As a hetman and marshal and later a king, Jan III Sobieski never ceased to show interest in detailed matters concerning the administration of his numerous estates (needless to say that his extensive library collection included the publication by Jakub Haur entitled Ekonomika ziemiańska generalna [General manorial economics]). He was totally preoccupied with hunting and gardening, especially in his beloved Wilanów which he practically never left towards the end of his life.
Sobieski had a baroque garden created in Wilanów, similar to the one in Versailles, only in an entirely different scale. The establishment of the garden took place in the third stage of the palace alteration (1684–1696). A geometric Italian garden was laid behind the palace, descending in two levels towards the lake. The upper terrace was ornamented with boxwood baroque parterres, gilded mythological figures, marble vases, fountains and garden houses. The lower part of the garden contained two ponds. Arranged along the sides of a dual courtyard in front of the palace there was a fruit garden composed of apple, cherry, pear, plum, peach and apricot trees as well as currant and gooseberry bushes. According to Kazimierz Sarnecki’s account, at the end of his life especially in fine weather Jan III would slip out of the palace nearly every morning and walk in his favourite garden until lunch time. Sarnecki recalls the date 28 May 1694 when, “His Majesty got up early and left for the garden wherein he took pleasure in questioning the apothecary about various herbs of medical use and their virtutes (…)”. The date 6 July of the same year (this time in Wysock, not Wilanów) contains the following account: “[The king] praised this garden rich in miscellaneous fruit, particularly cherries and pears, and complained to Her Highness the Queen about his own garden in Jaworów that it no longer had the previous ornament and fruit, by saying: Marie, my love, it’s already turned into a desert”.
Jan III honestly hated etiquette and in the Wilanów garden he personally planted lime trees just like a simple farmer of a noble birth (it is rather difficult to imagine Louis XIV doing the same in the gardens of Versailles). This very activity was captured in the currently missing painting by Wojciech Gerson (1831–1901), an artist active in Warsaw. It features the monarch wearing common Old Polish dress, standing and holding with his left hand a sapling, while a gardener kneeling on the ground is plugging the soil around it. Sobieski breaks off from his activity for a moment to listen to a bowing poet who is making an oration and handing the king a copy of his Sobiesciada. Visible in the background on a hill there is the Wilanów Palace partly covered with scaffolding.
Gerson’s work, revealing a brief episode from the monarch’s private life, was reproduced in woodcut by Julian Schübeler, a printmaker active in the capital city, who also cooperated with “Tygodnik Ilustrowany” [“The Illustrated Weekly”] and “Kłosy” [“Ears”] in 1865–1889. The print was twice released in “Tygodnik Ilustrowany”, namely in 1871 and 1883.
Julian Schübeler, based on a drawing by Wojciech Gerson: Jan III Sobieski planting trees in Wilanów, woodcut, publ. 1871.
