Anna Orzelska
- Date
- 1st quarter of the 18th c.
- Object type
- painting
- Technique
- oil
- Material
- canvas
- Dimensions
- 79,5 x 64,3 cm
- Acquisition date
- 1764
- Location
- The Palace on the Isle - Bacchus Room, ground floor
- Marks and inscriptions
- red number 100 of the Stanisław August collection, bottom right
- Place of Origin
- France (Europe)
- Owner
- The Royal Łazienki
- Museum number
- ŁKr 869
Anna (1707–69), natural daughter of August II the Strong and Henrietta Rénard-Duval; her father gave her the title, Countess, and the surname, Orzelska.
The painting belongs to a group of 15 portraits which are traditionally believed to have been acquired by Stanisław August in 1764 from Kasper Lubomirski, together with the Ujazdów estate (for the series see cat. no. 48). … .
In the 1783, 1793, 1793–95 and 1795 catalogues of the Stanisław August collection, the painting is recorded as being an anonymous work; in the 1784–92 catalogue the entry can be interpreted (although rather ambiguously) as indicating it could be by Ádám Mányoki.
In 19th-century sources the painting was described as the work of an unknown artist. Stanisław Iskierski (1931) and Béla Lázár (1933)—the latter dated the portrait to 1713—believed it to be the work of Ádám Mányoki, and it was thus published in the 1964 and 1967 catalogues of the National Museum in Warsaw, as well as in the Dictionary of Art in 1996 (Turner 1996) by Klára Garas. Enikő Buzási … rejected this attribution, as did Harald Marx (…), who gave the painting to Louis de Silvèstre. … .
Dorota Ewa Olczak, the author of a recent monograph on de Silvèstre, considered the portrait of Orzelska to be a work of the studio, probably by the artist’s wife, Marie-Catherine, or his daughter, Marie Maximilienne, who were trained by and collaborated with de Silvèstre. The type of face depicted in Orzelska’s portrait with the characteristic, somehow slanted eyes brings to mind the similarly rendered physiognomies of King August III’s daughters in the pastel portraits at the Residenz in Munich, whose authorship is ascribed to de Silvèstre’s wife or daughter … . … . [See D. Juszczak, H. Małachowicz, The Stanisław August Collection of Paintings at the Royal Łazienki. Catalogue, Royal Łazienki Museum, Warsaw 2016, no. 95, pp. 346–348.]