09/08/2016

Wilanów takes its name from words in Italian ´villa nuova´. A beautiful palace with the park and water canals near Warsaw, built like a miniature of Versailles. Wilanów Palace is now a museum. Interesting Poster Museum is located in the old stables of the Wilanów Palace. Its highlights include the two-storey Grand Entrance Hall, the Grand Dining Room, and the Gallery of Polish Portraits, featuring a collection of paintings from the 16th to 19th centuries. Note the so-called ­coffin portraits – a very Polish feature – that are images painted on a piece of tin or copperplate personifying the deceased, then attached to the coffin during the funeral. The exterior of the palace is adorned with impressive murals, including a 17th-century sundial with a bas-relief of Chronos, god of time. As guides are expensive, you might be better off picking up an audio-guide (6zł).

The history of the Wilanow Palace, a wonderful Baroque royal residence, began on April 23, 1677, when a village became the property of King John Sobieski III. At the beginning, the residence built there was small. Augustyn Locci, the king’s court architect, received the task of creating only a ground floor residence of a layout typical for the buildings of the Republic of Poland. However, military successes and an increase of the importance of royalty in the coming years had a huge influence on expanding the initial project. Huge construction works were conducted in the years 1677-1696. After completion, the building comprised of elements of a nobility house, an Italian garden villa and a French palace in the style of Louis XIV. After the death of the King, the Palace became the property of his sons, and in 1720, a run down property was purchased by one of the wealthiest women in Poland of those days – Elizabeth Sieniawska. In 1730, the Palace, for three years, was owned by king August II the Strong, who made considerable changes in the residence, particularly as far as the internal décor is concerned.

In the middle of 18th century, the Wilanów property was inherited by the daughter of Czartoryski, wife of a field marshal, Izabela Lubomirska, during whose reign, Wilanów started shining with its previous glory. Sixty nine years later, the Duchess gave Wilanów to her daughter and her husband, Stanislaw Kostka Potocki. Thanks to his efforts, one of the first museums in Poland was opened in the Wilanów Palace, in 1805.

The exposition consists of two parts: on the first floor, there is the Gallery of the Polish Portrait where you can see the effigies of the Polish monarchs collected over the centuries, representatives of great magnate families, participants of national uprisings, eminent artists and people honored by Poland. Their authors are often prominent Polish and foreign painters.

After visiting The Gallery of Polish Portraits, you will be able to see the royal apartments of the palace. Rooms where parties took place, chambers where the royal couples listened to music, met their friends and guests, and where they worked and rested.

Coffin Portraits
This exhibition presents a collection of coffin portraits of 17th-century Polish nobles. The characteristic coffin portraiture is a unique phenomenon of Polish Baroque painting, not to be found anywhere else in Europe.
The portraits, painted on metal, were placed at the head piece of the coffin so that the face of the dead person could look at the mourners during the lavish funeral celebrations.

The portraits, often painted in the person’s lifetime, offer an amazing source of knowledge about 17th-century Polish nobility. The dead are depicted either in their official clothes or in a travelling garb as death was believed to be a journey into the unknown.

Polish Portrait Gallery, 16th and 17th c.
The Polish Portrait Gallery takes up the upper Palace galleries (in the 19th century these used to house the library of the Potocki family) and the first floor of the north wing. It continues the tradition of the family portrait gallery started by King Jan III and continued by the successive owners of Wilanów.

Today’s exhibition, enriched with paintings from the National Museum collections, presents portraits of well-known Polish personages: participants of momentous historical events and sponsors of the arts. The collection also presents the different styles and directions in the evolution of painting, and inasmuch as possible it is arranged in a chronological order to offer an overview of the developments in the Polish art of the portrait from the 17th century until the 1870s.

The Gallery includes statues and busts as well as medallion portraits. It also presents various military accessories and official symbols of rank of the sitters, together with period furniture and decorative craftwork. The first section of the Gallery brings together portraits of royalty and magnates, followed by a collection of the uniquely Polish coffin portraits and a number of Sarmatian portraits characteristic of Polish art in the 16th to 18th centuries.

The paintings are mostly anonymous, but some notable works by well-known painters stand out, including pieces by Bartłomiej Strobl of Breslau (today Wrocław) and Daniel Schultz of Danzig (today Gdańsk).

