Jerzy Szymonowicz Siemiginowski was one of the foremost artists employed by King Jan III Sobieski. His works largely defined the final contours of the decorations in the royal apartments at the Wilanów Palace, and the portraits he painted altered the public perception of the monarch and his family. Born around 1660, Siemiginowski was the son of a painter and royal servitor, Jerzy Szymonowicz, and Teodora (Teodozja), a member of the Korunka family from Lviv. Knowledge of the painter’s origins derives partly from the Genealogy of the House of Messrs. Siemiginowski and Sir Jerzy Elephter Siemiginowski (Genealogia Domu Ichmść Panów Siemiginowskich i Imci Pana Jerzego Elephters Siemiginowskiego), compiled in 1783 for the purpose of justifying claims to nobility of the painter’s descendants. Certain passages in this work would suggest that Jerzy Szymonowicz’s father belonged to the noble house of Siemiginowski. The document itself, however, is not entirely trustworthy, even though some of the information it includes finds support in other sources.
Jerzy Szymonowicz Siemiginowski’s style as a painter developed mostly during his stay in Rome. The painter travelled to the city around 1677 for learning at the behest of King Jan III. It is not unlikely that prior to his arrival to the Eternal City, Siemiginowski paid a visit to Paris, as well. Still, while this hypothesis finds confirmation in the recurrent allusions to French art in the artist’s works, no confirmation of a trip to the capital of France had been found.
The few years of Siemiginowski’s education in Rome culminated in a spectacular triumph. On 11 January 1682, the painter won the grand prize in the most prestigious category — painting — in a competition for young, developing artists, organised by the Accademia di San Luca. The works he prepared for the competition — drawings The Building of Tower Babel and God’s Wrath at the Building of the Tower Babel, held in the archive of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome — are also the earliest known works by Siemiginowski. Perhaps the prize allowed the painter to be inducted into the Accademia di San Luca on 6 September 1682, though he may have owed the honour to Jan III, likely supported by Cardinal Barberini (the ‘protector’ of Poland) or Prince Livio Odescalchi, nephew of the Pope, and maybe even Pope Innocent XI himself.
Siemiginowski’s other known work completed in Rome is tied precisely to Prince Odescalchi. The painter favoured the Prince with a series of etchings based on allegorical frescoes (which did not survive to our times) painted by Lazzaro Baldi, pupil of Pietro da Cortona, at Palazzo Odescalchi in Rome. It is thought that Siemiginowski learned composition from Baldi, who is presumed to have been one of the Polish artist’s teachers (perhaps together with Luigi Garzi), but his later development owed more to his knowledge of the academic theory of art. Aside from a dedication bearing the date 29 November 1682, the aforementioned series of etchings includes five engravings: one replicating the central fresco from Palazzo Odescalchi — an allegorical composition glorifying the family — and four others, depicting Night, Day, Dawn, and Dusk.
The dedication for these earliest known graphical works of the painter testifies to Siemiginowski’s association with the patronage of the Odescalchi family during his Roman sojourn; Prince Livio himself took the painter under his wing. While in Rome, Siemiginowski likely produced other works, but little is known about them. One of his canvasses — a pastel portrait of Jan III — was held in the collection of Cardinal Carlo Barberini. The King’s confessor, Jesuit Carlo Maurizio Vota, mentioned the painting in a letter to the monarch dated 6 June 1693. It is impossible to decide whether the painter was involved in any way in the works on the projected, but never executed monument to Jan III at the Vatican. However, a small painting held at the Royal Castle at the Wawel, referred to as Painting Leading the Painter Toward the Statues of Jan III and Marie Casimire and associated with the Roman period of Siemiginowski’s career is also sometimes called Apotheosis of the Artistic Patronage of Jan III Sobieski and attributed to Jan Reisner, another protégé of Jan III and recipient of a grand prize of the Accademia di San Luca.
Immediately before Siemiginowski’s departure for Poland, the painter received the Order of the Golden Spur from Pope Innocent XI, a decoration which bestowed upon its recipient the titles of Eques Auratus (Golden Knight) and Lateranensis Comes (Count of the Lateran). The medal, which conferred noble status on its holder, altered Siemiginowski’s social standing, and the painter now chose to name himself ‘Cavalier Eleuter’. A few years later, Siemiginowski’s nobility was confirmed by a royal decree of Jan III. In his act of 7 August 1687, given in Zhovkva, the King granted Siemiginowski life-long ownership of the village Luka near Zolochiv, and a year later (on 31 July 1688), bestowed upon the painter his own title of Eques Auratus.
Siemiginowski’s road from Rome to Poland may have led through Paris, and quite certainly through Vienna, where in June 1683 the painter bought paintings for the King together with Jan Reisner.
