Kolekcja | 23.09.2015 The four Baroque boxes and a mirror preserved in the Wilanów collections are part of a dressing table, which originally was certainly composed of many more elements. The surface of the boxes and the mirror frame are covered with marquetry – one of the costliest decorative techniques, applied in exclusive artefacts since the seventeenth century. Pictures with sophisticated colours are the outcome of a combination of tortoise shell, silver and brass tin and mother of pearl. Gilt brass battens with an interlace motif, acanthus leafs and rosettes decorate the edges, while the legs and the corners are embellished with bluebells. The cover of one of the boxes features a brocade pincushion.
The themes of the scenes on the tops and walls of the boxes were derived from a series of allegorical paintings by Francesco Albani (1578–1660), depicting Venus, the goddess of love and, at the same time, referring to the four elements -– air, water, earth and fire, entitled La toilette de Venus ou l’Air, Adonis conduit pres de Vénus ou l’Eau, Les amours désarmés ou La Terre and Le Repos de Vénus et de Vulcain ou le Feu.
In this case, the compositions of Albani’s paintings were divided into smaller fragments, placed on the side walls of the boxes. The mirror, topped with an ornament, is flanked by two medallions with coats of arms showing an eagle under a crown and three deer under a crown, in this way linking the set with Queen Maria Kazimiera Sobieska née de La Grange d’Arquien. The coats of arms were probably added later, in France, in order to legitimate tradition. On 27 February 1808 Count Stanisław Kostka Potocki, the then co-owner of Wilanów, purchased Une Toilette de Marqueterie in Paris, from the De Tourniere firm [rue des Petits Augustins] no. 18 for 300 livres, as a national souvenir. In the same year, he recorded in Pamiętnik Interesów : […] dressing table of the Queen, wife of Jan – 300 livres. Placed in the Queen’s Bedchamber in Wilanów Palace the dressing table comprised an extremely important element of the first historical exposition of the museum, opened in 1805, and has been on show in the same place for almost 200 years.
A similar, single box displaying contre-partie marquetry with a slightly reduced version of the scene of the toilet of Venus, also from the end of the seventeenth century, is part of the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Anna Kwiatkowska