The Sobieski Family Portraits Room
Some of the furniture displayed here is connected with the Royal Apartments on the first floor: the sofa from King Jan III’s bedroom is upholstered with the same fabric as the interior and the 17th-century Dutch chairs. The chest of drawers decorated with bronze and the stools are early 18th century. The 17th-century Dutch inlaid writing desk is a loan from the National Museum in Warsaw.
1. Jan III with his son, Jakub Ludwik - Jerzy E. Siemiginowski, ca. 1690
2. Marie Casimire Sobieska
( née de la Grange d'Arquien) - French painter, ca. 1660-1665
3. Marie Casimire with her daughter Teresa Kunegunda (wife of the Elector of Bavaria) - Jerzy E. Siemiginowski (?), ca. 1690
4. Equestrian statue of Aleksander Benedykt Sobieski - Jerzy E. Siemiginowski, ca. 1696
5. Equestrian statue of Konstanty Władysław Sobieski - Jerzy E. Siemiginowski, ca. 1696
6. Jan III in Vienna (apotheosis) - Jerzy E. Siemiginowski, 1683-96
7. Maria Klementyna Sobieska (wife of James III Stuart, “the Old Pretender” to the British throne) - painter unknown, early 18th century
8. Jan III against the background of a battle - painter unknown, late 17th century
9. Teresa Kunegunda Sobieska - painter unknown, 17/18th century
10. Jan III Sobieski - painter unknown, 4th quarter of the 17th century
11. Aleksander Benedykt Sobieski - Jerzy E. Siemiginowski, ca. 1690
12. Konstanty Władysław Sobieski - Jerzy E. Siemiginowski, ca. 1690
13. Marie Casimire - French painter, ca. 1685
14. Marble bust of Marie Casimire - Jacques Prou (the Younger), ca. 1690

The Quiet Room
The Quiet Room is decorated with Baroque trompe l’oeil frescoes discovered in a post-war conservation project under 19th-century pseudo-Chinese murals.

The ceiling decoration is characteristic of the so-called quadrature painting, fashionable in the Baroque age, and optically imitates the interior of a caisson dome depicting the goddess of beauty, Venus, rising through the air and surrounded by symbolic personifications of various concepts from art theory ( “Nature”, “Imitation”, “Idea”, “Artistic Practice”, “Artistic Knowledge” and “Imagination and Ingenuity”).

The frieze at the base of the dome features the repeated motifs of the royal eagle on an amaranth-coloured background and of a lion’s head – the emblem of King Jan III Sobieski. The whole composition is an apotheosis of the ruler as a patron of fine arts. The allegorical decoration (ca. 1696) is probably by Michelangelo Palloni, an Italian painter working at the court of Jan III.

The Middle Room
The room has a beamed ceiling characteristic of an old Polish manor. It is decorated with the coats of arms of King Jan III and Queen Marie Casimire, crowns and laurel wreaths. Today, the portraits displayed in the Middle Room (mostly by Louis de Silvestre) are of persons connected with the court of August II (“the Strong”) who resided in the Wilanów Palace in 1730-1733, August III, and of important State officials.

Opposite the window there is a picture of Elżbieta z Lubomirskich Sieniawska, who owned Wilanów in 1720-1729, depicted as Minerva by an unknown Saxon court artist ca. 1725. The portrait is flanked by two Saxon cabinets monogrammed with August II’s initials. On the cabinets there are porcelain Meissen vases (ca. 1730) signed “AR” (“Augustus Rex”) to confirm that they were made for the king.  

The table and corner shelves are decorated with 18th-century Japanese imari vases. On the north wall, one notable painting is the centrally positioned portrait of a lady with a black boy, probably made in the circle of Antoine Pesne (ca. 1705) and believed to be Gräfin Anne Konstanze von Cosel, a mistress of August II. Other interesting items include two panoramas of Dresden, ca. mid-18th century, by Bernard Bellotto (“Canaletto”).

The Anteroom
Known as “The First Room” in the 19th century. The original illusionist murals come from the first half of the 18th century and were discovered in a post-war conservation project under 19th-century pseudo-Chinese murals.

The frescoes are by Giuseppe Rossi, a court painter of Elżbieta Sieniawska, who left behind his self-portrait in the south-east corner of the room (to the right of the window). The furniture in the room comes from the first half of the 18th century.

The Pastel Cabinet
This room, featuring a number of watercolours from the original Wilanów collection, is an allusion to the Palace’s 19th-century Watercolours Room. The pictures are mainly portraits of persons related to the owners of Wilanów.

The room is furnished with 18th-century French furniture signed by Parisian ébénistes: three chests of drawers by L. Peridiez, N. Guyot and J. G. Schlichtig and a set of armchairs by L. Falconet.

In a neighbouring Passageway there are portraits of King Stanisław Leszczyński (by a French painter, 2nd quarter of the 18th century) and his daughter Maria, wife of Louis XV (copy after Jean Marc Nattier) and of Grzegorz Piramowicz (painter unknown, ca. 1785). Other paintings include a historical scene painted in 1795 by Franciszek Smuglewicz (“Confirmation of Count Paweł Ksawery Brzostowski’s 1769 Decree on Self-Government for the People of Pawłów” and another painting depicting Brzostowski grieving over the destruction of Pawłów (Francois-Xavier Fabre, 1797/98).

