Wokół gestu Dürerowskiej Melancholii. Kilka uwag i uzupełnień w dyskusji o ikonograficznych źródłach „Portretu generała Henryka Dembińskiego” Henryka Rodakowskiego

Abstrakt

The exhibition of Salon 1852, where the Portrait of General Henryk Dembinski was presented, is documented by preserved photographs by Gustave Le Gray. Rodakowski’s work, awarded the first class medal at the same Salon, gained a special esteem in the circle of Polish emigration, not only because of its artistic quality, but also because of its meaningful content. It was mainly this content that, starting from the 1960s, became the subject of analyses of Polish researchers.The vast state of research on the iconography of the portrait developed around two main painting themes, figures that de facto merge in it. The first of them is the romantic type of “image of the commander of the defeated army” distinguished by Andrzej Ryszkiewicz. The second is the image of melancholy known from Dürer’s copperplate from 1514 – this parallel was pointed out by Mieczyslaw Porebski.Expanding the field of analysis slightly beyond the circle of images of the commanders of the defeated armies, we find new analogies. The compositional similarity of the portrait of Rodakowski to Rembrandt’s Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem (1630), known in Europe mainly thanks to Georg Friedrich Schmidt’s etching from 1768, seems to be particularly significant. The image of the Polish general and the image of the sage prophet, referring to the Old Testament Book of Lamentations, also seem to share ideological ties. Rodakowski’s inspiration with the paintings of his master Léon Cogniet is also important for understanding the genesis of Dembinski’s portrait.