Stanislaw August - Patron of the arts

The King, although criticised as a politician and ruler, was a great lover, connoisseur and collector of art, and his artistic patronage bore a rich ideological content and political programme. According to the monarch’s intention, both the architectural designs he commissioned and the most outstanding works of European art served clear purposes of propaganda. Stanisław August believed in constitutional monarchy and wanted to persuade the nobility, then synonymous with the Polish nation, to support deep reforms in the spirit of the Enlightenment. The King also wanted to ensure Poland’s prestige and attract prominent representatives of science and culture from major European centres to Warsaw. In 1764, at the very outset of his reign, Stanisław August planned to significantly rebuild the Castle. He wanted his main residence to reflect the tastes and ambitions of the Enlightenment, as the castle was in poor condition when he took it over. Jacob Fontana, the court architect, as well as Domenico Merlini, Efraim Schröger and Victor Louis prepared ambitious designs for the king. However, those costly plans never came to fruition due to a lack of funds. On the other hand, the Castle interiors were significantly changed. The Great Apartments, serving for representative state functions, were modelled after designs by Fontana, Merlini and Johann Christian Kamsetzer, as were the private King’s Apartments. Court painters, including Marcello Bacciarelli, Bernardo Bellotto, Jan Bogumił Plersch, and sculptors, André Le Brun and Jacob Monaldi made paintings, painted decoration and sculptures specially for those interiors. Stanisław August supervised and approved the projects himself; he sketched outlines for interior design himself and ordered furnishings, furniture and other mobilia from the best European craftsmen. The Castle interiors do not owe as much to any other Polish monarch. During the last years of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, several momentous legal acts were adopted in those interiors, including the Constitution of the Third of May in 1791, the first modern governmental act in Europe, whose reforming character was due to the King. The majority of works on display come from the original decor of interiors arranged for Stanisław August. All the orders and purchases were most likely consulted and accepted by the king himself. They are an authentic testimony to that period and to the refined taste of the last Polish monarch.

This was painted in 1777. It shows a perspective of this busy route at the time, as seen from the junction with Senatorska Street. The painter recreated the facades of buildings located at Miodowa Street in great detail: on the left the Palace of the Cracow Bishops, the Palace of Peter Fergusson Tepper (no longer standing today), the banker of King Stanisław August, and the Church of the Capuchins; on the right we see the residence of the Branicki family. The silhouette of the baroque Krasiński Palace closes the street perspective. Before they returned to their place after the Castle’s reconstruction, the fate of Bellotto’s outstanding works was rather turbulent. Four paintings from the collection were exported to Versailles on the order of Napoleon in 1807; they returned to Warsaw thirteen years later. In 1832, after the failure of the November Uprising, all 22 paintings were looted by the Russians; most were taken to Petersburg, one to Moscow. They were returned to the Castle only in 1921. The Nazis later abducted all the canvases to the Reich. They were found after the war by the Recovery Committee and moved to the National Museum in Warsaw. They were then exhibited there for many years in waiting for the Castle to be rebuilt. The great value of Canaletto’s views, apart from being faithful representations of the architecture of Warsaw from that period, lies in how they depict the life of the capital’s streets, carriages, trade stalls, the costumes of the visitors and the city’s inhabitants.

The second work by Bernardo Bellotto from our collection, the Holy Cross Church, depicts the view of Krakowskie Przedmieście Street, the principal and hallmark route in Warsaw at that time. The painting shows the street running northwards from a place now occupied by the Staszic Palace. In the foreground to the left is shown (in foreshortening) the facade of the baroque Holy Cross Church, the biggest and one of the most important churches in Warsaw at the time. It was there that significant state events took place, including some of Stanisław August’s coronation ceremonies in 1764. Numerous palaces of magnates are visible in the distance; on the right, the entrance gate to the Kazimierzowski Palace, today within the area of the University of Warsaw. In the distance is the facade of the Carmelite Church, of which Canaletto painted a separate painting.

