Stopy Barbary Radziwiłłówny
The Feet of Barbara Radziwiłłówna

Summary/Abstract: The history of art is full of examples proving that reciprocated feelings were a factor stimulating artistic creativity. In his painting Death of Barbara Radziwiłłówna Józef Simmler disclosed the feet of a dying woman – the painter was looking at his wife who acted as a model. This canvas was part of Victorian ambience, characteristic for an epoch when bourgeois morality concealed sexuality but did not obliterate it; sexuality expanded in assorted forms, today difficult to capture and hidden under various cotsumes. An academic, formalistic and historical discourse dimmed the subjectivity of this painting, The fact that it immediately became public property also contributed to this approach. The private sphere became dominated by its historical counterpart, in which the queen’s naked feet became meaningless. The work was extracted from concrete social space, in which art had for centuries a certain place in the history of art, whose formative element was the public collection/musem. This was the onset of the discourse on modernity.

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