Titian or workshop], painted on canvas without frames, (391) Sleeping Venus, painted on canvas, without frames, (535) Portraits of various Lords ... thirty-six of different sizes, painted on canvas, without frames, (536) Portraits of various Lords and Kings of unequal size, painted on canvas, (544) Different portraits under one No., nineteen pieces, painted on canvas, (577) Portrait of Stephen Bathory, King of Poland, painted on canvas in black frames, (596) Story of Judith with Holofernes, painted on canvas in black frames, (597) Venus asleep on the hunt, painted on canvas, (604) Story of Saint Susanna with two Elders, painted on panel in black gilded frames, (607) Kings of Poland, fifty and one on parchment and (608) A lady with a dog, painted on panel, without frame (after "Zamek w Białej Podlaskiej ..." by Euzebiusz Łopaciński, pp. 37-47). With such a large collection, it was difficult to fully describe the identity of each effigy. The chaos of war also contributed to the forgetting of the names of models and painters.

Before the First World War, in the collection of the splendid Baroque Pidhirtsi Castle near Lviv in Ukraine, which belonged to the Koniecpolski, Sobieski, Rzewuski and Sanguszko families, there was a Rembrandt painting on canvas depicting "Christ the Lord and Mary Magdalene" and an unspecified copy of Rembrandt's work painted on panel (after "Dzieje rezydencji na dawnych kresach Rzeczypospolitej" by Roman Aftanazy, Volume 7, p. 479). In 1842, in the Tyzenhauz (Tiesenhausen) Palace in Pastavy, Belarus, there were "The Nativity of the Lord Jesus by Brammer [Leonaert Bramer], a follower of Rembrandt. The edges are strangely lit, the household utensils, and especially the basin, are rendered with rare perfection!", "Head of a Man, School of Rembrandt" and "Madonna by Simon Vouet" (after "Galeria obrazów Postawska" by Aleksander Przezdziecki, p. 198-199, items 13, 17, 25).​

Although some paintings previously considered originals by Rembrandt are now considered works by his followers, the number of these works, despite the enormous destruction of the historical collections of Sarmatia, testifies to his great popularity in Poland-Lithuania-Ruthenia. Thus, the catalogue of the gallery of Józef Maksymilian Ossoliński (1748-1826) in Warsaw, prepared by Constantino Villani in 1817, lists seven paintings by Rembrandt or his school (No. 32, 225, 265, 280, 320, 357, 409). Several works attributed to Rembrandt migrated in 1851 from the Mniszech collection in Vyshnivets to Paris, and in 1915, "The Falconer" attributed to Rembrandt burned in the Miączyński Palace in Satyiv near Dubno, Ukraine (after "Rembrandt w Polsce" by Michał Walicki, p. 333). "Rembrandt's Mother", mentioned in the guide to the Wilanów Palace in Warsaw from 1934, was considered to be an original by the Dutch painter from around 1632 ("Zbiory wilanowskie: przewodnik", pp. 17, 26, National Library of Poland, I 507.327 A). It was exhibited in the "Rembrandt's Cabinet" of the palace along with other Dutch paintings from the Branicki collection. This small painting came from the Potocki collection in Ros near Grodno (after "Wilanowskie muzeum w czasach Branickich" by Tomasz Igrzycki, part 2). The Ros estate initially belonged to the Chodkiewicz family, since the 16th century, and later to the Potocki family, since the 18th century. It was probably lost during Second World War. According to Michał Walicki (1904-1966), this painting could be equivalent to portrait of Rembrandt's mother, mentioned in the inventories of the Branicki gallery in Białystok in 1771, and it would rather be a work of an imitator of the master, probably Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich (1712-1774). The painting was a version of the composition painted several times by Rembrandt's pupil Gerrit Dou (1613-1675), "The Old Woman with a Book", copies of which are today in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden (inv. Gal.-Nr. 1720) and in the Mimara Museum in Zagreb (inv. ATM 714). A good copy of A man in oriental costume (King Uzziah stricken by leprosy), probably by Dou, a copy of a painting by Rembrandt from around 1639, is still in Wilanów (inv. Wil.1718) and the same old woman in prayer can be seen in a painting by Dou from the collection of King Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski (1732-1798), today in the National Museum in Warsaw (inv. M.Ob.553 MNW). 

The case of the painting Zechariah in the Temple, previously attributed to Rembrandt and today to Jan Lievens, kept in the Wawel Royal Castle (inv. ZKnW-PZS 1188), is similar. It comes from the Czosnowski collection and, according to family tradition, was a gift from Count Franciszek Stanisław Potocki (1788-1853). Johann III Bernoulli (1744-1807) mentioned a similar painting in the collection of Franciszek Stanisław's father Wincenty Potocki (d. 1825/1826) in Warsaw in 1778 (Ein Priester die Messe lesend, von Rembrand, sehr schön). This painting was probably engraved by Jean-Pierre Norblin de La Gourdaine (1745-1830) in 1781. One of the etchings, which was in the Potocki collection in Krzeszowice, was signed: Rembrandt p. 1644. Norblin d. 1781 (after "Nieznany obraz przypisywany Rembrandtowi" by Zygmunt Batowski, p. 45-46). Therefore, it cannot be excluded that the original painting by Rembrandt from 1644 and its copy by Lievens were in Poland.

