Images of the Grand Ducal Radzivill Family

Janusz Radziwill
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• Icones Familiae Ducalis Radivilianae ex originalibus in Ganzophylacio ordinationis desumptae (Images of the Grand Ducal Radzivill Family from the originals in the Treasury Collection) is an album containing 165 portraits of the members of the Radzivill family from the period 1346–1780. The Radzivills produced more outstanding political, church, military, and cultural figures than any other family in the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. At the height of its power in the 15th century, the duchy ruled over the territory of present-day Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine, and parts of Estonia, Moldova, Poland, and Russia. The Radzivills were at all times the wealthiest family in the duchy and the owners of extensive estates in present-day Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Poland. The portraits in this album are replicas of those from the Radzivill Gallery in Nesvizh, Belarus. Hirsz Leybowicz (1700–post 1785), an engraver at the Radzivill printing house in Nesvizh, was one of the artists who created the portraits. He also designed the Radzivill coat of arms, three ex-libris bookplates for the Nesvizh library, and engraved the map of the locations of the Lithuanian Bernardine monasteries. Fifty copies of the album were printed in 1758. The only extant copy of that edition located in Belarus is in the National Archive of Belarus. Presented here is the second edition, published in 1875, one of three copies held by the National Library of Belarus. (link to the source)