Moliere

One of the three miniatures, owned by the Castle Museum in Łańcut since 1944, and belonging before that year to the Potocki family, owners of the Łańcut Castle. The oval miniatures depict famous people connected with art in its broadest sense, who lived in the 17th century, and were painted in the 18th century by an unknown painter. One depicts a portrait of Molière – a bust of a young man against a neutral background with MOLIERE signed on the frame in black paint. Molière or Jean Baptiste Poquelin (born in January 1622 in Paris died in February 1772 there) was a French comedy writer of the Baroque era. He came from a middle-class background and, although he graduated from law school, he never worked in the profession. In 1643 he founded a theatre troupe in Paris and staged medieval farces as well as commedia dell arte. After bankruptcy, Molière went to prison for debts. After his release from prison, he led the life of an itinerant actor until 1658, when he returned to Paris with the other actors of the troupe. In 1659, he staged there a comedy of his own authorship, The Affected Young Ladies, which was a success and was liked by Louis XIV. From then until 1673, he created comedies, farces, comedy-ballets, in which he ridiculed human vices – hypocrisy, hypocrisy, family life (Tartuffe, or, the Impostor, The School for Wives), contempt for honest people (The Misanthrope), or the accumulation of wealth for the sake of accumulation itself (The Miser). He was interested in human types, but despite the pessimism and bitterness contained in some of his works, he believed in human goodness, reason and overcoming evil. He died in 1673 during a performance of the play The Imaginary Invalid. Initially refused burial in a cemetery, he was buried outside the city after intercession by the Archbishop of Paris, and a year after his death he was transferred to the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.