Tadeusz Kościuszko

Tadeusz Kościuszko, general and statesman, leader of the 1794 Insurrection, was also a talented artist. In the Triumph of Flora—a reminiscence of his journey to Italy—he shows a bucolic scene of a flower-adorned dancing procession celebrating the festival of the Roman goddess Vesta against an idealised landscape. Kościuszko, an Enlightenment republican looking for a righteous order also in the real world, throughout almost his entire adult life was actively fighting for the freedom of nations as well as the most disenfranchised social groups (slaves in the United States, peasantry in Poland). Kościuszko’s Enlightenment ethics constantly drove him to strive for a better world. The longing for such a world is manifested in the idyllic composition of the drawing.