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Portrait of Anna Rzewuska

unknown

Basic information

ID: Ж-4545
Author: unknown
Name: Portrait of Anna Rzewuska
Date of creation: 1760s
Technique: oil painting
Material: canvas oil
Dimensions (height x width, cm): 206 x 180.5

Additionally

Type: painting
Genre: portraiture
Provenance: the Rzewuski collection (Pidhirtsi Castle)

Information about author

Author: unknown
Country

Object description

Anna Rzewuska (c. 1717–1763) – daughter of Jozef Lubomirski, voivode of Chernihiv and Teresa Mniszech. She was the wife of Waclaw Rzewuski. The ceremonial portrait shows a full-length woman in a décolleté blue dress with lace. On the chest, we see the Order of the Starry Cross, which she was awarded in Vienna in 1748. From the end of the seventeenth century, portraits of noblewomen and a change of traditional dress to fashionable French garments began to imitate European imagery. Among these portraits, the most original is that of Anna Rzewuska, one of the best representative female images. The woman is presented against the blue sky. A vague, unemotional face is lost against the backdrop of many carefully painted objects. The white pages with Latin texts of necrological and panegyrical content, painted afterwards, appear unique. At her feet, there is a small dog, which was a traditional addition to 17th- and 18th-century European ceremonial portraits of women. It is believed that a model for Rzewuska's portrait was the work of French painter Louis de Silvestre (1676–1760) – a painting of Maria Josefa, wife of Polish King August III Sas, which can be seen in the National Gallery in Dresden.

Portrayed person