The Poniatowski Family Portraits Room
The portraits form the starting point of a presentation of important Polish figures of the Age of Enlightenment. Notable among these is the self-portrait of Marcello Bacciarelli, a court painted and the king’s chief advisor in matters of art, Director General of Royal Construction Projects and head of the painting workshop at the Royal Palace in Warsaw (ca. 1790), who depicted himself in a Polish four-cornered cloth cap lined with lambskin.

The miniature portrait of King Stanisław August (1776) was made by the Kraków artist Franciszek Ignacy Molitor, and a later depiction of the king (ca. 1789-91) is a workshop replica of a lost work by Bacciarelli. Bacciarelli’s best early works include two stately portraits of the king’s father, Stanisław Poniatowski (1758) and the wife of Kazimierz Poniatowski, Apolonia z Ustrzyckich Poniatowska with their son Stanisław, depicted as Flora with a puerile Cupid (ca. 1757).

The sculptures on the corner shelves include the head of Stanisław Poniatowski (by Iacopo Monaldi, before 1786) and a bust of Izabela z Czartoryskich Lubomirska, the owner of Wilanów in the second half of the 18th century.

Other items on display include a miniature toilette (England, ca. 1720) and an inlaid table decorated with painted porcelain tiles (France, late 18th century)

Decorative Kontusz Belts
Worn proudly over the kontusz or the long outer robe, the so-called kontusz belt – a decorative cloth belt measuring some four metres (up to 15 feet) in length and 40 cm (15 inches) in width – was one of the most picturesque and characteristic accessories in the Polish national costume. As late at the early 18th century, kontusz belts were still imported from Persia and Turkey, but in the 1740s the first Polish belt-making workshops begin to appear. Their beautiful products, modelled on Eastern originals, were to reach a high level of artistry.

The belts were made in a number of workshops, including Lipków, Kobyłka and Słuck. The name of the Słuck belt-making workshop eventually lent its name to all types of the kontusz belt, which are often referred to generically as pas słucki or “the Słuck belt”. The belts were woven of silk combined with gold and silver thread. The two sides of the belt were differently coloured, and the strip was frequently divided into two halves of different patterns. By means of some ingenious folding, the same belt could be worn in four different combinations to suit different occasions and clothes.

The Polish Portrait Gallery, 18th c.
Displayed in the North Gallery are the portraits of eminent figures of the Polish Enlightenment: great reformers, authors of the celebrated Constitution of May 3, 1791 (Europe’s first modern constitution and the second oldest constitution in the world), members of the Kościuszko Uprising (a failed attempt at freeing Poland from Russian influence, fought and lost in 1794) and other distinguished figures active in the social, political and cultural spheres, such as Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski, Ignacy Potocki, Stanisław Małachowski or Tadeusz Kościuszko. The collection also features portraits of the Targowica Confederation with its leader Stanisław Szczęsny Potocki. The Confederation was a military faction that successfully opposed the Constitutional reform camp, but whose victory ultimately brought about the second partition of Poland.

Other portraits in the Gallery include the family members of the successive owners of Wilanów from the families of Lubomirski and Potocki, such as the portrait of Aleksandra and Izabela z Lubomirskich Potocka taking a stroll near Lake Albano (by Carlo Labruzzi, 1779-80) and of Krystyna, daughter of Ignacy Potocki, as a small girl (by Angelica Kauffmann, 1783/84). Many of the portraits are by Polish artists trained in Bacciarelli’s workshop, such as Kazimierz Wojniakowski, Mateusz Tokarski and Maciej Topolski or Aleksander Kucharski, based and France and supported by a grant from King Stanisław August (portrait of Ignacy Potocki). In addition to Labruzzi and Kauffmann, also displayed are other portraits by foreign artists in Polish employ, such as Giuseppe Grassi, Anton Graff, Gianbattista Lampi, Alexander Roslin,.

The exhibition also includes modern decorative accessories, including kontusz belts made in Poland.

The room in the north tower
Displayed in glass cases are the busts of eminent Poles, mostly members of the intellectual elites, cast ca. 1850-60 in the foundry of Karol Minter after drafts by Jakub Tatarkiewicz. They include a portrait of the Museum’s founder, Stanisław Kostka Potocki. As Minister of Religious Denominations and Public Education, Potocki was the influence behind the establishment of many institutions of learning and culture, including the University of Warsaw (1818) with its Faculty of Fine Arts, University Library and the Fine Arts Cabinet. At an earlier stage, he played a role in the establishment of the Society of Friends of the Sciences, first convened on 16 February 1800 in the house of Stanisław Sołtyk. Hanging over the glass cases (from the left) are portraits of Society members: Franciszek Karpiński, Ludwik Gutakowski, Bishop Jan Albertrandi (first President), Maciej Sobolewski and Stanisław Sołtyk.

