Exploring the evidence of scientific and artistic patronage of Polish King Jan III Sobieski (1674-1696): A focus on the library in Wilanów Palace Le patronage scientifique et artistique du roi de Pologne Jean III Sobieski (1674-1696) : la bibliothèque du palais de Wilanów

Library—the room one can still see in Wilanów Palace (former Villa Nova), a suburban villa of the Polish valiant King, Jan III Sobieski (1674-1696). It does not hold books, prints, volumes any more, as they were dispersed among King’s inheritors, gathered in their various and distant estates and then, regretfully, lost.What extants today from the Library is a stucco and painting decoration dating back to the 1680s, comprising two grand tondos and smaller medallions with effigies of Eruditorum et Sapientum. The two main images represent allegorical figures of Theology and Philosophy creating a perfect balanced expression of two fundamental disciplines of human thought. They patronize smaller medallions which are composed as double portraits—a representative of science and arts from modern times is always assisted by his antique or pagan predecessor, Fidias and Michelangelo, Ptolomeus and Copernicus, Archimedes and Galileus, etc.The ideological programme of this decoration still raises questions and encourages our research. Was it just a means of cataloguing books and a regular realization according to well-known iconography fit for libraries? Was it also a certain ideological and propaganda statement of the monarch who was regarded during his reign as one of the erudite kings? How does it relate to the general significance of Wilanów that was adorned on the fa ade according to Sobieski’s will with an inscription stating: Quod Vetus Urbs Colluit Nunc Nova Villa Tenet? My paper will point out relations between those elements which were a well-known set of motifs to adorn such interiors and those who appeared here due to the site specific of the place; Wilanów, a new antique villa for a King who was Primus Inter Pares, a voted sovereign for the Commonwealth of Two Nations, the nation that regarded its origins in the classical antiquity of Sarmatians. His reign, although dominated by Bellona’s actions, never ignored those which were dominated by Apollo and Muses. For the King himself supported (intellectually and financially) Jan Hevelius (astronomer), Adam Kochański (mathematician and physician) and Philippe Avril (French Jesuit missionary, geographer and explorer of far East) and in 1684 became a member and protector of the Accademia degli Argonauti founded in Venice in 1684. A perfect combination of bold and accurate attitude for the new science that spread across Europe found its pre-academic center in the court of Jan III Sobieski, on the Eastern boundaries of the Latin world. Its symptomatic and peculiar evidence remains the Library of Wilanów Palace.