The paintings of Szymon Chekhovich adorn 18th century churches scattered throughout Poland and in many places in Ukraine, Lithuania and Rome. This creative, industrious and Roman-educated painter was professionally active for 60 years (sic!), but is now almost forgotten and underestimated. The quantity and quality of his artistic output contrasts with the current ignorance of his achievements. Despite his fame and the wealthiest clientele of his time, Chekhovich remained a modest man, never having started a family or left a fortune. He painted in the same style for decades, which makes it difficult to date his works and to know his work accurately.

Short biography of Szymon Czechowicz
His somewhat mysterious biography began in Kraków, where Szymon Czechowicz was born in 1689, as the son of a goldsmith. It was the decline of the reign of John III Sobieski. He owed his artistic education to Franciszek Maksymilian Ossoliński (1676-1756), Grand Treasurer of the Crown. The wealthy protector sent Czechowicz to study in Rome. He studied at the famous Academy of Saint Luke (Accademia di San Luca, founded in 1577). The artist lived and worked in the Eternal City for nearly twenty years. He was a member of the prestigious papal congregation of virtuosos, bringing together the most outstanding artists active in the city. He mainly practised sacred painting, decorating churches and monasteries.

Despite Czechowicz's long stay in the Eternal City, little is known about his life and work at the time. It is not known when he arrived in Rome or when and why he left it. Only a few paintings painted for the Polish church of St Stanislaus in Rome - San Stanislao dei Polacchi - and for the Franciscan monastery on the Palatine have been identified. It is possible that other, unrecognised works by the Pole still adorn Rome's palaces or churches today.

Szymon Czechowicz an authority on religious painting
Czechowicz returned to Poland around 1730 and settled in Warsaw. With an academic, Roman education and experience, he was an unrivalled painter in the Republic. There were no opportunities for artistic education in Poland at the time. The foundation of an academy was sought by the last monarch of the Republic, Stanisław August. However, the first Academy of Fine Arts on Polish soil was not established until 1818, in Kraków.

Szymon Czechowicz, as a religious painter taken from Rome, was regarded as an authority in the field of painting. He became famous as a portraitist and the author of paintings for magnate palaces and churches, including those in Ciechanowiec, Lublin, Kielce, Lubartow, Krakow, Warsaw, Lviv, Opatów, Opole Lubelskie, Tykocin, Podhorce, Siedlce, Vilnius, Poznań, Kaunas, Janow Podlaski. He worked for Maksymilian Ossoliński, Sandomierz Voivode, Jan Tarło (1684-1750), the Lithuanian court treasurer, Jozef Franciszek Sapieha (1679-1744) and his brother, the Grand Chancellor of Lithuania, Jan Fryderyk (1680-1751), and the Grand Hetman of the Crown and Castellan of Cracow, Jan Klemens Branicki (1689-1771) or the Sanguszkos. He also applied for the post of court painter to August III Wettin in ؘ1757, unfortunately without success.

Szymon Czechowicz - painter, lecturer
. "Nationwide" activity of the painter required assistants to meet the commissions. Although Czechowicz worked quite quickly, a large-format altar painting took him one and a half to two months. It is likely that he and his studio carried out several orders simultaneously. It is estimated that Szymon Czechowicz produced around 1,000 works during his forty-year career in Poland. One of his pupils and close associates was Lukasz Smuglewicz (1709-1780), married to Czechowicz's niece, Regina Olesinska. They ran the first private painting school in the Pod Fortuna tenement on the Old Town Square in Warsaw, educating the next generation of painters. Their pupils included Lukasz's sons, Antoni (1740-1810) and Franciszek Smuglewicz (1745-1807) and Antoni Albertrandi (1733?-1795).

An interesting relationship, previously unknown in the domestic art world, was the artist's collaboration with the magnate. Szymon Czechowicz worked from 1762, with interruptions, at the palace in Podhorce (modern Ukraine) under Waclaw Rzewuski (1706-1779). The voivode of Krakow, later Great Hetman of the Crown, created almost a museum-gallery of Szymon Czechowicz as part of his art collection, buying and commissioning his works en masse, mainly on sacred subjects. Of the 106 paintings in Rzewuski's collection, more than 70 were by Chekhovich and were displayed mainly in the Green Room of the Podhoretz mansion. The painter also produced paintings for the nearby Capuchin church in Olesko (a foundation of Hetman Rzewuski).

Towards the end of his life, Chekhovich became a Capuchin tertiary. His studio was located in an annexe of the Radziwiłł palace, adjacent to the Capuchin monastery on Miodowa Street in Warsaw. The last painting, 'Saint Francis Seraphim', executed in the year of the artist's death, is now in the Capuchin church in Kraków.

Szymon Czechowicz died in Warsaw on 21 July 1775, aged 86, and was buried in the crypt of the Capuchin church. The memory of his work was still alive decades later; one 19th-century copy of a self-portrait of Szymon Chekhovich was signed on the reverse: "Szymon Czechowicz / the only good Polish painter / in the 18th Century".

The Adoration of the Three Kings by Szymon Czechowicz
The Adoration of the Three Kings is a popular biblical theme which gives artists of various eras room to show off when depicting exotic figures and animals, glittering fabrics and the splendour of an eastern retinue. It could not be missing from the repertoire of Szymon Czechowicz, master of sacred painting.

The artist placed only the main, essential figures of the scene in his painting. Behind Mary and the Child, to the right of the painting, we see a fragment of a male figure, probably Saint Joseph. In the background, behind the Three Kings, we see the head of a camel leaving the depiction of the rest of the colourful retinue to the viewer's imagination alone. We view the figures in close-up, almost in the foreground. However, Mary and the King kneeling before her catch the eye as the most important, with their intense large patches of blue, red and ochre (yellowish-gold pigment), forming a kind of background for the bright figure of the Child illuminated by a ray of light coming from a star.

"The Adoration of the Three Kings" by Szymon Czechowicz from the Lviv museum collection is limited to the most important figures: Mary with Jesus on her lap and the Kings. This minimalism, unusual for Baroque painting, is characteristic of the artist's art. So is the background, barely marred, with the stable limited to a piece of wall with a visible fragment of a column, covered by a makeshift wooden roof. In Czechowicz's work, one looks in vain for elaborate, dynamic compositions or detailed decoration, as well as for light contrasts. He places the figures in neutral lighting and brings them out of shadow with soft modelling.