Agnieszka Emerczanna: portrait of a great hetman

(1673 Szokolya/Hungary – 1757 Dresden) Portrait of Agnieszka Emercjanna Pociejowa, née Warszyska. Painted between 1715 and 1722, this artwork depicts one of the famous mistresses of Augustus the Strong (1670–1733), Frederick Augustus I, Elector of Saxony, and from 1697, in personal union, Augustus II, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. Agnieszka Emercjanna (c. 1690 – after 1759) was the wife of Ludwik Konstanty Pociej, Grand Treasurer and Grand Hetman of Lithuania. From 1709, she spent increasingly more time at the royal court in Warsaw and Dresden, where she became the mistress of Augustus II. In 1719, she gave birth to a daughter, possibly the king’s child. In the early 1730s, Agnieszka Emercjanna was widowed, and that same year she married Count Józef Aleksander de Montmorency de Bours (d. 1759), Commander-in-Chief of the Saxon army. The artist vividly conveys the self-assured yet erotically coquettish nature of her personality, depicting her in a dynamic pose with male attire: she wears a tricorn hat, a justaucorps opened wide enough to reveal her décolletage, and around her neck a cheerful, delicate violet bow with a tie. The depiction is rendered in soft shades of gazelle and pink, giving her body and face a fully modeled plastic appearance, with full, red lips. The application of female attire in this painting ranks among Mányoki’s most impressive achievements. At the same time, it conveys a striking impression of the erotically charged atmosphere at the court of Augustus the Strong. A second version, differing only in details, is located in the Łazienki Palace in Warsaw. This painting belongs to a group of portraits that King Stanisław II Augustus Poniatowski of Poland likely acquired around 1764 along with the Ujazdów estate from Kasper Lubomirski. In the inventory of Stanisław Augustus’s gallery, the painting was listed between 1784 and 1792 as a work by Mányoki. The esteemed portraitist Adam Mányoki was appointed court painter to Augustus the Strong in 1713 and worked in Dresden until 1723. There and during his travels, he created numerous portraits of prominent and important figures from the aristocracy and court society. Canvas, restored. Accompanied by an expert opinion from Professor Dr. Helmut Börsch-Supan, Berlin, November 13, 2011. Literature (regarding the version in the Łazienki Palace in Warsaw): Enikő Buzási: "Adam Mányoki (1673–1757)", monograph and catalogue of works, Budapest 2003, No. B. 296, color illustration 29/p. 84; Dorota Juszczak and Hanna Małachowicz, catalogue of the painting gallery of Stanisław Augustus in the Royal Łazienki Park, Warsaw 2015, catalogue No. 69, pp. 261–263.