page_title: Elżbieta Sieniawska
section_title: Later life
hierarchical_section_title: Elżbieta Sieniawska / Biography / Later life
context_page_description: Elżbieta Helena Sieniawska, née Lubomirska, was a Polish noblewoman, Grand Hetmaness of the Crown, and a renowned patron of the arts.
  An influential woman politician in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth during the reign of Augustus II the Strong, she was deeply embroiled in the Great Northern War and in Rákóczi's War for [Hungarian] Independence.
  She was considered the most powerful woman in the Commonwealth and was called "the uncrowned Queen of Poland".
context_section_description: In the following years, the hetmaness retired from politics, and concentrated on administration of her vast estates and their economic development. In one of her letters of 17 July 1726 Sieniawska reprimanded an accountant in the Tenczyn Castle, Monsieur Zabagłowicz: 
  Your letter of today's post has reached me here and you describe everything in it very heedlessly, only to slobber the post, it is the way you care about the propriety but remember you can take it on the chin.
   Among her close collaborators were Końskowola canon Andrzej Stanisław Tucci and a Jewish woman Feyga Leybowiczowa, to whom she entrusted the management of mills and inns in Końskowola. She also supported Jewish settlement on her lands (on 2 May 1718 she issued a privilege for the Jews to settle in Staszów and build a synagogue).
  She also focused on constructional foundations. In 1720, she established the new orangery of the Wilanów Palace, in 1722 she started the reconstruction of the Puławy Palace and in 1730 she enlarged the Łubnice Palace, at that time artistic center of Sieniawska's properties. From Konstanty she purchased Olesko and Ternopil and in 1720 the Sobieskis colifichet de gentillesse (the most pleasant trinket) – Wilanów Palace. Among her most notable foundations are the church and monastery for the Capuchin friars in Lviv founded in 1708 and accomplished in 1718, the wooden mansion in Oleszyce (1713), a palace-orangery in Sieniawa (1718), the Discalced Carmelite Sisters Church in Lublin (before 1721), the palace in Wysocko (1720s), the two storied palace in Przybysławice (1720s), reconstruction of the Founding of Holy Cross Parish Church in Końskowola (1724), the St. Elisabeth's Church in Powsin (1725), reconstruction of the Lubomirski Palace in Lublin (1725–1728) – some of them she erected together with her husband. When Sieniawska's daughter widowed in 1728 her new marriage become a significant matter, not only in the Commonwealth but also in Europe. After her father's death in 1726 Maria Zofia inherited his Ruthenian estates including 35 towns, 235 villages and Berezhany fortress, she was also the only inheritor of her husband's estates and of her mother's fortune. Among the candidates to the hand of one of the wealthiest women in Europe were Charles de Bourbon-Condé, Count of Charolais supported by France (Louis XV even invited Maria Zofia to Versailles), Portuguese infante Dom Manuel de Bragança supported by the Habsburgs (proposed as the next King of Poland, due to the tenets of the Löwenwolde's Treaty), Jan Klemens Branicki, Franciszek Salezy Potocki, Jan Tarło and August Aleksander Czartoryski, who eventually won the competition full of duels and speech encounters due to support of Augustus II, as the latter was afraid of increase of power of his opponents.
caption: Sieniawski family, 1724–1726
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