DOI Heft:
Nr. 4
DOI Artikel:Białostocki, Jan: Esilio Privato: King Stanisław Leszczyński painted by Oudry
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18817#0115
a malicious destiny He neither accepts, nor allows the spectator to accept the possibility tliat
his political misfortunes might be in any way due to his own injustices.
Oudry's portrait, far from representing King Stanisław as a love pilgrim or sentimental tra-
veller, is thus an allegorical expression of a morał attitude, and the tragic mode of that attitude
recalls similar instances which occurred morę than once in the unhappy history of the Poles
in exile in later centuriers. The idea of pilgrimage, connected in rococo civilization with ]ove
and with the unserious, though transient, world of Arcadian and Cytherean shepherds, was
conceived by the Polish poets and philosophers of the 19th century in a way similar to that
found in Ripa. They connected the idea of pilgrimage with that of exile, but they added to the
two kinds of exile known to the Iconologists of Mannerism a third one, with a biblical flavour:
the exile of a nation. The most important document of this idea is the Books of the Nation and
of the Pilgrimage, written in Paris in 1832 by Adam Mickiewicz, and known in France in Mon-
talembert's translation of 1834 as Les Pelerins polonais. It was another French master who
gave artistic form to this conception. This form was created by Bourdelle in his monument
to Mickiewicz in the Place de 1'Alma in Paris (fig. 4). As in Oudry's portrait of Leszczyński,
Ripa's inspiration, direct or indirect, is still present there, sińce in Bourdelle's work, as in Oudry's,
the pilgrimage gives a symbolic form to the exile.
101
his political misfortunes might be in any way due to his own injustices.
Oudry's portrait, far from representing King Stanisław as a love pilgrim or sentimental tra-
veller, is thus an allegorical expression of a morał attitude, and the tragic mode of that attitude
recalls similar instances which occurred morę than once in the unhappy history of the Poles
in exile in later centuriers. The idea of pilgrimage, connected in rococo civilization with ]ove
and with the unserious, though transient, world of Arcadian and Cytherean shepherds, was
conceived by the Polish poets and philosophers of the 19th century in a way similar to that
found in Ripa. They connected the idea of pilgrimage with that of exile, but they added to the
two kinds of exile known to the Iconologists of Mannerism a third one, with a biblical flavour:
the exile of a nation. The most important document of this idea is the Books of the Nation and
of the Pilgrimage, written in Paris in 1832 by Adam Mickiewicz, and known in France in Mon-
talembert's translation of 1834 as Les Pelerins polonais. It was another French master who
gave artistic form to this conception. This form was created by Bourdelle in his monument
to Mickiewicz in the Place de 1'Alma in Paris (fig. 4). As in Oudry's portrait of Leszczyński,
Ripa's inspiration, direct or indirect, is still present there, sińce in Bourdelle's work, as in Oudry's,
the pilgrimage gives a symbolic form to the exile.
101