page_title: Wilanów Palace
section_title: Interior space
hierarchical_section_title: Wilanów Palace / Design / Interior space
context_page_description: Wilanów Palace is a royal palace located in the Wilanów district, Warsaw. Wilanów Palace survived Poland's partitions and both World Wars, and so serves as a reminder of the culture of the Polish state as it was before the misfortunes of the 18th century.
  It is one of Poland's most important monuments. The palace's museum, established in 1805, is a repository of the country's royal and artistic heritage and receives around 3 million visitors annually. The palace and park in Wilanów hosts cultural events and concerts, including Summer Royal Concerts in the Rose Garden and the International Summer Early Music Academy.
  The palace, together with other elements of Warsaw Old Town, is one of Poland's official national Historic Monuments, as designated on 16th September 1994. Its listing is maintained by the National Heritage Board of Poland.
  Since 2006, the palace has been a member of the international association of European Royal Residences.
context_section_description: The most prominent Polish and foreign artists participated in the decoration of the palace interiors. It was entrusted to painters Martino Altomonte, Jan Rayzner of Lviv, Michelangelo Palloni, sculptor Stefan Szwaner and stucco decorators Szymon Józef Bellotti, Antoni of Wilanów and Abraham Paris. They were supervised by the official court painters Claude Callot and later by Jerzy Siemiginowski-Eleuter. The latter, one of the greatest Polish painters of that time, had a significant influence on the palace's subsequent internal aspects (plafonds in the state rooms, frescoes). Internal decoration was also superintended by Adam Kochański, a great admirer of China, who supported closer economic relations of the Commonwealth with the "Central nation". Due to his influence, Wilanów and other residencies were full of luxury Chinese imports and chinoiserie.
  The 17th-century palace inventories included the works of the greatest contemporary and ancient masters, like Rembrandt (Portuguese rabbi, Jewish Girl in a beret, The Adoration of the Magi, Abraham and Hagar, Portrait of an old man in the so-called Dutch Room of the palace), Pieter van Laer, called Bamboccio (Travellers), Anthony van Dyck (Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane), Ferdinand van Kessel (batalistic scenes, allegorical paintings and still lifes), Raphael, Caracci brothers, Guido Reni and Bernardo Strozzi. The chambers were filled with precious furnishings, like silver folding screen, silver pyramid with 11 baskets, a three-storeyed silver fountain or a silk baldachin presented by the Shah of Persia. Unfortunately they were scattered by the successive proprietors, appropriated by Friedrich August of Saxony and transported to Dresden or looted by the Germans during World War II (e.g. John III's tortoise-shell cabinet, never retrieved).
  Among the artists appointed for decoration of the palace's interiors in the 18th century were Giuseppe Rossi, an Italian fresco painter, who adorned the chambers with trompe-l'œil paintings and stucco decorators Francesco Fumo and Pietro Innocente Comparetti. Following the example of Queen Marie Casimire, who ordered a painting of herself as a goddess on the palace plafonds, Elżbieta Sieniawska embellished the Lower Vestibule with a fresco of Flora. On her initiative the walls in the royal chambers were covered with Genoan velvet. The walls of the second floor, that is the Great Dining Room, were covered with frescoes depicting Apollo, Minerva and Hercules as an allegory of Virtus Heroica (Heroic Valor), Hebe symbolizing Venustas (Beauty) completed with panoplies. Sieniawska's daughter, Maria Zofia Czartoryska, furnished the palace with new fireplaces made of white-cherry marble and crowned with mirrors in rich rococo frames.
  In the contract with King Augustus II Maria Zofia obliged him to preserve the palace unchanged. Therefore, his actions were limited to finishing the new dining room, called the White Room in the southern wing and to the decoration of some unfinished interiors. The plafonds and other paintings were executed by Julien Poison, Johann Samuel Mock and Lorenzo Rossi, while the decorative lacquer panneaux in the Chinese Room were made by Martin Schnell.
caption: African servant carrying a parrot (detail of a fresco by Giuseppe Rossi).
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