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Item Number: 103846
Title: Celebration of Baroque : The Artistic Patronage of Primate Michal Stefan Radziejowski (1645-1705)
Author: Zmudzinski, Jerzy (ed)
Price: Not Available
ISBN: 9788360959640
Description: Wilanów: Wilanów Palace Museum, 2009. 31cm., hardcover, 327pp. with numerous color plates. English text. From the museum's website: The époque of Jan III and Maria Kazimiera, turbulent in political and above all military terms, coincided with the full bloom of Baroque art in Poland. The activity of a number of outstanding Polish and European artists, active for almost three decades chiefly in Warsaw in the circle of the royal court, shaped a distinctive model of artistic activity. The model broke up with Mannerist traditions, opted for mature Baroque forms (including decorative art), and referred to exemplary works created in Rome and Paris, the two artistic centres of the time. It also drew from the two opposite traditions, the cold and intellectual ‘classical’ and the emotional ‘Baroque’, and constructed artistic foundations on an ideological content, focused on glorifying the monarch and introducing his circle of his influence. This picture was completed by the presence of the lively Sarmatian trend, presumably dearer to noblemen than the forms used by court elites. The Wilanów Palace, a true capital of the Polish Baroque, epitomizes the art of the time and provides a certain synthesis of its diversified trends. Due to considerable royal capacities, the patronage of Jan III constituted the most significant phenomenon of the époque, though other significant founders, such as Stanislaw Herakliusz Lubomirski or Jan Dobrogost Krasinski, deserve due recognition. Likewise, Cardinal Michal Stefan Radziejowski, the central figure of the Celebration of Baroque exhibition, whose attitude towards art requires additional explanation. Numerous are excellent pieces of art founded by Primate Radziejowski. Scholars stressed the large scale of his founding activity, his employment of the most outstanding artists (e.g. Tylman, Palloni et al.), and commissions executed in Rome and Paris. Preserved mementoes of the primate’s founding activity – the palace in Nieborów, the Missionaries chapel in Lowicz, the silver altar set from the cathedral in Gniezno – have frequently been recalled in studies on Polish Baroque art as flagship local and leading imported works. However, no in-depth analysis of Radziejowski’s motives has been attempted, and the his personal attitude towards art has never been juxtaposed with his artistic patronage. The ‘black legend’ surrounding the cardinal – founded partly on his imperfect personality, but resulting mainly from the long-lasting propaganda activities of Augustus II and his court – became established in the consciousness of scholars to the extent that they could no longer discern an art connoisseur in the allegedly greedy and treacherous cardinal. Research undertaken for the sake of the Wilanów exhibition allows to shed a more objective light on Cardinal Radziejowski and his approach to art...
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