After his return to Poland, Siemiginowski worked mostly for Jan III, but he continued to accept commissions from other clients. He directed the King’s so-called ‘painting school of Wilanów’ following the departure to Wrocław of its former director, Claude Callot. He produced paintings, engravings (the royal library at the Zhovkva castle held a portfolio of ‘copper engravings of different persons from the hand of Mr. Szymonowicz’), and designs (e.g. he took part in the designing of the Zhovkva town hall). The painter also oversaw some of the King’s artistic undertakings, such as the production of statues for the church of Carmelite sisters in Lviv. By the end of the 1680s he was living in Wilanów, but moved to Warsaw around 1690, joining the court of Prince Jakub Sobieski at the Kazimierzowski Palace. Though consistently employed in Wilanów or Warsaw, he still found time to visit his native Lviv. During one of his stays there, in 1687, he produced the coffin portrait of Maria Anna Jabłonowska née Kazanowska (since lost). The painting, likely subscribing to the conventions of this type of art, was painted on a silver plate.
Primacy among Siemiginowski’s works commissioned by Jan III belongs to the paintings intended for the interiors of the palace at Wilanów and the portraits. The painter’s allegorical compositions depicting the seasons decorate the main rooms in the palace — the apartments of the King and the Queen. The only lost painting from this series, Night and Day, formerly found at the ceiling of the Grand Vestibule, represented Apollo dispersing the shadows of the night giving way to the light of day and bound together other paintings within the main programme. The bedroom and antechamber in the Queen’s apartment are adorned with plafonds: Spring, whose literary archetype was the dialogue poem La Rosa by Giambattista Marini, and Autumn, which, like the paintings in the King’s apartment — Summer and Winter — relates to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Siemiginowski tied the seasons to relevant elements and, in accordance with the tradition of the era, Zodiac signs accentuating change and the passage of time. In addition, the paintings were integrated with decorations of the facets depicting activities characteristic for particular times of the year. Several of them refer to Virgil’s Georgics and may have been executed by Siemiginowski, as well. Some of the figures in the plafonds are allegorical depictions of the owners of the palace. In this context, Summer — with Marie Casimire as Aurora-Astrea — and Spring — with representations of the transformation of people into flowers, as described by Ovid, and the depiction of Rose, who, like the entire painting, may be seen as an allegorical portrait of the Queen, at times named Rose or Bouquet by Jan III — merit particular attention. Siemiginowski drew inspiration for his plafonds from ancient masterpieces as well as works of contemporary masters: Carlo Maratta, Pietro da Cortona, Guido Reni, Annibale Caracci, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Nicolas Poussin, Charles Le Brun, Antoine Coysevox.
While the painter drew particular motifs from the works of these artists, he used them in original, independently shaped compositions, lending a personal touch through his own way of modelling, colouring, and shaping the draperies. The skilful implementation of artistic devices introduced by other artists, the painter’s own broad range of inspirations, and his procedure in framing his composition testify to the quality of education received by Siemiginowski.
The apartment of Marie Casimire was adorned with another significant work by the painter — decorations in the so-called Al Fresco Cabinet. Here, Siemiginowski applied his brushwork directly to the plaster, rather than to a canvas, creating painted imitations of tapestries (depicting Apollo: Apollo and Issa, Apollo and Cumaean Sybil, Apollo Playing), bronze medallions, sculptures on the mantelpiece, and architectural details. The painter may have also taken part in decorating rooms on the first and second floors of the Wilanów palace.
Siemiginowski is also the presumed author of other allegorical paintings invoking themes from Greek and Roman mythologies or literary works. The castle at Olesko holds the painting Bacchus and Ariadne, composed in a manner suggestive of a design for a plafond, perhaps for one of Jan III’s other residences — for instance, in Zhovkva. Mariusz Karpowicz associated the painter with Rinaldo and Armida, a picture found at the National Museum in Stockholm, previously assumed to have been the work of Andrea Camassei, an associate of Domenichino. The painting depicts the scene of Rinaldo’s capture, derived from Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered and rendered in a style closely reminiscent of Siemiginowski’s canvasses at Wilanów, adapting motifs of Roman art and alluding to a painting by Simon Vouet, found in the Louvre, devoted to the same subject, which again speaks to the French inspirations of the royal painter.
An important part of Siemiginowski’s oeuvre consists of portraits of Jan III and his family. Among the works unquestionably attributable to the painter are two antiquated depictions of the King’s sons — Konstanty, painted in 1688, and Aleksander, two years later. Other works raised doubts among scholars. The two likely most captivating canvasses — due to their ideological ramifications — the Portrait of Jan III with Son Jakub and the allegorical Portrait of Marie Casimire with Children, are likewise associated with Siemiginowski. The former is though to have been painted to express the dynastic ambitions of the King, and presents Jakub as the heir and successor to Jan III. The latter, brimming with symbolic implications, portrays Marie Casimire as the mother-progenitor of a dynasty with her virtuous offspring. Siemiginowski’s other, lost portraits of the royal family are known from graphical reproductions or copies by other masters. The portrait of Jan III on Horseback, known from an etching by Charles de la Haye, had obvious propaganda overtones. Siemiginowski’s composition, eagerly reproduced by other masters, had a significant impact on the iconography of celebratory and battle portraiture of the King. The so-called minor and major redaction of the head-and-shoulders portrait of Jan III, another product of the Siemiginowski-de la Haye duet, had a similar impact. The latter version was dedicated to Queen Marie Casimire and the artist completed it only after his relocation to the Kazimierzowski Palace.
