Portraits of Marie Louise Gonzaga by Justus van Egmont and the Beaubrun workshop
One of the best, signed works by Flemish painter Justus van Egmont (born in Leiden in the Netherlands), is a full length portrait of Marie Louise Gonzaga (1611-1667), Duchess of Nevers, created in Paris in 1645 (caption, signature, location and date verso: MARIAE PRINCIPI MANTUANAE, DUCISSAE NVERNENSI.&.Justus d'Egmont Pinxit a. 1645. Parisi), a year when Polish-Lithianian delegation arrived to Paris (September 19th) to sign a marriage contract of widowed king Ladislaus IV with Marie Louise. It is belived that she brought the portrait with her to Warsaw (today in the National Museum in Warsaw), however it is also possible that it was sent to Poland shortly before signing of the contract. Around that year also Jeremias Falck Polonus, an engraver from Gdańsk who moved to Paris in 1639, created an engraving with effigy of Marie Louise as Duchess of Nevers (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum), then he modified this print, changed the inscription, the ducal crown into a royal crown (corona clausa) and replaced the flowers and a fan in her hands with an orb and a sceptre and added the date '1645' (National Graphic Arts Collection in Munich). According to inscription at the bottom of this engraving the original (painting or drawing) was made by Justus van Egmont (Justus d'Egmont fecit Cum Privilegio ...). Pieter de Jode the Younger published around 1646 in Antwerp another version of this print (Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg).
Portrait of a noble lady in the Weissenstein Castle in Pommersfelden, Bavaria (oil on canvas, 75 x 60cm) shows a young woman in almost identical pose as in the mentioned engravings depicting Marie Louise Gonzaga. This painting is attributed to Jacob Adriaensz Backer, however its style is also very close to Justus van Egmont and the woman depicted resemble closely Marie Louise from mentioned prints and other portraits. The same woman was also depicted in another painting by Justus van Egmont showing a lady as Diana the huntress, the goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, nature, vegetation, childbirth and chastity, today in the Palace of Versailles (inventory number MNR 41). It was identified as effigy of Madame de Montespan (1640-1707), however the style of her coiffure indicate that it was created in the 1640s. This full-length portrait was acquired by Hermann Göring from Joseph Schmid, his close friend, on 12 January 1943 for his hunting estate in Carinhall, northeast of Berlin. Its previous history is unknown, therefore it cannot be excluded that the painting was confiscated in Poland or other countries forming the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. After the war the canvas was transferred to France in 1950 from the Central Collecting Point in Munich. Similar effigy of goddess Diana from the same period is visible in a print showing triumphal arch Pyramides ante fores Regii Hospitii (National Library in Warsaw), third ephemeral decoration in Gdańsk to celebrate the ceremonial entry of Marie Louise Gonzaga into the city. In this triumphal gate the Polish Eagle is placed between two obelisks with figures of Apollo and Diana below royal monograms symbolising the brides - L4 for Ladislaus IV and ML for Marie Louise. This print was created in 1646 by Jeremias Falck Polonus after a drawing or a painting by a Gdańsk painter Adolf Boy. Both obelisks are entwined by a vine plant, a symbol of attachment. Leaves of a vine plant, like in the Apollo obelisk, or more likely an oak, are visible in another painting by Justus van Egmont from the same period (sold at Christie's, 18 May 2022, lot 193). It comes from a private collection in France and according to handwritten inscription on the back of the canvas it was earlier attributed to Pierre Mignard and allegedly created in Paris in 1677. The woman depicted was identified as Françoise-Marguerite de Sévigné, comtesse de Grignan (1646-1705), however, as in the case of the Versailles painting, her coiffure indicate that it was created in the 1640s. The woman resemble greatly Marie Louise from other portraits by van Egmont (identification suggested by Wladyslaw Maximowicz), she holds her right hand on the leaves, her left hand on her heart and her gaze is directed at the person (most probably a man) from a pendant portrait that probably has not preserved. The oak alludes to a mighty king, both Greeks and Romans associated the tree with their highest god, Zeus or Jupiter, king of the gods in ancient Roman religion and mythology. A portrait in similar convention as the Warsaw painting by van Egmont represent the same woman sitting under the tree in a park at dusk and holding a small book (private collection). She wears a black dress, most probably a mourning dress after death of Louis XIII of France (died on 14 May 1643) or after death of Ladislaus IV Vasa (died on 20 May 1648), Marie Louise's first husband. The Queen of Poland was depicted in very similar dress in the print showing the ceremony passing the marriage contract at Fontainebleau, created by Abraham Bosse in 1645. A structure with obelisks in far background resemble triumphal arch in Elbląg to celebrate the ceremonial entry of Marie Louise on February 23, 1646 (State Archive in Gdańsk). Obelisk, a phallic symbol that represented the Egyptian god of light and of the dead, the ruler of the underworld, the god of resurrection and fertility, Osiris, after having been transported to Rome develop into a most spectacular symbol of imperial power and military triumph. Different symbolic plants are visible in engravings by Jeremias Falck Polonus, depicting the queen, like a lily, a sunflower, a carnation and a rose, among others. Marie Louise extended Warsaw's royal gardens and Simon Paulli wrote about it in his Viridaria varia regia, published in 1653, a catalogue of plants in the botanical gardens of Copenhagen, Paris and Warsaw. The Queen established two botanical gardens in Warsaw in 1650, one next to the Villa Regia (later Casimir Palace) and other - next to the Royal Castle. Catalogus Plantarum Tum exoticarum quam indigenatum quae Anno M.DC.LI in hortis Regiis Warsaviae ... by Martinus Bernhardus (Marcin Bernhardi), a botanist and court surgeon of King John II Casimir Vasa, published in Gdańsk in 1652, describes the plants in these gardens, a large part was imported from Hungary (after "Rys historyczno-statystyczny wzrostu i stanu miasta Warszawy ..." by Franciszek Maksymilian Sobieszczański, p. 475). A portrait of a queen sitting in a chair with the royal crown on the table next to her, sold in Lisbon in 2015 (Veritas Art Auctioneers, 10 December 2015, lot 585), resemble greatly other effigies of Marie Louise Gonzaga. This painting was identified as a portrait of D. Luísa de Gusmão (Luisa de Guzmán, 1613-1666), Queen of Portugal or her daughter Catherine of Braganza (1638-1705), Queen of England, however, no similarity to their depictions can be found. The copperplate engraving by Willem Hondius in the National Museum in Kraków (inventory number MNK III-ryc.-37107), a study to Triumphal Arch Porta tempore regiarum nuptiarum in Gdańsk to celebrate the ceremonial entry of Marie Louise in 1646, shows the queen sitting in a similar chair, as well as gold marriage medal created that year in Gdańsk by Johann Höhn (private collection). Stylistically the portrait in Lisbon is very close to the effigy of Anne of Austria (1601-1666), Queen of France, a cousin of Ladislaus IV and John II Casimir, in the Visitandines Monastery in Warsaw. This portrait was most probably brought to Poland by Marie Louise or sent to Warsaw by the Queen of France to her cousins and resemble greatly other portraits of Anne by workshop of Henri and his cousin Charles Beaubrun. It is highly possible that the Lisbon portrait was commissioned around 1650 in the Beaubrun workshop in Paris as one of the series and sent to Portugal.
Portrait of Marie Louise Gonzaga (1611-1667) in oval by Justus van Egmont, ca. 1645, Weissenstein Castle in Pommersfelden.
Portrait of Marie Louise Gonzaga (1611-1667) sitting in a park at dusk by Justus van Egmont, 1643-1648, Private collection.
Portrait of Marie Louise Gonzaga (1611-1667) as Diana the huntress by Justus van Egmont, 1645-1650, Palace of Versailles.
Portrait of Marie Louise Gonzaga (1611-1667) holding a branch by Justus van Egmont, 1645-1650, Private collection.
Portrait of Marie Louise Gonzaga (1611-1667) with the royal crown by workshop of Henri and Charles Beaubrun, ca. 1650, Private collection.
Portraits of Louise Charlotte of Brandenburg, Duchess of Courland by Justus van Egmont
On October 9, 1645 in Königsberg, Calvinist Princess Louise Charlotte of Brandenburg (1617-1676) married Jakob Kettler (1610-1682), Duke of Courland, which was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a Lutheran.
The eldest daughter of George William, Elector of Brandenburg and Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate was a descendant of Casimir IV Jagiellon (1427-1492), King of Poland both on paternal (through Magdalena of Saxony and Sophie of Legnica) and maternal side (through Albert of Prussia). She was a candidate to become the wife of Ladislaus IV, who however decided to marry French Princess Marie Louise Gonzaga - on September 26, 1645 in Paris Gerard Denhoff, Voivode of Pomerania, who represented the king of Poland, concluded a prenuptial agreement with the French court. Louise's family moved to Königsberg (Królewiec in Polish), the capital of Duchy of Prussia, fief of Poland, in 1638. After the marriage, the couple moved to Kuldiga and then to Jelgava in the Duchy of Courland. Louise Charlotte helped Duke Jacob in governance, both by lending money and maintaining correspondence with many political figures, like King John II Casimir Vasa, Queen Christina of Sweden or Swedish Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna, among others. She had a significant influence on the politics of Courland, whose capital Jelgava became the center of negotiations between Poland, Russia, Brandenburg and Sweden during the Deluge (1655-1660). Louise Charlotte's husband Duke Jakob was educated in Rostock and Leipzig and travelled frequently to Szczecin to visit his friend Bogislaw XIV (1580-1637), Duke of Pomerania. He also visited his relatives in Cieszyn. Around 1629, Kettler traveled to Birzai in Lithuania, which belonged to the Radziwill family, in order to find a bride. In 1634, he made a grand tour of Europe and after spending several months in the Netherlands, in June 1635 he arrived in Paris. Jacob stayed in France for more than a year, then went to Italy, but it is possible that he also visited England or Spain during this time. He returned to Courland in the spring of 1637. Under Kettler's rule, the duchy traded with France, Venice and Denmark (trade agreements were concluded in 1643), Portugal (1648), the Netherlands (1653), England (1654), Spain (1656) and many other countries, including Ottoman Empire. In 1642 he sent a few hundred colonists from Zeeland under the leadership of Cornelius Caroon to establish a colony on Tobago. When this settlement was attacked and the survivors were evacuated, a new colony was established on Great Courland Bay in 1654. On February 16, 1639 in Vilnius, Jacob received investiture from King Ladislaus IV and took the oath of allegiance to the king in a solemn ceremony at the Vilnius Castle. On April 20, 1646 Ladislaus IV confirms the marriage contract between the Duke of Courland and the daughter of the Elector of Brandenburg concerning the bride's dowry in jewels and lands of her dower. In the Ecclesiastical Treasury in Vienna there is large amber altar (190 cm high, inventory number GS Kap 274) in the shape of a pointed pyramid, created in Königsberg or Gdańsk. It is dated to about 1645-1650 and according to Latin Inscription on the back (Lovysa Charlotta D.: G: Princ: Brandenb.: Livoniae Curlandiae et Semigaliae Ducissa) it belonged to Louise Charlotte of Brandenburg, Duchess of Courland. According to some theories, it could have been offered through Andrzej Chryzostom Załuski (1650-1711), Bisop of Warmia to the Emperor in about 1700 (after "Bernstein, das “Preußische Gold”" by Kerstin Hinrichs, p. 142), although it cannot be excluded that the Duchess presented it to the Emperor during the Deluge or earlier. In the Imperial Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, on the other hand, there is a portrait of a lady with a dog by Justus van Egmont, which is identified as effigy of Anne of Austria (1601-1666), Queen of France (oil on canvas, 115 x 96 cm). The lady is sitting in a gilded armchair in a grey-green satin dress. Basing on costume and hairstyle of the woman this portrait should be dated to beginning of the 1650s, very similar to those visible in a portrait of Mary, Princess Royal (1631-1660) by Bartholomeus van der Helst in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, signed and dated upper left: Bartholomeus van der helst 1652 f. Behind a dark green drapery there is a view of a mountainous landscape, which resemble the view of a bay on Eylandt Tabago (Island of Tobago), copper print by Romeyn de Hooghe, published before 1690 (Royal Library of the Netherlands). This painting comes from Archduke Leopold Wilhelm's collection (after "Die Denkmale der Stadt Wien (XI. - XXI. Bezirk)" by Hans Tietze, p. 166, item 192). The young woman bear no resemblance to effigies of Queen of France, who in 1650 was 49 years old, and her physiognomy was clearly inspired by images of Queen of Poland, Marie Louise Gonzaga - for example in the copperplate print by Willem Hondius in the National Museum in Kraków (inventory number MNK III-ryc.-37107). At that time, the style of the Queen of Poland obviously became iconic in Central Europe, because in the Lobkowicz Palace at Prague Castle there is a portrait of Maria Anna Freiin von Breuner née Khevenhüller, a lady-in-waiting of the Empress Eleonora Gonzaga (1630-1686), niece of Marie Louise, probably from the early 1650s (I. 4575). The portrait is almost identical to several effigies of the Queen of Poland, considered the ideal beauty of the time. The same woman was also depicted in another painting in the style of Justus van Egmont (oil on canvas, 62.5 x 79 cm, auctioned at Proantic, reference: 798554, 18th century, Louis 15th style). Her face features resemble greatly Louise Charlotte of Brandenburg from her portrait in the Rundale Palace Museum and Louise Charlotte's sister Hedwig Sophia of Brandenburg (1623-1683), Landgravine of Hesse-Kassel from an engraving by Philipp Kilian, created in 1663 (Austrian National Library in Vienna). In the collection of the House of Hohenzollern, formerly in the Hohenzollern Museum, there is an interesting painting by the Bohemian painter Matthias Czwiczek, who from April 1628 was court painter in Königsberg. This small painting (oil on wood, 33 x 44.5 cm), painted around 1649, represents the members of the family of the Duke of Prussia and Elector of Brandenburg and his wife in the guise of figures from the Old Testament. Frederick William (1620-1688) was depicted as the biblical King Solomon and behind him are his sister Louise Charlotte, Duchess of Courland and her husband Jacob Kettler. The Elector's mother, Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, crowned by her younger daughter Hedwig Sophia, Landgravine of Hesse-Kassel, is the Queen of Sheba. She receives the bunch of grapes from the hands of the elector's wife Louise Henriette of Nassau (1627-1667), symbol of the Eucharistic wine and therefore of the sacrifice of Christ. The group on the left of the composition shows deceased family members, including Frederick William's father, George William (1595-1640) (compare "Die Frau an Jakobs Seite ..." by Ulrich Schoenborn, p. 4-5, 7). To create his painting, Czwiczek had to use different study drawings or other paintings, which were undoubtedly also used by van Egmont and his workshop to create portraits of the Duchess of Courland.
Portrait of Louise Charlotte of Brandenburg (1617-1676), Duchess of Courland by Justus van Egmont, 1650-1654, Private collection.
Portrait of Louise Charlotte of Brandenburg (1617-1676), Duchess of Courland with a dog and a view of the Island of Tobago by Justus van Egmont, ca. 1654, Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna.
Portrait of a member of the Sollogub family by Ferdinand Bol
In 2014, a "Portrait of a young man, half-length, in a white shirt, golden mantel and red plumed cap, before a draped curtain", attributed to the School of Rembrandt and dated around 1650, was sold in London (oil on canvas, 69.5 x 57 cm, Auction 1576, December 3, 2014, lot 136). The painting was also auctioned with an attribution to Rembrandt's student Ferdinand Bol (Daphne Alazraki Fine Art in New York) and this attribution appears to be the most relevant to the painting's style. According to an old inscription on the reverse of the stretcher the painting belonged to Count Sollogub from whom acquired by V.Th. Levshin, Russia.
The Sollogub family, known as Sołłohubowie in Polish, Sologubai in Lithuanian and Salaguby in Ruthenian, was a noble family of the Prawdzic coat of arms. They probably originated from the Ruthenian nobility of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and rose to prominence in the early 16th century when a certain Yurii Sollogub (d. 1514) was appointed to the post of voivode of Smolensk. In the 16th century many of them became Calvinists. During the Deluge, several members of the family betrayed the rightfully elected monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth John II Casimir and sided, together with Janusz Radziwill (1612-1655), voivode of Vilnius, with the "Brigand of Europe ". Their names appear among the signatories of the Treaty of Kedainiai of October 20, 1655 recognizing the authority of the Swedish king, such as Raphael Sołłohub, Konstanty Dowoynia Sołłohub, woyski Upitski, Andrzey Sołohub, Stefan Dowoina Sołlohub and Mikołai Dowoina Sołohub. This is probably why none of them were given important positions and their biographies were not elaborated by historians. The family rebuilds its status in the Commonwealth when Jan Michał Sołłohub (d. 1748), who, through his marriage to Helena Szamowska in 1706 began his brilliant political career, rose to the position of Grand Treasurer of Lithuania and then voivode of Brest. In 1861, members of the family who settled in the Russian Empire received confirmation of the title of count. As supporters of the Radziwills in the 17th century, the Sollogubs arguably also followed their example in patronage, and as Calvinists some members probably studied in the Netherlands. A somewhat similar painting by Rembrandt is mentioned in the 1835 catalogue of paintings from the Radziwill collection: "18. Portrait of a man in a dark purple dress with fur and a beret on his head, an image full of expression, strong tones give it a charming effect. Painted on canvas". This catalogue also lists three paintings by Ferdinand Bol: "4. Portrait of a man with a dark beard in rich eastern clothes, with folded arms; rendered in a strong color. - Painted on canvas", "356. A man and a lady in eastern clothing. Painted on copper" and "363. Portrait of a man with a beard, in a black cap and a dark robe, with a gold chain hanging on his chest. Painted on canvas" (after "Katalog galeryi obrazow sławnych mistrzów ..." by Antoni Blank, p. 3, 8, 105, 107). Before 1909 in the collection of Countess Sollogub (W. Sologoube) in Saint Petersburg, there was a portrait of a young boy identifed as portrait of Rembrandt's son Titus by Nicolaes Maes ("Les Anciennes écoles de peinture dans les palais et collections privées russes, représentées à l'exposition organisée à St.- Pétersbourg en 1909 par la revue d'art ancien "Staryé gody"", n. 398), now in the Cincinnati Art Museum (1946.95). Although we will probably never confirm the identity of the man in Sollogub's painting with reliable documents, he bears a resemblance to a notable family member, who lived more than a century later - General Jan Michał Sołłohub (1747-1812), painted by Józef Pitschmann in 1792 (Oporów Castle). Since some genes reappear in future generations and some people are even compared to their great-grandfathers or even more distant ancestors, it must be assumed that the man in the portrait was a member of the Sollogub family.
