Vue prise de Parchatka

The view from Parchatka comes from an album presenting views of Puławy and its surroundings, created based on illustrations made from nature by Barbara Czernof of Groten, who lectured at the Institute of Education of Ladies. This is her only known and attributed work. The lithographs were made by Armande Cassagne, a French painter, watercolourist, lithographer and writer in the printing house of Auguste Bry in Paris.

Parchatka is a village located on the high right bank of the Vistula River. Its name comes from the phrase "a pair of huts". The poplar avenue visible in the painting led to the romantic garden called Pustelnia, founded by Izabella Czartoryska. The trees were removed in 2004 due to the danger they posed to road traffic. On the hill on the left you can see a mountain with three crosses. This place, according to the intention of Princess Izabella Czartoryska, was to commemorate her beloved pupil, Zofia of Matuszewicz Kicka, and her two children. The tragic fate of Zofia, who died at the age of twenty-six as the result of complications after childbirth, and of her two children who died shortly after birth, moved Princess Izabella. This event initiated many activities for the benefit of the local community in the form of founding schools, as well as furnishing the church of Włostowice. Zofia's tomb is in the crypts of the Holy Cross church in Warsaw. In 1827, in Puławy, Duchess Izabella founded a cross in her favourite place, later moved to the cemetery in Włostowice. Efforts were also made to preserve her memory through an appropriate service held in Włostowice on 15 May, celebrating the merits of the prematurely deceased countess. The family tragedy also prompted Ludwik, Sophie's husband, to act After her death, in winter he set off on an individual pilgrimage to Częstochowa on foot. The Parchatka Crosses were probably a landmark, as evidenced by their inclusion as pictograms on the Topographical Chart of the Kingdom of Poland in 1839.

The place was described in 1885 by Wojciech Gerson: "The hill on the left above the village of Parchatka used to be covered with a beautiful fruit garden, today it is covered with wild bushes and here and there a pear tree serves as a shelter for shining sparrows, and above the deep ravine, as on Golgotha, three crosses reign over the emptiness".

Klara Sadkowska