Among Warsaw’s foremost architects of Late Baroque period was Johann Sigmund Deybel (Teubel, Teuble, Teubler, Deibler), who signed his designs Johann Sigmund (or JS) Deybel. His sons, Christian Gottfried and Heinrich, added ‘von Hamerau’ to their last names, theoretically an indication of noble status more likely intended to specify their place of origin—the city of Hammerau near Salzburg. Their father’s second name, so common in Alpine areas, would corroborate this conviction. The exact date of birth of the architect remains unknown; he was certainly born before 1700, most likely between 1690 and 1695, and died in 1752. Deybel was an Evangelical who left his homeland most likely for religious reasons, initially finding asylum in Saxony. The architect’s scholarly background and youthful experiences have not been entirely ascertained. As a creator, he owed the most to French architecture, which he may have observed either during an educational trip to Paris (as did another Saxon architect of the period, Carl Friedrich Pöppelmann) or in Dresden, where the French brand of architecture became an official style at the court before 1720.
Johann Sigmund’s brother Jakob, a gilder described in registers as ‘de Augsburg’ (indicating the place of education rather than of origin) had been living in Warsaw since the end of the seventeenth century. His name appeared in the register of the parish of Saint John in Warsaw already before 1700, and he died in 1729, having worked for magnates such as Anna Radziwiłł née Sanguszko. The circumstances of the younger Deybel’s arrival to Warsaw are uncertain. It is supposed that a building inspector named Teuber, listed on the payroll of the Saxon Corps of Engineers in Dresden in 1712, was in fact Deybel the architect. The first archival mention of Johann Sigmund Deybel in Poland—then a Lieutenant of Horse Artillery—is an entry in the register of the Evangelical parish at Węgrów (which included Warsaw) from 1719, most likely concerning his marriage. Deybel was probably encouraged to move to Warsaw by Johann Christoph Naumann, Major of the Corps of Engineers and the first director of the Warsaw Bauamt, who wanted the architect to lend support to Joachim Daniel Jauch, completing royal commissions at the Royal Castle and the Saxon Palace. The ties between Deybel and Naumann must have been considerable given the frequent allusions to Naumann’s oeuvre in the works of the former.
Deybel figured as an employee of the Bauamt since April 1721, on the payroll of the so-called Polnische Generalkasse, with a salary of 220 thalers (rising to 300 in 1729). He was promoted to Captain in 1730 and to Major in 1738. Initially, he executed designs by other artists and acted as a pollier on the building sites, but from around 1725 on, Deybel completed designs of palaces independently to eigene Gedanken (original concepts), for instance at Ujazdów, where he took part in a competition of sorts for the most impressive concept for remodelling an existing edifice formerly owned by the Vasas into a residence for Augustus the Strong, adjoined to church of the Resurrection. Designs for the new Saxon Palace—intended to replace the extant residence adapted from the palace of Treasurer Jan Andrzej Morsztyn—were also submitted into a competition. Aside from Deybel, Joachim Daniel Jauch, Johann Christoph Naumann, Jean de Bodt, and Carl Friedrich Pöppelmann took part in it, among others.
The first project Deybel evidently executed was the Blue Palace—a remodelling of an older residence conducted in 1726—which Augustus II intended as a gift to his biological daughter Anna Orzelska. While working on this project, Deybel joined forces with architects Joachim Daniel Jauch and Carl Friedrich Pöppelmann, designing and executing the main body of the palace (according to his own statement in letters to Jan Fryderyk Sapieha). Around 1728, he also devised numerous plans for a remodelling of the Casimir Palace along with the adjoining barracks of the Guards and a terrace extending toward Vistula, some of which bear his signature. The Casimir Barracks were eventually built to a design by Joachim Daniel Jauch in 1731. Deybel, in turn, designed and raised Wielkopolskie Barracks next to the Saxon Palace complex.
Since ca. 1727–8, Deybel complemented royal commissions (to a growing extent) with works for Polish magnates—more precisely, for a narrow circle of the most esteemed families with ties to royal ministers. These were the families of Sieniawski, Czartoryski, Poniatowski, Sapieha, Branicki, and later Radziwiłł, of the country’s elites focused on Warsaw as a major cultural centre—particularly (though not exclusively) on the royal court—and often bound together by ties of blood or friendship. Already in 1727 Deybel joined the ‘factory’ at the Wilanów Palace owned by Elżbieta Sieniawska (and earlier by Jan III), replacing Giovanni Spazzio (who died in 1726) as director of works. Until 1730 he concluded work on the southern wing of the palace (based on its northern counterpart created a few years earlier by Spazzio). The building site at Wilanów remained the architect’s domain even after the residence was leased by Augustus II toward the end of 1730. Within two construction seasons—1731–2—the King financed primarily significant new interiors designed by Deybel: the two-story, subdued White Hall in white pilasters in the southern wing and four cabinets in the bays of the old corpus of the palace of Jan III, partly adorned with seventeenth-century decorations, with the so-called Lackkabinet (Chinese Cabinet) executed by the court lacquerer Martin Schnell and sculptor Johann Georg Plersch the most prominent commission. Deybel did not leave his post at Wilanów even after the death of Augustus II in 1733, when the residence was taken over by Elżbieta Sieniawska’s daughter Maria Zofia, the wife of August Aleksander Czartoryski, Voivode of Rus’. He continued to extend his care over the substance of the palace and farm buildings (he raised a tavern in 1745), as well as the gardens (his designs were implemented, for instance, in the second orangery in 1746–8). The Czartoryskis mostly employed Deybel at Puławy, where his designs reshaped the former Lubomirski villa into a formidable Baroque multi-story residence consisting of the main corpus and side annexes with richly adorned interiors and façades, completed in 1729–36.
