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"Portrait of King Sigismund I the Old",
oil on canvas, second half of the sixteenth century, Wawel Royal Castle in Cracow
"Portrait of Sebastian Lubomirski",
about 1580, Wilanow palace
"Portrait of Lukasz Opalinski",
oil on canvas, 1640, the Princes' Czartoryski Foundation at the National Museum in Cracow
"Portrait of Krzysztof Zbaraski",
XVII century, Lvov Picture Gallery, Lvov, Ukraine
"Portrait of Zbigniew Ossolinski and his Sons",
prior to 1650
"Portrait of Janusz Radziwill",
after 1654, Wawel Royal Castle, Cracow
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"Portrait of Michal Korybut Wisniowiecki",
Lvov Picture Gallery, Lvov, Ukraine
"Portrait of Sobieski Family",
1693, Wilanow palace (by one of king's court painters)
"Portrait of Weglinski, Sub-treasurer of Chelm",
oil on canvas, about 1750, Regional Museum in Tarnow
[...] basic and afterwards long-binding conventions, both of the most representative full-length
portrait (Sigismund the Old by an unknown artist) and the more modest half-figure
portraits or busts, assumed form in the sixteenth century. Regardless of the scale and artistic
worth of the likeness, it scrupulously registered predominantly all the attributes of the social
position of the sitter, and rarely delved into his personality. The rigid portrait of
Anna Jagiellon, executed by Marcin Kober and
striking for the severity of its rendition, remains an exception.
[...]
Sarmatian culture, which reached its apogee in the mid-seventeenth century and remained cultivated
among wide groups of the gentry well into the eighteenth century, was enamoured more of the
Oriental opulence of weapons and costumes, Oriental carpets and costly objects d'art than of
paintings. Nonetheless it was precisely this trend which produced the Sarmatian portrait, a genre
which best expressed the spirit of a culture that came into being in a land "where the East
meets the West". A decisive role in its popularisation was played by a custom whose intention
was to prove the ancient lineage of a given family, and which entailed establishing a gallery of
imaginary portraits of ancestors, which successive generations supplemented with their own
likenesses. For a long time, the conventions of those paintings remainded unaltered: a haughty
pose, the so-called Polish costume, the heroization of the male figures and the idealisation of
the female sitters. The coat of arms, inscription and, above all, the insignia of power or
attributes of fulfilled functions and offices, and not the mastery of the paintbrush, were to
ensure a place in the memory of future generations. Although the patterns originated from court
art, the growing need for such portraits and the entrustment of their execution to local, guild
painters denoted an increasingly strong domination of local tastes and possibilities:
colourfulness, flatness, and decorativeness. Skill was expressed in a minute rendition of the
details of dress, weapons, lace, patterned fabrics, furs and ornaments.
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