Vase

In May 1949, at the request of the regional conservator, Tadeusz Zelenay, a provincial museum clerk, went to the visit a property in Brzezinka in the Oleśnica district. The aim of the trip was to determine the state of the destroyed palace and to carry out an inspection of historic sculptures commissioned by Count von Kospoth which were standing in the palace park. This was the beginning of the “administration” of the palace furnishings. Most of the sculptures and paintings ended up in the collecting centre in Brzeg. Subsequently, they were distributed to various museums and institutions. At the request of the conservation authorities, 22 mythological statues, including 14 male and 8 female figures, and two baroque vases were transported to Wilanów. After initial conservation combined with a partial reconstruction of the missing elements, the statues were placed on the upper terrace of the Italian garden and on the quayside of the Wilanowskie Lake. In 1964, six sculptures from the upper terrace were incorporated into the rows on the lower terrace, and the vases were placed on the lower terrace of the Baroque garden. The author of the sculptures and vases is Johann Albrecht Siegwitz (Sigewitz) – one of the three most important representatives of the so-called Prague-style in the Silesian sculpture in the first half of the 18th century. Despite the fact that the mythological sculptures and vases differ stylistically from the decorative sculptures found at Wilanów, placing them in the gardens in the immediate vicinity of the palace was an attempt to recreate the once rich sculptural collection which could be found in the gardens.

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