Elżbieta Helena Sieniawska, née Lubomirska (Końskowola, 1669 – 21 March 1729, Oleszyce), was a Polish noblewoman, Grand Hetmaness of the Crown (hetmanowa wielka koronna),[1] and a renowned patron of the arts.

[6] In 1687, she married Adam Mikołaj Sieniawski, Grand Hetman of the Crown, and despite her husband's demands she stayed in Warsaw, where she got involved in a famed romance with Jan Stanisław Jabłonowski.

[6] Eventually, the hetmaness achieved equilibrium within their marriage, and sometimes even underlined her leadership role in their intimate relations addressing Sieniawski as My dear Maiden in her letters.

[10] The hetmaness was "a lady of great wisdom, reason and shrewdness" and she was deployed by her husband on diplomatic missions, duties and obligations that he could not cope with.

[13] After John III Sobieski's death she supported the French candidature of François Louis, Prince of Conti for the Polish throne and became a leader of his party.

[16] When in 1704, Jakub and Konstanty Sobieskis were kidnapped and imprisoned in Saxony, Aleksander resigned from the rivalry for the crown, afraid of revenge from his former lover (at that time Wettin partisan).

[17] In 1706, after Augustus II's abdication, she engaged in the negotiations to reach an agreement between the tsar Peter I of Russia and king Charles XII of Sweden.

[20] She was an unscrupulous politician participating in political affairs on a large scale, establishing secret contacts with different camps and conducting various personal intrigues[6] – Charles XII of Sweden referred to her as "that most accursed woman".

[21] Since 1709, she fostered Konstanty's candidature to the throne (he visited her together with Stanisław Leszczyńksi in Lviv in Spring 1709), and though she was against the Wettin restoration, she could accommodate to Augustus II being already in possession of the Polish crown.

Among the candidates to the hand of one of the wealthiest women in Europe were Charles de Bourbon-Condé, Count of Charolais supported by France (Louis XV even invited Maria Zofia to Versailles), Portuguese infante Dom Manuel de Bragança supported by the Habsburgs (proposed as the next King of Poland, due to the tenets of the Löwenwolde's Treaty),[31] Jan Klemens Branicki, Franciszek Salezy Potocki, Jan Tarło and August Aleksander Czartoryski, who eventually won the competition full of duels and speech encounters due to support of Augustus II, as the latter was afraid of increase of power of his opponents.

Among them there were architects Giovanni Spazzio, Józef Fontana, Karol Bay, Efraim Szreger and František Mayer of Moravia, painters Jan Jerzy Plersch and Giuseppe Rossi, eminent sculptors of Bohemian Baroque Jan Elijáš and Hynek Hoffmanns,[33] stucco decorators Francesco Fumo and Pietro Innocente Comparetti, gardener Georg Zeidler of Saxony.

It was a time of late baroque and rococo, when theatrum mundi, with its theatrical decorations played an essential role, not only in founder's glorification but also in politics to confirm the status.

Sieniawska, who competed with the king in architectural foundations,[39] choose an old Royal edifice – the Visitationist Church established by Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga, as her major propaganda investment in the capital.

[40] Probably the most important was its location at the Cracow Suburb Street, in front of the main entrance to the new royal residence, so everyone who visited the king must pass before the ornate Sieniawska's magnum opus.

[29] For the decoration of the palace's interiors she nominated an Italian fresco painter Giuseppe Rossi, who adorned the chambers with trompe-l'œil paintings and mythological plafonds.