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<\/code><\/div>\nThe King of Engineers<\/em> is a four-year research project financed by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education and affiliated at the History Faculty of the University of Warsaw. Its aim is to provide a detailed description and interpretation of the automatic theatre commissioned in 1742 to the gardens of the Lun\u00e9ville palace by the king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and duke of Lorraine and Bar Stanis\u0142aw Leszczy\u0144ski, as well as to promote him as a historical figure of considerable importance for political, intellectual, and artistic life of the period.<\/p>\nCreated as an embellishment of the residence of Leszczy\u0144ski in Lun\u00e9ville, the automatic theatre comprised up to 88 life-like mechanical figures of men, women, children, and animals set against a picturesque background of rural houses and cottages. The installation\u2019s eighteenth-century name, Le Rocher <\/em>(French for \u2018rock\u2019), originated from a then common practice of decorating residential palaces and their gardens with rocky mounds and crags, often featuring waterfalls and water jets, and Leszczy\u0144ski\u2019s theatre was no exception. What was really exceptional about the whole construction was its size, and the grandeur of its appearance. A result of cooperation of the king\u2019s most trusted architect, Emmanuel H\u00e9r\u00e9, with a Parisian clock-maker, Fran\u00e7ois Richard, Le Rocher <\/em>was aimed to amaze Leszczy\u0144ski\u2019s guests, Voltaire among them, and to leave them speechless in front of such a spectacular view.<\/p>\nLeszczy\u0144ski\u2019s theatre was a part of a larger phenomenon, and it seems by no means accidental that the 1730s saw a great rise of interest in automata and other similar self-perpetuating mechanisms. Therefore, the research hopes to investigate the link of the Lun\u00e9ville automata with their counterparts created at the same time in Paris by great French engineer Jacques de Vaucanson, a genius of technology apotheosized by many as \u2018the modern Prometheus\u2019. The development of medicine in general, and anatomy in particular, novelties in mechanics, the philosophical conceptions of Descartes\u2013all of this contributed to the modern re-emergence of the ancient automatika<\/em>, the science and craftsmanship of constructing self-perpetuating mechanisms. As a supra-disciplinary research project, The King of Engineers <\/em>is meant to address the most significant phenomena that brought about the creation of the automata of both Leszczy\u0144ski and Vaucanson, the use of and the ideology behind which seem to be very different.<\/p>\nAlbert Kozik<\/a> is the principal investigator. The project is supervised by Gabriela \u015awitek<\/a>\u00a0and financed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Poland.<\/p>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The King of Engineers is a four-year research project financed by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education and affiliated at the History Faculty of the University of Warsaw. Its aim is to provide a detailed description and interpretation of the automatic theatre commissioned in 1742 to the gardens of the Lun\u00e9ville palace by … <\/p>\n