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.