The Chapel, designed by Domenico Merlini in the years 1776-77, was used by the king for his daily rites. The display currently includes the royal regalia: a sword, the chain of the Order of the White Eagle, and a sceptre.

The sceptre was made for Stanisław August Poniatowski by Jean Martin, a jeweller active in Warsaw. It is made up of three octagonally-cut aquamarine stones bound together with golden ferrules in the form of acanthus leaves. When Stanisław August died in 1798, his private sceptre was taken by the Russian tsars who placed it in the Kremlin. It was returned to the Royal Castle under the Treaty of Riga signed in 1921. Before WW2, it was deposited at the Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego [the National Economy Bank], then exported to the Polish Embassy in Paris, whence it was taken to Great Britain in 1940 and later to Canada. It was returned to Poland with other royal regalia in 1959.

The interiors were arranged in 1776-77 by Domenico Merlini as a place for audiences with Stanisław August. Until 1786, it also served as the Throne Room. Today the vases decorate an Italian fireplace in the Old Audience Chamber.

The King’s Bedchamber, together with the Dressing Room, the Study, the Yellow and Green Rooms, formed part of the private areas of the King’s Apartments. It was the focal point of daily life at the court. It was here that the King received guests for informal audiences, gave intimate dinners and, above all, worked and rested. The King designed it himself, and Jacob Fontana and Domenico Merlini constructed the project.

The mantel clock depicts a mythological scene of Europa being kidnapped. It was created in Paris c. 1755. Its casing is made of gilded and patinated bronze, signed ‘Osmond’. The mechanism was made by the clockmaker François Viger. Purchased for the Royal Castle in 1994, this clock is displayed in the Bedchamber of King Stanisław August.

The Dressing Room functioned not only as a place for daily ablutions, but also as a place where the king rested and worked. Its furnishings mainly comprised 17th-century paintings from the monarch’s collection, as well as exquisite furniture – chests-of-drawers, games tables, bookcases and a reading table. Due to the king’s passion for reading, there is no wardrobe in the Dressing Room, but instead bookcases with books.

The semi-circular chests-of-drawers, veneered with mahogany and adorned with gilded bronze, with marble tops, were made in Paris in the workshop of Pierre-Michael Russel. They were a gift from Prof. Karolina Lanckorońska to the Royal Castle. Currently, they are displayed the Dressing Room of Stanisław August, arranged according to a 1792 design.

The King’s Study was a place where the King performed daily duties connected with the exercise of power in the state. He also spent his free time here reading and writing letters. During the reconstruction of that interior, unrealised projects for the reconstruction from 1792 by Johan Christian Kamsetzer were used.

The two oval landscapes are by Jean Pillement, a French painter and decorator, who worked for Stanisław August on the refurbishment of the Castle interiors in 1765-67. They form part of a series of four overdoors, the earliest purchases of paintings by the monarch crowned in 1764. Both painting are late-rococo with bright and cheerful colours and characteristic staffage. They are of high artistic value and are some of the best landscapes by this painter. They once adorned the Yellow Room, later also the Apartments of Prince Stanisław, the king’s nephew. Today they are displayed in the Green Room which forms part of the King’s private apartments. Stanisław August met a small and intimate group of closest associates and guests there.

The bust of Voltaire (philosopher, historian and writer, the main representative of the Enlightenment) on display in the Study is connected with Stanisław August’s fascination with the French thinker’s works and ideas. This bust, made of white porcelain, on a cylindrical plinth with some gildings, was created by Friedrich Elias Meyer (1723-1885).

This classicist escritoire forms part of the furnishings of the Yellow Room, which was part of the King’s Apartments and served as a small private dining room in which Stanisław August organised his famous Thursday dinners with renowned writers, poets and scholars in the period 1771-1782. The name of the room comes from the colour of the walls, the great majority of which are covered with damask fabric with gold and white stripes. The escritoire is richly ornamented with bronze fittings, chiselled in plant and geometrical motifs. Inside there is a folding writing desk padded with green cloth and drawers and shelves for documents and stationery. It was purchased for the Castle in 1983.

