Cecilia Baydel

Portrait of Cecylia Baydel A small painting, behind a glass (oval inscribed in a rectangle), showing a 12-year-old girl, a maiden, a half figure, on a neutral background. The painting has a wooden, profiled, gilded frame. The painting is signed and dated in the lower left corner as „Schmidt 1799”. Sadly, until today, it is impossible to determine the exact painter. There is a lengthwise panel on the lower part of the frame, in the centre, with the inscription „Cecylia Baydel”. The painting stems from the Lubomirscy collection, and was removed abroad by the last ordinary of Łańcut, Alfred Potocki, in 1944. In 1981, the Polish Ministry of Culture and Art bought the painting back from the Heim Gallery of London and gave it to the castle in Łańcut. Cecylia Beydale (Baydel) (b. in 1787 in Paris, d. July 1851 in Paris) is an illegitimate daughter of Izabelli Czartoryska nee Fleming and Kazimierz Rzewuski. Cecylia took her last name from her father – Kazimierz Rzewuski originally came from the Beyd family of Podlachia. She remained in Paris until the French Revolution, when she was moved to the Czartoryski palace of Puławy, where her half sister, Maria, took care of her. In the year 1808 she fell in love in her half-brother, Konstanty Adam Czartoryski, who responded in kind. Sadly, they could not marry (the relation was too close). This disappointing love affair reflected on the mental health of Cecylia, and she rejected numerous marriage proposals. After the death of her father, Rzewuski, in 1820, she received an inheritance that allowed her to support herself and Maria after the family wealth was confiscated for supporting the November Uprising (with the property taken by Russian forces). In 1838, together with her caretaker Maria Czartoryska, she left for Paris to take up residence at the Hotel Lambert, where Cecylia died in 1851. Her ashes were moved a few years later to the mausoleum of the Czartoryski family in Sieniawa. The painting is displayed in the Boucher Salon in the first floor of the castle of Łańcut. All three portraits are laid out in the same way.