Portrait of a man in a golden mantel, most likely a member of the Sollogub family, by Ferdinand Bol, ca. 1650, Private collection.
Portrait of Alexander Louis Radziwill by Adolf Boy
In 1642, after the death of his older brother Sigismund Charles Radziwill (1591-1642), Knight Hospitaller, Alexander Louis Radziwill (1594-1654), Grand Marshal of Lithuania, inherited the Nesvizh ordynacja (entail), becoming the 5th ordynat. Alexander Louis was the youngest son of Nicolaus Christopher Radziwill "the Orphan" (1549-1616). He studied in Nesvizh and Germany, then traveled around France and Italy. The favorite residence of the landowner and his wife, Tekla née Wołłowicz, was the palace in Biała Radziwiłłowska (Podlaska), where after 1622 he built a lavish palace to design by Lublin architect Paolo Negroni (Paweł de Szate), called Murzyn (the Black Man). In Nesvizh, around 1650, Alexander Louis added two gallery wings connecting the palace wings.
Inventories of 1650 and 1658 present the furnishings of the Radziwill Castle. According to the most complete inventory from 1658, portraits constituted the largest collection of paintings in Nesvizh. In the dining room of the palace, there were 31 portraits of "old princes their Highnesses Radziwills, Szydłowieckis, Wołłowicz and other senators who used to visit this room", including a full-length portrait of Nicolaus Christopher "the Orphan". The second portrait gallery was located in the "great hall", in the second building of the castle complex. It consisted of 14 "standing paintings of the Szydłowiecki counts, various figures rendered in oil" (after "Monumenta variis Radivillorum ..." by Tadeusz Bernatowicz, p. 18). The inventory from 1650 list a portrait of a "lord of Vilnius", probably Janusz I Radziwill (1579-1620), and royal portraits placed behind a curtain at the door to the chapel, i.e. in the sacrum circle. Similar collections were in other residences of the Radziwills - the castles in Mir, Olyka and Szydłowiec, palaces and houses in Warsaw, Vilnius, Grodno, Kraków, Lviv and Gdańsk. Alexander Louis died in Bologna in 1654, where he went for treatment. His son, Michael Casimir, moved the coffin with the prince's body to Nesvizh and buried it in the ancestral crypt of the Jesuit church. In the former Radziwill palace at Nieborów, between Warsaw and Łódź, there is portrait of a man, attibuted to Dutch school and dated to about 1640-1660, incorporated into the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw in 1945 (oil on canvas, 75 x 64.5 cm, inventory number NB 974 MNW). It was mentioned in the catalogue of the collection of Alexander Louis' descendant Michał Hieronim Radziwiłł (1744-1831), exhibited in Królikarnia near Warsaw in 1835, as by Flemish school: "310. Portrait of a man with a white Spanish beard, wearing a white collar, chain hanging around his neck. Painted on canvas". The style of the painting resemble greatly the works by Adolf Boy, court painter of King Ladislaus IV Vasa, especially the portrait of Elżbieta (Halszka) Kazanowska née Słuszczanka (1619-1671) with forget-me-nots (National Museum in Warsaw), created between 1649-1652. The painting is also particularly similar, both in terms of style and physiognomy of the model, to the portrait of King Ladislaus IV Vasa in the Royal Castle in Warsaw (ZKW 559 dep., deposit of the National Museum in Warsaw, 128758). In 1649, Boy created a composition, most likely a painting, depicting the Apotheosis of King John II Casimir Vasa, engraved by Willem Hondius (National Library of Poland, G.219/Sz.1). This indicates that together with another Gdańsk painter, Daniel Schultz, who at that time returned to the Commonwealth from the Netherlands, Adolf became the main court painter of the new king. The engraving as well as Nieborów painting follows the same pattern - exaggerated facial features, a slightly jagged image, and beautiful pastel colors, typical for Boy. The costume and pose of the sitter resemble the effigies of Alexander Louis' cousin Albert Stanislaus Radziwill (1593-1656) from the 1640s (National Art Museum of Belarus), portrait of Nikolaus Hübner, counsellor of Toruń, dated '1644' (District Museum in Toruń) and portrait of Giovanni Ambrogio Rosate (1557-1651), a Milanese silk merchant, dated '1650' (Ospedale Maggiore in Milan). The man depicted bear a strong resemblence to Alexander Louis from his effigies in the National Museum in Warsaw (MP 4771 MNW, Gr.Pol.10095/102 MNW), created in the 18th century after original from the 1630s, and in the State Hermitage Museum (ОР-45869), created between 1646 and 1653.
Portrait of Alexander Louis Radziwill (1594-1654), Grand Marshal of Lithuania by Adolf Boy, ca. 1650, Nieborów Palace.
Portrait of Christopher Sigismund Pac
In 1837 Louis Philippe (1773-1850), King of the French, founded a museum in the Palace of Versailles dedicated to "all the glories of France", today Museum of the History of France (Musée de l'Histoire de France). The museum displayed artefacts formerly in other national collections as well as works specifically commissioned for it.
Auguste de Creuse, a French portrait painter, was commissioned to create several copies of effigies of historically significant individuals. The originals were probably lost or damaged during past revolutions and disrepair of some of the royal palaces. He created a copy of a portrait of Louis Philippe when Duke of Chartres by Jean-Antoine-Théodore Giroust from the 1790s and a portrait of La Grande Mademoiselle (Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans, Duchess of Montpensier) as a shepherdess by Gilbert de Sève from the 1660s (originals are considered lost), among others. On August 14, 1838 he was also paid 150 francs to create a portrait of Jean Bart or Jan Baert (1650-1702), a French/Flemish naval commander and privateer, inscribed Jean Bart / Chef D'escadre (oil on canvas, 39 x 29 cm, MV 4307). De Creuse probaly copied a painting preserved in the French royal collection. The man wears a silk costume similar to Polish-Lithuanian żupan and overcoat lined with fur similar to kontusz, both buttoned up with large gold buttons set with precious stones in oriental style, similar to guzy from Polish national costume. The sitter bear no resemblance to the effigy of Jean Bart published by Pierre Blin in 1789, a print made by Antoine François Sergent-Marceau, whereas, he bear a striking resemblance to effigies of Christopher Sigismund Pac (1621-1684). Although in one portrait, by Mathieu Elias, Jean Bart was depicted in a fur hat which looks like Polish kołpak (National Navy Museum in Paris, inventory number OA 49), his costume is from western Europe. The costume in the Versailles portrait is almost identical to that visible in Christopher Sigismund's effigy by Johann Franck, a print published in 1659 (Vilnius University Library). Christopher Sigismund Pac was educated in Kraków, Padua and Perugia, and then in Graz and Leiden and served in the French, Spanish and Dutch armies. In 1646 he become Grand Standard-bearer of Lithuania. He enjoyed the great trust of King John Casimir Vasa and his French wife Marie-Louise Gonzaga. He adhered to the French orientation and supported Queen Marie-Louise's plans to hold a vivente rege election (election of a king during the lifetime of predecessor). In 1654, he married the French noblewoman Claire Isabelle Eugenie de Mailly-Lespine (better known in Poland-Lithuania as Klara Izabella Pacowa), a descendant of Anne Lascaris, lady-in-waiting and confidante of Queen Marie Louise. A year later, in 1655, he received the office of Vice-Chancellor of Lithuania. In 1662, in addition to 30,000 livres received from the French treasury in 1661, he got a salary of 15,000 francs from the French ambassador to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Antoine de Lumbres, for supporting the French candidate during the vivente rege election. This explains clearly the presence of his portrait in the French royal collection. Like the portrait holding the Grand Lithuanian Seal in the National Art Museum in Kaunas from about 1670, the original was most probably created by royal court painter Daniel Schultz. The sitter, however, is much younger in the Versailles portrait than in the Kaunas version, thus the painting should be dated to the early 1650s, when Schultz began his career at the court after return from France and the Netherlands.
Portrait of Christopher Sigismund Pac (1621-1684) by Auguste de Creuse, 1838-1840, after original from the early 1650s by Daniel Schultz (?), Palace of Versailles.
Portrait of Johann Georg Franz Wisendo von Wiesenburg by Frans Luycx and workshop
Although, according to known sources, the Flemish painter and portraitist of the imperial court in Vienna, Frans Luycx or Luyckx (d. 1668), student of Peter Paul Rubens, never visited the Commonwealth his works and those of his workshop linked to Poland-Lithuania are numerous. Some of the effigies of members of the royal-grand ducal family of Poland-Lithuania the painter was able to create during their visit to Vienna in 1638 or shortly after. Before 1643, Luycx most probably worked for Prince John Casimir since, according to the inventory of works on his wooden palace in Nieporęt near Warsaw, 160 florins were paid to a painter in Vienna for the altars (P. Von Sorgen zapłacieł w Wiedniu według recognicy K.J.M. Malarzowy ad rationem ołtarzów do Nieporęta) (after "Zbiory artystyczne ..." by Ryszard Szmydki, p. 43).
The composition of the portrait of John Casimir in fashionable French costume, created after his election, perhaps around 1648-1654, was similar to the portrait of his brother Ladislaus IV in "white boots", created by Luycx about a decade earlier, especially when it comes to the strange, almost surreal representation of the room behind the monarch. However, this portrait, which was probably lost during the First World War, is only known from very old photographs (National Museum in Warsaw, DI 40131 MNW), so nothing can be said with certainty about its style. Many of Frans' paintings were also in the king's collection before the Deluge, however only one preserved in Warsaw. This is the portrait of John Casimir's cousin, Maria Anna of Spain (1606-1646), Holy Roman Empress, at the Visitandine monastery in Warsaw (inscribed in Latin: MARIA HISPANA IMPERATRIX / FERDINANDI III VXOR.). The painting was given to the monastery most probably after the king's abdication, because the accounts show a payment of 6 zloty and 20 groszy for moving certain objects from the castle (September 1668) - furniture, paintings, silverware, musical instruments, fabrics and books (after "Portrety infantek ..." by Jerzy T. Petrus, p. 31, 33). This painting was commissioned or received as a gift from Vienna between 1638 and 1642. In the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm there is another portrait of the Holy Roman Empress by Luycx, which most probably comes from the collection of John Casimir (oil on canvas, 226 x 126 cm, NMGrh 75). This is the portrait of Eleonora Gonzaga (1630-1686), daughter of Charles II Gonzaga, Duke of Nevers and niece of the king's wife Marie Louise Gonzaga. In April 1651, Eleonora married the king's cousin, Emperor Ferdinand III, and she was crowned in Regensburg Cathedral on August 4, 1653. The portrait was therefore most likely created between 1651 and 1653 as part of the series, because there is a similar one at the Cheb Museum in the Czech Republic (inventory number č. O 177) and at the Villa del Poggio Imperiale (a reduced version, Poggio Imperiale 431 / 1860), most likely offered to the Medici. The Stockholm painting is signed and dated at the bottom in Latin: ELEONORA GONZAGA ROM. IMP. AN. 16. / Lux Pinxit. / M, however the exact date was probably obscured, as were probably other signs of its original provenance. It is therefore very likely that the painting was looted in Warsaw in 1656 or during the Great Northern War (1700-1721), like the portrait of Abbess Euphemia Radziwill (1598-1658) by Johann Schretter from the 1640s (NMGrh 1576). Another gift from Vienna for John Casimir or his wife painted by Luycx could be the portrait of a man from the collection of Jan Popławski (1860-1935), now in the Museum of Warsaw (oil on canvas, 80 x 63 cm, MHW 522). This painting was initially attributed to a follower of Hans von Aachen (1552-1615) and now to an 18th century painter. It is very close to the style of the Flemish painter and his workshop, in particular the portrait of Ladislaus IV in Wilanów (Wil.1143). The way the hand was painted is particularly characteristic of Luycx. This painting depicts Johann Georg Franz Wisendo von Wiesenburg (1622-1666), a clerk (Hofkammerkonzipist) at the court of Emperor Ferdinand III from 1648. He was painted by Luycx and his workshop in 1653 and the inscription on the back confirms this: Johan Georg Fran.s. / Wisendo VW. / M 1653. L. P. pinx.
Portrait of King John II Casimir Vasa (1609-1672) with a crown by workshop of Frans Luycx (?), ca. 1648-1654, present whereabouts unknown.
Portrait of Empress Eleonora Gonzaga (1630-1686) by Frans Luycx, ca. 1651-1653, Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.
Portrait of Johann Georg Franz Wisendo von Wiesenburg (1622-1666) by Frans Luycx and workshop, 1653, Museum of Warsaw.
Tronies of King John II Casimir Vasa
Dutch head-studies in a costume, known as tronies (meaning "faces" or "visages"), became popular in Poland-Lithuania as early as the 17th century and many paintings of this type were part of royal and magnate collections. Two paintings by followers of Rembrandt - portrait of a bearded man (oil on mahogany, 102 x 78 cm, Gal.-Nr. 1567, signed: Rembrandt. f. 1654.) and portrait of a man in a hat decorated with pearls (oil on canvas, 82 x 71 cm, Gal.-Nr. 1570), and one by Willem Drost - portrait of a man with a red kolpak (oil on canvas, 89.5 x 68.5 cm, Gal.- Nr. 1568), all in the Dresden gallery (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister) are generally considered to come from the collection of John II Casimir Vasa.
