It has not been an even progress growth of heritage after looking at the history of Poland. First when I visited the uprising museum in Warsaw – I saw how the whole city of Warsaw was shattered during the post war. There stayed hardly any traces of its heritage, it is said there remained no brick on a brick. After such a disgraceful look I had a feeling never can I touch the beauty of its past. But everything changed when I had a glorious look at the Lazienki park. Stanislaw August built up a fine collection of paintings during his reign. His residences, principally the Royal Castle in Warsaw and the Royal Lazienki, boasted a collection comprising, according to the 1795 inventory, 2289 works by the most important European artists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, among others Rembrandt van Rijn, Angelica Kauffman, Per Krafft, Anton van Dyck, Nicolas de Largilliere, Gabriel Metsu and Marcello Bacciarelli. The multi-facted collection was to serve as more than mere decoration of the Royal seat. Stanislaw August perceived art as part of the image of the enlightened ruler and as “shaping the spiritual culture of the nation”.
The exhibition Rembrandt and others. The Royal Collection of Stanislaw August Poniatowski in the Palace on the Isle is the first to be unveiled in a series of exhibitions planned by the Royal Lazienki Museum, dedicated to the royal collections and the patronage of the last ruler of the Republic of the Commonwealth.
The current exhibition was prepared on the basis of the royal inventory Catalogue des Tableaux appurtenant a Sa Maj. Le Roi de Pologne 1795, detailing the arrangement of paintings in, among others, the Royal Lazienki. The works are presented in accordance with the eighteenth century method of exposition, creating a decorative wallpaper effect. The paintings of Adam Manyoki, portraying figures from August II’s circle, as well as those attributed to that painter in the eighteenth century, have been returned to the Bacchus Room. The Portrait Room features works on various subjects, while the most valuable works from the King’s collection, among which are two paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn – “Scholar at His Writing Table” and “Girl in a Picture Frame”, are exhibited in the Picture Gallery. For the duration of the exhibition, the Salle de Salomon – most representative room in the Palace on the Isle presents the works of only one master, Stanislaw August’s great friend and art advisor – Marcello Bacciarelli. The last part of the exhibition is the Chapel, where three presented works are the equivalents granted to Poland under the Treaty of Riga, and one work is historically connected with the Palace Pod Blacha.
Posted by : Amal Kiran Jana from Warsaw, Poland at 04:17 PM