Siemiginowski also produced drawings for several other etchings by Charles de la Haye: illustrations of philosophical theses and a portrait of Queen Marie Casimire. The so-called Thesis with Święta Lipka from 1694 — a symbolic depiction of the Warmia diocese — was produced as an illustration for the thesis of a young Stanisław Hozjusz (the future Bishop of Poznań), while the portrait of Bishop Konstanty Brzostowski served to illustrate the thesis of Andrzej Wołodkowicz, defended in 1699 at the Academy of Vilnius. The two artists were also commissioned by Jakub Sobieski to produce a frontispiece for the book Fidelis subditus by Stanisław Orzechowski, published in Warsaw in 1697, a piece of propaganda art depicting the Prince as the personification of Freedom.
Among Siemiginowski’s independently-produced graphical works, illustrations made around 1690 for Flores vitae beatae Salomeae, a small volume by Priest Sebastian Piskorski — former preceptor of the Princes Sobieski and subsequently the Cracow canon and professor of law at the Jagiellonian University — published in 1691 in Cracow, stands out. Expressed in writing and images, the events from the life of Blessed Salomea were divided into 24 ‘flowers’, or emblems. Made using a mixed technique (etching and drypoint), the illustrations uncover Siemiginowski’s mastery of graphic arts, his inventiveness and the ability to shape new compositions, in some cases unburdened by a long historical tradition. The manner in which the painter represented events from Salomea’s life made an impact on the iconography of the Blessed, a fact borne out in the fresco decorations of Saint Andrew’s church in Cracow. Siemiginowski’s cooperation with Priest Piskorski resulted in other commissions, as well. Between 4 January and 30 March 1695, on the basis of a specified ‘invention’, the painter drew a design for the confession of Saint John Cantius for the newly erected university church of Saint Anne in Cracow. The monumental confession scene, located on one side of the transept, was executed the following year by Baldassare Fontana, author of stucco decorations in the church. The construction of the university church was supervised by Priest Piskorski, who placed an order with Siemiginowski to make the painting of Virgin and Child with Saint Anne for the main altar (completed in 1699). It is one of the few remaining religious works unquestionably attributable to the painter. The painting Christ Teaching (?), which Siemiginowski gifted to the Visitation monastery in Warsaw on 24 June 1694, is considered a product of his workshop, while the depiction of Virgin with the Child, held in the National Museum in Wrocław, is merely attributed to the painter. Priest Piskorski may have also acted as an intermediary between Siemiginowski and the professors of the Academy of Cracow — the founders of the shrine for the head of Saint John Cantius. The design for this work, executed by the Cracow gold-worker Jan Ceypler in 1695, is attributed to the royal painter.
Most of Siemiginowski’s known religious paintings were destroyed during World War II. The paintings from the Warsaw churches of the Capuchins (The Transfiguration of Christ, Guardian Angel, Saint Bonaventure, Saint Felix of Catalince) and of the Holy Cross (Saint Roch, Saint Sebastian, and Christ at the Cross) did not survive. The latter composition, executed in 1700 for the main altar of the church of the Holy Cross, has attracted particular attention since the painter was claimed to have received a surprisingly high remuneration for the work — 2,560 Polish Złotys. Some of these paintings are known from photographs, but the contours of the lost paintings from the Franciscan church in Lviv are unknown, while the paintings for the church in Szczuczyn, mentioned in the artist’s letters to Vice-Chancellor Stanisław Antoni Szczuka from 1706, may not have been eventually completed. The correspondence suggests that the Vice-Chancellor also commissioned Siemiginowski to produce designs of altars for the temple.
The painter also designed and decorated everyday objects. For Stanisław Szczuka, he was supposed to have painted decorations for a carriage. A work in a similar vein, the allegorical-mythological paintings from the grand carriage of the Sobieskis (1692), is attributed to the artist’s workshop.
With the demise of King Jan III and Prince Jakub Sobieski’s failure to secure the Polish throne, Siemiginowski remained the court artist for Aleksander Sobieski, but also accepted orders from King August II, who nominated the painter as his secretary. In January 1699 Siemiginowski took up work in the Royal Castle in Warsaw together with his brother-in-law, Martino Altomonte. The artists were tasked with creating appropriate theatrical decorations at the Senators’ Chamber for a play meant to honour the occasion of the inauguration of the carnival. In 1700–2 Siemiginowski directed development works on the side wings of the Wilanów Palace.