The "Catalogue of the pictures in the Royal Gallery at Dresden", published in 1912, also lists "Portrait of a young married woman" (oil on canvas, 67.5 x 60.5 cm, Gal.-Nr. 1584) and "An old man with a bald head" (oil on canvas, 63.5 x 53 cm, Gal.-Nr. 1585), painted in the 1630s, both by Jacob Adriaensz. Backer, as "acquired in Poland" according to the inventory of 1722. It also mentions "Mordecai and Esther write letters in King Ahasuerus' name" ("An important document", Gal.-Nr. 1792 A) by Aert de Gelder, however this painting is generally dated around 1685, so it was very probably purchased during the Sobieski period. Portrait of a young woman putting on a pearl bracelet (oil on canvas on wood, 78 x 62.5 cm, Gal.-Nr. 1591), attributed to Willem Drost, was also transferred from Poland before 1722, according to Hübner's register (no. 1235). Interestingly, many of these paintings are dated around 1654, so John Casimir may have acquired them shortly before the Deluge and evacuated them to Silesia. Apparently, this type of paintings gained popularity in Poland-Lithuania also among the local painters, because in the Museum of Fine Arts in Bordeaux there is a tronie-like portrait showing a man in eastern costume (oil on canvas, 68.5 x 55 cm, Bx E 10). It comes from the collection of the King of France Louis XIV in Versailles (Cabinet des tableaux), who received and purchased several objects from John Casimir's collection such as a brooch with the Polish eagle (Louvre, MR 418) or tapestries with the Triumphs of the Gods by Frans Geubels. His fur hat and Asian features indicate that he is Tatar. Men of this Muslim ethnic group of the Commonwealth were frequently members of the royal guard since the Middle Ages, confirmed since the times of King Casimir IV Jagiellon (1427-1492) (after "Tatarzy w dawnej Rzeczypospolitej" by Piotr Borawski, p. 98). His gorget indicates that he is indeed a soldier. This painting was once attributed to Guido Reni and now to the School of Rembrandt, but the closest seems to be the works of the court painter of John Casimir - Daniel Schultz, such as the portrait of the king at the Royal Castle in Warsaw (ZKW 1175), the alleged self-portrait of Schultz in the National Museum in Warsaw (MP 2447) or the family portrait, believed to represent the Crimean Tatar falconer of John Casimir, in the Hermitage Museum (ГЭ-8540). Another tronie-like portrait painted by Schultz for the king could be a dwarf with a dog from the Wilanów Palace (oil on canvas, 56 x 50 cm, inv. 270), which, according to the preserved photograph, was comparable to the mentioned paintings. This painting has been considered lost since the Second World War and as nothing was known about it apart from the fact that it came from the royal collection of the last elected monarch Stanislaus Augustus, it was considered to be the work of a 17th-century Spanish painter, as they frequently painted dwarves. Even during the Deluge, John Casimir maintained a luxurious lifestyle, comparable to that of his cousin King Philip IV of Spain. Pierre des Noyers, secretary to the Queen, who was apparently not favorable to him, stated: "He is surrounded by a large number of dwarves, dogs, birds and monkeys. In his room, only lewd topics are discussed - this is his usual occupation. On Good Friday, like any other day, he always takes five or six Jesuits with him, often goes to confession, but this produces nothing" (letter dated October 1, 1658 from the military camp near Toruń, after "Lettres de Pierre Des Noyers ...", published in 1859, p. 446). Among many dwarves, the king had at his court two Kuczkowski brothers, Stanisław and Kazimierz, whom he affectionately called Kuczkosie. In the expenses of the royal court of John Casimir from 1650 to 1652, the following were repeated: "to Barthelek the dwarf - 75 zloty", "to Januszek the dwarf - 50 zloty", "to Kuczkoś the dwarf - 50 zloty", "to the second Kuczkoś - 50 zloty" and there is also a payment "to Mr. Vinderhenn for a silver pot and a gilded cup for the dwarves of His Majesty the King - 70 zloty" (after "Niziołki, łokietki, karlikowie ..." by Bożena Fabiani, p. 5). A female dwarf of the Queen named Resia, along with the dwarf Bonarowski, was sent to Chantilly in the 1660s, to the court of Louis II de Bourbon, Prince of Condé. Furthermore, the Dutch obviously also wanted to have tronies with the "Poles" (as it is often simplified when referring to people from the Commonwealth), because there are many portraits of this type of people wearing costumes similar to those known from Poland-Lithuania and Ruthenia, painted by Rembrandt and circle. As an example, we can cite the portrait of a boy with a fur hat with feathers by Jacob Backer at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (2483 (OK)), the portrait of a youth in Ruthenian costume by Pieter de Grebber in the Liechtenstein Museum in Vienna (GE 89), portrait of a man in a kolpak hat as the Apostle Paul by Willem Bartsius in the Catharijneconvent Museum in Utrecht (StCC s35) or portrait of a man in a fur hat and a fur coat by Isaac de Jouderville (signed and dated: Rembrandt f / 1641, sold at Christie's, auction 21643, January 31, 2023, lot 337). Many tronies and genre paintings that survived the Deluge or acquired later were in the collections of the "Victorious King" John III Sobieski (1629-1696). Some of them are mentioned in the inventory of the king's palace in Wilanów from 1696, such as "A pair of paintings, in one of them a Swiss man with a halberd, in the other a Dutch woman" (No. 29), "A picture of an old Spanish woman" (No. 76), "A picture of a woman reading a book" (No. 97), "A picture of a Dutch seamstress [possibly a copy of The Lacemaker by Johannes Vermeer]" (No. 98), "A picture of old men painted on a board, one of them is holding a fish and money" (No. 169), "A pair of paintings, in one of them an old man, in the other a woman" (No. 172), "A pair of pictures, in one of them the Dutchman is fighting lice, in the other one the other man is scratching" (No. 202), "A painting by the painter Rynbrant [Rembrandt], on which an old man is painted, large, with gilded frames, round at the top" (No. 210), "A Dutch painting of David triumphing over the giant [David and Goliath], yellowish" (No. 216), "A picture on a tin plate, a Spanish woman in a hat" (No. 240) (compare "Inwentarz Generalny 1696 z opracowaniem" by Anna Kwiatkowska). This inventory also lists paintings that may be copies or originals of The Love Letter (No. 156) and The Milkmaid (No. 180) by Vermeer. In the inventory of paintings from the collection of Princess Louise Charlotte Radziwill (1667-1695), drawn up in 1671, tronies depicting Dutch people (Olender/Olenderka) are listed separately after standard portraits and effigies of Roman emperors (numbers 337-347, 696-697, 730, 797, compare "Inwentarz galerii obrazów Radziwiłłów z XVII w." by Teresa Sulerzyska). Also the octagonal portrait of King John II Casimir, attributed to his court painter Daniel Schultz, resembles a tronie (National Museum in Warsaw, deposited in the Royal Castle in Warsaw, oil on panel, 62 x 50 cm, NB 474 MNW, inscription: Joan. Ca ...). This painting was most likely created after the king's accession to the throne in 1649 or after the Deluge in the 1660s to complete the series of the so-called Jagiellon Family in the Marble Room of the Royal Castle in Warsaw. In addition to the monarch's costume with a Ruthenian fur hat, this painting is clearly inspired by Rembrandt's style.
Portrait of an old man with a bald head by Jacob Adriaensz. Backer, ca. 1633-1635, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.
Portrait of a young married woman by Jacob Adriaensz. Backer, ca. 1633-1635, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.
Portrait of a bearded man by follower of Rembrandt, ca. 1654, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.
Portrait of a man in a hat decorated with pearls by follower of Rembrandt, before 1667, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.
Portrait of a man in a red kolpak by Willem Drost, ca. 1654, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.
Portrait of a young woman putting on a pearl bracelet by Willem Drost, ca. 1654, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.
Portrait of a Polish-Lithuanian Tatar in a fur hat by Daniel Schultz, after 1649, Museum of Fine Arts in Bordeaux.
Portrait of King John II Casimir Vasa by Daniel Schultz, after 1649, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of a dwarf with a dog by Daniel Schultz (?), after 1649, Wilanów Palace, lost.
Tarquin and Lucretia with portrait of Lucrezia Maria Strozzi, Princess Radziwill by Pietro della Vecchia
"Having rendered to the Prince my husband, worthy of memory, the last service after such serious troubles, I followed the advice of my friends who came to this funeral to come to an agreement with the Prince Incisor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania so that at least in my orphanhood I would have a calmer head and I would not ruin my health with constant worry", wrote in a letter dated October 22, 1654 from Turets (Belarus) Lucrezia Maria Strozzi (ca. 1621-1694), Princess Radziwill to Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga (Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw, 1/354/0/4/703). The queen supported the former lady-in-waiting of Queen Cecilia Renata of Austria in the conflict with her stepson Michael Casimir Radziwill (1635-1680).
Michael Casimir raised objections to the provisions of his father's will in favor of Lucrezia Maria, accused her of forging her husband's will and intended to deprive her of her rights to Chernavchitsy and Turets. Lucrezia Maria's husband, Alexander Louis Radziwill, died in Bologna in March 1654, where he went with his wife for treatment. Returning from abroad in July 1654, Michael Casimir forcibly seized his deceased father's main residence, Biała Podlaska Palace. He also seized the property of Lucrezia Maria in Chernavchitsy. He went even further by filing an official complaint against his stepmother, in which he blamed her for the conflict and its escalation. Until November 1663, the widow with two young children was constantly involved in legal proceedings with him, usually interrupted by compromise agreements. During the invasion of the Commonwealth by neighboring countries (Deluge), Lucrezia Maria accompanied the Queen to Silesia. The entire court evacuated from Warsaw via Kraków to Głogówek (October 17, 1655), which was part of the Vasa estates and the queen's dower. The town became the emigration capital for the royal couple and their supporters. It is estimated that up to 2,000 people lived in Głogówek and surrounding areas. From there, Lucrezia Maria with her children went to Italy, to Mantua (February 1656) and Naples (August 1657). She probably left her children with her family in Mantua until 1661 or 1663. In her last will she requested that her body be placed in the Sanctuary "delle Grazie" in Curtatone near Mantua, where the bodies of her ancestors were buried in the family chapel of Saint Louis (decorated with frescoes by Il Pordenone). They were quite fortunate. Their wealth, position and connections allowed them to spare their lives and part of their property. What happened to the people who couldn't escape was truly terrible. The atrocities of the invaders are described in the letters of the Queen's secretary Pierre des Noyers, such as during the burning of Praga (a district of Warsaw on the east bank of the Vistula), when the Brigand of Europe - Charles X Gustav of Sweden, arrived there "all these miserable peasants, with their wives and their children threw themselves on their knees begging him to have pity on their misery; he told them that they were all traitors, and ordered his people to kill everyone, which they did in his presence without forgiving not a single child" (le roi de Suède étant arrivé au lieu de l'incendie de Prague, tous ces misérables paysans, avec leurs femmes et leurs enfants, se jetèrent à genoux en le priant d'avoir pitié de leur misère; il leur dit qu'ils étaient tous des traîtres, et commanda à ses gens de tout tuer, ce qu'ils firent en sa présence sans pardonner à pas un enfant, letter dated August 11, 1656 from Łańcut) (after "Lettres de Pierre Des Noyers ...", published in 1859, p. 217-218). The tragic story of a boy-bear, described in "Ordinary News of January 5, 1664. From Warsaw, December 1, 1663" (Nouvelles Ordinaires du 5me Ianvier 1664. De Warsovie, Ier Décembre 1663, p. 13-14, National Library of France, FRBNF32780022), is most likely also directly linked to the invasion. "The Bishop of Vilnius sent to the Queen here a child aged 8 to 9 years old who was found among the bears near Kaunas, in Lithuania: where the soldiers who have their winter quarters on that side, having been asked by the peasants to give chase to these beasts, who caused them great damage, seeing him naked, fleeing with the cubs of a bear that they were pursuing. He was placed in our hospital: where by the order of this Princess, he is being taught the French language" (L'Evesque de Vilna a ici envoyé à la Reyne un enfant agé de 8 a 9 ans qui a esté trouvé parmi les Ours proche de Kowno, dans la Lithüanie: où les Soldats qui ont leurs Quartiers d'hyver de ce costé-là, ayans esté sollicitez par les Païsans de donner la chasse à ces Bestes, qui leur causoyent de grands dommages, l'aperçeurent tout nud, fuïant avec les petits d'vne Ourse qu'ils poursuivoyent. Il a esté mis dans nostre Hospital : où par l'ordre de cette Princesse, on lui apprend la langue Françoise). The boy "had no human speech or manners [...], the queen gave him a peel of a pear sprinkled with sugar; [...] after tasting it, he spat it out on his hand and with his saliva, he threw it between the queen's eyes; the king began to laugh greatly" (Jan Chryzostom Pasek recounts about the boy raised by bears and found in 1662 - Pamiętniki). The female bear suckling a child and history of a boy was also published in Bernard O'Connor's "The history of Poland in several letters to persons of quality ...", published in London in 1698 (Volume I, p. 342-343, National Library of Poland, SD XVII.3.4040 I). During the invasion Kaunas was burnt and pillaged by the Russians, who occupied this part of the country from 18 August 1655 to 2 December 1661 (after "Social and Cultural Relations in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: Microhistories", p. 9). The devastation of the city was so great that the Sejm in Warsaw in 1662 exempted Kaunas from taxes and customs duties for 10 years. According to Nouvelles Ordinaires, the boy was 8 or 9 years old when he was brought to the queen in Warsaw in 1663, therefore he lost his parents around 1655-1660, that is, during the horrific Deluge. The invasion found its reflection in poetry, such as the poem by Zbigniew Morsztyn (ca. 1628-1689), a Protestant poet at the court of the Radziwills, dating from around 1657 - "The second muse of the author during the siege of Kraków, when he was a prisoner of the Swedes": "I sing, although my motherland is suffering, She was once so fertile, So invincible, And with her her deeds are ruined [...] I sing, and streams gather Polish blood, and smoke rises to the clouds from cities and villages. This happy country is turning to ashes [...] I sing petrified, And where is my abundance? Where did the holidays go? The remnants were burned with fire and razed to the ground". One of the few European artists to possibly react to these tragic events was Rembrandt creating his print of Christ Presented to the People, also known as Ostentatio Christi or Ecce Homo. This work is mysterious for many reasons. We don't know who ordered it or why the artist created it. He made several versions of this etching, the last being the most dramatic (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, RP-P-OB-612). The square in front of the building, filled with the people of Jerusalem demanding the crucifixion of Christ in initial versions, was replaced by two arched openings. Between them Rembrandt placed the figure which is sometimes interpreted as a river or sea god, but it could also be Saturn, Roman god of time, dissolution, abundance, periodic renewal and liberation. The niches of the building house allegorical sculptures of Justice and Fortitude (courage in pain or adversity). In the 19th century the representatives of the imperialists who destroyed the Commonwealth and its multiculturalism have often emphasized Rembrandt's particular inclination towards theatricalism, without paying sufficient attention to the fact that this theatricalism in the 17th century must have had an important context and meaning, not necessarily religious or moralistic. The most intriguing are the people surrounding Christ and the man at the door on the right. They are definitely not typical inhabitants of Amsterdam and closely resemble the nobles of the Commonwealth, as in the print depicting four Poles (Polachi), created by Johann Wilhelm Baur in Rome in 1636, title page of Polonia, nunc denuo recognita et aucta by Szymon Starowolski, published in Wolfenbüttel in 1656 or in the map of the Commonwealth (Poloniae Nova et Acvrata Descriptio) by Jan Janssonius, published in Amsterdam in 1675. Several magantes and dignitaries of the Commonwealth were also depicted with a similar hairstyle - for example Jan Żółkiewski from his marble tomb monument by Wojciech Kapinos (II) in the Church of St. Lawrence in Zhovkva (1630s) or Mikołaj Spytek Ligęza from his alabaster tomb monument by Sebastiano Sala in the Bernardine Church in Rzeszów (1630-1638). In this composition, we can identify characters wearing costumes typical of 17th century Jews, Poles, Lithuanians, Ruthenians, Cossacks, Muslim Tatars, Armenians, Germans, Dutch and even Italians. Such a mixture was rather unprecedented at the Town Hall of Amsterdam or at the court of The Hague, while it was typical at the grand-ducal-royal court in Vilnius, Grodno, Lviv, Gdańsk, Kraków and Warsaw and in most towns and villages in the Commonwealth (compare: "Lamentation of various people over the dead credit" - Lament różnego stanu ludzi nad umarłym kredytem, from about 1655). Only the last two states of Rembrandt's print are signed and dated above the arcade to the right of the central platform - Rembrandt f. 1655. That same year, several foreign armies invaded the Commonwealth. Another fascinating piece of art related to Rembrandt can be found at the Wilanów Palace in Warsaw (oil on canvas, 76 x 65 cm, inventory number Wil.1346). This painting represents a soldier and a young girl and is attributed to Pietro della Vecchia (d. 1678), a painter active in Venice from 1633, who probably studied with Alessandro Varotari, hence his interest in Venetian painting of the previous century, in particular that by Titian and Giorgione. The image of a knight in Renaissance costume with a wide feathered hat drawing a sword, perhaps being a copy of a lost original by Palma Vecchio (Theatrum Pictorium, 223), is typical of della Vecchia. He made many versions and variations of this warrior. The image of the girl, on the other hand, is quite unusual. The style is different and the influence of Rembrandt is clearly visible "primarily in the painterly, free arrangement of thick impastos on the girl's shirt" (after "Malarstwo weneckie ..." by Agnes Czobor, p. 165). It seems that the painter combined the two distinct effigies, his warrior and the portrait of a young girl by Rembrandt or his circle. The paintings come from the collection of Count Stanisław Kostka Potocki (1755-1821). On the back of the canvas there is a sticker with the count's seal from 1818-1821 and the inscription in French: "Portrait of a Man and a Woman by Della Vecchia" (Portrait d'un homme et d'une Femme de Della Vecchia). From 1818 Potocki served as president of the Senate of the Kingdom of Poland. He therefore most likely acquired this painting in Poland. The woman closely resembles Lucrezia Maria Strozzi, Princess Radziwill from her effigies by Rembrandt (National Gallery of Art, 1937.1.76 and Minneapolis Institute of Art, 34.19) and from the workshop of Andreas Stech (Museum of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn), all identified by me. In the mentioned paintings by Rembrandt, the princess was depicted in the guise of the Roman heroine and her namesake Lucretia. Lucretia was the daughter of Spurius Lucretius Tricipitinus and the wife of Collatinus of the Tarquin royal family. She was famous for her beauty and even more for her virtue. According to ancient historians, Sextus Tarquinius (Tarquin), one of the sons of the last king of Rome, was captivated by her beauty and, threatening her with a weapon, raped her. This event marked the start of a revolt and led to the overthrow of royal power in Rome and the establishment of the Republic. Throughout the centuries of Roman history, Lucretia was highly revered, representing the archetypal example of female purity and valor and a symbol of bravery unconquered by tyranny. Tarquin became the image of a tyrant or enemy and a symbol of arrogance. In the Wilanów painting, the warrior looks at the woman with desire, while she looks at the viewer. The soldier-Tarquin can therefore be considered as a symbol of the "tyranny" of Lucrezia Maria's stepson. The painting is generally dated to the second half of the 17th century, which is why the princess commissioned this disguised depiction of herself probably during her stay in Venice or Mantua or shortly after her return to Poland-Lithuania (around 1657 or 1661). Della Vecchia probably received her portrait by Rembrandt to prepare this composition and was inspired by the Dutch painter's style. One of Pietro's best works - Saint Mark the Evangelist from the National Art Museum in Kaunas (ČDM Mt 1396) was also created around this time.
Tarquin and Lucretia with portrait of Lucrezia Maria Strozzi (ca. 1621-1694), Princess Radziwill by Pietro della Vecchia, ca. 1654-1661, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
Ecce Homo - Allegory of the fall of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Deluge (1655-1660) by Rembrandt, 1655, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.
Portrait of Marcjan Aleksander Ogiński on horseback by Rembrandt
"They generally killed everyone in Vilna [Vilnius], both men and women" (Ils ont généralement tout tué à Vilna, tant hommes que femmes), reports Pierre des Noyers, secretary to Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga, in a letter dated November 8, 1655, on the destruction of the illustrious capital of Lithuania (after "Lettres de Pierre Des Noyers secrétaire de la reine de Pologne ...", published in 1859, p. 10).
