3-071-978 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Listening to the Nuncio during the election of Stanislaw August Poniatowski, 19th century. The painting is a nineteenth-century copy of a canvas that used to be in the Mniszchów castle in Wisniowiec in Volhynia. It depicts the electoral field in Wola near Warsaw, where the nobility from all over the country gathered in 1764 to elect a king for the last time in the history of the Commonwealth. It was Stanislaw Antoni Poniatowski, a Lithuanian carpenter. The quadrangle marked by a rampart houses the delegates of the voivodeships. On one of the shorter sides stands a wooden, makeshift building. It is a shed where senators' deliberations took place. The whole field is surrounded by a large crowd of nobles who gather under the banners of their voivodeships. At the bottom of the canvas there is a legend that describes in detail all the elements of the scene taking place.