The clock in gilded bronze casing in the manner of Louis XVI from the Yellow Room has extensive crowning. In the upper part a wave motif dominates, whereas the bottom part, in the Regency style, is in the form of a Bandwerk ornament. On the white clock shield there are Roman hourly digits, whereas on the outer circumference there are Arabic minute digits. The side panels are filled with openwork plant ornamentation against a red background. The shield and the mechanism were created in the studio of the clockmaster Pierre Gille L’Ainé in Paris

The room with likenesses of Polish kings was created in 1640-1643 during the reign of Władysław IV. 130 years later, the room was rebuilt at the behest of King Stanisław August. In this marble-covered room, portraits of kings by Marcello Bacciarelli were placed above the cornice.

The console table belongs to the original design of the Marble Room from the time of its rebuilding by Jacob Fontana. Made from oak with ebony veneer, it is richly ornamented with gilded bronze appliqués and covered with a marble top. It is the first and at the same time a remarkable example of a classicist piece of furniture created in Poland in the style known as à la grecque. It has been placed in its former location, under the mirror situated opposite a representative Portrait of Stanisław August in coronation robes. The Marble Room having been destroyed by the Russians after the November Uprising, the table was transported to the old Study of Stanisław August. During WW1, it was exported to Russia and came back to the Castle in 1922. In 1939, it was stored in the National Museum, in order to be reinstated to its former place in the Royal Castle in 1984.

This small octagonal interior, adjacent to the Throne Room, was intended as a small conference room in which the king held important diplomatic talks. The ideological programme for the Room was carefully devised by the monarch himself. It was intended to display portraits of the seven most influential contemporary European rulers: George III, King of Great Britain and Ireland; Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor; Frederick II, King of Prussia; Catherine II, Tsarina of Russia; Louis XVI, King of France; Gustav III, King of Sweden; and Pope Pius VI. The interior was designed in the late 1760s by Jacob Fontana and the wall decoration was painted by Jan Bogumił Plersch. The paintings serve as a symbolic commentary on the portraits and by means of allegory reveal Stanisław August’s attitude towards the exercise of power.

In the middle of the Cabinet Room stands a guéridon with a circular liftable top made of Sevres porcelain plaques on a shaft forked in a tripod. Its top is adorned with seven painted porcelain plaques which illustrate the adventures of Telemachus, the mythological son of Odysseus and Penelope. This piece of furniture is the work of two Parisian artists: Martin Carlin, a cabinet maker of German origin who specialised in luxurious furniture for the wealthiest clients, adorned with plaques from Sèvres porcelain and lacquered panels; and Charles-Nicolas Dodin, a porcelain painter and goldsmith, who worked for the manufactory in Sèvres in the years 1754-1803. This luxurious piece of furniture was a gift from Count d’Artois, the brother of Louis XVI King of France, to Elżbieta Grabowska, the mistress and presumed morganatic wife of Stanisław August. At first (1780-1782), the table was in the White House Villa in the Royal Łazienki Complex. In about 1786 it was transported to the completed European Monarchs’ Portrait Room at the Royal Castle. After the fall of Poland and Warsaw’s occupation by the Russians in 1795 it was moved, together with the king’s other luxury belongings, to his private residence in Łazienki where it remained until it was taken by the Russians during WW1. It was reclaimed in 1922 and three years later it came back to the Castle. After September 1939 it was stored in the National Museum. In 1984 it was placed in the European Monarchs’ Portrait Room in the Castle again.

The Great Assembly Hall is the largest and the most ceremonial interior in the Castle. In King Stanislaus Augustus's reign the Great Assembly Hall was used for court ceremonies, banquets, balls, concerts and theatrical performances. Interior decor and furnishings were made according to designs by Domenico Merlini and Jan Christian Kamsetzer in the years 1777-1781.

The Senators's Chamber is one of the most sumptuous rooms in the Castle. It was here that the Constitution was passed on 3 May 1791. the interior was destroyed after the failure of the November Uprising, and has been reconstructed on the basis of earlier drawings. The royal throne and fragments of the backdrop and the canopy are original.