This invasion was certainly one of the worst barbarities in human history and this was only the beginning of the horror caused by foreign imperialism. Death surrounded people everywhere in a destroyed country. Foreign armies and unburied rotting corpses in the streets caused epidemics. It is very meaningful that images of the Dance of Death, an allegory on the universality of death, popular in Western Europe in the Middle Ages after the Black Death (1346-1353), gained popularity in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth after the Deluge - stucco allegories of death in the Chapel of the Good Death in Tarłów, most probably created by Giovanni Pietro Perti and Giovanni Maria Galli after 1662 or Dance of Death by Franciszek Lekszycki at the Bernardine Monastery in Kraków, painted in the 1660s, and a copy in Węgrów Basilica. After the destructive Deluge, the country slowly recovered. It also significantly impoverished. Many people lost their lives and, according to some estimates, the population decreased by 40%, even 90% in some cities, such as Warsaw. Residents could no longer afford to spend on luxury items and paintings abroad (mainly in Italy, Flanders and Germany), with exceptions, which, paradoxically, had a positive impact on local production. The painting workshops of two large economic centers not destroyed during the invasion - Lviv in Ruthenia (Ukraine) and Gdańsk in Polish Prussia (Poland), become the most important. The eminent Gdańsk painter Daniel Schultz, court painter to King John II Casimir, trained in the Netherlands, became the major painter of this period. The apocalyptic memories of the invasion had a great influence on art which became very dark and focused on the vanity of life - "the vanity of vanities, and all things are vanity" (vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas) and "remember that you will die" (memento mori). It was after the Deluge that the Sarmatian tradition of coffin portraiture developed significantly, while the rotting skeleton gradually replaced the effigies of the joyful Venus and the eastern Hodegetria replaced the lascivious western Madonna. As many buildings were made of wood, burned structures completely disappeared in just a few days or months. During more than five years of occupation, the invaders transformed large parts of the country into desert. These horrific events in which an army of united bandits engaged in one of the greatest organized pillages in history, repeated over the following centuries, were forgotten and never strongly condemned in Western Europe. The leaders of this dubious campaign are still glorified by some historians as "extraordinary tacticians" or "great conquerors". After such an apocalypse, everything had to be rebuilt from scratch. It should also be noted that in those cruel times the Poles were not only victims. They were also engaged in controversial military campaigns. One of these notorious military formations was Lisowczycy also known as Straceńcy ("lost men" or "forlorn hope"), an irregular unit of the Polish-Lithuanian light cavalry, formed as a result of semi-legal mutiny of royal forces. As a result of rapes and robberies, Lisowczycy were usually not taken prisoner, but executed on the spot. Already in 1623, their actions in Moravia and Silesia became a subject of dispute between Sigismund III Vasa and his brother-in-law, Emperor Ferdinand II. Brought to fight Gabriel Bethlen (1580-1629), Prince of Transylvania and Duke of Opole, the Lisowczycy started robbing and murdering the inhabitants of local towns and villages. During a private audience with Ferdinand II, Prince Albert Stanislaus Radziwill (1593-1656) responded to the complaints and accusations formulated in the imperial letters sent by his diplomats in Warsaw. In his instructions, Sigismund III described the actions of the Lisowczycy as the "licentiousness of evil people". Severe parliamentary acts were issued regarding the prosecution and imprisonment of them for crimes and robberies in 1623, 1624, 1625, 1629 and 1631. Prince Radziwill and Crown Prince Ladislaus Sigismund Vasa were to present an identical opinion to Archduke Charles of Austria, bishop of Wrocław, who hosted them in Nysa. During the joint journey of the retinues of the Polish-Lithuanian Prince and Archduke Charles to Vienna, there was a danger that Ladislaus Sigismund, Albert Stanislaus Radziwill and Bishop Charles of Austria would be kidnapped by the Lisowczycy. On June 16, 1624, Radziwill wrote: "The news spread, I don't know, from who it comes, about the threats of the Lisowczycy to kidnap the Most Serene Ones" (after "Świat polskich Wazów: eseje", p. 281). The Lisowczycy were formally deprived of the knighthood and dissolved in 1635 by an act of the Sejm, after their return to the Commonwealth (after "Lisowczycy – jeźdźcy apokalipsy ze wschodu" by Piotr Korczyński). "The Polish Rider" by Rembrandt, painted around 1655 (or the 1650s), traditionally known in Polish literature as Lisowczyk (as listed in the Tarnowski collection at Dzików), could not have been part of this notorious formation because it was created 20 years after its formal dissolution. The painting, now at the Frick Collection in New York (oil on canvas, 116.8 × 134.9 cm, inventory number 1910.1.98), comes from the royal collection of the elected monarch of the Commonwealth, Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski. It was listed in the inventory of the king's Palace on the Isle in Warsaw in 1793 as a "Rembrandt Cossack on horseback high 44, width, 54 inches" (Rembrandt Cosaque à cheval haut 44, larg. 54 pouces), because in the 18th century, Cossacks wore such little old-fashioned costumes, with the price of 180 ducats. The Polish-Lithuanian horseman by circle of Anthony van Dyck, painted in the 1620s (Schleissheim Palace, inventory number 4816), is also known as "The Polish Cossack" (Der polnische Kosak). This painting comes from the Düsseldorf Gallery, like the portraits of King Sigismund III and his second wife Constance of Austria (Neuburg Castle, 984 and 985), so it was possibly in the collection of their daughter Anna Catherine Constance Vasa. The painting by Rembrandt was offered to the king in the middle of August 1791 (mediis Augusti 1791) by Michał Kazimierz Ogiński (Mykolas Kazimieras Oginskis), Grand Hetman of Lithuania in exchange for some orange trees: "Sire, I am sending Your Majesty a Cossack, whom Rembrandt had set on his horse. This horse has eaten during his stay with me for 420 German gulden" (Sire, Odsyłam Waszey Królewskiey Mości Kozaka, którego Reinbrand osadził na koniu, zjadł ten koń przez bytność swoją u mnie 420 guldynów niemieckich). Ogiński, as king's envoy, resided in the Hague and in London from August 1790 to March 1791. Based on this, some researchers believe that he purchased the painting abroad, but there is no solid evidence of this. It sometimes seems that they want to maintain the image of a poor and primitive Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (before 1655), inhabited by people incapable of appreciating the quality of a work of art and commissioning an exquisite painting, than admitting that some of their compatriots or allies engaged in truly barbaric activities as invaders, including the looting and destruction of paintings. Michał Kazimierz, a member of a princely family of Ruthenian origin, was also a patron of the arts. Around 1755, he commissioned a series of his effigies from Anna Rosina de Gasc née Lisiewska, a German portrait painter of Polish origin, but only two paintings were preserved - one in Minsk in Belarus and the other in Sanok in Poland. While art historians in England or Italy sometimes have the comfort of determining the identity of the sitter for van Dyck's portrait (or other famous Old Master), simply based on prior ownership of the painting, in Poland's connected artworks such attempts result to sometimes harsh discussions and controversies. Although for some scholars the great Rembrandt could not paint someone from destroyed Poland-Lithuania and the painting is imaginative or depicts someone in eastern costume, the oldest determined ownership (Michał Kazimierz Ogiński before 1791) and the costume indicate that the man comes from the Commonwealth. In 1981 Juliusz Chrościcki proposed Marcjan Aleksander Ogiński (1632-1690) as the sitter ("Rembrandt's „Polish Rider”. Allegory or Portrait?", p. 444) basing on great resemblance of the model and his costume to the portrait formerly at the Wenner-Gren collection in France. This effigy bearing the inscription MO / STR (bottom right), identified as "Marcjan Ogiński / Starost of Trakai", is attributed to Ferdinand Bol, a student of Rembrandt, who painted the portrait of Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga from the collection of Jacques Goudstikker in Amsterdam (sold at Christie's New York, June 3, 2015, lot 15). Marcjan Aleksander, son of Castellan of Trakai Alexander, the last Orthodox senator, studied in Vilnius and Kraków. He was enrolled at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in 1650 and joined the Lithuanian army a year later. At that time also his cousins: the brothers Jan Jacek (1619-1684) and Szymon Karol (ca. 1625-1694) were studying in the Netherlands. The younger, Szymon Karol, who was also proposed as a possible model for Rembrandt's painting, studied at the University of Franeker between 1641-1655 and in 1643 married a Dutch woman Titia Staakman, the daughter of the mayor of Franeker, but soon divorced her (they had a daughter Sophia) and lived in Groningen between 1648-1653. Marcjan Aleksander returned to the Commonwealth during the Deluge and from 1656, under the command of Paul John Sapieha, he participated in the fighting with the army of Transylvania, then in 1657 with the Swedes in Courland. He abandoned Orthodoxy for Catholicism in 1669 (foreign invasions accelerated the creation of the idea that a good Pole, i.e. resident of the Commonwealth, should be Catholic). In 1663, he married a wealthy heiress of the Ruthenian Hlebowicz family - Marcybella Anna (1641-1681), and after her death, on March 4, 1685, he married Konstancja Krystyna Wielopolska (1669-1693), daughter of Chancellor Jan Wielopolski (1630-1688). Marcjan Aleksander died without an heir, so all his properties were inherited by other family members, including Michał Kazimierz's parents. In Alovės in Lithuania, where he died in 1690, there was a medieval castle and a princely manor of which no trace is visible today. As an important notable of the Commonwealth, Lithuanian Steward (1659), Grand Lithuanian Pantler (1661), Grand Lithuanian Carver (1665), voivode of Trakai (1670), Grand Chancellor of Lithuania (1684), he undoubtedly also possessed an important collection of paintings, such as, most likely, the portrait of a man in Roman-style armor, which was later identified as his portrait (National Museum of Art in Kaunas, ČDM Mt 1929). In 1688, Ogiński restored the Protestant church in Rykantai in Lithuania badly damaged during the Deluge and handed it over to the Dominicans of Trakai. The interior of the church is decorated with frescoes. On the wall on both sides of the altar, the full-length portraits of Marcjan Aleksander and his first wife Marcybella Anna are preserved, today barely visible. During the renovation in 1931, the signature and date were revealed: IAN CIANO 1688, identified as the autograph of the painter Jonas Jonavičius (Jan Janowicz). 56 years old Ogiński was depicted in traditional costume - a long żupan and holding his hand on his hip as in Rembrandt's painting. His face closely resembles the effigies by Rembrandt and Bol.
Portrait of Marcjan Aleksander Ogiński (1632-1690) on horseback by Rembrandt, ca. 1655, The Frick Collection.
Portrait of Marcjan Aleksander Ogiński (1632-1690) in a fur hat by Ferdinand Bol, 1650s, Private collection.
Portrait of Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga by Ferdinand Bol
On May 3, 1660, the Peace of Oliva was concluded between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Swedish Empire, ending one of the bloodiest and most destructive wars in Polish history. This treaty is frequently attributed to the ambitious Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga (1611-1667), who personally oversaw the proper preparation of the negotiations and held meetings with the envoys (compare "Odrodzenie i reformacja w Polsce", Volume 45, p. 200). The country surrounded by many absolutist monarchies was an island of so-called "golden liberty" (Aurea Libertas) for the nobility and a "free veto" (liberum veto) that contributed to the ineffectiveness of its parliamentary system. Like Queen Bona in 1530, Marie Louise wished to introduce the election of the king during the lifetime of his predecessor (vivente rege) and she obtained the support of the French court for these projects.
The country was ravaged by a long war. Many people who managed to save their lives lost their life's possessions. But paradoxically, when some lose everything, others become very rich. This war must have also affected many people abroad. For example, the trade in grain and wood imported from Gdańsk was so vital to the Dutch economy that it was called the "mother trade" (moedernegotie) (after "Kopstukken ...", ed. Norbert Middelkoop, p. 104), while Hendrick van Uylenburgh (d. 1661), a relative of Saskia, his son Gerrit (d. 1679), and other merchants exported many luxury goods and art to the Commonwealth. On July 14, 1656, the Amsterdam-based painter Rembrandt was forced to declare bankruptcy (he applied to the High Court in The Hague for cessio bonorum), his house and collections were sold, and at the age of fifty-one, he found himself homeless and penniless. He was stripped, we read, even of his household linen (after "A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery", Volume I, John Ruskin, p. 45). In the same year, Otto van der Waeyen, the son of an Amsterdam-based weapons trader, Dirck van der Waeyen, who had contacts with Poland-Lithuania, was portrayed by Rembrandt's student Ferdinand Bol. This painting, now kept at the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, was signed and dated by the painter (FBol - 1656) and the inventory of Dirck's possessions of July 14, 1670 lists "a portrait of Otto van der Waeyen by Ferdinand Bol" (een conterfeytsel van Otto van der Waeyen door Ferdinand Bol). Later, the family coat of arms was also added at the top right. Trade with the Commonwealth in 1656, when the country desperately needed to defend itself against barbaric invasion, was very lucrative for Otto's father, as young boy, standing among the weapons and cannons, is dressed in a costume of a Polish-Lithuanian nobleman - żupan of gold satin, velvet kolpak hat lined with expensive fur, typical safian leather shoes and holding a nadziak war hammer. The boy was also a nephew of Bol's wife Elisabeth Dell. Bol, like Rembrandt, must have participated in the trade before and after the invasion because many of his paintings found their way to Poland, most probably shortly after their creation, but the lack of painters' names in the preserved inventories and the enormous destruction of the Commonwealth's heritage makes it difficult to prove. For several centuries after the Deluge, the Realm of Venus became one of the greatest battlefields in Europe. Among Ferdinand's paintings, most likely from the collections of the Polish-Lithuanian Vasas, we can cite Jacob's Dream from the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden (oil on canvas, 128.5 x 97cm, Gal.-Nr. 1604, signed bottom right: f. Bol. fecit.), dated around 1642, which was moved from Warsaw by Augustus II before 1722. The king transferred many objects from the royal collections of Poland-Lithuania to Saxony. The provenance of this painting is marked as "From Poland and later from the Royal Chapel" (Aus Polen und später aus der Königl. Capelle.) in Julius Hübner's register from 1862 ("Verzeichniss der Königlichen Gemälde-Gallerie zu Dresden", no. 1267). A painting in the National Museum in Gdańsk depicting the Angel appearing to Hagar in the wilderness is very similar in composition and dimensions, so it may also come from the royal collection (oil on canvas, 115.6 x 97.8 cm, Ml 421 MPS). From the collection of King Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski come two signed portraits by Bol - portrait of an old woman from the 1640s (National Museum in Warsaw, M.Ob.555, earlier 129022, signed: F. Bol) and portrait of Johanna de Geer-Trip with her daughter (M.Ob.556, signed and dated: F.Bol 1661), as well as Repentant Saint Peter, attributed to Bol (Royal Castle in Warsaw, ZKW 3908). At the Wawel Castle in Kraków (2947) there is a portrait of a young man, wearing a feathered cap, painted by workshop of Ferdinand Bol (also considered to be the artist's self-portrait), which comes from the Zamoyski collection. Another very good painting by Bol which may have come from the Polish royal collection is a Man in armour and helmet (also known as Mars) in the National Museum in Warsaw (oil on canvas, 72.5 x 62.5 cm, M.Ob.2544, earlier 34675), purchased in 1935 from the collection of Jan Popławski. It belongs to the category of so-called tronies, a form of genre painting in portrait format, especially since the same man posed for several of such paintings by Rembrandt, like the Man in a turban, so-called "The Noble Slav", painted in 1632 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 20.155.2), and Karel van der Pluym. The sitter was long thought to be Rembrandt's older brother Adriaen. A copy or an original of this composition was in 1909 in the collection of Baroness Wilhelmina Czecz in Kozy (oil on canvas, 109.5 x 83.5 cm, after "Album wystawy mistrzów dawnych" by Mieczysław Treter, 1911, item 110, p. 33). Due to the coat of arms of the Ruthenian Chodkiewicz family, the painting was considered to depict the most famous member of the family Jan Karol Chodkiewicz (died 1621), Grand Hetman of Lithuania. This painting had an inscription at the bottom, cut off during the restoration of the canvas in the mid-19th century and placed on the back: JAN CHODKIEWICZ WOIEWOD KIIOSKI HETMAN [...]