Dimensions: 183 × 131.5 cm
purchase, 1925
Inv. no.: MP 4511 MNW
Adoption period: 1 year
Biography
This is one of the earliest portraits of Stanislaw August Poniatowski as king. It was painted by the prominent Swedish portraitist Per Krafft. He was invited to the court of the Polish king (where he served as court painter in 1767-1768) thanks to the reputation he had earned as court painter to the court of Margrave von Bayeruth and professor at the Academy of Arts there.
Stanislaw August Poniatowski sought to create a portrait - a representative image of himself - that would properly convey the solemnity and splendor of monarchical power. Krafft immortalized the monarch in light armor - cuirass, in the convention of rex armatus, popular since the beginning of modernity. Over the years, such armor acquired the meaning not only of a universal emblem of power, including military power, but also a symbol of moral power. As for the pose, composition and accessories, Krafft referred, probably in accordance with Stanislaw August's wishes, to the tradition of French royal portraits, especially to the representative image of Louis XV in armor by Carl van Loo, disseminated through an engraving by Nicolas Larmessin. Stanislaus Augustus is depicted wearing a silver cuirass superimposed over a golden leather collet, whose cuffs and lower part are decorated with gold thread embroidery. Prominent on the king's chest is the blue sash of the Order of the White Eagle and the Prussian Order of the Black Eagle, suspended from a red ribbon around his neck. The ruler supports his right arm on a regiment, (an attribute of army command), below which the insignia of power - a crown and an apple - are displayed on a table. Of the two versions of the portrait painted by Krafft (the other is in the Royal Castle in Warsaw), the one in the MNW presents a slightly higher artistic level, due to a more suggestive and harmonious elaboration of the monarch's features. Neither of these paintings belonged to the king's collection: one was owned by the bishop and poet Ignacy Krasicki, while the other - possibly the one at the MNW - may come from the Knights' School founded by Stanislaw August.
Per Krafft was active in Sweden and Denmark as early as around 1750, but he chiseled his artistic training for another ten years in Paris, in the studios of Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin and his, by then highly regarded compatriot, Alexander Roslin.