August II
- Date
- 1770s
- Object type
- painting
- Technique
- oil
- Material
- canvas
- Dimensions
- 127,0 x 98,0 cm
- Acquisition date
- 1783
- Location
- The Palace on the Isle - Bacchus Room, ground floor
- Marks and inscriptions
- red number 94 of the Stanisław August collection, bottom left; red number 479 of the 1839 inventory of Russian Imperial Palaces – Łazienki, bottom right
- Place of Origin
- Warsaw (Poland, Mazowieckie)
- Owner
- The Royal Łazienki
- Museum number
- ŁKr 509
August II (1670–1733), Elector of Saxony (as Friedrich August I), king of Poland 1697–1706 and 1709–33.
Stanisław August commissioned the painting from Bacciarelli, most probably in the 1770s to decorate the Bacchus Room in the Łazienki Palace, in order to complete a series of 15 portraits of famous personages from the reign of August II. (see cat. no. 48).
It is a slightly altered version of a portrait by Louis de Silvestre the Younger (1675–1760), which shows the monarch in a red justaucorps and cuirass, with the Order of the Golden Fleece and Order of the White Eagle, as well as a mace of office. …
Bacciarelli probably made his copy after a painting in the Stanisław August collection. The catalogue lists as many as six portraits of August II (apart from Bacciarelli’s), all of which were in the Belvedere Palace. These included two undefined busts, one en pied in Polish dress, one in armour (all by anonymous artists), one recorded as by Mányoki, under no. 491… Mányoki is known to have copied the portrait of August II painted by Silvestre … It is possible that no. 491, one of several portraits attributed to Mányoki in the catalogue, came into the possession of Stanisław August together with the Ujazdów estate in 1765. This is the purported, although unconfirmed, provenance of a group of portraits from the time of August II, which decorated the Bacchus Room. …
Dorota Ewa Olczak suggested … that Bacciarelli may have made a copy after the painting that was formerly in Gołuchów … , which in Stanisław August’s days may have been the property of the Czartoryski family. [See D. Juszczak, H. Małachowicz, The Stanisław August Collection of Paintings at the Royal Łazienki. Catalogue, Royal Łazienki Museum, Warsaw 2016, no. 3, pp. 54–56.]