Siemiginowski’s personal life was not one of consistent joy. The painter married four times. Not all circumstances of his marriages are known, and the available information can be interpreted in various ways. Most likely the painter’s first wife was Magdalena Georkiewicz (Gębarowicz dated their wedding as late as between 1688 and 1690, and Karpowicz suggested her identity with another of the artist’s wives, Caroline Guerquin). Siemiginowski married her no later than in 1694, and possibly even at the end of 1683. Magdalena bore him two children — a daughter (who was christened in her mother’s name) and son Jan, who figures in later documents found in Lviv as ‘Primo voto procreatus filius’. Magdalena died before 1687, since already in January of that year the painter entered into his second marriage with Pelagia née Affendyk, daughter of a wealthy Lviv patrician. This marriage did not last long, either, as Pelagia died already in December 1687 — most likely in childbrith, since the painter also lost his young daughter Anne at the same time. Both marriages testify to the firmness of Siemiginowski’s ties with Lviv following his return from Rome. On 31 July 1690 Caroline Guerquin became the artist’s next wife. The wedding took place at the church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw, which at that time was the painter’s parish. It was here that his four children borne by Caroline were christened — two daughters (Róża and Karolina Magdalena) and two sons (Jakub and another unknown by name). After Caroline’s death (between 1694 and 1696) Siemiginowski married Teresa, daughter of merchant Jerzy Laroza, on 8 June 1698. The painter had four children with her: Marianna, Jerzy (Eleuter), Michał, and Bonifacy Bonawentura. Teresa survived her husband, dying before 15 January 1718.
In 1704 Siemiginowski owned a house at Aleksandria and a mansion at Wielopole between Grzybów and Leszno, outside Warsaw. He lived mostly in Warsaw, maintaining close ties to many artists active in the local milieus during the last quarter of the seventeenth century (Tielman van Gameren, Michelangelo Palloni, Martino Altomonte, Jan Reisner, Charles de la Haye). After 1706 the painter spent a significant proportion of his time in the village Luka outside Zolochow, and in Zolochow itself, where he owned property, probably a tenement house, since as early as 1690. He died between 28 February 1708 and 13 March 1711. Little is known of his pupils and successors. While he must have benefited from the aid of assistants or students for the performance of his many commissions, only one of them is known to us — Adam Swach.
Selected readings:
W.S. Aleksandrowicz, ‘Nowe materiały do biografii i twórczości Jerzego Szymonowicza Starszego oraz Jerzego Eleutera Szymonowicza-Siemiginowskiego’, Foliae Historiae Artium 27 (1991), 111–124.
M. Gębarowicz, ‘Młodość i pierwsze prace Jerzego Eleutera Szymonowicza-Siemiginowskiego’, in: Księga pamiątkowa ku czci Oswalda Balzera, Lwów 1924, 391–416.
M. Karpowicz, ‘Autoportret Siemiginowskiego’, Biuletyn Historii Sztuki 18 (1956), no. 1, 139–144.
M. Karpowicz, Jerzy Eleuter Siemiginowski malarz polskiego baroku, Wrocław—Warszawa—Kraków—Gdańsk 1974
M. Karpowicz, ‘Malowidła Gabinetu Al Fresco w Wilanowie’, Rocznik Historii Sztuki 7 (1969), 221–242.
M. Karpowicz, ‘Polonica w Akademii św. Łukasza’, Biuletyn Historii Sztuki 33 (1971), no. 4, 382–395.
M. Karpowicz, ‘Portret Marii Kazimiery z dziećmi’, Biuletyn Historii Sztuki 20 (1958), no. 2, 223–235.
M. Karpowicz, ‘Rinaldo i Armida Siemiginowskiego w Sztokholmie’, Studia Wilanowskie 17 (2010), 17–24.
K. Moisan-Jabłońska, ‘Malowidło Charles Le Bruna z Pawilonu Jutrzenki w Sceaux inspiracją dla wilanowskich plafonów Pór roku Jerzego Eleutera Siemiginowskiego’, Biuletyn Historii Sztuki 68 (2006), no. 1, 45–58.
J. Ostrowski, ‘Flores Vitae B. Salomeae, nieznany cykl graficzny Jerzego Eleutera Szymonowicza-Siemiginowskiego’, Biuletyn Historii Sztuki 35 (1973), no. 1, 43–52.
W. Owsijczuk, ‘Bachus i Ariadna Jerzego Eleutera Szymonowicza-Siemiginowskiego z Lwowskiej Galerii Obrazów’, Biuletyn Historii Sztuki 53 (1991), no. 1–2, 99–102.
Translation: Antoni Górny
