Izabela Czartoryska’s arts patronage

Abstract

Izabela Czartoryska, née Flemming, one of the most influential women of the 18th and 19th century, was known as an art collector, the founder of the first Polish museum, the initiator of several landscape gardens, and an ardent patriot. Among her many interests was arts patronage. She was the force behind two landscape architecture concepts, a sentimentalist one in Powązki and a pre-romanticist one in Puławy. Izabela Czartoryska contributed to the development of sentimentalism and Pre-Romanticism in Poland, with Puławy – devoted to patriotism and celebration of Polish history – having been particularly important for the Polish society given the demise of Polish independence.