Portrait of King Stanisław I Leszczyński in Knight's Armor

(1683 Paris – 1757 Berlin) Portrait of King Stanislaus I Leszczyński of Poland, Duke of Lorraine and Bar, half-length portrait of the king in knightly armor with no signs of royal dignity, his right hand resting on the upper end of a marshal’s baton. The body is depicted almost entirely in profile, as he turns his head to the left with a calm gaze directed at the viewer. A series of displayed orders are visible, worn by the king himself, correspondingly presented on the backdrop covered in red fabric: the top star is the Order of St. Andrew, established in 1698 by Tsar Peter I of Russia; below it is the Order of St. Anne, founded in 1735 by Duke Karl Friedrich Anton of Holstein-Gottorp; the corresponding precious stone is worn by Stanislaus on a red necklace; the blue sash may belong to the Polish Order of the White Eagle (founded in 1705 by King Augustus the Strong); additionally, he wears a small order cross on a red ribbon in the form of a rosette, the Order of St. Louis (founded in 1693 by Louis XIV), likely awarded in 1725, when his daughter Maria Leszczyńska married Louis XV. The painting was probably created in 1735/36, after King Stanislaus I found refuge with the Prussian King Frederick William in 1734 due to the Polish War of Succession and before he became Duke of Lorraine and Bar in 1736. Remarkable in this portrait is the great similarity in the type of depiction to the well-known, widely reproduced last portrait of Frederick II, painted from life by Pesne in 1739 in the Berlin Picture Gallery (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Prussian Cultural Heritage, Inv. No. 489). In two published catalogs of Pesne, issued in 1958/60, only two portraits of the Polish king are documented: a large half-length portrait from 1736 (at Charlottenburg Palace) and a hidden portrait offered at auction in Hamburg in 1779. It is unclear whether they are identical. Oil on canvas; on the reverse of the canvas, an old (possibly later added) inscription reads "Peint à Berlin (...) t Pesne Berlin an 17 (...)", with the last two digits of the year missing. 82 cm x 66 cm. The expertise of Professor Dr. Helmut Börsch-Supan, Berlin, April 25, 2023, is attached.