Before the Voivode of Rus’ employed him, Deybel worked for his sister Konstancja Poniatowska née Czartoryska and her husband Stanisław, Voivode of Mazovia, for whom he built a palace and courtly church at Vowchyn in 1728. The palace, most likely made partly from wood, and the extensive garden subscribed to the architectural patterns of French residences, primarily those designed by Jacques-François Blondel. The still extant, though ruined church was an exemple of the elegant, centralised court temple (patterned on the Greek cross) with refined architectonic and sculpted decorations.
Since 1728—through a recommendation from Jauch—Deybel was hired by a supporter of Augustus II, Jan Klemens Branicki, General of Horse Artillery and later Field Hetman and Grand Hetman of the Crown. During the same year, he set about expanding Branicki’s residence at Białystok according to the French model entre cour et jardin, which entailed, for instance, the remodelling of the existing palace designed by Tielman van Gameren (before 1743). The first stage of expansion works (until 1733) involved the broadening of the living quarters and grand rooms at the palace (e.g. a second story was added to the main corpus and bound in giant order, and the interiors and furnishings were changed). The second stage (after 1737) saw the raising of the side galleries adjacent to the main corpus and the erection of a central portico under the terrace, as well as open column galleries, placed symmetrically on both sides; new roofs were laid along with domes at the front towers; courtyards and gardens were reorganised. During a similar period, Deybel built a palace for Branicki in Warsaw—a two-story main corpus toward Miodowa Street and wings grasping an extensive courtyard on the side of Podwale Street. The attic of the palace was adorned with figural and ornamental sculptures.
Foremost among the dignitaries who employed Deybel was the Voivode of Trakai, later Grand Chancellor of Lithuania, Jan Fryderyk Sapieha, owner of the sizeable palace in the New Town district of Warsaw. In 1727–35, to a design by the architect and under his strict supervision, the main corpus of the palace was erected, along with short side wings enclosing a shallow, five-sided courtyard; in 1741–3, also under Deybel’s supervision, the long side annexes along Zakroczymska Street were erected.
Deybel’s final clients included Minister Heinrich Brühl, for whom the architect produced numerous unimplemented designs for a remodelling of the Sandomierski Palace at Wierzbowa Street, which the dignitary acquired in 1750 from the Sanguszko family. The plans were characterised by an extensive spatial programme including the use of a system of several courtyards.
The characteristic style of Deybel’s drawings allows for numerous designs to be attributed to him—sometimes due to the presence of his signature—involving primarily palaces, but also barracks. They can by found in collections in Poland (the Library of the University of Warsaw, the National Museum in Warsaw) and Germany (Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden).
Deybel’s style was marked by decided French and Classical influences, though less definite than that which characterised the period of the formation of the architectonic doctrine of the era of Louis XIV. It represented a sensibility more attuned to the eighteenth century, lighter and less focused on blocks as structures and more on the impression of the silhouette. He approximated the Classical-Rococo style of his contemporary Robert de Cotte. The Warsaw architect also used French template editions devised mostly as an aid for developing concepts and detailed studies of residences, such as the albums of Jacques-François Blondel, Germain Boffrand, or Charles-Étienne Briseux. Such was the source of his particular interest in the ground floor, which he introduced in Warsaw as a cornerstone of his style, treating it as a so-called bel-étage, especially in newly-erected buildings. Deybel skilfully combined the unmediated French influence with elements characteristic for Saxony (which incidentally also looked to France during that period), such as a refined geometry and embellishments at roofs and domes. These he may have appropriated from figures such as his patron, Johann Christoph Naumann. Italian influences rarely figured in Deybel’s oeuvre, and were typically limited to the traditional disposition of interiors, a feature known to Warsaw since as early as the seventeenth century. Deybel’s architecture is typified by flat, unordered façades interspersed with shallow projections cut through with embossed lesenes, adorned with richer sculpted decorations in stone in the part of the attic, and by a characteristic disposition and rhythm of rectangular windows in lower floors and square ones above, partitioned into sections.
Translation: Antoni Górny
