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Lot Essay
LANCUT: VERSAILLES OF THE EAST
In the former Hapsburg province of Galicia, where the cultivated fields and woods of Central Europe fade into the vast swamps and primeval forests of the Ukraine and Belarus, lies the legendary estate of Lancut. Probably the most famous country house in Poland, it once housed magnificent collections of 18th century French furniture and Italian sculpture, the majority of which was acquired in 1786 during Izabela Czartoryska Lubomirska's foreign travels. Displayed in galleries designed by Vincenzo Brenna and Chrystian Aigner, Lancut presented one of the most sophisticated collections between Paris and St. Petersburg.
In the waning months of the Second World War, as the Soviet Army drew closer to Poland's pre-war frontiers, Count Alfred Potocki organized the evacuation of the most important paintings, furniture and objects which eventually arrived in Liechtenstein. The collections were then gradually dispersed to pay for his peripatetic life in exile. Count Alfred Potocki, in a letter dated 15 May, 1947, declares the cartonnier and clock were a gift from Queen Marie-Antoinette of France to Princess Izabela who was an intimate of the French Queen.
In the former Hapsburg province of Galicia, where the cultivated fields and woods of Central Europe fade into the vast swamps and primeval forests of the Ukraine and Belarus, lies the legendary estate of Lancut. Probably the most famous country house in Poland, it once housed magnificent collections of 18th century French furniture and Italian sculpture, the majority of which was acquired in 1786 during Izabela Czartoryska Lubomirska's foreign travels. Displayed in galleries designed by Vincenzo Brenna and Chrystian Aigner, Lancut presented one of the most sophisticated collections between Paris and St. Petersburg.
In the waning months of the Second World War, as the Soviet Army drew closer to Poland's pre-war frontiers, Count Alfred Potocki organized the evacuation of the most important paintings, furniture and objects which eventually arrived in Liechtenstein. The collections were then gradually dispersed to pay for his peripatetic life in exile. Count Alfred Potocki, in a letter dated 15 May, 1947, declares the cartonnier and clock were a gift from Queen Marie-Antoinette of France to Princess Izabela who was an intimate of the French Queen.