. The painting has been in the possession of the Czecz family for 55 years, and was acquired from Stanisław Reychan, who inherited it from his father, painter Alojzy Reichan (1807-1860). The latter allegedly claimed that the painting came from the painting studio in the Warsaw Castle during the reign of Stanislaus Augustus and was a study for a series of portraits of hetmans. This portrait, deposited in the National Museum in Kraków before the Second World War, was considered a copy rather than an original (after "Katalog wystawy obrazów ze zbiorów dr. Jana Popławskiego" by Jan Żarnowski, p. 43) and was lost during the war. It is also worth noting that in a painting by Karel van der Pluym in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (71.84), also identified as an image of the Roman god of war Mars, the helmet resemble those in images of Sarmatian warriors and Jan Karol Chodkiewicz kneeling before the altar of the Virgin Mary from Sacra Lithothesis ("Consecration of the Stone") by Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski, published in Vilnius in 1621 (National Library of Poland, SD XVII.3.9161). His breastplate is medieval and his sword Far Eastern. The oldest confirmed provenance of this painting is the collection of Théophile Thoré-Bürger in Paris in 1869, it is possible that this tronie-like portrait was also produced for the Commonwealth's clients and transferred to France by aristocrats fleeing numerous invasions and wars, like the January Uprising (1863-1864) or the November Uprising (1830-1831), against the Russian Empire. The same goes for the famous Man with the Golden Helmet from Rembrandt's entourage in Berlin (Gemäldegalerie, 811A). The oldest confirmed provenance of this painting is the collection of Clement Augustus of Bavaria (1700-1761), archbishop-elector of Cologne, son of Princess Teresa Kunegunda Sobieska (1676-1730), daughter of the "Victorious King" John III Sobieski, who, like Anna Catherine Constance Vasa, transferred a rich dowry to Bavaria. The collections of Dutch tronies already occupied an important place in the royal and magnate collections of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th century. The Sarmatians of the modern era - nobles from Poland-Lithuania were frequently depicted in exotic, fantastical or ancient costumes, for example in the so-called "Stockholm Roll" (Royal Castle in Warsaw, ZKW/1528/1-39) from around 1605, portraits of Wincenty Aleksander Korwin Gosiewski from around 1650 (Palace on the Isle in Warsaw, ŁKr 136, Wilanów Palace, Wil.1135) or portrait of Aleksander Jan Jabłonowski on horseback, painted after 1697 (Wawel Royal Castle, 8425). In 2015, a very fine portrait by Ferdinand Bol was sold in New York (oil on canvas, 126.5 x 102 cm, Christie's, June 3, 2015, lot 15). Before 1902 it was in the Westenberg collection in Amsterdam and later in the collection of Jacques Goudstikker in Amsterdam. In 1940, during World War II, the painting was confiscated by the German Nazis for the so-called Führermuseum in Linz. This portrait has been identified as depicting Marie Louise Gonzaga, second wife of Ladislaus IV, who later married his brother John Casimir, listed in the 1945 restitution file as "Portrait of Maria of Gonzaga". During her trip from Paris to Warsaw between 1645 and 1646, the queen stayed in Amsterdam and Utrecht. On December 30, 1645, a play by Jan Vos "Aran and Titus" was performed in Amsterdam for the queen who was visiting the city with Frederick Henry of Orange. Her features and noble demeanor seem to confirm that this is indeed the portrait of the Queen of Poland. However the style of this painting seems to be later than 1645-1646, closer to the Mars in Warsaw which is generally dated to the end of the 1650s or to the portrait of Johanna de Geer-Trip dated '1661', when the influences of the French or Flemish school of painting become more visible in the work of Bol, and much less that of Rembrandt. Thus, in recent catalogs this identification has been questioned because the painter and the queen could not meet according to known sources and the painting was sold as "Portrait of a lady, traditionally identified as Maria Louise Gonzaga". In Albertina in Vienna (9938), there is a drawing with a portrait of the queen, which resembles most of her effigies. It closely resembles the portrait of Marie Louise made by Claude Mellan in 1645 in Paris (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 53.601.285). Her face is almost identical to that in Bol's painting. The Vienna drawing is signed: P van Schuppen. faciebat. / .1656., indicating that it was made by the Flemish painter and engraver Pieter van Schuppen (1627-1702), who left Antwerp and settled in Paris in 1655. Thus, the effigy could be copied from Mellan's print or another effigy. Many effigies of the queen attributed to Justus van Egmont were created long after her departure for Poland, such as the portrait in the Royal Castle in Warsaw (ZKW 2283), generally dated to around 1650. In 1650, Marie Louise commissioned a large portrait of herself and her two husbands from van Egmont in Paris. Therefore, the studies for Bol's portrait could have been sent from Warsaw. The queen's face is also very similar to that seen in a drawing attributed to Claude Mellan, now in the Hermitage Museum (ОР-1814) and is comparable to the portrait of the queen in a green dress at the Suermondt-Ludwig Museum in Aachen, which was probably created in the 1650s. The rich costume and pose indicate that she is a queen. She holds a sword as if holding a scepter. The style of her costume and hairstyle, similar to that of ancient statues of Roman goddesses, confirms that the portrait is an allegory. The sword was a traditional attribute of the ancient goddess of justice and divine law Themis (or Justitia), while the scepter or caduceus was a symbol of Pax, goddess of peace. The two goddesses were frequently depicted embracing, as in the very lesbian painting by Artemisia Gentileschi (Royal Palace of Naples). Thus, by joining the symbols of the two goddesses, the queen represents Pax-Justitia (Peace and Justice). In the second quarter of the 16th century, Diane de Poitiers (1499-1566), favorite of King Henry II of France, was depicted as half-naked Pax (Allegory of Peace) in two paintings by the School of Fontainebleau, most likely Giovanni Capassini (Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence, Collezione Carrand 2064 and Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence, inv. 201) and more than a century later, in 1664, Anne of Austria (1601-1666), dowager queen of France, was represented in the guise of Minerva and his daughter-in-law Maria Theresa of Spain (1638-1683) as Pax in a painting by Simon Renard de Saint-André (Palace of Versailles, MV 6925). Her crimson velvet dress is probably also symbolic and refers to the symbols of Poland. The portrait should therefore be dated to around 1660 or later. The reconstruction of the destroyed palaces in Warsaw began already in 1659, as the design for the trompe-l'oeil decoration in the gallery of the Villa Regia palace in Warsaw by Giovanni Battista Gisleni dates from this time. Gisleni designed the gallery for the queen and it was made between 1665 and 1667. The trompe l'oeil decoration imitated an open loggia with the landscape, and niches decorated with allegorical figures and statues including the Cesi Roma and Hercules Farnese. The portrait by Bol probably also had a pendant showing the queen's husband and was most likely created as part of the series, but this we will probably never know, as after the Deluge also many paintings were destroyed during invasions or fires. The painting may have been a gift for someone in the Netherlands or it may have returned there later from Paris, where John Casimir moved several of his paintings. It is also possible that the painting or its copies never reached Poland. The country's economy, ravaged by five years of pillage and destruction by various invaders, was in a deplorable state. King John Casimir ordered the rich Muscovy crown, which was probably made for his brother's coronation as Tsar of Muscovy, to be melted down for coinage and sold the precious stones, which caused a dispute with parliament because the crown was state property. It is therefore possible that the painting was not paid for and remained in the painter's studio. Interestingly, the pendant could have been kept in the Netherlands. It is an artist's self-portrait of similar composition and dimensions, now in the Rijksmuseum (oil on canvas, 127 x 102 cm, SK-A-42). Bol does not represent himself as a painter but as a wealthy aristocrat or merchant, resting on the statue of Cupid, which symbolizes romantic love. This painting is considered to have been produced on the occasion of his marriage to the wealthy widow Anna van Erckel in 1669, however the accompanying piece is unknown, which suggests that Ferdinand may have repainted the portrait of the King of Poland. John Casimir abdicated in September 1668 and settled in Paris shortly after the death of his wife, who brought peace to the Realm of Venus.
Jacob's Dream by Ferdinand Bol, ca. 1642, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.
Portrait of Otto van der Waeyen in a costume of a Polish-Lithuanian nobleman by Ferdinand Bol, 1656, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.
Portrait of Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga (1611-1667) as Pax-Justitia (Peace and Justice) by Ferdinand Bol, ca. 1660, Private collection.
Portrait of a man in armor and helmet by Ferdinand Bol, ca. 1660, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of a man in armor and helmet with Chodkiewicz coat of arms by Ferdinand Bol, Karel van der Pluym or follower, after 1660, National Museum in Kraków, lost.
Portraits of Katarzyna Sobieska and Louise Charlotte of Brandenburg by Justus van Egmont or workshop
At the end of February 1650 in Lviv, Katarzyna Sobieska (1634-1694), sister of Jan Sobieski (1629-1696), future king and daughter of Jakub Sobieski (1591-1646), voivode of Ruthenia, married a fabulously rich Ruthenian Prince Vladislav Dominik Zaslavsky-Ostrogsky (d. 1656), also known as Władysław Dominik Zasławski-Ostrogski in Polish, who was almost 20 years older than the bride and widowed. The parents prepared Katarzyna for monastic life, which was prevented by the death of her father in 1646. Her mother, Zofia Teofila Sobieska née Daniłowiczówna (1607-1661), decided to marry Katarzyna, despite the protests of her daughter who was in love with Prince Dmytro Yury Vyshnevetsky (1631-1682). Dmytro Yury later married Katarzyna's daughter Teofila Ludwika (1654-1709). The marriage took place in an atmosphere of public scandal, since Sobieska gave birth to a son on March 6 of the same year - Aleksander Janusz Zasławski-Ostrogski (1650-1673), considered the son of Dmytro Yury.
Katarzyna's husband was famous for his lavish lifestyle, but only a few vestiges of his splendid patronage have survived, including the famous portrait painted by Bartholomeus Strobel in 1635, depicting the prince in rich French costume, today at Wilanów Palace (Wil.1654) and full-length version at the National Art Museum of Belarus in Minsk (ЗЖ-106). Similar magnificent portraits of the prince's wives Zofia Prudencjana Ligęzianka (d. 1649) and Katarzyna Sobieska must have existed. Portraits of Zofia Prudencjana are not known and all known effigies of Katarzyna were created after the Deluge, as her costume indicates. After her husband's death in 1656, Katarzyna married for the second time in July 1658 in Lviv to Michael Casimir Radziwill (1635-1680). They probably met in March 1658 in Warsaw, during the marriage of Jan "Sobiepan" Zamoyski (1627-1665) and Marie Casimire de La Grange d'Arquien (1641-1716) or in Bardejov in Slovakia, where she took refuge with her minor children during the Deluge. At that time, her second husband was engaged in battles for the liberation of territories conquered by Russian troops, the reconstruction of his estates and his career at court. Due to the military devastation, he obtained exemption from taxes and customs for four years from the king. In 1661 he received 3,000 livres from the French treasury. Michael Casimir soon became castellan of Vilnius (1661), voivode of Vilnius (1667), Deputy Chancellor of Lithuania and Field Hetman of Lithuania (1668). Since then, Katarzyna's fate has been closely linked with the public activities of her husband and brother. The Deluge was also a turning point in the career of the young Jan Sobieski, future king, educated with his older brother Marek (1628-1652) in France and the Netherlands. In the first phase of the invasion, he betrayed John Casimir and sided with the Brigand of Europe, which is one of the most controversial parts of the biography of the Victorious King or the Lion of Lechistan, as he was later called, attributed to "errors of youth". On March 24, 1656, he left the Swedish ranks and entered the army of Stefan Czarniecki. In response, Charles X Gustav ordered portraits and plaques bearing the names of Sobieski and other commanders to be hung on the gallows. Thus, around 1656, portraits of young Sobieski and other nobles must have been numerous, since they were hanged in effigy (in effigie, one such execution of traitors to the Commonwealth in 1794 was depicted in a painting now in the National Museum in Warsaw, MP 4881 MNW). On May 26, the king John II Casimir promoted him to the position of grand standard-bearer of the crown and he was given command of a Tartar auxiliary corps led by Subkhan Gasi aga. Sobieski's mother, Zofia Teofila, after tragic death of Marek during the Batoh massacre in June 1652 went on a pilgrimage to Italy (March 1653), visiting sanctuaries in the north of the peninsula. She stayed there for over five years, until 1658, possibly with breaks and probably visted Naples. She also had to visit Rome, an almost obligatory point of visit for any pilgrimage to Italy. Zofia Teofila was known for her strong, even masculine character. Full of energy and entrepreneurship, she helped her husband manage the immense estate. During her husband's absence, and then after his death, Zofia Teofila ruled the city of Zhovkva and all domains with an iron fist (after "Teofila Sobieska ..." by Hanna Widacka). She died on November 27, 1661 in Zhovkva. Her magnificent portrait, kept before the Second World War in the Church of St. Lawrence in Zhovkva, was probably painted in Italy. It depicted her in mourning after the death of her son and holding a rosary. The style of this painting is comparable to paintings attributed to Carlo Francesco Nuvolone (1608/1609-1661/1662), an Italian painter born in Milan and active mainly in Lombardy, notably the portrait of Giulia Bonfanti and pendant portrait of her husband Carlo Beccaria (Galleria nazionale di Parma, GN 1112, GN 1113). However, the authorship cannot be stated with greater certainty, as the portrait is only known from a photograph taken by Edward Trzemeski (1843-1905) in Lviv in 1880. It is also unclear whether Trzemeski photographed the original painting or a copy made by Jan Maszkowski (1794 -1865) or his son Marceli (1837-1862) for the Lubomirski Museum in Lviv (compare "Katalog muzeum imienia Lubomirskich ..." by Edward Pawlowicz, item 372, p. 141 and "Jan Sobieski ..." by Józef Łoski, p. 3r). After completing his studies in Poland, in 1667 Katarzyna's son Aleksander Janusz, heir to the enormous estates of Władysław Dominik (although not his biological son), undertook a customary educational trip abroad, to Germany, the Netherlands, France and Italy. From the Spanish Netherlands, where he went to Antwerp and Brussels, on September 20, the Prince and his retinue continued their journey to Paris. In 1669, the 19-year-old Prince returned to his homeland, where he took part in the royal election and was considered one of the candidates for the crown (as related to the Jagiellon dynasty). His beautiful portrait in French costume, attributed to Andreas Stech, now kept in the National Art Museum of Belarus (ЗЖ-129), is dated around 1670. Although his mother's stay in France is not confirmed in sources, she is frequently credited with the saying "Good France, glorious Spain, happy Italy, rich Germany, but Poland is my favorite" (Dobra Francja, chwalebna Hiszpania, wesołe Włochy, bogate Niemcy, ale mi najmilsza Polska). In the early 1670s, she renovated the Radziwills' main residence in Biała Podlaska and the local parish church, which were looted and badly damaged by Transilvanian forces in 1657 and especially by Russian troops in 1660. In 1675, Princess paid Stefan Florian Paszkowski 400 zlotys for the frescoes in the palace (after "Katarzyna z Sobieskich ...", part III, by Jerzy Flisiński). In the second half of the 17th century, the fashion for portraits of French dames de qualité spread in Europe. Such portraits, comparable to the effigies of the so-called Bellezze di Artimino in Palazzo Pitti from the early 17th century, were frequently acquired as models for the new Parisian fashion. They represented aristocratic ladies of the kingdom of France, usually educated women, but also 17th century celebrities, known for their position at the French court or for scandals. The 1661 inventory of the Lubomirski collection in Wiśnicz lists several such portraits of French and Italian ladies that survived the Deluge (section "Portraits" - Konterfety). Likewise the 1671 inventory of Princess Louise Charlotte Radziwill (1667-1695) - items 308-312, including the Queen of Spain and the Empress most probably in French costumes (Reine d'Espagnie, L'Emipératrice), preceded by two portraits of Alexandra, daughter of the Prince of Wallachia (296, 305), "Half-naked lady in sable coat" (Dama wpół naga w sobolach, 297), perhaps by Titian, portrait of Duchess of Courland (300), two portraits of ladies in French-style dresses decorated with pearls (301-302), Electress of Brandenburg (304), most probably Louise Henriette of Nassau (1627-1667) and Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga (307) (compare "Inwentarz galerii obrazów Radziwiłłów z XVII w." by Teresa Sulerzyska). The 1667 inventory of the possessions of King John II Casimir includes 13 portraits of the French royal family, including the king (Louis XIV), queen mother (Anne of Austria) and king's wife (Maria Theresa of Spain) as well as 10 unspecified French ladies (dames de France) (after "Ludwika Maria ..." by Bożena Fabiani, p. 224). Several such portraits of French ladies, attributed to school of Pierre Mignard, which probably decorated the Queen's Mirror Cabinet and the King's Cabinet next to the Chinese rooms, and once the upper rooms of Queen Marysieńka (Marie Casimire), preserved in the Wilanów Palace (Wil.1284, Wil.1285, Wil.1289, Wil.1290, Wil.1291, Wil.1292, Wil.1293, Wil.1297, Wil.1298, Wil.1300). After her marriage to Radziwill, Katarzyna Sobieska was one of the richest women in the country, mother and wife of owners of large estates in Lithuania and Ruthenia, so her portrait should be considered an obligatory position in the cycle depicting dames de qualité of the Commonwealth. Interestingly, there is no portrait of the king's sister in the Wilanów Palace inventory, made after John III's death in 1696. It lists, however, portraits of Queen Eleonora Maria Josepha of Austria "in white robe" (w białłej Szacie, no. 287), the Queen of France "behind the glass" (za Szkłem, no. 37), the Queen of England "undressed" (bez Stroju, no. 289), the Queen of Sweden in "old-fashioned costume with ruffs" (wstaroswieckim Stroju z kryzami, no. 288) or even the Queen of Scotland (Reginae Scottorum, no. 296), most probably Mary Stuart (compare "Inwentarz Generalny 1696 z opracowaniem" by Anna Kwiatkowska). The mentioned paintings from the school of Pierre Mignard were not also mentioned, so they could be transferred from other royal residences in the 18th century. Wilanów or Villa Nova was a suburban leisure residence, it was therefore filled with less formal effigies unlike other state residences, such as the Royal Castle, also being the seat of parliament. It is therefore possible that Katarzyna's effigy was "hidden" in disguise, for example in the painting of her patroness Saint Catherine "in gilded frames" in the Queen's Study (Obraz Swiętey Katarzyny w ramach złocistych, no. 40). In the second half of the 17th century, portraits in guise of Christian saints were still very popular, as evidenced by portraits with attributes of Saint Catherine depicting Anne Marie Martinozzi (1637-1672), niece of Cardinal Mazarin, by follower of Constantijn Netscher (Versailles Enchères, March 30, 2003, lot 20), Barbara Palmer née Villiers (1640-1709), mistresses of King Charles II of England, by follower of Peter Lely (National Portrait Gallery, NPG 387), Catherine of Braganza (1638-1705), Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, by Jacob Huysmans (Hillsborough Castle, RCIN 405880), Catherine of Questenberg (Kateřina z Questenberka) by Jan de Herdt (Jaroměřice nad Rokytnou Castle) and portrait of Marie Mancini (1639-1715), niece of Cardinal Mazarin, as Saint Catherine by workshop of Jacob Ferdinand Voet (Musée de Vendôme). The palace currently houses two interesting portraits depicting ladies dressed in the fashions popular in the 1660s. Not only are their poses and costumes similar, but also the style of the painting, undoubtedly painted by the same painter or his studio. They also have a similar inventory number, indicating that they were listed together and likely come from the same series of effigies. One of them is said to represent Anne of Austria (1601-1666), Queen of France, cousin of King John II Casimir and friend of his wife Marie Louise Gonzaga (oil on canvas, 85 x 67 cm, Wil.1281). It also bears a relevant inscription in French in the upper left corner: Anne de Autriche Reine de France / femme de Louis XIII. It is believed to come from the collection of August and Aleksandra Potocka, acquired before 1877, which does not exclude the provenance from a previous magante or royal collection. A similar (incorrect) inscription is visible on the portrait of Cardinal John Albert Vasa (1612-1634) from the Wilanów collection, identifying the sitter as Cardinal Andrew Bathory (1562-1599) and correctly identified by me in 2013 (Wil.1240). The model's resemblance to effigies of the Queen of France from Polish collections, such as the engraving by Jeremias Falck Polonus after Justus van Egmont (National Museum in Kraków, MNK III-ryc.