Equestrian-themed Jewels from Polish-Saxon Court of Augustus II the Strong

 Salvete Omnes,

Dresden's Saxon Royal Castle contains some of the most outstanding royal jewels in the world - 

the famous and fabulous green diamond of king Augustus III

among there are some beautiful examples of jewelry made for our kings Augustus II the Strong and his son Augustus III (of the Wettin Hourse). 

Augustus II had a goldsmith Johann Melchior Dinglinger working for him, and master Johann created many magnificent object of his art. These objects can be seen at  the Grünes Gewölbe (Green Vault) inside the castle.

One of the is this cup with a horse - outfitted in the Polish style of the period, with the sabre suspended under the saddle's skirt. 

Agate, enamel, gilded silver, gold, precious and semiprecious stones were used by maestro Dinglinger to make this magnificent cup, one of two (circa 1722).

There is also these 2 figurines of  Nubian/Ethiopian drummer and trumpeter on horseback -

and many more beautiful objects - like this composition

or this egreta alias szkofia (aigrette)

Valete

Art from the Polish-Saxon kings treasury in Dresden stolen

Salvete Omnes,
sad moment for the Polish-Saxon kings collection held at the Dresden Castle, state of Saxony, German Federal Republic - yesterday, circa 5AM there was  a robbery in there.
Das Grünes Gewölbe or Zielone Sklepienie (the Green  Vault)  - started in AD 1723 by our king Augustus II the Strong(and Unlucky should be added too) - was robbed in a daring or astonishing act of thievery.
As usually when comes to reporting crime in Germany very little is known, but it appears that two men broke into the Green Vault and took what they came for. An inside job?
There is no precise info what and how much was stolen. It appears that he protections at the vault were more or less laughable considering the treasures it held.
The famous green diamond, the largest in the world and originally bought by our king Augustus III,  was away at the MET, in NYC - thank God
The artwork stolen is priceless, but broken into pieces is worth millions or even billions of dollars.


 now, one more matter:
I would like to point to you that the reporting in many English language worldwide media outlets (eg here, or here- BBC no less-, or here - CNN the friends of Poland ,   or here they say that he was 'later a king of Poland') indicate that the collection was started by Augustus II the Strong, elector of Saxony, and they do not mention that he was first and foremost the king of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and that he draw his wealth from his kingship, and that when he started the collection he had been already more than 20 years the ruler of our Polish state.
a little chronology of  Augustus II der Starke reign:
1694 - elector of Saxony
1697 - elected by the Polish nobles as the king of Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth
1733 - died in Warsaw, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth


Is this English language world media  willful, orchestrated omission of Polish history and heritage or a simple case of ignorance and lack of education?

 one must ponder - IMHO this is the very failure of the Polish institutions and scholars to educate the world, in spite of the Polish history foundations at many of the American, British and Canadian universities - perhaps wrong people sit there; time to change the appointments.

valete

[in Polish]
Zielone Sklepienie okradzione - artykul z Deutsche Welle.

Jan III Sobieski - Happy Birthday

Zamek w Olesku - Olesko Castle

Janina coat of arms inside the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth coat of arms

Salve,


today is yet another anniversary, for on this day but in 1629AD future king of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was born at the castle of Olesko, present day Ukraine (I went there a month ago, what a trip it was).
Jan was born to Teofila Sobieska de domo Daniłowicz and Jakub Sobieski, Janina coat of arms.

Jakub Sobieski

Teofila Sobieska

Sas, Topór, Herburt and Korczak coats of arms in Olesko castle main gate

By Stalin's whim this very important, historically and emotionally, Polish territory lays outside of the present-day Polish Republic.

Past weekend I went to the Wilanow Palace Museum and did a bit of exploring of this former residence of Jan Sobieski and his family..

Jan Tricius' portrait of our King

 I am afraid I have to admit that the exposition is disappointing in many ways. Most especially the interior is poorly lit, and many of the fine canvasses are hung in near darkness that prohibit any study of the paintings. The paintings and prints/engravings are not named in any way or fashion, so unless one has the knowledge of the period art and patience to search the Net (or bought the services of a tourguide or an audioguide), the viewing will be difficult to enjoy and without any context.

