Zofia née Czartoryski Zamoyska as Psyche

Portrait of Zofia Zamoyska nee Czartoryska, as Psyche The painting from the museum collection depicts a young, beautiful, winged woman, shown from the knees up, holding a lit olive lamp in her hand. This is a portrait of Hanna Zofia Zamoyska nee Czartoryska (born September 1778 in Warsaw, d. February 1837 in Florence). She was the daughter of Izabella Czartoryska nee Fleming and Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski. When she was fourteen, during the carnival celebrations at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, she was crowned the most beautiful lady of the Polish Republic. She married Stanisław Kostka Zamoyski, a famed sponsor of the arts, and bore him ten children, including seven sons. Many painters made portraits of her as the most beautiful woman of the first half of the 19th century, and many desperately wanted to portray her. The painting in Łańcut depicts her as the ancient Psyche – the goddess and personification of the human soul; the figure is related to a Greek myth, according to which Aphrodite, envious of the beauty of Psyche, ordered Eros to make her fall in love with the ugliest man. However, Eros, himself enamoured by Psyche, fell in love and visited her at nights. It was a condition for those meetings that no light is lit. By encouragement of sisters, Psyche lit an olive lamp, with a drop of hot oil falling onto Eros; at that time, her lover disappeared, and the goddess set off to search for him. Aphrodite accepted her as her servant and ordered her to do the heaviest tasks. She appeased Aphrodite with her love for Eros, and, granted immortality by Zeus, was taken to the Olympus where she was to wed her lover. In the painting of Łańcut, we see the moment, when curious Psyche is holding the lit olive lamp. The painting in Łańcut is a copy of the original by Henryk Füger from 1797. Heinrich Friedrich Füger (b. 1751, d. 1818) was a neoclassicist Austrian painter, the best skilled miniature artist of the Vienna school. The painting has a profiled gilded frame decorated with the motif of a bow on a rod; it is displayed in the Great Dining Hall in the first floor of the castle in Łańcut.