-13405), full-length portrait from the Monastery of Visitandines, offered by John II Casimir in September 1668, and two portraits from the National Museum in Warsaw (129779 MNW and MP 5274 MNW), identified by me, is very general. The crown placed on a table to the left is ducal or princely (not royal) and similar has been depicted crowning coat of arms of the Radziwill family in two works dedicated to Katarzyna's husband, Michael Casimir Radziwill - Kolęnda, ktorą podczas morowego powietrza w powiecie radomskim w roku 1653 panuiącego ... by Jacek Przetocki, published in Kraków in 1655 (Institute of Literary Research in Warsaw, 11811127) and Aqvila Radiviliana in ardvis investiganda ... by Hyacinthus Rynt, published in Kraków in 1664 (National Library of Poland, SD XVII.4.3545 adl.), as well as in the portrait of Katarzyna Sobieska as a widow, painted around 1680 (private collection of Maciej Radziwiłł, inscription in Latin: CATHARINA DE SOBIESZYN GERMANA İQANNİ / III REG: POL: SOROR ...). The woman in the Wilanów painting bears a close resemblance to Katarzyna from the mentioned portrait as a widow and another portrait from the same collection, identified as depicting Princess Radziwill sitting on a chair. The costume and hairstyle are almost identical to those in the engraving with the portrait of Sobieska by Hirsz Leybowicz, made between 1747 and 1758 after an original portrait from the 1660s. The other portrait represents a slightly older lady (oil on canvas, 73 x 57 cm, Wil.1282). It is said to depict Empress Maria Theresa (1717-1780), which is not possible because the portrait was apparently painted more than half a century before her birth. This effigy bears a striking resemblance to the engraving with the portrait of Louise Charlotte of Brandenburg (1617-1676), Duchess of Courland and Semigallia, a vassal state of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, who was a close friend of Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga. This print was made by André Vaillant (1655-1693), an engraver and painter active in Amsterdam, Paris and Berlin, in 1684, based on an original from the 1660s (National Library of Poland, G.3253). This is a pair (pendant) with the effigy of Duke Jacob Kettler (1610-1682), the husband of Louise Charlotte (G.3131/I). It also resembles the effigy of the duchess at Gripsholm Castle (NMGrh 189), in black dress, perhaps in mourning after the death of the Queen of Poland in 1667. Her contacts with Queen Marie Louise were very cordial as her letters written in French bear witness to this (preserved at the Condé library and archives, Château de Chantilly, Papiers de Gonzague). She frequently expressed concern for the destroyed Commonwealth, ravaged by invaders and internal conflicts, for her duchy and for the royal couple. "My heart is so attached [to you] that if my father [George William (1595-1640), Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia] was still there and committed something against Your Majesties I would never approve of it because I have too much passion and respect for Your Majesties. And I wish when I am dead to carry the title in my coffin with me that until my last breath I was the very humble and dedicated, faithful servant", she wrote to the queen in a letter of April 27 1665 (compare "Zwiastunki pokoju w świecie męskich wojen?" by Igor Kraszewski, p. 171). Like the Queen the Duchess of Courland also commissioned her effigies from the same painter - Justus van Egmont, as evidenced by two portraits, at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna and in a private collection, identified by me. Justus is the author of several beautiful portraits of the queen, several of which were made after the coronation at the Wawel Cathedral in Kraków on July 15, 1646, including probably the effigy in the coronation robes at the Palace of Versailles (oil on canvas, 82 x 65 cm, MV 3461) or the portrait in guise of Juno, queen of the gods and goddess of marriage and childbirth accompanied by her two husbands Ladislaus IV and John Casimir, commissioned in Paris in 1650, most likely destroyed during the Deluge. It is interesting to note that the two described portraits in Wilanów also resemble the style of Justus van Egmont, particularly comparable is the portrait of a lady, known as the Marquise de Montchevreuil, beside a fountain (Sotheby's London, October 29, 2014, lot 447). The portrait of the Brigand of Europe, Charles X Gustav, painted around 1654 as a pair with a portrait of his cousin Queen Christina, depicted as Minerva (Gripsholm Castle, NMGrh 1853), is also attributed to van Egmont, although according to known sources the painter and the king could not meet in person, so the portrait was based on study drawings or other effigies. In 1653, the painter returned to Antwerp with his family, from where he could easily ship his works to the Commonwealth and Courland.
Portrait of Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga (1611-1667) in coronation robes by Justus van Egmont or workshop, after 1645, Palace of Versailles.
Portrait of Zofia Teofila Sobieska née Daniłowiczówna (1607-1661) by Carlo Francesco Nuvolone (?), 1653-1661 or 19th century copy, lost.
Portrait of Katarzyna Sobieska (1634-1694), Princess Radziwill by Justus van Egmont or workshop, ca. 1660-1667, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
Portrait of Louise Charlotte of Brandenburg (1617-1676), Duchess of Courland by Justus van Egmont or workshop, ca. 1660-1667, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
Portrait of a man in a tall hat, probably theologian Andrzej Wiszowaty by Rembrandt
During the Deluge (1655-1660), the multicultural and multireligious federal country joined together through the Union of Lublin of 1569, a European power and an important player on the political scene, the "State of Religious Freedoms" (Warsaw Confederation of 1573), "Granary of Europe", "Paradise of the Jews" (Paradisus Judaeorum), which largely depended on trade with other countries was deeply humiliated by the non-Catholic foreign invaders, who invaded the country from the north, south, east and west, pillaged and destroyed large parts of it.
The Catholic priest Szymon Starowolski (1588-1656) in his "Lamentation of the distressed mother of the Polish Crown" (Lament vtrapioney matki Korony Polskiey ...) declares that the Deluge and the successes of the invaders "are a consequence of the war that the nobility declared against God, the Church and the priests. [...] The main fault was the observance of the Warsaw Confederation, established so that all sects could find refuge in Poland and everyone could blaspheme the name of the Lord as he pleases and force their subjects to do so. Starowolski was echoed by an unnamed poet, writing: All these people blaspheme the Most Holy Trinity, how can you not punish us, O righteous God" (after "Przyczyny wygnania arian ..." by Leszek Bober). Additionally, prominent members of the country's Protestant communities sided with the invaders. Under these circumstances, in 1658 the Sejm had adopted a constitution expelling the Polish Brethren (also known as Arians or Socinians) from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Act of Parliament gave them a choice: conversion or confiscation of property and exile from the country (within 3 years). The Socinian theologian and nobleman of the Pierzchała coat of arms Andrzej Wiszowaty (1608-1678), known in Latin as Andreas Wissowatius, made a last attempt to save the Arians. From March 11 to 16, 1660, a famous public theological dispute (Colloquium Charitativum) between representatives of the Polish Brethren and the clergy of the Catholic Church took place at the castle of castellan Jan Wielopolski (d. 1668) in Rożnów. The meeting came to nothing, but the castellan, impressed by Wiszowaty's intelligence, suggested that he stay in a country that needs educated people. In exchange for his conversion to the Catholic religion, he offered the theologian the village of Gródek. He refused, saying it was better to lose "all property and civic honor than good conscience" (after "Reformacja w Polsce" by Henryk Barycz, Volume 1, p. 202). On July 10, 1660, he left Poland. Wiszowaty and his family went first to Habsburg Silesia, then to Unitarian friends in Transylvania. From 1663 he stayed in Mannheim and Heidelberg. When he was banned from teaching in the Palatinate, he chose Amsterdam as his permanent place of residence (1666). Andrzej was the grandson of the founder of Socinianism in Poland, the Italian humanist Fausto Paolo Sozzini (1539-1604). At the age of eleven he was sent to the Academy in the Socinian town of Raków. He left the Academy in 1629, then traveled extensively in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and England. From June 1632 he studied theology and philosophy for several years in Leiden, Netherlands. He soon settled in Amsterdam. There he met and befriended Krzysztof Arciszewski (1592-1656), an Arian, traveler and soldier famous in Europe. In Paris, Wiszowaty met the thinkers Marin Mersenne, Pierre Gassendi and Hugo Grotius and perhaps René Descartes. In 1637 he returned to Poland. In 1638, under the pretext of insulting Catholicism, the school in Raków was demolished, the church closed and the teachers and students expelled. Outraged by this event, Wiszowaty went to Warsaw in 1639, where he gave a speech in favor of the Raków doctrine before the Chamber of Deputies. In 1640 he undertook another journey across Europe as teacher of Andrzej Suchodolski. He visited Germany, the Netherlands and France. After his return, in 1642, the Arian synod entrusted him with the post of minister of the Arian congregation in Piaski, which belonged to the Suchodolski family. He died in Amsterdam on July 29, 1678. At the National Gallery of Art in Washington is a portrait of a man in a tall hat, attributed to Rembrandt and dated variably around 1663 or between 1660-1665 (oil on canvas, 121.3 x 94 cm, 1942.9.69). According to "A Catalogue of pictures at Canford Manor in the possession of Lord Wimborne", published in 1888 (p. 62, item 153), the painting came from the collection of the last elected monarch of the Commonwealth Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski (1732-1798) and after "the dispersion of his celebrated Collection it came into the hands of M. Noe, a well-known picture-dealer at Munich". As a descendant of Izabela Elżbieta Morsztyn (1671-1758), Poniatowski was a distant relative of Wiszowaty, whose grandmother was Elżbieta Morsztyn (d. 1587). Although the king is renowned for attempting to create national collection of paintings, it is worth remembering that before his election he probably also owned paintings, which were rather his private possessions. Men dressed in similar tall hats were depicted in a series of paintings which decorated the ceiling in one of the rooms of the Wielopolski Palace in Kraków. Stanisław Tomkowicz, in his 1918 publication on the palace ("Pałac Wielopolskich w Krakowie ...", p. 4, 18, 20, 23), compared the building, which today houses the City Council, to Palazzo Venezia, a grand early Renaissance palace in the center of Rome (seat of the Venetian embassy from 1564). This sumptuous palace was built in 1535-1560 for hetman Jan Amor Tarnowski (1488-1561), who undoubtedly also decorated it in the Venetian or Italian style, but the building was partially destroyed during the Deluge - in 1655 the palace served the Swedes as a position for cannons shelling Wawel. From 1667 until the middle of the 19th century, the palace remained in the hands of the Wielopolski family. Mentioned Jan Wielopolski, who probably acquired the palace when he became viovode of Kraków in 1667, and his son, also Jan (1630-1688), renovated the palace, which contained "respectable antiquities" and "historical paintings" and a room on the first floor, where there were family portraits and paintings from the 17th century. The ceiling of the first floor hall was the only one of several that survived until around 1813, when it was redrawn for Stanisław Zamoyski by Jan Nepomucen Żyliński (d. 1838). The drawing, kept in the Zamoyski Library in Warsaw, was probably destroyed during World War II. The original ceiling was destroyed when the palace burned down in the great fire of Kraków in 1850. According to Stanisław Zamoyski's description of drawing, the ceiling was painted in oil on wood and depicted a Polish-Lithuanian embassy to Vienna in 1669 to negotiate the marriage of Archduchess Eleonora Maria Josepha of Austria (1653-1697) to King Michael I. Tomkowicz claimed that the painter could have belonged to the Dutch school of the 17th century. In 1663 some paintings in the Venetian style gilded ceiling of the Koniecpolski Castle in Pidhirtsi near Lviv in western Ukraine were replaced with works signed by Jan de Baan, most probably commissioned in the workshop of a Dutch painter Jan de Baen (1633-1702), a pupil of Jacob Adriaensz Backer in Amsterdam. It is possible that the ceilings of the Wielopolski Palace were also painted in Amsterdam. Since members of official Polish-Lithuanian legation wore such costumes in the 1660s, the same was undoubtedly the case for a philosopher trained abroad, mainly in the Netherlands. After 1650, Lambert Visscher, perhaps a student of Pieter Soutman and active in Amsterdam between 1666 and 1673, created a series of engravings depicting notable Polish Socinians, such as Fausto Paolo Sozzini, Jonasz Szlichtyng (1592-1661) or Stanisław Lubieniecki (1623-1675). The costume of a man in Rembrandt's painting is comparable to that in Lubieniecki's effigy, while his facial features resemble those of Wiszowaty's grandfather - Sozzini. The 1671 inventory of the collection of the Calvinist branch of the Radziwill family provides valuable insight into the state of the painting collections just a few years after the Deluge. It confirms that the magnates' collections included paintings of local and foreign notables or important diplomats, but in many cases the exact identity of the sitter was forgotten and sometimes even the paintings were unintentionally damaged due to poor storage conditions, mainly due to the need to evacuate the collections: "The present French king [Louis XIV] when young" (30/10), "An image of a priest wearing lynxes" (49/9), "Some Metropolitan bishop" (50/10), "Cecilia Renata, Queen of Poland, her legs are rotten" (61/1), "A painting of the deceased from the house of the Princes their Lordships" (95/14), "King of England" (126/2), "Some bishop" (154/5), "A bishop sitting in a chair" (155/6), "A Ruthenian man in German costume holding a mace" (165/16), "Gray-hair person, hetman and marshal" (193/19), "An old painting of some king" (194/20), "An old painting of a king with an eagle" (195/21), "Some Cossack hetman" (259/10), "Some cardinal" (260/11), "Hospodar of Wallachia" (261/12), "Person with a long beard, in black, inscription An° 1553 etatis 47" (753/14) (compare "Inwentarz galerii obrazów Radziwiłłów z XVII w." by Teresa Sulerzyska). Catholic magnates therefore undoubtedly also possessed numerous paintings representing famous Socinians.
Portrait of a man in a tall hat, probably theologian Andrzej Wiszowaty (1608-1678), by Rembrandt, ca. 1660-1666, National Gallery of Art in Washington.
An audience from the ceiling of the Wielopolski Palace in Kraków by Jan Nepomucen Żyliński after the Dutch painter (?), ca. 1813 after the original from around 1670, Zamoyski Library in Warsaw, lost.
Portrait of the family of John Charles Kopec by Rembrandt
John Charles Kopec (died 1681), known as Jan Karol Kopeć in Polish or Joannes Carolus Kopec in Latin, son of Vasil Vasilevich Kopec (1575-1636) and Barbara Chodkiewicz, was probably one of the most notable representatives of the Ruthenian Kopec family, originating most likely from the Smolensk boyars. He was probably born in Warsaw and educated at the Nowodworski College in Kraków. In 1636 he enrolled at the Kraków Academy and in 1641, like his father in 1593, he studied at the University of Padua. Later he was a deputy of the Brest-Litovsk voivodeship to the election sejm of 1648 and in 1650 he was a courtier of the royal household (dworzanin pokojowy królewski). During the Deluge, as a loyal supporter of the king, he was rewarded with the post of Lithuanian steward and voivode of Polotsk (Palatinus Polocensis) in 1658.