The walls are also decorated with early 19th-century portraits of ladies: Helena z Przeździeckich Radziwiłł, famous art collector and owner of the beautiful Palace in Nieborów with its Arcadian Park (replica by Ernst Gebauer), Antonina Krasińska, grandmother of the great Polish Romantic poet and playwright Zygmunt Krasiński (by Carlo Labruzzi) and Maria Kosińska (by Józef Kosiński). The miniature portraits of Aleksander Potocki, son of Stanisław Kostka Potocki, and Krystyna Potocka, daughter of Ignacy, painted in Rome in 1796 by Gaspare Landi.

The Polish Portrait Gallery, 19th century. Part One
The first section of the spacious gallery on the first floor of the Palace’s north wing displays portraits of active participants on the political, scientific and cultural developments during the Napoleonic period and in the times of the Duchy of Warsaw (1807-1815), Congress Poland (1815-1831), and the November Uprising (1830-31). Also featured are portraits of celebrated Polish 19th-century emigrés, mostly by Polish artists from Warsaw and Wilno (today Vilnius). Several of the portraits were painted in workshops of artists from the French school (F. Gerard, T. Gericault, G.M. Prevot, P. Delaroche). At that time, Polish painting received a strong stimulus from the newly established faculties of fine arts at the universities in Warsaw and Wilno, the popularity of painting exhibitions and the flourishing trade in artworks. The most valued artists included: A. Brodowski, A. Blank, A. Kokular, J. Peszka, J. Rustem, W. Wańkowicz, J. K. Damel, A. Reichan and J. Gładysz.

The portraits shown in the gallery include such important figures as General Henryk Dąbrowski, Count Józef Poniatowski, Stanisław Kostka Potocki (owner and founder of the Wilanów Museum), Count Adam Jerzy Czartoryski (leader of the Polish emigré community in Paris) and the poet Zygmunt Krasiński. Some notable women are featured, including Maria Walewska and Maria z Radziwiłłów Krasińska. The gallery also contains busts of Adam Mickiewicz (the greatest of Polish Romantic poets, officially recognized as a national Bard) and the composer Fryderyk Chopin, made by H. Stattler and J. Tatarkiewicz.

The dais in middle section of the gallery covers the dome of the ground floor vestibule, which is located directly underneath it. It contains portraits and self-portraits of painters, mostly distinguished artistic educators in the period following the failed November and January Uprisings (1830-1 and 1863): professors at the Fine Arts School and later in the Drawing Class of the Warsaw Lycée, who organized private education when official institutions were shut down in a wave of Tsarist repressions. Their activity led to the establishment in 1860 of the “Zachęta”, a Society of Friends of the Fine Arts, and in 1862 of the National Museum in Warsaw. The notable pedagogues included A. Kokular, R. Hadziewicz, K. J. Kaniewski, A. Lesser and W. Gerson.

The Polish Portrait Gallery, 19th century. Part Two
Presented in the last section of the gallery are portraits from the second half of the 19th century depicting participants in the January Uprising (1863), eminent personages of the so-called Positivist period in Polish culture which followed the failed uprising of 1863, and a number of Polish writers, poets, composers, musicians, actors and ballet dancers. The opening section includes portraits of Polish aristocrats by fashionable European artists. These include portraits of owners of Wilanów, August Potocki (by J. Ender) and his wife Aleksandra, daughter of Stanisław Septym Potocki (by F. Amerling). The most impressive works include the portrait of the wife of the poet Zygmunt Krasiński, Elżbieta, with children (by F. Winterhalter) and of her sister, Katarzyna Potocka (by A. Scheffer) as well as that of Jadwiga Konstantowa Branicka (by F. Winterhalter). Also displayed is M. Dawidowicz’s portrait of Ksawery Branicki, who inherited Wilanów in 1892 following the death of Augustowa Potocka.

The collection includes a large number of paintings by Józef Simmler, including a portrait of Aleksander Waszkowski, the last commander of Warsaw in the uprising of 1863-64, and a tasteful portrait of the Warsaw actress Emilia Ciemska-Ziemińska. Next to it, there is a portrait of the famous financier and industrialist, Baron Leopold Kronenberg, by L. Horowitz. Also notable are the portraits of two famous men of letters: the celebrated late Romantic poet Cyprian Kamil Norwid (by P. Szyndler) and the comedy playwright Aleksander Fredro (by A. Raczyński).

Lower Vestibule
A mid-19th-century cast-iron staircase leads to the ground floor rooms in the north wing. Here, a garden road designed by Francesco Maria Lanci replaced in 1852 an earlier “Gothic Gallery” (which is known from period pictures). The former gallery, custom-built in 1802 alongside the wing on the side of the Gardens, was designed to hold Stanisław Kostka Potocki’s art collections.

The section of the Vestibule adjacent to the staircase dates back to the mid-19th century and is decorated with en grisaille murals from the same period.

