All thanks to the idea of making the oval palace courtyard the centre, the shape of which is repeated by the arched, ground-floor annexes covered with gable roofs. The sections of the wall connecting the annexes with the corps de logis also adapt to the oval shape. This layout was most probably created in the years 1797–1806 on the initiative of Stanisław Ossoliński according to the designs of Jakub Kubicki (1758–1833), a renowned architect, the author of, among others, the palace in Młochów, the Warsaw Belweder and the city tollgates, as well as the author of the reconstruction of the Castle and the former annex in Radziejowice. Kubicki did not erect the Sterdyń layout ex nihilo. The body of the palace retained the shape of the seat built most probably in the 1680s for Jerzy Ossoliński. The two-story, central projection on both sides, higher by a mezzanine storey and topped with a triangular pediment, covered with a hipped roof, was in line with the classicizing Baroque of Tylman van Gameren (Gamerski). There is a clear resemblance to the beautiful Gniński palace designed by Gamerski on Tamka Street in Warsaw. However, was Gamerski the author of the Sterdyń palace project? There is no direct evidence for this. Kubicki added architectural detail – blind balustrades under the windows, segmental cornices and pediments above the windows; he covered the lower storey with rustication, added a column portico on the axis, consisting of two pairs of Doric columns supporting a small balcony, and built a large belvedere with high walls pierced with semicircular openings. He completely changed the silhouette of the Sterdyń palace and gave the building a character of severe classicism, which we encounter in a slightly different version in the palace in Młochów. Perhaps the inspiration for this unusual form was the belvedere of the Łazienki in Warsaw. After all, their author Dominik Merlini was once Kubicki's teacher, so why shouldn't he have reached for the model of one of his master's most outstanding works? The interiors of the palace retained their original seventeenth-century layout with a ceremonial staircase and bel-étage on the first floor. However, the rooms received a completely new painterly decor. The walls and ceilings were covered with grotesque-floral motifs, oak branches tied with ribbons, and sphinxes and griffins appeared in antithetical poses next to vases and tripods. One of the rooms on the first floor deserves special attention, where among the grotesque decoration with depictions of Apollo and the Muses in medallions and winged figures holding cornucopias there were rectangular panels with sentimental-romantic landscapes. The fashion for sentimental-romantic landscapes forced them not only to be painted on the walls of rural residences, such as Sterdyń, Mała Wieś or Rybienko, but also to materialize in Siedlce Aleksandria, Nieborów Arkadia, in the parks of Jabłonna, Powązki and Mokotów.
The painted decoration of the palace in Sterdyń is attributed to Adam Byczkowski (ca. 1756–1820?), a student of Tombari and Brenna, co-author of the polychromes in the palaces in Natolin, Wilanów and Radziejowice.
Translated by Google •
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