Ostatni prymas Rzeczypospolitej. Michał Jerzy Poniatowski w portretach Marcella Bacciarellego.
The last Primate of the Polish-Lithuanin Commonwealth. Michał Jerzy Poniatowski in the portraits by Marcello Bacciarelli

Summary/Abstract: Michał Jerzy Poniatowski, brother of Stanislaus Augustus, Archbishop of Gniezno and Primate, was the closest political collaborator of the king. His portrait iconography developed thanks to the premier peintre du roi Marcello Bacciarelli. The poses arranged by the painter, around 4–5 during the Primate’s lifetime, were replicated and copied in the Castle Painting Studio. A large number of copies made in the workshop are seen today as authored by Bacciarelli, yet none of the Primate’s portraits made by Bacciarelli is an original in the full sense of the term (a painting made without the collaboration of the workshop). The oldest portrait was an unassuming bust within an oval from a series of portraits of the royal family in the Łazienki Palace (ca. 1778). After Poniatowski was assigned to the Archdiocese of Gniezno, his first official portrait as the Primate was made. It is known from two repetitions made with the aid of Bacciarelli (at the Academy of St. Luke in Rome and in the Muzeum Okręgowe in Toruń). The most ceremonial en pied portrait of Poniatowski belongs to the Raczyński Foundation at the National Museum in Poznań. Patterned on a portrait of Bossuet by Hyacinthe Rigaud and on the Portrait of Stanislaus Augustus in Coronation Attire, despite its artistic value and extensive content it never became an official portrait of the monarch and was not repeated. The last portrait of the Primate is the one from the collection of Abe Gutnajer, now lost. It was most likely painted after the Primate’s return from a two-year trip abroad (1791) and references the portrait of Primate Olszowski from the Knights’ Hall of the Royal Castle in Warsaw as a mirror reflection of the original.

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