Panorama Warszawy w pałacu Walickich w Małej Wsi – niedostrzeżone dzieło Antoniego Smuglewicza
A Panorama of Warsaw in the Walicki Palace at Mała Wieś – an Overlooked Work by Antoni Smuglewicz

Summary/Abstract: This article is devoted to a polychrome painting depicting a panorama of Warsaw viewed from the east bank of the Vistula River, located in the palace at Mała Wieś in Mazovia. The subject matter had a personal dimension for the owner of the residence, since Bazyli Walicki, the voivode of Rawa, chaired the capital’s Boni Ordinis Commission, whose aim was to unite the city into a single urban organism. Although the painting was inspired by an oil painting by Bernardo Bellotto, A View of Warsaw from the Praga District (1770), the model was used creatively, updating the capital’s cityscape. This makes it possible to determine the time of its creation as the autumn of 1785 or the spring of 1786. The work demonstrates a high level of painterly skill and constitutes one of the most interesting illusionistic secular polychromes created in the Commonwealth during the reign of Stanislaus Augustus. Its author was most probably Antoni Smuglewicz, as evidenced both by formal indications, especially analogies with the decorations he executed in the Dobrzyca palace, and by the painter’s long-term collaboration with the designer of the palace at Mała Wieś, the architect Stanisław Zawadzki.

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