Focus on Equestrian Portrait of Count Stanislas Potocki and analyze the Commission.
While Potocki's travels to Italy between 1779 and 1780, as well as his subsequent encounter with David, have been well documented, the exact circumstances of the portrait's commission remain a subject of scholarly debate. Some art historians propose that Potocki directly requested that David paint his portrait sometime in 1780. A collection catalogue published by the Potocki family in 1834 mentioned that "the portrait was completed in Paris after a sketch made from life in the Naples Riding School".This version of events was later confirmed by David's grandson, Jacques-Louis-Jules David, who in 1880 published an album titled Le peintre Louis David 1748–1825 celebrating the artist's oeuvre. He claimed that Ferdinand IV of Naples commissioned the painting in 1780 after Potocki had visited him in Naples. According to Jacques-Louis-Jules, Potocki impressed the king by taming a wild horse during a hunting trip, leading Ferdinand to request an equestrian portrait from David. This led some scholars to believe that David had begun painting the work in Rome in 1780 before finishing it in Paris in 1781 and exhibiting it in the same year at the Paris Salon , an official art exhibition organized by the members of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture (Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture). In the 1960s, Polish art historian Andrzej Ryszkiewicz challenged this narrative, asserting a lack of historical evidence to confirm that the 1780 encounter between David and Potocki in Naples had ever transpired.While Ryszkiewicz's claim influenced art historical research into the origins of the work in the subsequent decades, a 2019 conservation report from the Museum of King Jan III's Palace in Wilanów lent credibility to the account of David's grandson. The report analyzed x-rays of the original painting and an early modello of the composition—a preparatory study drawing initially believed to be a 19th-century sketch. The drawing portrays Potocki adorned with the Order of St. Stanislaus ribbon, awarded in 1780, rather than the Polish Order of the White Eagle, which he received in 1781. These findings led researchers to conclude that the 1780 drawing was an original work by David, created in Naples. Additionally, the x-rays exposed red paint beneath the existing blue ribbon, further substantiating the notion that the painting's initial design was meant to showcase the Order of St. Stanislaus.
hat Museum of King Jan III's Palace Naples Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture Salon Polish Order of the White Eagle Potocki x-ray conservation taming commission modello Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture pl Ferdinand IV of Naples Wilanów Order of St. Stanislaus historical evidence Palace equestrian portrait Order of the White Eagle hunting trip