The 1863 Catalogue of the Picture Gallery of the House of the Silesian States in Wrocław lists Rembrandt's The Continence of Scipio among the paintings from the collection of Karl Daniel Friedrich Bach (1756-1829) donated to the Picture Gallery (Scipio Africanus, der einen gefangenen Carthager die Braut zurück giebt, von Rembrandt van Ryn, item 57), as well as "Portrait of an Unknown Man. In the style of Rembrandt" (Bildniss eines Unbekannten. In der Richtung Rembrandts, item 55). The painting The Continence of Scipio, now kept at the National Museum in Wrocław (inv. MNWr VIII-2623), is currently considered to be the work of a follower of Rembrandt, Jacob Willemsz. de Wet. His collection also included a work by Titian (item 46) and one by Cranach (item 58, now in the National Museum in Warsaw, inv. M.Ob.836 MNW, after "Katalog der Bilder-Galerie im Ständehause zu Breslau", p. 14). Bach worked for major collectors and patrons such as Józef Maksymilian Ossoliński (1748-1826) and Jan Potocki (1761-1815) in Warsaw, however the earlier provenance of these two paintings has not been established, so he may also have acquired them elsewhere.

Very interesting in the context of Sarmatian Rembrandtiana, as well as forgotten portraits, is the story included in the autobiography of Dr. Stanisław Morawski (Stanislovas Moravskis, 1802-1853), published in Warsaw in 1924 under the title "A few years of my youth in Vilnius (1818-1825)": "In 1830, having been sent by order of the Emperor to southern Russia with the Minister of Internal Affairs, during the cholera that was raging there, travelling from Saratov to Simbirsk and Kazan, we stopped on the way to the city of Volzhsk on the Volga. A wealthy Astrakhan merchant, who had a house in Volzhsk, a certain Sapozhnikov [Alexey Petrovich Sapozhnikov (1786-1852)], gave us a ceremonial breakfast there. All the inventions of the local gastronomy, Tatar-Russian-European, were used. [...] I could not eat, because I was tempted by the beautiful Rembrandts, hanging in great numbers on the walls. And what is more, almost all of them were portraits of our Poles. Polish portraits and a rich collection of Rembrandts in the desert, next to the Kalmyk encampments! Who would bother with the stomach in such a case?!

The affable Sapozhnikov, as hospitable as all Russian merchants, kept running to me complaining that I wasn't eating. So I said to him: 'I'll eat and I'll even eat everything you have on the table, when you tell me where you got these pictures from?' The bearded man told me that these were pictures, plundered in 1794 in Poland, in Nesvizh [Belarus] and from other lordly houses. That they were given by Russian generals to Zubov, that he gave them to his sister, Mrs. Zerebtsov and her husband. That finally, when the Zerebtsovs needed money, Sapozhnikov, needing their help again, bought the whole gallery from them and placed it in his house in Volzhsk. In this way, perhaps the richest collection of Rembrandt's portraits in the world, depicting the faces of ancient Poles, ended up at katsap's house, in the middle of the wild steppes on the banks of the Volga!" (after "Kilka lat młodości mojej w Wilnie ...", p. 275-276). 

Destruction

Many valuable works of art in Poland-Lithuania were looted or destroyed during the invasions of the country in the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. The country became significantly impoverished due to the wars, so valuable and movable works of art, especially those whose history was lost, were sold. By the end of the 18th century, like the country itself, Poland-Lithuania had almost completely disappeared from the history of European art. Art collections were confiscated during the Partitions of Poland - after collapse of the Kościuszko Uprising in 1794 (especilly Polish crown jewels), November Uprising in 1830-1831 and January Uprising in 1863-1864. To secure their belongings, many aristocrats move their collections abroad, especially to France. When the Second World War broke out in 1939, the Jagiellonian tapestries commissioned in Flanders by king Sigismund II Augustus and recovered from the Soviet Union between 1922-1924, were transported through Romania, France and England to Canada and returned to Poland in 1961. 

The elective system of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth also favored the outflow of works of art from the country. Paintings and other valuables from the royal collection that survived the Deluge (1655-1660) were transported to France by king John II Casimir Vasa (1609-1672), who abdicated in 1668 and moved to Paris. Many valuables were inherited by Anna Gonzaga (1616-1684), Princess Palatine, who died in Paris. Queen Bona Sforza (1494-1557) moved her belongings to Bari in Italy, Queen Catherine of Austria (1533-1572) to Linz in Austria and Queen Eleonora Wiśniowiecka (1653-1697) to Vienna. French-born Queen Marie Casimire Sobieska and her sons transported their collections to Rome and France and elective monarchs from the Saxon dynasty in the 18th century moved many items to Dresden. The last monarch of the Commonwealth, Stanislaus II Augustus, abdicated in November 1795 and moved part of his collection to Saint Petersburg. 

It should also be noted that when the treasures of the Most Serene Republic (Serenissima Respublica Coronae Regni Poloniae Magnique Ducatus Lithuaniae) were plundered by different invaders, in 1683, the army of the Republic under the leadership of the elected monarch John III Sobieski saved the opulent imperial treasures from a similar fate at the gates of Vienna (Relief of Vienna or Battle of Vienna). A century later, between 1772 and 1795, Austria was one of the countries that divided the Republic (Partitions of Poland) and Poland disappeared from the maps of Europe for 123 years.

Art collection of Prince Ladislaus Sigismund Vasa, attributed to Étienne de La Hire, 1626, Royal Castle in Warsaw.