Hieronima Floriana Radziwiłła stosunek do sztuki i artystów

ENHieronim Florian Radziwiłł (1715-1760), the Grand Standard Bearer of Lithuania and the owner of Słuck and Biała, was a highly controversial figure. He was known for his extraordinary cruelty towards his subjects, including artists. Nonetheless, he remained distinguished among Polish and Lithuanian lords for his predilections for art (music, the theatre and architecture) and his interests in technology and science. In Sluck Prince Radziwiłł founded a school for ballet and singers, the first in Poland and Lithuania, and built stages for the theatre, opera and comedy (Stuck and Biała). Finally, he maintained a large court composed of musicians, singers and actors as well as painters, architects, gardeners and technicians of various kind. They included numerous foreigners who came from Austria, Saxony, Italy, France and Switzerland and were accompanied by locals whom they trained. Although Hieronim Radziwiłł wished to surround himself with talented artists, who raised the prestige of his court, he offered low remuneration and forced them to prolong their contracts. The artists often resigned from further service and fled, but were caught by the revengeful prince and incarcerated. Even imprisoned, they were compelled to pursue their work; an equestrian portrait of the patron was executed by Stefan Cybulski while under arrest (1750).Prince Radziwiłł was a patron of numerous building projects. He provided architects with detailed directives and observed the theoretical rules of regular and axial plans. The result of his interests were theatres and summer palaces, gardens and bestiaries (he was an avid hunter), splendid stables and large army barracks (his private troops included 6 000 men). Hieronim Radziwiłł did not, however, assist sacral foundation, and remained critical towards the clergy. He was also the initiator of roads and bridges as well as a fortress known as Wenecja, on the Kniaźmor lake near Sluck. Constructions and land work were performed by a team composed of 600 representatives of various professions, organized according to military principles. These realizations were carried out in a truly regal fashion. The reason for the grand scale of the undertakings was an augury from 1748 which foretold that the Prince would become the king of Poland. Soon afterwards, he embarked upon a reconstruction of the centre of the town of Biała into a representative "royal" square, based on a regular plan, with opulent buildings situated in the corners (a town hall and 3 taverns) as well as his own equestrian statue and fountains in the centre; the model was the Prussian town of Koslin (Koszalin) in Pomerania. Prince Radziwiłł planned to commemorate a stifled peasant revolt in the starostwo of Krzyczew in Byelorussia by placing the figures of four prisoners at the foot ot the statue. The latter was designed in Warsaw (1749/1750) by the architect Joachim Daniel Jauch, a Saxon general, according to a conception proposed by the Prince; the model - a bozzetto - was executed, also in Warsaw, by the royal sculptor Jan Jerzy Plersch (1750).A contract for a large wooden model to be used for a bronze version was signed with Plersch on 14 June 1750. Finally, a completed model was delivered by him to Biała as late as the middle of 1755 (the prime obstacle probably being the payment for the artist). The Prince decided that the statue was to be made of copper sheet and that its copies were to embellish not only the square in Biała but also Sluck and other localities of the Duchy. A classical all’antica form was to be patterned after the Roman statue of Marcus Aurelius and Girardons’ statue of Louis XIV. The final fate of the statue (statues) remains unknown. The numerous representative portraits of Hieronim Radziwiłł also depicted his figure as a hero. The most opulent portrait, in Hungarian costume, but with royal attributes, was painted by Jakub Wessel in Gdańsk in ca 1750. According to an inventory made after the death of the Prince in 1760, a gallery in the castle in Biała contained over 600 paintings, including many new works, commissioned by the Prince himself. Numerous portraits, favourite hunting scenes and landscapes with animals and birds were executed by Stefan Cybulski, Jan Sebastian Dur and others. As an heir of an ancient family, Hieronim Radziwiłł revealed historical interests, and increased the inherited collections by adding many objects connected with the art of war; he also provided his rich library with bookplates. Despite his varied achievements, Prince Hieronim Florian Radziwiłł does not deserve the title of a true patron; he treated artists instrumentally and regarded them as an inferior species, whose purpose was only to serve lords of his rank.