50 zł Stanisław Leszczynski - Treasures of Stanisław August

"Treasures of Stanislaw August" is a unique series of gold and silver collector coins with face values of 500 zloty and 50 zloty - it reproduces the famous 18th century medallic series with the images of the kings of Poland, commissioned by Stanisław August Poniatowski.

The royal medals were created at the Warsaw mint between 1791 and 1798 by two distinguished medallists - Jan Filip Holzhaeusser and Jan Jakub Reichel. The medals were modelled on portraits painted between 1768 and 1771 by Marcello Bacciarelli for the Marble Room of the Royal Castle in Warsaw.

The coins issued by the National Bank of Poland are faithful replicas of the medals, preserving the diameter and height of relief of the originals. This applies to the royal portraits presented on the reverses of the coins. The backs of the medals with biographies of the kings, placed on the obverses of the coins, have been reduced in size, because they are accompanied by the name of the state, the emblem of the Republic of Poland, the face value and the year of issue. The biographies of the monarchs, as well as the inscriptions on the obverses of the medals accompanying the portraits of the monarchs, are in Latin. The final editing of these texts was probably carried out by King Stanisław August himself. The names of the monarchs in Polish have been placed on the sides of the coins; the name of the series, "Treasures of Stanislaus Augustus", can be found there.

The twenty-second coin of the series depicts Stanislaus I Leszczynski (1677-1766), who twice assumed the Polish throne and spent the last 30 years of his long life as Duke of Lorraine and Bar. After the outbreak of the Northern War, when Augustus II renounced the Polish crown, by the will of the Polish nobility and the Swedish king on 12 July 1704. Stanislaus was elected king and crowned on 4 October 1705. After the defeat of the Swedes at Poltava in 1709, he was forced into exile and August II returned to the Polish throne. After his death, a double election was held in Warsaw in 1733; on 12 September, during the first of these, Stanislaus was elected king with the support of France, and on 5 October August III Sas was elected king with the support of Russia. A succession war broke out over the Polish throne, in which foreign powers were involved (as the saying 'One to the Saxon, the other to the Forest' bluntly illustrates). As a result, in January 1736, Stanislaus surrendered the crown and, by the grace of French King Louis XV, settled in Lorraine. 

The reverse of the coin shows the king's bust (probably based on a painting by Jan Bogumił Plersch), transferred from the medal, in left profile, with short hair combed back, moustache, wearing a cuirass and a coat with a fur collar fastened with a clasp. 

The obverse of the coin reads the text from the reverse of the medal (in translation): King, elevated to the throne during the Swedish disturbances in the Year of Our Lord 1705, gave way to the power of the returning Augustus II. On the death of Augustus II, he was unanimously elected in the year of our Lord 1733 and, having yielded to violence, he took possession of Lorraine on the basis of the Treaty of Vienna in the year of our Lord 1736. A philosopher and benefactor, always mindful of his homeland, burned by accidental flames, he died at Lunéville, in the year of Our Lord 1766, on 23 February, aged 89.