Maria Alfredowa Potocka née Sanguszko

Portrait painting from the museum’s collection depicting a young woman shown in half-figure, looking at the viewer. The portrayed woman is Maria Klementyna Potocka, née Sanguszko (b. March 1830 in Sławuta, d. October 1903 in Lviv), daughter of Roman Sanguszko and Natalia Potocka. In 1851 Maria married Alfred Józef Potocki, the Second Entailer of Łańcut. She was a woman endowed with a strong, authoritative character, as the wife of the governor of Galicia she often organised meetings and balls, supporting her husband in his responsible work and managing the household. In 1880 Alfred decided to build a palace in Lviv, on what is now Nicolaus Copernicus Street; after his death in 1889, Maria supervised the completion of the palace, where she spent the autumn and winter, while spending and the summer in Antoniny. She rarely stayed Łańcut, the state of which began to deteriorate. At the Łańcut portrait, we see a beautiful woman in a black dress, decorated with a large white lace collar and long strings of pearls, fastened around her neck with an oval brooch, with long dormeus pearl earrings in her ears. The portrait is a copy from an original by Franz Xaver Winterhalter (b. April 1805 in Menzenschwand, d. July in Frankfurt am Rhein), a German painter and lithographer who became popular as a portraitist of crowned heads and aristocracy. He portrayed most of the crowned heads in Europe, the most famous being the portrait of the Austrian Empress Elisabeth (Sisi) from 1864. His way of painting was conservative with characteristic smooth (“enamelled”) surface of paintings. He was never praised by the critics, but was respected by his principals and very popular among them. The portrait in question is exhibited in the Entrance Room on the first floor of the Łańcut Castle.