Agnieszka Emerchan: Portrait of a Great Hetman

(1673 Szokolya/Ungarn - 1757 Dresden) Portrait of Agnieszka Emercjanna Pociejowa, née Warszycka. The painting, created between 1715 and 1722, depicts one of the famous mistresses of Augustus the Strong (1670-1733), Friedrich August I, Elector of Saxony and, since 1697, in personal union, August II, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. Agnieszka Emercjanna (ca. 1690 - after 1759) was the wife of the Grand Treasurer and Grand Hetman of Lithuania, Ludwik Konstanty Pociej. Since 1709, she spent more and more time at the royal court in Warsaw and Dresden, where she became a mistress of August II. In 1719, she gave birth to a daughter, possibly a child of the king. In the early 1730s, Agnieszka Emercjanna became a widow and in the same year, she married Count Joseph Alexandre de Montmorency de Bours (d. 1759), Field Marshal of the Saxon Army. The artist vividly captures the self-confident and simultaneously erotic-coquettish character of her personality by depicting her in a dynamic pose with a masculine outfit: she wears a tricorn hat, the justaucorps is opened wide enough to reveal her décolleté, and she has a playful, delicate violet bow tied around her neck. The incarnate is executed in delicate chamois and pink tones, giving her body and face a fully modeled, plastic appearance, with full, red lips. The pictorial invention of this lady's portrait in men's clothing belongs to the most impressive ones that Manyoki ever achieved. At the same time, it conveys a striking impression of the erotically charged atmosphere at the two courts of Augustus the Strong. A second version, differing only in details, is located in the Lazienki Palace in Warsaw. This painting belongs to a group of portraits that King Stanislaus II Augustus Poniatowski of Poland probably acquired around 1764 together with the Ujazdów estate from Kasper Lubomirski. In the inventory of the gallery of Stanislaus Augustus, the painting was listed in 1784/92 as a work by Manyoki. The esteemed portraitist Adam Manyoki was appointed court painter to Augustus the Strong in 1713 and worked in Dresden until 1723. There and on his travels, he created numerous portraits of well-known and important persons of the nobility and court society. Since 1738, he worked again at the court in Dresden, alongside court painter Louis de Silvestre, creating portraits of Friedrich August II, son of Augustus the Strong, and the aristocracy. Oil on canvas, relined. Accompanied by an expertise from Professor Dr. Helmut Börsch-Supan, Berlin, 13 November 2011. Literature (regarding the version in Lazienki Palace in Warsaw): Eniko Buzasi: "Adam Manyoki (1673-1757)", monograph and oeuvre catalogue, Budapest 2003, no. B. 296, color illustration 29/p. 84; Dorota Juszczak and Hanna Malachowicz, catalogue of the gallery of paintings of Stanislaus Augustus in the Royal Lazienki Park, Warsaw 2015, catalogue no. 69, pp. 261-263.