In the same year, or early 1659, he married Lucrezia Maria Strozzi (ca. 1621-1694), widow of the Polotsk voivode Alexander Louis Radziwill (1594-1654). The couple had two daughters: Frances, known in Polish as Franciszka Kopciówna, born in 1659 in Warsaw and died in 1690 in Kodeń (mentioned as Francisca, Caroli Kopec Castellani Trocensis Filia, cuius Mater ex Ducali Prosapia Marchionissa de Strozzi in "Historia Przezacnego Obrazu Kodenskiego", published in 1720), who married Casimir Vladislav Sapieha (1650-1703), voivode of Trakai, and Anna, probably born in 1661, who first married Stanisław Karol Łużecki (d. 1686), voivode of Podolia, and then Konstantin Yan Shuisky (d. 1695), Grand Scribe of Lithuania. Both are mentioned in documents concerning their parents' inheritance in 1694, which they divided between them (compare "Kniaziowie litewsko-ruscy ..." by Józef Wolff, p. 527). In 1662, John Charles founded a wooden Catholic church at Haradzishcha near Pinsk in Belarus, dedicated to Saint Anne (probably to commemorate the birth of his second daughter) and the monastery for Benedictine monks, whom he brought from Monte Cassino, and which he richly endowed. The family, associated with the Pinsk region, converted from Orthodoxy to Catholicism in the 17th century and John Charles was one of the first Catholic representatives. In 1629, his father and grandmother Apolonia Wołłowicz founded the Orthodox monastery in Kupyatichi near Pinsk (compare "Czar Polesia" by Grzegorz Rąkowski, p. 242). In 1659, Kopec personally went to Monte Cassino to request a foundation in his estates. He also built a wooden palace for his wife in Haradzishcha. Samuel Straszkiewicz dedicated to Kopec his Decas qvaestionvm ex vniversa theologia, published in 1672 in Vilnius. In the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Brunswick there is a "Portrait of a family" by Rembrandt, signed by the artist on the basket held by a young servant (oil on canvas, 126 x 167 cm, GG 238, signed: Rembrandt. f.). The painting is dated by experts to around 1665, thus coming from the period of maturity and the final years of the artist with neo-Venetian (more precisely Titianesque) tendencies clearly visible. Assuming that Titian's works filled many residences in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth before the Deluge, such a style would be particularly favorable to patrons from Poland-Lithuania during post-war reconstruction. The painting comes from the collections of the Dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg and the Princes of Wolfenbüttel. It was first documented in the inventory of the Salzdahlum gallery catalogued by Anton Friedrich Harms between 1737 and 1744 (after "Welfen und Porträt ...", ed. Klaus Niehr, Silvia Schmitt-Maass, p. 133). The costumes of the man and woman are unusual for the Netherlands of the 1660s, indicating that they were foreigners (compare - portrait of Meyndert Sonck with his wife and children by Jan Albertsz Rotius, painted in 1662, Mayer van den Bergh Museum, MMB.0138). The man wears a collarless black outfit, most likely an eastern kaftan or czekman, like the black outfit of Kristupas Zaviša (1578-1670), Grand Marshal of Lithuania in his 1667 portrait (National Museum of Art in Kaunas, ČDM Mt 1900). Underneath, the man wears a crimson żupan as indicated by the sleeve of his robe. The woman's headdress, or toque, is reminiscent of the Italian balzo of the second quarter of the 16th century, popularized in Poland-Lithuania by Queen Bona Sforza, while her costume is similar to that of Teodora Krystyna Sapieżyna née Tarnowska (1625-1652) from her portrait by Franciszek Wincenty Charliński, painted in 1775 after the original from the 1640s (Wawel Royal Castle, 8690) and the dresses of the ladies from the Finding of the Cross by Tomasz Muszyński, painted between 1654 and 1658 (Dominican Church in Lublin). The same woman, in a similar pose, was also depicted in another painting by Rembandt, identified as portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels, Rembrandt's longtime partner, or Magdalena van Loo, a strangely happy widow of Rembrandt's son Titus (died in 1668 just a few months after the marriage). The woman wears a "fantastic costume", which resembles Spanish dresses from the mid-16th century. This painting, now in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (oil on canvas, 56.3 x 48 cm, inv. 1949.1006), comes from the Duke of Hamilton's collection at Hamilton Palace, Scotland, first documented in 1836. The woman closely resembles Kopec's wife - Lucrezia Maria Strozzi, who after marriage was known in Polish as Lukrecja Kopciowa, according to an engraving with her effigy from Icones familiæ ducalis Radivilianæ, made before 1758, as well as from her painted portraits identified by me, such as that by Pietro della Vecchia (Wilanów Palace, Wil.1346) and Rembrandt (Minneapolis Institute of Art, 34.19). The appearance of two children corresponds to the ages of Kopec's daughters around 1663 (four and two years respectively), therefore close to the date proposed for the execution of the painting. It has also been suggested that the youngest child is a boy, but a child wearing a similar costume in a painting by circle of Daniel Mytens or Anthony van Dyck (Sotheby's London, October 27, 2010, lot 16) is identified as Henriette Marie (1626 -1651), daughter of Elizabeth Stuart (1596-1662), Queen of Bohemia. The portrait of Johanna de Geer (1629-1691) with her daughter Cecilia Trip (1660-1728) by Rembrandt's student Ferdinand Bol, painted in 1661 (National Museum in Warsaw, M.Ob.556 MNW), from from the collection of the last elected monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski in Warsaw, shows another similar girl's costume. Interestingly, about three years later, around 1664, Johanna was depicted with her children in another painting by Bol, represented as Caritas and resembling images of the Madonna and Child (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, SK-A- 45). Moreover, in the family portraits, such as the mentioned portrait by Rotius or in the family portrait by Cornelis de Vos from 1631 (Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, 815), girls generally emphasized attachment to the mother and boys to the father, especially in the case of a single male heir, as would be the case here if the child were a boy. The man in Rembrandt's painting is holding a red flower, probably a carnation, a symbol of love for his wife and daughters. According to Bożena Fabiani, the two little children are the daughters of the couple and the third girl, who is holding a basket of flowers, is a dwarf - very popular as courtiers at the courts of the Polish-Lithuanian magnates since the time of Queen Bona (compare "Niziołki, łokietki, karlikowie ...", Niezła Sztuka). Her rich costume, similar to that of the other girls, suggests that she was treated as a member of the family. All of the factors listed allow the family to be identified as that of the voivode of Polotsk, who, although probably never visited the Netherlands, could have commissioned such a painting through Dutch agents in Gdańsk, who also prepared the initial drawings.
Portrait of the family of John Charles Kopec (died 1681), voivode of Polotsk with a dwarf by Rembrandt, ca. 1663, Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Brunswick.
Portrait of Lucrezia Maria Strozzi (ca. 1621-1694) in black dress by Rembrandt, ca. 1663, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
Pilate washing his hands by Mattia Preti
In the summer of 1663, the new grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire Köprülü Fazıl Ahmet (1635-1676), commanding an army of approximately 100,000 men, conquered the fortress of Nové Zámky in Slovakia, then part of the Kingdom of Hungary during the reign of Emperor Leopold I, relative of King John II Casimir Vasa.
The commander-in-chief of the emperor's army, Count Raimondo Montecuccoli (1609-1680), who in 1657 took part in the Habsburg expedition to support Poland-Lithuania during the Deluge, had under his command only 12,000 Austrian regular soldiers, to which were added the 15,000 Croats and Hungarians under the orders of Nikola Zrinski (1620-1664). Faced with this numerical inferiority of his troops, Emperor Leopold I, during the winter of 1663, asked for help from the German princes and from all of Europe. The Protestant electors of Brandenburg and Saxony and even Louis XIV of France, who opposed the Habsburg rule, sent an army in support. The emperor also called on Poland-Lithuania to aid Austria in return for helping to repel the invasion during the Deluge. "The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was in 1660 engaged in the expanding war with the Cossacks and Russia in Ukraine. It was also a period when the leaders of the pro-French party loudly demanded reforms and did not hesitate to use intrigues to achieve their political goals, including demands for foreign intervention. It was no coincidence that John Casimir, a supporter of the reform party, called in 1663 Tatars - vassals of their ally Turkey - to help break the internal opposition, strengthened by the transfer of the Crown Marshal and Field Hetman Lubomirski to the side of the pro-Austrian party. Turkey demanded aid in the war against Austria in return. Then John Casimir not only refused to help Austria, but also agreed to send in 1663 20,000 Cossacks, loyal to Pavlo Teteria, the pro-Polish ataman of right-bank Ukraine, to take part in the expedition to Nové Zámky alongside the Turks and Tatars. These Cossacks participated in the capture of Nové Zámky and, together with the Tatars, terribly devastated half of Moravia. They also contributed to the public opinion of the defeated countries regarding Poles as Turkish agents" (after "Nieznany list Jana Sobieskiego z 1672 r." by Vaclav Štěpan and Barbara Leszczyńska, p. 362). Although the enormous destruction of the country by the Christian invaders during the Deluge seems to have gone unnoticed in Italy, this betrayal of the Christian cause, as some may think, is reflected in one painting. It is a scene from the New Testament - Pilate washing his hands, painted by Italian painter Mattia Preti (1613-1699), called Il cavaliere calabrese (the Calabrian knight) after his appointment as a Knight of the Order of Saint John (Knights of Malta) in 1660. From 1661 the artist was permanently in Malta and the painting was probably offered for sale by the artist in two letters dated September 23 and December 11, 1663 to Don Antonio Ruffo (1610/11-1678), Prince of Scaletta, a notable Sicilian collector, living in Messina during the reign of the Spanish Habsburgs. "I have made a painting of 9 x 7 palmi, where there is a Pilate who washes his hands of the death of Christ with many figures" (mi ritrovo fatto un quadro di palmi nove e 7, donde ci è un Pilato che si lava le mani della morte di nostro sig.re con molte figure), wrote the painter (compare Catolgue Entry by Melissa Yuen). The painting comes from the Ferrara collection in Naples, now kept at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (oil on canvas, 206.1 x 184.8 cm, 1978.402). The scene, believed to be inspired by the works of the Venetian painter Paolo Veronese, is unusual, as the main character is Pontius Pilate washing his hands, looking meaningfully at the viewer, and the Christ brought for his death is only slightly visible in the background. Another intriguing and significant element of the composition is the young African servant, generally associated with Turquerie and Orientalism in European art, thus representing Muslim culture. However, the most important and significant element of the scene is the costume. Pilate, washing his hands of guilt for Jesus's death, wears a typical costume of a Polish-Lithuanian nobleman - a fur kolpak hat and fur-lined coat, similar to those seen in a print depicting a noble couple of the Commonwealth in Description de l'univers by Alain Manesson Mallet (1683), engraved portrait of King John III Sobieski (1629-1696) by Nicolas de Larmessin (1684) and engraved portrait of the Commonwealth's Ambassador to Brussels Józef Bogusław Sluszka by Henri Bonnart after Robert Bonnart (1695). Preti must have been familiar with these costumes, as the Sarmatians frequently traveled to Italy in their traditional attire and his Diogenes from a 1649 painting in the Capitoline Museums in Rome (oil on canvas, 151 x 101 cm, PC 225), also wears it. Although he may have forgotten it a bit in Malta, because the blue color of the hat's fur is rather unusual (people from impoverished Poland-Lithuania, after devastation during the Deluge, apparently traveled much less than before 1655). Additionally, in the hot climate of southern Italy and Malta, Sarmatians obviously rarely wore their warm hats, so this anomaly probably even went unnoticed by the person who commissioned the painting. In the 17th century, religious scenes were still used to convey other meanings and in politics.
Diogenes and Plato with a man dressed in a costume of a Polish-Lithuanian nobleman, by Mattia Preti, 1649, Capitoline Museums in Rome.
Pilate washing his hands, dressed in a costume of a Polish-Lithuanian nobleman, by Mattia Preti, ca. 1663, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Portraits of Lucrezia Maria Strozzi, Princess Radziwill by Rembrandt and workshop of Andreas Stech
"REMBRANDT VAN RYN. 319. A person holding a dagger in her right hand and a cord with a knob in her left hand, as if she wanted to ring. Painted on canvas. Height: elbow: 1, inch 19, width: elbow: 1, inch 12." (REMBRANDT VAN RYN. 319. Osoba trzymająca w prawej ręce sztylet, a w lewej sznur z kutasem, jakoby dzwonic chciała. Mal. na płótnie. Wys: łok: 1, cali 19, szer. łok: 1, cali 12.), it is the most accurate and the oldest known description of a painting by Rembrandt entitled "Lucretia" and created in 1666 (signed and dated: Rembrandt / f. 1666), today in the Minneapolis Institute of Art (oil on canvas, 110.2 x 92.3 cm, 34.19). It was published in 1835 in the "Catalogue of picture gallery of famous masters from various schools collected by the late Michał Hieronim, Prince Radziwill, voivode of Vilnius now exhibited in Królikarnia near Warsaw", created by painter Antoni Blank. Radziwill assembled his collection of paintings in his palace in Nieborów near Łódź. The collection included such works of art like the Annunciation by Hans Memling, today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, paintings by Venetian masters, like Titian and Tintoretto, and several other works by Rembrandt, like "Entombment of Christ" (item 26), "Portrait of an old man, in a purple cap and in a black dress, holding a rolled paper in his hand" (item 193), "Annunciation (to the Shepherds)" (item 242) and "A woman, undressed, sitting in a room, soaking her feet in a bathtub" (item 291).
Interestingly, the direct ancestor of Michał Hieronim, who lived in 1666, was also called Lucretia, and it was not a commonly used name in Poland at the time: Lucrezia Maria Strozzi (ca. 1621-1694) or Lukrecja Radziwiłłowa in Polish. Lucrezia Maria came to Poland as court lady to Queen Cecilia Renata of Austria in 1637, when she was about 16 years old. Her father was Pompeo Strozzi, who connected his career with the powerful Mantuan Gonzaga family, and mother Eleonora Guerrieri. She was probably born in Florence. On November 23, 1642 in Warsaw in the church of St. John the Baptist, Lucrezia Maria married Prince Alexander Louis Radziwill (1594-1654), whom she met already in 1637, as he was among the Polish dignitaries who welcomed the queen in Poland. They married only five months after Alexander Louis's marriage to Katarzyna Eugenia Tyszkiewiczówna was annulled (July 4, 1642). Radziwill was older than his third wife by about 27 years, he was 48 years old, which at that time was already considered a very advanced age. Their first child Cecilia Maria, named after the queen, was born soon after the marriage. At the beginning of December 1652 they set off on a journey to Italy, where Alexander Louis's son from the first marriage, Michael Casimir, began his studies at the University of Bologna in May 1653. In the first days of September 1653, after a difficult pregnancy, Lucrezia Maria gave birth to a son, Dominic Nicolaus, but her husband died soon after in Bologna on March 23, 1654. Alexander Louis's death caused a great troubles for Lucrezia Maria as his eldest son was very hostile towards her and he raised objections to the bequests in his father's will in favor of her. In the years 1655-57, during the Deluge (1655-1660), she stayed with her son Dominic Nicolaus in Italy. At the end of 1658 or at the beginning of 1659, she married Jan Karol Kopeć, voivode of Polotsk. The marriage was a real salvation for Lucrezia Maria, because since then, Kopeć became a party to the dispute with Michael Casimir, defending the interests of his wife and her underage children. In 1662, she married her first-born daughter Cecilia Maria to Mikołaj Hieronim Sieniawski (1645-1683), future field hetman of the crown. In gratitude for improving her son's health, Lucrezia Maria founded a Dominican monastery in Pińsk in 1666 (after "Lukrecja Maria de Strozzi (ok. 1621-1694), księżna Radziwiłłowa" by Jerzy Flisiński). For many more years, Lucrezia directed her son's actions in private and public life. As a court lady of Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga, she probably did not support a rebellion against King John II Casimir Vasa, initiated by Jerzy Sebastian Lubomirski, who in 1664 was accused of treason, so-called Lubomirski's rokosz (1665-1666), and she could express it through paintings. Lucretia, the epitome of female virtue and beauty, whose suicide ignited the political revolution, can be considered a perfect allegory. The country was devastated by several wars, such as the Khmelnytsky Uprising (1648-1657) and the Deluge. Gdańsk, the country's main seaport, dominated by German-speakers, which, together with Lviv, was one of only two major cities of the Commonwealth not seized by any of Poland's enemies, strengthen its position as the artistic center of the country. Painters from Gdańsk, Daniel Schultz, court painter of king John II Casimir, and Andreas Stech worked for many Polish-Lithuanian magnates. In about 1654 Schultz created a beatiful portrait of Prince Janusz Radziwill (1612-1655) in silk żupan and in about 1670 Stech or his workshop created an effigy of Prince Aleksander Janusz Zasławski-Ostrogski (1650-1682) dressed in fashionable French costume (both in the National Art Museum of Belarus in Minsk). Portraits of two women from the Kwitajny Palace, today in the Museum of Warmia and Masuria in Olsztyn, identified as members of the Radziwill family are painted in very similar style. Both women were depicted in Spanish guardainfante court dress (cartwheel farthingale or hoop skirt) from the 1660s. Radziwills as the Princes of the Holy Roman Empire had some contacts with the Imperial court of Empress Eleonora Gonzaga (1630-1686) and Empress Margaret Theresa of Spain in Vienna, who re-introducted the Spanish fashion there after her marriage to Emperor Leopold I in April 1666. Each of Lucrezia Maria's journey to Italy also had a stop in Vienna. Spanish fashion was also very popular in Italy at that time. King John II Casimir Vasa, as a cousin of Philip IV of Spain and his second wife Queen Mariana of Austria (1634-1696), undoubtedly owned several works by Spanish court painter Diego Velázquez and his workshop, sent to Warsaw by his relatives, including most probably a copy of Queen Mariana's famous portrait, today in the Prado Museum in Madrid (P001191). The older woman, whose portrait is very in the style of Andreas Stech, is sometimes identified as Katarzyna Potocka (d. 1642), first wife of Janusz Radziwill (1612-1655), however date of her death and lack of resemblance to her known effigy in Minsk, exclude this possibility. Her dress is very similar to portrait of Maria Virginia Borghese (1642-1718), Princess Chigi in Palazzo Chigi of Ariccia, near Rome, painted by Giovanni Maria Morandi in 1659. This woman bears a striking resemblance to effigy of Lucrezia Maria Strozzi by Hirsz Leybowicz, created between 1747-1758, after a likness dating from about 1642. The portrait of a younger lady, due to composition, can be considered a pendant, however its style is different and more close to Daniel Schultz, who from about 1660 was active primarily in Gdańsk, but still worked for the royal court in Warsaw. Her dress is similar to portrait of a lady in a Spanish dress, possibly depicting Krystyna Lubomirska (1647-1669), daughter of Jerzy Sebastian Lubomirski, created in about 1667, in mourning after her father's death (from the Potocki collection, today in the National Museum in Warsaw, oil on canvas, 121.5 x 97 cm, M.Ob.758). The face of a young woman resemble greatly the effigy of Aleksander Hilary Połubiński (1627-1679) in the Warsaw University Library (inventory number Inw.zb.d. 15609), who became the Grand Marshal of Lithuania in 1669, therefore created around that year. The mentioned effigy of Połubiński is a drawing (ink and watercolor on paper) and it is probably a preparatory drawing for an etching or a portrait painting, perhaps commissioned in Gdańsk or even abroad. The woman is therefore Połubiński's daughter Anna Marianna (1658-1690), who on October 9, 1672 at the age of 14 years old married Dominic Nicolaus Radziwill, son of Lucrezia Maria (after "Archiwalia związane z kniaziami Trubeckimi ..." by Andrzej Buczyło). Her portrait could be therefore commissioned in Gdańsk together with effigy of her father and offered to the Radziwills. The woman from mentioned painting of Lucretia by Rembrandt in the Minneapolis Institute of Art bear a great resemblance to the effigy of older woman from Kwitajny. Her guardainfante is also very similar and whole costume is almost identical to portrait of a member of the Tyszkiewicz family created in about 1793, after original from the 1660s (National Museum in Warsaw, inventory number MP 4308) or to the portrait of Empress Margaret Theresa of Spain by workshop of Frans Luycx, created in about 1666 (private collection in Sweden). The same woman was also depicted as another "Lucretia" by Rembrandt, today in the National Gallery of Art in Washington (oil on canvas, 120 x 101 cm, 1937.1.76), which before 1825 was in Paris. This painting is signed and dated left center: Rembrandt / 1664. Her dress and necklace are very similar to those visible in a portrait of Anna Tworkowska nee Radziwill from the 1660s (Royal Castle in Warsaw, inventory number ZKW 544) or in the portrait of Empress Eleonora Gonzaga by Frans Luycx from the 1650s in the Gripsholm Castle in Sweden, taken from Poland during the Deluge.
