Marcello Bacciarelli

Portrait of Anna Charlotta Dorothea Biron Princess of Courland

Portrait of Countess Konstancja Tyszkiewicz nee Princess Poniatowska

Michal Poniatowski Prince Primate of Poland

Stanislaus II Augustus King of Poland

Marcello Bacciarelli (Italian pronunciation: [marˈtʃɛllo battʃaˈrɛlli]; 16 February 1731 – 5 January 1818) was a Polish-Italian painter of the late-baroque and Neoclassic periods.

Biography

He was born in Rome, and studied there under Marco Benefial. In 1750 he was called to Dresden in Saxony, where he was employed by Elected King Augustus III of Poland; after whose death he went to Vienna, and thence to Warsaw. There he met and worked by the side of another Italian painter in Dresden, Vienna and Warsaw, Bernardo Bellotto. He was the Director there of the newly set up Academy of Arts of Warsaw.

He painted a set of portraits depicting nearly all Polish kings, from Bolesław I the Brave to the last king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Stanisław II Augustus who was also Bacciarelli's patron and admirer. He also made a portrait of Izabela Lubomirska in her wedding gown, that she commissioned years later after her marriage.[1] Bacciarelli was also keen in painting culturally significant scenes from the history of Poland. Following the partitions of Poland and after Napoleon's rise to power he moved to the Duchy of Warsaw, a client state of the First French Empire and died in 1818.

A number of his paintings were painted for King Stanisław II Augustus of Poland and are in the Royal Castle in Warsaw. These include:

Strength, Reason, Belief, and Justice, in the Old Audience Chamber
The Flourishing of the Arts, Sciences, Agriculture, and Trade on the ceiling of the Old Audience Chamber
Rebecca and Eleazar in the King's Bedroom
Esther and Ahasuerus in the King's Bedroom

During Bacciarelli's early years in Warsaw, the young Alexander Kucharsky began to train as a painter in his studio.[2] Another notable pupil of Bacciarelli's was Kazimierz Wojniakowski.

References

Bryan, Michael (1886). Robert Edmund Graves, ed. Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, Biographical and Critical (Volume I: A-K). York St. #4, Covent Garden, London; Original from Fogg Library, Digitized May 18, 2007: George Bell and Sons. p. 66.

The Ideal Eighteenth-Century Wedding Gown of Izabela Lubomirska at the Wilanów Palace Museum (accessed 9 November 2011)]

Le peintre KUCHARSKY at museelouisxvii.com (accessed 28 December 2007)