The other section of the Vestibule (opening onto the courtyard) has a dome with a painting of Flora (by Giuseppe Rossi) and rich statuary decorations (by stucco-worker Francesco Fumo). It was built in 1726-29.

The Raspberry Parlour
The west section of the north wing comprises the Crimson Room and the Bedroom and Study. In the 18th and 19th centuries these were the living quarters of the owners of the Palace from the Sieniawski, Lubomirski and Potocki families. After World War II, the Communist government used the rooms as guest accommodation for visitors until 1989. Conservation work has revealed the original colour and design of the ceiling stuccos (1726-29), designed by artists working at the court of Elżbieta Sieniawska: the painter Giuseppe Rossi and stucco workers Francesco Fumo and Pietro I. Comparetti.

The Paintings Gallery called Museum
Originally a three-room apartment, August Potocki had it converted around the middle of the 19th century into a permanent museum gallery, mostly displaying foreign paintings. The Pompeii pink walls and the ceiling murals with medallion portraits of great sculptors, architects and painters of the Renaissance, Baroque and Classicist periods are an allusion to typical 19th century museum interiors. The walls are decorated with European paintings from the collection of Stanisław Kostka Potocki and his successors. The most valuable pieces include: “The Final Judgement” (1530) by Wolfgang Krodel the Elder and “Entry of Michał Radziwiłł to Rome” (probably 1680) by Pieter van Bloemen and possibly also Niccolo Viviani Codazzi.

The exhibition also includes examples of fine craft work, such as two large cabinets containing silverware from the M.G. Biennais & J.B.C. Odiot works in Paris. One of the two smaller glazed cabinets situated between the windows displays 18th and 19th century bronzes and 17th to 19th-century stoneware tankards; the other – Böttger’s red stoneware from 1710-19 and 18th-century Meissen china and Dutch faience after Oriental patterns. The ormolu console contains a cast-iron fireplace clock with a pair of candlesticks, purchased by August Potocki in Paris in 1851, after the World Exhibition in London.

The Landscapes Gallery
Adjacent to the Great Crimson Room, this room, also known as the Landscape Gallery, was used as another museum room for landscape painting. This purpose is alluded to in the ceiling mural by E. Bürger of Berlin, with three multi-coloured allegorical compositions depicting Agriculture, Hunting and Shepherding, and monochromatic portraits of celebrate 17th- and 18th-century painters. Displayed on the walls are landscapes by 17th- and 18th-century French and Italian artists, and a portrait of a former owner of Wilanów, Aleksander Potocki (by A. Kolukar) hangs on the curtain on the left. The room also contains French furniture inlaid with semi-precious stones, three round tables with mosaic tops and two livery coats of the Palace domestic staff from the days of the Potocki family.

The Etruscan Cabinet
This was designed (post 1853) by Enrico and Leandro Marconi as an exhibition room for the Wilanów collection of ancient amphorae started by Stanisław Kostka Potocki. The collection, originally made up of ca. 100 items, is unique among contemporary Polish collections of this kind as it was gathered not only through purchases but also thanks to archaeological work personally led by Potocki in 1785/1786 at Nola near Naples. In 1853, August Potocki augmented the collection with a number of vases belonging to the Mikorski family, purchased together with their estates in Słubice near Gostynin.

The decorative paintings in this room (probably by Carlo Marconi) and its tiled floor are an allusion to the art of Antiquity. The figurative scenes from Homer’s Odyssey are based on the engravings of Tomasso Piroli after drawings by John Flaxman; the mosaic-effect floor tiles were probably made in Berlin ca. 1850.

Today, the permanent exhibition of Wilanów amphorae contains 84 ancient vessels from the 8th to the 2nd century BCE, mainly from south Italy, Etruria and Athens, and 27 copies from the end of the 18th century, mostly commissioned by Stanisław Kostka Potocki to be modelled on originals in his collection.
The North Gallery
The Lower North Gallery links the wing of the Palace with its main body. In 1820, Stanisław Kostka Potocki decided to use it as museum space and had the side adjacent to the Gardens walled up to half its height. Together with the rooms in the north wing, the Gallery formed part of Wilanów’s public collection of paintings. It was restored to its original shape in a post-war conservation project.

The walls and ceilings are decorated with frescoes which emerged after the removal of a layer of plaster. Commissioned by King Jan III from Michelangelo Palloni (ca. 1688), they continue Apuleius’ story of Amor and Psyche (the beginning of the story is depicted on the ceiling frescoes in the south gallery). The ceiling paintings are separated by lavish stucco decorations with analogous scenes played by putti, with Latin captions on streamers.

The murals opposite the Gallery windows are by Giuseppe Rossi and date back to the first half of the 18th century.