The Museum is not presented as the sanctuary of the Lion of Lechistan - I love the name our foes and friends from Ottoman Turkey gave Poland and our king - but as a magnate residence, with much emphasis on the David's painting of Stanislaw Kostka Potocki and interior decorations done during the centuries after our beloved king. I must say that the Olesko Castle in much more interesting to see if you are a Sobieski-phile - :)

And yet the park, an integral part of this museum complex,  is lovely and worth the visit, especially during the warm months of the year. The museum's website is much more Sobieski oriented than the actual palace complex exhibits etc.

enjoy

St. Martin at Poznań - kings & winged hussars

Salve,

continuing with the theme of Saint Martin of Tours i would like to bring to your attention a painting from Poznań, w Greater Poland,

that not only brings the narration of our Saint sharing his cloak with a beggar while entering Amiens (France), but also it is a large and equestrain group portrait of the Polish Crown rulers, king Sigismund (the first imaged in this post) and his son Wladyslaw, and magnates and important figures, and also winged hussars of the era, all armoured from cap to toe -:) .  it was painted by a local artisit and priest - Krzysztof Boguszewski Ostoja coat of arms, circa 1628 and is located in St. Martin chappel at the Archcathedral Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul, Poznań.

winged hussars

By the way, in Poznań  there is a church named St.Martin, and from that church runs  a main street named Saint Martin Street (the Polish-Soviet Communists tried to obliterate this name, and failed) and each  year on November 11 you can eat a special Saint Martin croissant - 'rogal świętomarciński' - as Poznań celebrates this Saint's name day :) with a parade and sweets.
enjoy

Pan Zawadzki with king Charles I of England, Scotland etc

Salve,
sometime during 1633 our king Władysław IV sent his envoy, starosta of Swiecie pan Jan Zawadzki, to the various royal courts of Europe, including the Stuart court in London.
In June 1633 Polish embassy reached England.
There is a description of the gifts from our king to the King of England, and here as always, our good king regaled his English counterpart several riding horses, dressed and with then typical horse tack used in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth:
''Rzędom też oprawnym bardzo się dziwują, że w Anglji takich niewidali, także też i koniom, jakoż Cavalcator Królewski powiedział ża żadnego takiego u Króla niemasz.''
 -Our adorned, [precious stones etc], horse furniture (back in XVII-XVIII century ''rząd koński'' included both all the harness and the saddle with stirrups)  they are wondering about since they have not seen those in England, also they have not seen the horses [of our embassy], thus the Royal Master of Horse has stated that there is no horse similar [to ours] in the Royal stables.
 ...
Po prywatnej audyencyi oddał Jegomośś te konie Królowi Jegomości ubrane w rzędy z pałaszami z buławami. Dzianeta po usarsku z rzędem turkusami osadzonym, lamparth na niem, na gniadego, drugi rząd po Arabsku łuk, sajdak, rząd barzo piękny, w nim turek cisawy których obu rączości i gotowości wysławić nie mogą.
 -After a private audience [of our envoy with the King] the envoy gave these horses to His Royal Highness tacked with horse furniture, with palashes (pałasz) and maces (buława).  Bay jennet in winged hussar fashion tack, his harness adorned with turquoises, with a leopard pelt [under the saddle]; second horse furniture was in in an Arabian fashion, with a bow and bowcase, his tack very beautiful, carried by a chestnut Turkish hors;  they, [the English], cannot praise enough the swiftness and [level] of dressage of both [our] horses..

 ...

Also the Polish envoy brought another 'horse gift ' for the English monarch, a carriage with 6 carriage horse, presumably all the same in color and size (their color has not been given in the depiction). as it was our Polish custom of the times. There were also priceless Siberian sables for the queen,
...

...
ps
the images are from a later part of XVII century, from Sweden, and show two manners of presenting Polish horses : winged hussar horse tack and 'Arabian' tack . The hussar horse furniture in the top image lacks the wild cat, leopard, tiger or lion pelt.

A few horse words in Old Polish describing a pacing horse

Salve amici,
the year is drawing to an end so allow me to talk about some horse 'things'  long neglected. i.e., my blogging.
  in the XVI-XVIII century Polish writings  these words - ''stupak,'' ''stępak,'' ''szłapak'' - often appear to describe for a certain kind of a riding horse.
Samuel Bogumił Linde in his monumental work ''Słownik jẹzyka polskiego'' (Dictionary of Polish Language , 1812 AD) vol. 5, page 415 explains 'stępak' as a pacing horse/caballo de paso (in XIX century Polish a 'jednochodnik,' now it is 'inochodziec'). In the older Medieval sources: Latin ''pro equo ambulatore/ambulato''these names were used as palefroi (French)/palfrey(English),  podjezdek/stępak (Polish).
 Perhaps it is worth mentioning that in 1392 King Władysław Jagiellon paid 21 grzywna for a ''stepak'' (ambulator in the sources) and gave this horse to the Masovian duke Siemovit's wife as a gift...

