Centrum Dziedzictwa i Badań Proweniencyjnych Instytutu Sztuki PAN oraz Szkoła Doktorska Anthropos IPAN zapraszają na wykład / The Heritage and Provenance Research Centre of the Institute of Art of Polish Academy of Sciences and the Anthropos Doctoral School invite you to the lecture:
Maureen Cassidy-Geiger
A Souvenir Album from the Marquess of Titchfield’s Sojourn in Warsaw in 1759: the sources and significance of the carnival costumes of the Inventions Masquerade allerhand Nationes hosted by Jerzy August Mniszech and Carl Leonhard Bieberstein during carnival that year
8.10.2026, 16.00–17.30
Instytut Sztuki PAN, ul. Długa 26, sala wykładowa
At least two masquerade balls were held in Warsaw in February 1759, with the new Duke of Courland, Prince Charles of Saxony (1733–96), in attendance. The Marquess of Titchfield’s souvenir album, in the collection of the Dukes of Portland at Welbeck Abbey (UK), contains watercolors of thirty-one individuals wearing ‘his-and-her’ masquerade costumes representing pastoral or regional types, foreign nations, Olympian gods, the trades, the elements, or actors and actresses. Most of the sheets are captioned in French and twenty-six are also inscribed, in another hand, with the names of the men and women of the Polish court who wore the various outfits. While not intended as portraits, many of the illustrations derive from albums of engravings published as collector’s items and artistic resources as were collected by the Saxon court for use in mounting festival events. It is even possible the masquerade costumes were manufactured in Saxony and traveled between Dresden and Warsaw as needed, like so much of the court equipment required by the king and the court as they progressed from place to place.
MAUREEN CASSIDY-GEIGER is a specialist in European decorative arts and court culture and patterns of
collecting and display, with the court of Dresden her primary focus. Based in New York, she was curator of the
exhibitions Fragile Diplomacy: Meissen Porcelain for European Courts, ca. 1710–63 (BGC/NYC, 2007–2008) and
The Grand Cure [Die Grande Kur]: A Disabled Saxon Prince and his Tour of Italy, 1738–40 (SKD/Dresden, 2018).
Her current research topics include the history of devotional sculpture in Meissen porcelain, ca. 1710–1790, and
a survey and comparison of the privy purses (spending accounts) of Queen Maria Josepha (1699–1757) and her
son, Crown Prince Friedrich Christian (1722–63).