Portrait of Lucrezia Maria Strozzi (ca. 1621-1694), Princess Radziwill as Lucretia by Rembrandt, 1664, National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Portrait of Lucrezia Maria Strozzi (ca. 1621-1694), Princess Radziwill as Lucretia by Rembrandt, 1666, Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Portrait of a lady in a Spanish dress holding a fan, possibly Krystyna Lubomirska (1647-1669) by Flemish painter (?), ca. 1667, National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait of Anna Marianna Połubińska (1658-1690) in a Spanish dress by Daniel Schultz, ca. 1670, Museum of Warmia and Masuria in Olsztyn.
Portrait of Lucrezia Maria Strozzi (ca. 1621-1694), Princess Radziwill in a Spanish dress by workshop of Andreas Stech, ca. 1670, Museum of Warmia and Masuria in Olsztyn.
Portrait of Michael Casimir Pac by Pier Francesco Cittadini or workshop
In 1668, to commemorate the liberation of Vilnius after a long occupation and destruction during the Deluge (1655-1660/1), Michael Casimir Pac (ca. 1624-1682), Grand Hetman of Lithuania (from 1667) founded the construction of the new church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, in place of the old one destroyed during the invasion. This beautiful church is located on a picturesque hill called Antakalnis (literally "the place on the hills" in Lithuanian), one of the oldest and largest historical suburbs of Vilnius.
The church was built between 1668 and 1675 according to the plans of the Kraków architect Jan Zaor (Zaur, Zaorowicz), who led the construction work until 1671. The construction was then supervised by Italian architect Giambattista Frediani. Around 1677, Pac brought in the Italian sculptors Giovanni Pietro Perti (or Peretti) from Florence and Giovanni Galli from Rome for the interior decoration. Their stuccoes are considered the masterpiece of Lithuanian Baroque. The frescoes were probably created by Michelangelo Palloni or Martino Altomonte. Besides the statue representing the Triumph of Death, which became a common subject in the Commonwealth's art after the Deluge, frequently cited as one of the most important, the panoplies are another important element of this abundant decoration. They were probably requested by Pac, eager to display his military victories and whom panegyrists described as a fearless conqueror of the Muscovites and Turks (after "Wizerunki Michała Kazimierza Paca ..." by Anna Sylwia Czyż, p. 87, 90-91, 97, 104-105). He served in the army from his early youth. In 1652, he seriously injured Jan Sobieski, the future king, during a duel over Mrs Orchowska. During the Deluge, he distinguished himself in the battles in Livonia, Courland and Samogitia. He supported the policies of Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga, who promised him the baton of Lithuanian field hetman, which he received in December 1663 with the office of the Smolensk voivode. Soon, in 1665, Pac bought two tenement houses in a prestigious part of Vilnius, on via regia, which he then merged into a residence, and also expanded his estate in Antakalnis. Michael Casimir frequently ordered luxury items from abroad. The most famous is a series of portière tapestries with his coat of arms, created by the workshop of Jan Leyniers in Brussels between 1667-1669. Three fabrics with borders decorated with panoplies have been preserved to this day, two in the collections of the Royal Castle in Warsaw (ZKW-dep.FC/255, ZKW-dep.FC/256), one in the National Museum of Lithuania (IM 2555), and two with floral borders in the collections of the National Museums in Kraków and Poznań. In his portrait in the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, attributed to Michelangelo Palloni, the table is covered in a rich brocade fabric with his coat of arms - Gozdawa, most likely commissioned in Venice. Panoplies are visible on the title page of Mateusz Dłuski's Practica prudentiæ politicæ ..., published in Vilnius in 1670 and dedicated to Pac, as well as in his engraved effigy published in Vilnius in 1686 in Kwitnąca po smierci ... by Adam Wojciech Małachowski. In many of his portraits, the hetman holds a rich mace of oriental-style - bulava, a sign of his power as hetman. He had a rich collection of such maces and frequently offered them, such as the mace given before 1675 to the Marian sanctuary in Trakai (stolen along with the applications of the miraculous image of the Virgin in July 1676). The bulava, which he received as an inheritance from Wincenty Aleksander Gosiewski, he offered to Lithuanian Marshal Aleksander Hilary Połubiński and another to Lithuanian cupbearer Jan Karol Dolski. In his will, Michael Casimir mentioned "sabres in gold, silver and polish". He left one of them "Turkish gold, set with diamonds, rubies and turquoises" to Christopher Sigismund Pac, and the other "set in gold" to Piotr Rudomina-Dusiacki, the starost of Starodub. He also received rich gifts from abroad, such as "a cabinet encrusted with stones and filled with medicines" (uno stipo incrostato di pietre e ripieno di medicamenti), sent by Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany in February 1676. Three years later the Grand Duke expressed his wish for Michelangelo Palloni to make a portrait of Pac for his gallery of famous rulers and commanders. The effigy of hetman was published in 1674 in Historia di Leopoldo Cesare ... by Galeazzo Gualdo Priorato with images of European monarchs and notables and inscription MICHELE CASIMIRO PAZZI / PALATINO DI VILNA ..., emphasizing the kinship of the Pac family with the aristocratic Florentine family Pazzi (through their alleged common ancestor Cosmus Paccius). Michael Casimir maintained constant correspondence with the Pazzi and his "relative" Lorenzo Domenico de Pazzi was his courtier from at least 1665. When in 1669 Pope Clement IX canonized Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, a Discalced Carmelite nun, the ties to Pazzi family became even more important. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi became the protector of the Pac family and was mentioned in the hetman's last will. In the National Art Museum in Kaunas there is a portrait of a man wearing rich Roman-style armor (oil on canvas, 101 x 76 cm, ČDM Mt 1929). The painting comes from the Ogiński (Oginskiai) Palace in Plungė. It has been suggested that the sitter is Marcjan Aleksander Ogiński (1632-1690), but this man bears no resemblance to his effigy in the Rykantai church, as well as to the portraits by Rembrandt and Ferdinand Bol. He also holds the ceremonial baton, which indicates that he is a high-ranking military officer and excludes Marcjan Aleksander, who after the Deluge became more involved in a political career than a military one. In the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (inventory number SK-A-284), there is a similar portrait of Cornelis Tromp (1629-1691), a Dutch naval officer who served as lieutenant admiral general in the Dutch navy, and briefly as admiral general in the Danish fleet. The armor, cravat and pose of the two men are very similar as well as the composition of the two paintings with a landscape on the right. The portrait of Tromp was signed and dated (lower left): Aº: 1668. / jANMijtens F:, indicating that the painting was created by Johannes Mytens in 1668. The model for the Kaunas painting is certainly not Tromp and its style is more Italian than Dutch. The closest is a portrait of a lady holding a rose, made as her dress indicates in the 1670s (sold at Bonhams London, December 8, 2016, lot 50). The painting is attributed to Pier Francesco Cittadini (1616-1681), known as il Milanese or il Franceschino, a pupil of Daniele Crespi active mainly in Bologna. Also the portrait of a girl in an oyster embroidered dress by circle of Cittadini, painted in the 1650s (sold at Christie's London, April 27, 2016, lot 335) and the portrait of a boy in a red uniform, probably a Hungarian or Croatian aristocrat, painted in the manner of Cittadini in the 1660s (sold at Tennants, Autumn Fine Art Sale - Part II, November 16, 2019, lot 541) are comparable. The latter portrait indicates that the painter accepted commissions from Central European aristocracy. The man in the Kaunas portrait bears a close resemblance to Michael Casimir Pac, notably to his effigy published in Historia di Leopoldo Cesare ..., as well as his portrait by Daniel Schultz or circle at the National Art Museum of Belarus (ЗЖ-108) and the mentioned portrait by Palloni in the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. So the portrait was made around 1668, when the Grand Hetman of Lithuania founded the church in Vilnius and the mountain behind him, resembling Vesuvius more than the surroundings of the capital of Lithuania, is how the Italian artist imagined the hill called Antakalnis.
Portrait of Michael Casimir Pac (ca. 1624-1682), Grand Hetman of Lithuania in Roman-style armor by Pier Francesco Cittadini or workshop, ca. 1668, National Art Museum in Kaunas.
Portrait of King John II Casimir Vasa by workshop of Carlo Ceresa
Initium Calamitatis Regni (beginning of calamity for the kingdom) is how the opponents of the elected king John II Casimir Vasa interpreted his royal monogram I(J).C.R. (Ioannes Casimirus Rex). They blamed the king for the tragic events during his reign and believed that the claims of John Casimir to the crown of Sweden, the legitimate dynastic claims, brought to the country the army of the "Brigand of Europe" Charles X Gustav, as well as that of the Elector of Brandenburg united with him (Treaty of Marienburg, concluded on June 25, 1656), while the Commonwealth was grappling with other invaders to the east.
The country significantly depopulated, the economy was in ruins, tax sources dried up and money depreciated considerably. This led the king to participate in manipulating the face value of coins, such as the Boratynka minted by Tito Livio Burattini (1617-1681) in Ujazdów, which also contributed to John Casimir's unpopularity. The country that previously imported heavy marbles from Italy and Belgium, luxury goods from all over Europe, Persia and Turkey, was no longer able to even pay its own army. "The real cause of this misery lay in the extreme impoverishment of the country, devastated by robberies and destruction", as summarized it Zygmunt Gloger in his "Book of Polish Things" (Księga rzeczy polskich, p. 317), published in 1896. In addition, the Commonwealth was ravaged by grave internal conflicts. The policy of the king and queen aimed at strengthening royal power led to civil war - the Lubomirski rebellion (1665-1666), initiated by Jerzy Sebastian Lubomirski (1616-1667) and his supporters. They also paralyzed the proceedings of the Sejm. At the end of 1666, the main forces of the Crimean Tatars, supported by the Cossacks, crossed the southern borders of the Commonwealth and began the war in Podolia. In January 1667, the then apostolic nuncio in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, titular archbishop of Larissa, and later Pope Innocent XII, Antonio Pignatelli (1615-1700) reported that all of the country were abuzz with rumors of the king's imminent abdication of the throne, because "due to both age and [health] indispositions, he is unable to conduct military operations" (after "Stolica Apostolska wobec abdykacji ..." by Dorota Gregorowicz, p. 124). Additionally, on May 10, 1667, the king was struck by a personal tragedy: his wife, Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga, considered one of the most influential and powerful queen consorts of Poland-Lithuania since the time of Bona Sforza (1494-1557), died. The most tolerant country in Europe during the Renaissance was stepping more and more into the dark ages. Wartime, chaos and unrest have been used by some to oppress others, especially women. "Women have harmed us enough with their politics" (dosyć i białegłowy swą polityką nam zaskórzyły), wrote Andrzej Olszowski (1621-1677), Vice-Chancellor of the Crown and Bishop of Chełmno, in a letter dated October 6, 1668 to Marcin Oborski, starost of Liw. The reluctance towards women's political influence was fully expressed after the abdication of John Casimir, when the election Sejm adopted a resolution (May 1669), according to which "the Queen Her Ladyship should not interfere in negotia Status [state affairs], and also that no position at the court should be granted through the interference of foreign ladies of the court" (Królowa Ieymć aby się in negotia Status nie mięszała, promocye także aby nigdy przez białegłowy dworskie cudzoziemskie nie chodziły, compare "Dynastia Wazów ..." by Stefania Ochmann-Staniszewska, p. 276-277). In 1670, "fig leaves" were likely added to the nude effigies of King Sigismund Augustus (1520-1572) and his third wife Catherine of Austria (1533-1572), depicted as Adam and Eve in the Paradise Bliss tapestry, to cover their nudity, when the tapestry was transported to the Jasna Góra Monastery for the wedding of King Michael I, successor of John Casimir (compare "Arasy Zygmunta Agusta" by Mieczysław Gębarowicz, Tadeusz Mańkowski, p. 23). The last official portrait of John Casimir is probably the beautifully painted full-length portrait, now kept in the Wilanów Palace in Warsaw (oil on canvas, 202 x 153 cm, Wil.1159). It represents him in a French costume, fashionable at the time, black as a sign of mourning for his wife. He is holding the crown, most likely the so-called Muscovy Crown, which was recreated in a simpler form in 1668 by the Warsaw goldsmith Tobiasz Rychter. The original, more splendid, from the beginning of the 17th century, was minted for coinage by order of the king and he was obliged by parliament to return it before his abdication. The Order of the Golden Fleece awarded to John Casimir in 1638 by his cousin King Philip IV of Spain hangs around his neck. The painter is unknown and no painter active in the Commonwealth appears to be the author. The overall style indicates Italian influences, such bold brushstrokes, contrast of light and shadow and a "fresco" appearance, which exclude Gdańsk painters such as Daniel Schultz, Adolf Boy or Andreas Stech. The author was not Jan Tricius or Tretko (d. 1692), a Polish painter trained in Paris and Antwerp, because his signed works such as the portrait of Wojciech Dąbrowski, rector of the Kraków Academy, from 1664, bear no similarity. The paintings attributed to Claude Callot, a painter trained in Rome and who worked for Marie Louise Gonzaga from the beginning of 1667, in the royal library of the Wilanów Palace or in the Vasa Chapel of Wawel Cathedral, are also painted in a different way. Among the most prominent painters inspired by Italian painting was undoubtedly Tomasz Muszyński, active in Lublin between 1647 and 1680. Many of his paintings are kept in the Dominican Monastery in Lublin. His style is also different. Interestingly, Muszyński was undoubtedly the author of the portrait of Teresa Tyszkiewiczowa née Sapieha in the Museum of Warsaw (oil on canvas, 108 x 75 cm, MHW 2665), painted in the early 1660s, as indicated by the style of her dress. The painting bears her coat of arms - Lis surrounded by the letters TST/XSP, abbreviation of Teresa Sapieżanka Tyszkiewiczowa / Xiężna Sokolnicka Pułkownikowa. The style of the canvas recalls the portrait of Father Franciszek Grabiecki (painted in 1677), Blessed Ceslaus (1665) and larger compositions, such as that of Bishop Andrew carrying the relics of the Holy Cross to Poland (1651-1653). Muszyński placed his religious scenes in an entourage he knew in his daily life. Thus the majority of his scenes represent the inhabitants of Lublin "in the guise" of biblical or legendary characters. To the right of his large composition representing the Finding of the Cross by Saint Helena, he places a statue of Venus disarming Cupid. The painting closest in style to the portrait of the king from Wilanów Palace was sold in 2022 in Genoa - portrait of a man holding a letter (Wannenes Art Auctions in Genoa, November 29, 2022, lot 230). It was auctioned with attribution to the 17th century Bergamo school and Ferdinando Arisi attributed the painting to Carlo Ceresa (1609-1679), a painter active mainly around Bergamo in the Republic of Venice, trained in the workshop by the Milanese painter Daniele Crespi. Another work painted in the same way is an oval portrait of a nobleman (Galleria Marletta in Florence, 1stDibs: LU124028459822) and a portrait of a noblewoman (Lucas Aste in Milan, May 24, 2022, lot 24), both attributed to Ceresa. The style of the portrait of a lady, possibly the artist's wife Caterina Zignoni, as Judith with the head of Holofernes (Porro in Milan, Auction 81, November 30, 2016, lot 5), can also be compared to the effigy of the king. The works of Ceresa and other 17th century Bergamo painters are often compared to those of the city's most famous painter - Giovanni Battista Moroni. It cannot be excluded that through this perhaps last commission as elected monarch of the Commonwealth, John Casimir was referring to the golden age of Poland-Lithuania, to the Jagiellon portraits by Moroni, that I have identified, as well as many magnificent paintings that he probably also created for Sarmatians, which were destroyed during the Deluge.
Portrait of King John II Casimir Vasa (1609-1672) by workshop of Carlo Ceresa, ca. 1668, Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
Portrait of Teresa Tyszkiewiczowa née Sapieha by Tomasz Muszyński, 1660s, Museum of Warsaw.
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