Well, let us look at some sources from XVI-XVIII centuries:

 ...in 1596 AD Vatican envoy segnor Vannozzi visitng chancellor Jan Zamoyski always had been given 'tarant'(an appaloosa) 'stępak'  to ride to his estates, so when he finally left Poland the chancellor had given him the same horse with a saying:... equum graduarium, ut commodius possem redire in Italiam (a pacing horse, so I would return to Italy comfortably).

when the Polish embassy of Lew Sapieha came to Muscovy in 1600, his secretary Eiljasz Pielgrzymowski wrote a diary of that mission (delicate one as less than a decade later  Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth would enter into war against the Muscovy Russia)- the embassy members gave Tsar Boris' son Fiodor, amongst many other horses and valuable gifts, two pacing horses:  a ''koń cisawy drygant stupak'' - chestnut pacing stallion (''drygant'' in Polish besides being a stallion could signify a very spirited mount) and a ''koń Turecki stupak siwy'' - grey Turkish pacing horse.

Let us jump almost a century and a half, to 1744, when another Polish writer, Marcin Matuszewicz (author of Memoirs of 1714-1765), noted that ''podobał się królowi* koń brata mego, szłapak brudno szpakowaty, za którego dałem w Wysokiem dukatów szesnaście; kazał go sobie król przejeżdżać na dziedzińcu i kazał zapłacić za niego 5o dukatów. Był ten koń faworytem królewskim i już potem król oprócz tego konia na innym nie jeździł...'' 
(the King* liked my brother's horse, dirty dark-grey pacing horse, I had paind 16 dukats for it in Wysokie, the king ordered the horse ridden in the courtyard and ordered to pay 50 dukats for him. This horse was the king's favorite and after that the king would not ride any other horse than this one...) 

*
the king in question is Augustus III of Poland 
ps
the two images above show training of the stepping/pacing horse, the first image is from 1680s and the second is from the second half of XVI century. The last horse image is a fabulous grey Spanish stallion, painted in the early XVIII century.

Crimean Tatars, Poles and Hungarians - 1680s woodcuts

Salve,
today( after a two day discussion on a Polish history forum  on Crimean Tatars during the XVI-VII Historycy tatarzy  ) , I went into google books and I found a nice German woodcut, I think,  showing a Crimean (Perkop) Tatar couple or les petites Tartares de Krim from a XVII century  - the source is this book: ''Description de l'Univers contenant les differents systèmes du monde , les cartes generales et particulieres de la geographie anciennee et moderne...'' vol. 4 ( published 1686).


Interesting comment about the horses:
lls sont belliqueux & fort adroits à cheval : Leurs Chevaux sont infatigables , & propres aux longues irruptions de ces Coureurs, qui ne cherchent que la guerre..
...
Turkish warriors and soldiers:

...
Nice woodcuts of Polish king Jan III Sobieski and Polish noble couple

...

...
 A Muscovite noble couple:

...
and finally two noble Hungarians in their fine costumes

...

Jan III Sobieski on horseback

Salve,
king Jan III Sobieski is one of my personal heroes, between his achievements as a king, statesman, commander, family man, famous lover of women and excellent writer (letters to his beloved wife Marie ). I must add he was also our most Oriental monarch, embodiment of the Sarmatism, excellent administrator, horse owner and breeder, fine horseman and warrior (started his military career with the battle of Zborow, he was at Beresteczko of 1651 where he was seriously wounded, and perhaps because ofthat wound he escaped the fate of his  brother Marek murdered at Batoh a year later, nota bene  Beresteczko- in Polish: interesting discussion here and current state of the battlefield in this article).
Here are some horseback portrayals  of our famous king, victor of many battles, unfortunately he had to fight the Ottoman Turks (spoke Turkish) and Crimean Tatars (he spoke their language too), while he wanted and should have fought the Prussians, Russia and the Hapsburg Austria. One image shows the king at his triumph at Chocim - this is my bit longer entry on that painting and the battle.
I have plans to draw some images involving the king :) , God willing
Kossaks' paintings of Sobieski Vienna 1683  Before battle  Entry into Vienna Sobieski's Hussaria Vienna 1683