The equestrian portrait of Stanisław Kostka Potocki, signed “J. L. David 1781” and exhibited at the closing end of the Gallery, is one of the most valuable items in the Wilanów collections. The Gallery also contains 18th- and 19th-century marble busts (copies of ancient originals) displayed on 19th century gilt consoles.

The Gallery Study
This 17th century two-partite room known as “the Courtyard Study” used to lead from the north gallery to the apartments of Queen Marie Casimire. Its ceiling was lavishly decorated, and the walls were lined with colourful velvet. The present decoration scheme with an allegory of Painting on the ceiling dates back to 1850-1857. At the entrance to the Gallery, a marble plaque was erected. The Latin inscription reads “CUNCTIS PATET INGRESSUS” (“Free entrance for all”), and commemorates the day when the founder of the Wilanów Museum, Stanisław Kostka Potocki, made the collection available to the public in 1805. The furniture of the Study is mid-19th century. The paintings displayed on the walls come from Potocki’s collection exhibited in the Gallery.

A glazed cabinet in the Study contains some fine craftwork purchased by Stanisław Kostka Potocki: a 16th-century lock and key by J. Goujon, originally attributed to Benvenuto Cellini, a Berlin dining set (1st half of the 18th century) made of enamel on silver plated with gold – purchased as one-time property of “King Jan’s Queen Consort”, a 16th-century satyr figurine and a ceramic model of Michelangelo’s statue of Moses in San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome, probably by Antonio Mini (early 16th century). The founder of the Wilanów Museum looks from his portrait hanging over the cabinet, flanked by two emroidered portraits of Maria Leszczyńska and Louis XV, which he purchased in Paris in 1787.

The Queen’s Antechamber
The first room in the oldest, Baroque section of the Palace (where the royal couple had their apartments) was used as an antechamber and has been preserved in its original form. The ceiling is decorated with a plafond painting on canvas by J. E. Siemiginowski (1681-1682) depicting an allegory of Autumn (allegories of the remaining seasons can be found in the further royal rooms). Along the frieze there are scenes depicting different kinds of country work in the autumn with matching quotations from Virgil’s Georgics on streamers. The Regency mirror frames are likewise decorated with autumnal elements. Since the first half of the 18th century, the walls have been covered in patterned velvet (1710-1730) in the Genoan style. The portraits on the walls depict Queen Marie Casimire with her children (painting by J. E. Siemiginowski) and the children of the royal couple: Teresa Kunegunda, Jakub, Konstanty and the youngest, the prematurely deceased son Jan.

Among Polish, Dutch and French Baroque furniture there are two Boulle-style glazed cabinets (late 17th century) used to display such items as Italian majolica (Urbino and Castelli, 16th and 17th century), Dutch faience (Delft, 17/18th century), French enamel (Limoges, 16/17th century) and other items of silver, glass and stone including Sobieski family memorabilia, such as the box bottles (Lubaczów, ca. 1725), a glass formerly belonging to Prince Jakub (Czech, pre-1720) and a silver goblet by J. G. Holl (ca. 1700).

This is one of the most spectacular Baroque interiors in the Palace. The ceiling is decorated with a plafond painting by J. E. Siemiginowski (Allegory of Spring). The decorative moulding between the ceiling and the walls features sphinxes and putti as well as frescoes of the various kinds of springtime work in the country with matching quotations from Virgil’s Georgics on streamers. The Regency mirror frames are decorated with symbolic vernal motifs.

The walls are covered in patterned velvet (1710-1730) in the Genoan style. The furniture includes a chest of drawers made in Boulle’s workshop (early 18th century) with a toilet set that once belonged to Queen Marie Casimire, a Dutch escritoire and a Baroque sofa with a set of Saxon cushioned stools covered in the same fabric as the walls. The silver inkwell on the table was made around 1700 by N. Schlaubitz in Gdańsk.

The room is decorated with three mythological paintings above doors (workshop of L. de Silvestre) and “The Concert” after a fresco by Niccolo del' Abbate of Modena.

The Queen’s Bedroom
This is one of the most spectacular Baroque interiors in the Palace. The ceiling is decorated with a plafond painting by J. E. Siemiginowski (Allegory of Spring). The decorative moulding between the ceiling and the walls features sphinxes and putti as well as frescoes of the various kinds of springtime work in the country with matching quotations from Virgil’s Georgics on streamers. The Regency mirror frames are decorated with symbolic vernal motifs.

The walls are covered in patterned velvet (1710-1730) in the Genoan style. The furniture includes a chest of drawers made in Boulle’s workshop (early 18th century) with a toilet set that once belonged to Queen Marie Casimire, a Dutch escritoire and a Baroque sofa with a set of Saxon cushioned stools covered in the same fabric as the walls. The silver inkwell on the table was made around 1700 by N. Schlaubitz in Gdańsk.

The room is decorated with three mythological paintings above doors (workshop of L. de Silvestre) and “The Concert” after a fresco by Niccolo del' Abbate of Modena.

