Lietuvos istorijos institutas

The name of the artist and stage decorator Konstanty Ottosielski (Otoszelski, ca 1755–1809) is well known among culture historians, with brief biograms being included in biographical dictionaries of Lithuania’s and Poland’s artists.3 Nonetheless, in terms of his biography and his artistic legacy, this is a figure who has been researched in a very fragmented manner, perhaps because thus far not a single piece of his work is known to exist. Data is usually given in publications that in around 1780 Ottosielski worked for the Radziwiłł princes in Nesvyzh, where he painted decorations for the court theatre there, before moving to the Sapieha family’s Derechin estate, and lived in Vilnius from 1793 where he created a number of theatrical set designs and interior mural paintings.4 This article focuses on research of this artist’s biography, using sources to correct the life dates of the artist and his family members, the geography of his activities, paying particular attention to his time spent in Vilnius.