Maria Potocka

Portrait bust of Maria Potocka by the sculptor Pietro Tenerani, from the 1920s-1930s. Maria Klementyna Potocka, from the princely Sanguszko family, wife to count Alfred Potocki (1830-1903), daughter of prince Roman Sanguszko of Slavuta and Natalia Potocka of Wilanów, born in Slavuta, half-orphaned by her mother at eight months of age. When she was ten months old, her father, prince Roman, joined the November Uprising of 1830-1831. After a few months of fighting, captured by Russians, he was imprisoned and sent e. g. to Tobolsk and the Caucasus. Released, he returned to Slavuta, when his daughter was fifteen years old. Throughout these years, she was raised living in Slavuta and Antoniny by her grandparents, Eustachy and Klementynę Sanguszko. In light of the decision of Russia to confiscate the goods of prince Eustachy after he died, he made his granddaughter Maria his heiress, obliging her to share her inheritance in the future with her cousins. Hence, at the moment of her marriage with Alfred Potocki of Łańcut in 1851, he legally transferred the Slavuta property to Roman Sanguszko the younger, son to uncle Władysław of Gumniska. As a child, living in Slavuta, she was loved without comparison by all of Volhynia as the child of an expelee and national martyr. Indeed, she enjoyed particular respect and authority at all times, both due to her birth, wealth as well as patriotism, but also as the wife of the prime minister in the government and the viceroy of Galicia. Her opinions were as if those of an oracle, her stark replies became well-known sayings. She held a famous salon in Lviv, first at the viceroy palace and then, after Alfred Potocki left his post and as his widow, in her own palace, at the address Kopernika 14, setting the tone of the city’s social life. The horse trains that the countess used to ride around Lviv and Antoniny attracted similar attention. The Antoniny palace, where she spent the summer months, remained her main one until her death, beside the Lviv residence, even though the goods at Antoniny were transferred to her younger son, Józef. She died in Lviv, where the first part of the countess’ funeral took place. She is buried in Łańcut, in the Potocki family crypt at the parish church. The photograph depicts the portrait bust of Maria Potocka by Pietro Tenerani, along with a bust of her husband, made in Rome soon after their marriage. Evacuated by Alfred Antoni Potocki in 1944 to Western Europe, today it forms the collection of the Ciechanowieccy Family Foundation deposited at the Castle Museum in Łańcut. MŁ Aldona Cholewianka-Kruszyńska