Logo
  • Register
  • Login
    •  
      Język Polski   English
    baner
    Published : 2024-06-11
    Vol. 72 No. 4 (2024)

    Known and Unknown: Iconographical Sources Related to the Celebrations in Honor of Napoleon Organized by Poles in the Era of the Duchy of Warsaw

    Janusz Polaczek

    https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2817-6935

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rh24724-6

    Abstract

    The legacy of the Napoleonic era, legendary though it may be, does not contain very abundant contemporary iconographic documentation. Only rarely do we come across new, hitherto unpublished, sources. One of them is no doubt the painting depicting the “Celebration of NAPOLEON the Great Resurrector of the Poles on 13 (sic!) August 1812 under the presidency of Prefect H. H. Stanisław Wodzicki”. A reproduction of this work has recently been published on the PAUart website. In all probability, this is a painting by Michał Stachowicz, and it can be supposed that it was officially commissioned. It was probably intended to commemorate Napoleon’s declaration in Vilnius on 11 July 1812 on the restoration of the Polish Kingdom. Today, it is hard to say whether the painting was to be a model for an engraving, or as a painting to commemorate a momentous occasion in a public place. In the latter case, it should be regarded as a Kraków equivalent (albeit more modest in form) of the Warsaw proposal to place a plaque – a monument to Napoleon – in the Senate Room of the Royal Castle. It was also to feature an inscription containing an excerpt from the Emperor’s declaration made in Vilnius. The fiasco of the 1812 campaign prompted Poles to start thinking about similar commemorations anew, but of Tsar Alexander I this time. History repeats itself.

    Keywords:

    Napoleon I, Alexander I, Duchy of Warsaw, War of 1812, art as propaganda



    Details

    References

    Statistics

    Authors

    Download files

    pdf (Język Polski)

    Altmetric indicators


    Cited by / Share


    Licence


    Roczniki Humanistyczne · ISSN 0035-7707 | eISSN 2544-5200 | DOI: 10.18290/rh
    © The Learned Society of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin & The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Faculty of Humanities


    Articles are licensed under a Creative Commons  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)