The Grand Vestibule
In the days of King Jan III, this was the largest room in the Palace, a two-storey space aligned with the main body of the edifice (it was originally used as a Dining Room), linking the royal rooms situated on its two sides: King Jan III’s rooms to the right of the entrance, and Queen Marie Casimire’s to the left.

Late in the 17th century, an equestrian statue of King Jan III flanked by a pair of columns stood opposite the main entrance (in 1729 its was moved to a niche near the south turret). The walls used to be decorated with paintings depicting the triumphs of Alexander the Great. A plafond painting by J. E. Siemiginowski showed the allegory of “Night and Day”, and was surrounded with lavish stucco decorations (surviving to this day), illustrating the Four Elements (Earth, Water, Fire and Air) and the Four Winds in the corners.

The present Classicist interior with marbled walls was designed in the last quarter of the 18th century by Sz. B. Zug, and executed by F. Baumann. The ceiling decoration and the canvas-painted frieze are by Enrico Marconi and his son Carlo (mid-19th century).

The room is furnished with English chairs and armchairs (late 16th century) and a French table with an onyx tabletop, with an English lantern hanging over it.

The King’s Antechamber
This room is the structural equivalent of the Queen’s Antechamber located on the opposite side of the Grand Vestibule.

A ceiling painting by J. E. Siemiginowski is an allegory of Winter. The frieze is decorated with bacchanalia, hunting scenes and scenes from country life with matching quotations from Virgil’s Georgics on streamers. The Regency mirror frames are decorated with motifs symbolic of winter.

Since the first half of the 18th century, the walls are lined with patterned velvet (1710-30) in the Genoan style. The Antechamber is furnished with a 17th-century Florentine escritoire, a set of Venetian furniture in the style of A. Brustolone, a French chest of drawers in the style of A. Boulle and a console with faience Delft vases (ca. 1700-1710).
The paintings on the walls include “The Apotheosis of King Jan III” by Ciro Ferri (ca. 1684), a full-figure portrait of the King, a portrait of Jan III with his family, “The Battle of Vienna” by P. Casteels (?) after 1683, and “The Holy Family with St. John” by Benedetto Caliari (17th century).

The King’s Bedroom
This room is the structural equivalent of the Queen’s Bedroom on the other side of the Dutch Study.

The ceiling painting by J.E. Siemiginowski depicts an allegory of Summer with Aurora bearing the features of Queen Marie Casimire. The decorative moulding between the ceiling and the walls include putti riding sea horses and dolphins and tondo pictures depicting summer works in the country, with matching quotations from Virgil’s Georgics on streamers. The Regency mirror frames are decorated with summer motifs. The walls are lined with velvet (ca. 1730) in the Genoan style.

The interior is filled with 18th-century furniture: Louis XIV stools, a copy of a chest of drawers from the workshop of A. Boulle made for Cardinal Mazarin, bearing a gilt silver tray by J. G. Holl, an eminent goldsmith from Gdańsk, given to the King by the citizens of Kraków after his celebrated victory in the Battle of Vienna. The canopy over the King’s symbolic bed is flanked by panoplies composed of Polish and Turkish military artefacts.

The paintings above the doors with mythological scenes come from the workshop of L. de Silvestre.

The King’s Library
Once a two-part room connected by an arcade, this used to be Jan III’s refuge where he read and worked. It can boast of having the oldest authentic floor in the Palace, made of three-coloured marble tiles.

The ceiling was decorated by the king’s court artists with tondo paintings depicting allegories of the two chief sciences of the 17th century, Philosophy and Theology, surrounded with medallion portraits of eminent scholars and artists of Antiquity and modernity, arranged in respective pairs and duly captioned.

The room is decorated with several dozen paintings by Flemish, Dutch, French and German artists – exactly as it was in the times of King Jan III, according to a 17th-century inventory list.

In the cabinet there is a miniature portrait of the king’s youngest son, Konstanty, made in 1682-1684 by an unknown court painter, Chinese porcelain (16th to 18th centuries) and European weapons (16th-17th century).

The Chapel
The Chapel was built in 1852-1861 on the initiative of Aleksandra Augustowa Potocka to commemorate Jan III Sobieski, who had died in Wilanów in 1696. It was designed in 1852 by Enrico Marconi and F. M. Lanci, architects of the Potocki family, working as a team. The altar with its tabernacle and the decoration of the walls, doors and windows was done by the Italian L. Carimini, and the statue of Virgin Mary (after Raphael’s Sistine Madonna) was made by the Italian sculptor V. Gaiassi. The stucco decorations of the dome were made by a local stucco worker, one Józef Klimczak from the village of Powsinek. The bronze door was cast in the Warsaw foundry of K. Minter (1852-1853), and the four bas-reliefs with Gospel scenes come from the Paris works of J. B. Lavastre (1853).

