Room in the Tower

Historical names: “The painted Cabinet under the Tower”, “the Cabinet behind the Column Suite” (early 19th c.) “the Cabinet in the Bastion” (mid- 19th c.)
Other names: The Room in the southeastern Tower, the Cabinet in the Tower
Time of construction: 1890s and 1890-1895
Artists: Likely Lucjan Smuglewicz, Vinzenzo Brenna, Kazimierz Chodziński, Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo


Description: A study was arranged by Princess Izabella Lubomirska née Czartoryska (1737-1815) at the beginning of the 1790s, in an octagonal room on the first floor in the south-eastern tower. This cabinet, modelled on the English interiors of the Adam brothers, received a classicist painting decoration of the jamb walls and the ceiling, probably by Lucjan Smuglewicz, with grotesque motifs in an ornament of oak leaves, as frames for Giovanni Volpato's engravings, according to drawings by Stefan Tofanelli from the Vatican State Stanz, Rafael, and in the ceiling Lubomirski as Serafin from 1787 by Mary Louise Cosway. Both the engravings and the portrait were removed in 1944 and evacuated to the West. Currently, there are modern copies in their places. The classicist fireplace, from the 1890s, made of white marble, is covered with a grotesque painting decoration by Vincenzo Brenna with a relief depiction of Diana hunting. The floor of oak, mahogany, walnut and sycamore with a rosette in the middle and plant motifs in square fields was laid in the 1830s according to the design by Karol Chodziński. Until the 1890s, the only entrance to the Cabinet in the Tower was from the Column Salon; the second glass door from the west was the entrance to the balcony, transformed in the 1820s/1830s into a glazed interior also called the Balcony. Today it is the Veranda Room, which was created during major renovation and modernisation works carried out by the third ordinate Roman Potocki (1851-1915) and his wife, Elżbieta née Radziwiłł. Since then, the glazed, double-leaf door from the Veranda Room has become the main entrance to the Cabinet. The permanent equipment of the Cabinet is a flowerbed placed in the centre, designed around 1905 by the Spanish painter Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, with an electric spotlight hidden in the vegetation directed upwards to illuminate the portrait of Henryk Lubomirski set into the ceiling. Cholewianka-Kruszyńska Aldona, Portrety i wizerunki księżnej Marszałkowej, Biblioteka dawnej Ordynacji łańcuckiej 3 (5), Łańcut 2016, p. 17 Kossakowska-Szanajca Zofia, Majewska-Maszkowska Bożenna, Zamek w Łańcucie, Warsaw 1964, pp. 215-218 Majewska-Maszkowska Bożenna, Mecenat artystyczny Izabelli z Czartoryskich Lubomirskiej 1736-1816, Wrocław-Warsaw-Krakow 1976, p. 270 Omilanowska Małgorzata, Sito Jakub, Katalog zabytków sztuki w Polsce, seria nowa vol. III, book 5, Warsaw 1994, pp. 40-41 Piotrowski Józef, Zamek w Łańcucie: zwięzły opis dziejów i zbiorów, Lviv 1933, p. 78

Aldona Cholewianka-Kruszyńska