The Dining Room, Eating Room, Arabesque Room

It is the most spacious and finest interior in the White Pavilion. The
Dining Room was the centre of the villa, a place where Stanisław August
spent time with his family and close guests. Its walls are covered with
painted decorations known as grotesques. Executed in 1777 by Jan Bogumił
Plersch, the grotesques form an example of the earliest decorations of
this type in a classical residence in Poland.

The grotesques depict
various figures, including symbols of the Four Continents (the elephant
symbolises Africa, the camel – Asia, the ostrich – America and the horse
– Europe), the Four Elements, the Four Seasons of the Year, the Zodiac
Signs, as well as representations of various occupations, such as the
work on the land, the gardening and also play. The paintings represent
a symbolic picture of the world and the order existing in it.

This type of decorations
was very popular in the 2nd half of the 18th c. They adorned – among
others – the boudoir of the French Queen Marie Antoinette in
Fontainbleau as well as Salone d’Ingresso in Villa Borghese in Rome.

In the western wall of the room is a niche painted with imitations of a garden bower’s interior. Inside it stands Venus Anadyomene,
i.e. "rising from the sea". It is a Roman replica from early 2nd
century, which André Le Brun, the court painter of the King, bought in
Rome. This statue of Venus, goddess of love, was probably the most
important symbolic element of the villa’s decoration.