The Lapidarium
The Lapidarium was made in 1875 after a design by L. Marconi on the request of Aleksandra Augustowa Potocka, who called it “the New Belvedere” and intended to use it for the statues and stone fragments of Roman sarcophagi, mostly from the Imperial era Imperial era (2nd century CE), some of which had been collected by Marshal-Dowager Izabela Lubomirska and Stanisław Kostka Potocki. Architectural fragments, elements of sarcophagi and bas-reliefs were built into the room’s west wall. The statues and busts standing on pedestals and in niches include ancient pieces dating back to the 1st-2nd century CE (with other ancient statues purchased at later dates) and modern copies from the 18th and 19th centuries.

The fresco ceiling painting by M. A. Palloni depicts “The Wedding of the Sisters of Psyche” – the first scene in a series of compositions illustrating the story of Amor and Psyche which decorate the ceiling in the neighbouring Gallery.

The South Gallery
This Gallery links the main body of the Palace and the south wing. It is decorated with ceiling frescoes dating back to the reign of Jan III Sobieskiego by Michelangelo Palloni (ca. 1688) depicting the birth of the love between Amor and Psyche after Apuleius (continued in the Lower North Gallery). Both here and in the other Gallery, each scene is framed with a stucco border with putti and carries a Latin caption. The paintings have never been plastered over, and Master Palloni’s high artistic merit and talent is amply in evidence. The plafond painting at the far end of the Gallery – added ca. 1732 – alludes to the story of Amor and Psyche. A post-war conservation project revealed 18th-century frescoes on the side walls depicting bucolic landscapes.

Displayed in the Gallery are mythological paintings; the two charmingly vibrant compositions in the middle (The Three Graces and Diana and Nymphs) have been attributed to the Italian artist Pietro Liberi (fl. 17th century), with paintings by Louis de Silvestre, a French painter working at the court of King August II (“the Strong”) displayed on their sides.

Statue of Jan III Sobieski
In the King’s day, his equestrian statue showing Jan III Sobieski as the triumphant vanquisher of the Turks, stood in a niche flanked by two columns opposite the main entrance to the Palace. The plaster statue was made around 1693 by an unknown royal sculptor. When the Grand Vestibule was being modified in 1729, the statue was moved to a new location near the south turret. It was used as a model for F. Pinck’s statue of Jan III in the Łazienki Royal Baths Park in Warsaw (1788).

A post-war conservation project revealed near the statue two plaster statues of Hercules, walled up in the 19th century and probably dating back to 1730-1733. Together with the ceiling painting “The Genius of Fame” (after a painting by Annibale Carracci in the Dresden Gallery), they formed an allusion to the King’s military exploits.

The White Hall
Designed by J. Z. Deybl and completed in 1730-1733 for King August II, who used the Palace in Wilanów under a compact with the Czartoryski family, the White Room is the most sumptuous interior in the Palace, optically enlarged by great wall mirrors facing the windows. Aligned with the axis of the room are two fireplaces with surviving cast-iron plates carrying King August II’s initials. Above the fireplaces there are two orchestra boxes, formerly used by the court musicians and discovered after World War II as part of a conservation project.

The walls are decorated with paintings of two monarchs from the Wettin dynasty, August II and August III. Both were painted by Louis de Silvestre. Next to the fireplace there is a porcelain figure of August III made in Meissen after a model by J. J. Kaendler, J. F. Eberlein and J. G. Ehder (1740/1741). The niches under the mirrors contain furniture made in Saxon works, ca. 1730.

The Princess Marshall Lubomirska's Apartments
The apartement of Marshal-Dowager Lubomirska comprises three rooms: the Hallway, the Drawing Room and the Bedroom. The rooms were decorated at Lubomirska’s request by the architect Sz. B. Zug in 1792-1793. Some of the original furniture survives, identified on the basis of detailed entries in a 1793 inventory.

Princess Marshall Lubomirska's Anteroom
At the end of the a8th century, the walls were covered with yellow-green English wallpaper with a pattern of roses. The ceiling was painted al fresco. The surviving original furniture includes the English mirrors between the windows (ca. 1730), a French upholstered furniture set (ca. 1750) covered with tapestries with floral motifs and scenes from the fables of La Fontaine (Aubusson works), an escritoir table signed “Migeon”, two consoles with Japanese flower vases and an 18th-century bureau.

On the walls there are portraits of former owners of Wilanów: Marshal-Dowager Izabela Lubomirska in the middle (signed M. Bacciarelli, 1757), and again (ten years later) on the right (by A. Roslin), and on the left – her father, August Aleksander Czartoryski, by an unknown artist (2nd quarter of the 18th century). On both sides of the bureau there are portraits of the Marshal-Dowager’s daughters, Izabela and Aleksandra Potocki, painted by P. Batoni in 1780.