Michał on the Polish territory. The high cost of the purchase and sea freight from Livorno
Wardzynsfcż and Genoa via Amsterdam to Gdańsk (from where it would be transported inland,
to Crown territories, mainly Warsaw) or Konigsberg (for the territory of the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania, initially to Nieśwież, and later almost exclusively to the capital
city of Vilnius) in the 16th and 17th centuries made the white Carrara marble available
only to a small group of customers: the King and his closest Church and lay co-workers.
Imports of outstanding Italian works by Polish customers was also incidental.
King Sigismund III Vasa’s decision of 1619 to purchase next to Mosan marbles and
limestone, also the strongly sought after white marble of Carrara and other decorative
stones from Italy resulted from the opening up of opportunities to import those materials
in short supply directly from Livorno to Amsterdam, where the Kings agents and mid-
dlemen had direct access. On that occasion, however, the high price was again the reason
why the King could afford only a limited number of marmo bianco statuario and ordi-
nario blocks which were meticulously used and shared between the Royal Castle in War-
saw and St Casimir Chapel at the Vilnius Cathedral, where works were being carried out
simultaneously. The later royal procurement by Vladislaus IV of ready works in Florence
and marbles in Carrara and Livorno in 1637, as well as those of John III Sobieski in the
1st half of the 1680s in Amsterdam were made mainly for prestigious and propaganda
reasons, as the regular royal foundations would most frequently use cheaper and locally
available marbles and limestone from the Spanish Netherlands and from the domestic
deposits in Chęciny and Dębnik available at the time.
Itwas onlythe reign of Augustus II Wettin (1697-1733) that brought about a break-
through, quantity- and quality-wise; the King, when organizing the second after Dres-
den artistic court in Warsaw, resorted to the circle of trusted French sculptors, perfectly
well-acquainted with the Carrara marble: Vinache and Coudray; only later was the
group joined by Johann Georg Plersch (ca. 1727-30), employed initially by Bartlomej
Michal Bernatowicz and Princess Sieniawska nee Cartoryski; while over a decade later,
it was joined by the court sculptor of the Czartoryskis: Johann Chrisostomus Redler
(1740s). The full boom of the fashion for white Carrara marble in the all’antica tradi-
tion as well as in the new style of Neo-Classicism was only brought about by the reign
of King Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski (1764-95).
When analyzing Gdańsk and Elbląg sculpture of the modern era in view of the
application of different varieties of the white Carrara marble, it should be emphasized
that the material was merely used several times for strictly sculptural tasks. Marmo
bianco statuario or ordinario is not to be found in the grandest workshops in Gdańsk:
of Willem and Abraham van den Blocke, Willem van der Meer de Ghent, called Barth
Junior, Hans Caspar and Hans Michael Gockheller, or of Hans Caspar Aelschmann;
neither is it to be found in the workshops of Johannes Soffrens and Michael Broese
(Brosen) active in Elbląg. Such marble was most likely beyond their financial means,
so they applied white-pinkish English alabaster, also imported via Amsterdam, for
their figural and ornamental sculpture. Unique in this respect are infrequent works
of the little known masters: Wilhelm Richter and Conrad Walther of Gdańsk, Wil-
helm Pohl of Vilnius, and Leonhard Mertens of Elbląg, today preserved respec-
tively in Oliwa, Poznań, Warszawa, Pęcice, Grodno and Vilnius, Dubinki and Iwie,
and finally Frombork as well as Lidzbark Warmiński. The stonemasons working for
those ateliers, apart from using white Carrara marble, most likely applied previously

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