A painting from the royal collection returned to Łazienki
After 203 years, the portrait of Andrzej Poniatowski, brother of King Stanisław August, painted in 1778 by Marcello Bacciarelli, returned to the Palace on the Isle. The purchase of the painting was funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
The portrait was purchased with the support of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage at a Parisian auction in the summer of 2022. After several months of conservation work, the painting was hung in the Small Gallery on the first floor of the Palace on the Isle on 19 December 2022.
This valuable purchase originates from the collection of Stanisław August. It was part of a series of twelve oval portraits of members of the royal family that hung in the Dining Room of the Palace on the Isle. In 1819, the King’s niece (daughter of Andrew) Maria Theresa Tyszkiewicz took the portraits to Paris and so the series dispersed.
Four of the paintings from this collection are now owned by the Royal Castle in Warsaw, one is kept in the collection of the National Museum in Kraków and another remains in the hands of a private owner in Paris. The portrait of Andrzej Poniatowski, purchased by the Royal Łazienki Museum, is therefore the seventh identified painting from the series that once adorned the Dining Room in the Palace on the Isle.
