Modus: Prace z historii sztuki (18.2018)

society. On the contrary, it was the expression of striving to maintain that hierarchy
in the changing conditions.67
Apparently, the idea for this type of publication was conceived in Sierakowski s
mind long before the establishment of the Duchy of Warsaw. The author presented
his book as the completion of the project, which he had started back in the times of
Stanislaus Augustus, on the wave of educational reforms of the National Education
Commission (with which he himself was closely associated, serving in the Society for
Elementary Books): “excellent times for learning in the homeland under the govern-
ment of the Education Commission awakened the wish in many of the provinces,
for the study of architecture in the mother tongue to be morę widely expanded”.68
Sierakowski mentioned in this context two publications from this period69: Józef
Rogaliński s O sztuce budowniczej na swoje porządki podzielonej [On the art of the
builder, divided into its respective orders] (the First edition of 1764, thus preceding
the reforms of the Education Commission, and the second, improved, which he
probably had first and foremost in mind, published in 1775) and Piotr Świtkowskis
Budowanie wiejskie [Rural construction] of 1782, as works that grew out of the same
spirit (in another place, he also mentioned earlier works of this type, such as, for
example, Bartłomiej Nataniel Wąsowskis Callitectonicorum seu depulchro architectu-
rae sarcae et civilis compendio collectorum, which, however, because of their “foreign
language” in his opinion failed to contribute to the fact that “universal learning could
be expanded throughout the land”).70 However, due to the limited thematic scope,
nonę of the two aforementioned works fully satisfied the demand for architectural
knowledge. According to Sierakowski, Rogalskis book was only a “smali”, even if
it a “respectable” work, which contained only “a few sheets” of “some information
upon this art”.71 He believed that Świtkowski, on the other hand, “completed his
intention”, making his book “useful to the State”, but, as the Cracovian theoretician
emphasized, in his study he did not touch upon “the higher Greek and Roman
architecture, whose purpose lied in magnificence and decoration”.72 The patron of
such a comprehensive publishing project concerning architectural knowledge (both
the higher one, not only durable and comfortable, but also beautiful, and the lower
one, which included the remaining principles of building and masonry, and focused
only on durability and comfort), was nonę other than Stanisław Kostka Potocki,
associated with the National Education Commission, who as a “citizen, a true and
virtuous patriot, in words and works enlightened”, gathered together a group of
experts whose task was to work collectively on such a book. Sierakowski, who also
found himself in this circle, and felt the “increase [...] of desire to be useful to the
public, along with the initial teaching of drawing, which is given at a young age; he
changed from drawing that is playful to the one that serves architecture, because he
67 Por. B. Arciszewska, Classicism and Modernity: Architectural Thought in Eighteenth-Century
Britain, Warszawa 2010, p. 477 (“Classicism was the essential visual regime to fili the ideological
void created by the collapse of traditional, pre-modern foundations of authority”).
68 S. Sierakowski, Architektura, vol. 1, p. i.
69 It is intriguing that Sierakowski did not mention such publications as the anonymous Pięć
porządków budowniczych podług prawideł Jakoba Barocego z Winioti of 1791 or Architektura
cywitna dla młodzi narodowey of 1796, by his brother Wacław.
70 S. Sierakowski, Architektura, vol. 1, p. i.
71 Ibidem, p. i.
72 Ibidem, p. i.

Sebastian Sierakowskie treatise and the question of disseminating architectural knowledge... 107