Art cabinets in the 17th and 18th centuries were rooms where aristocrats and wealthy burghers displayed their private collections of paintings, sculpture or handicrafts. Only a select few had access to them. This practice, however, contributed significantly to the development of the culture of receiving art in Europe, and eventually - with the change in social relations and the spread of the idea of making collections public - gave rise to museums. Reference to this tradition is the guiding idea behind the exhibition presenting 37 works of European art from the largest and most valuable art collection in Ukraine. A collection whose core was a notable private collection.

The Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Art Museum in Kyiv is one of the most important museum institutions in Eastern Europe, with collections of European, Asian and ancient art. Due to the significant damage the institution suffered during Russia's attacks on Kyiv in the autumn of 2022, its management decided to lend part of its art collection to the Royal Castle in Warsaw in order to protect it for the duration of the war and to undergo conservation treatment. This decision created a unique opportunity to show works of the stature of the Ukrainian national collection to a wide audience in Poland. This is the first such extensive presentation of the Chanenko collection outside of Ukraine.

The exhibition includes works of Italian, Dutch, Flemish, French or Spanish art, including signed works by masters such as Peter Paul Rubens, Bernardo Bellotto and Juan de Zurbarán. The subject matter of the representations is also varied, ranging from portraiture to still lifes and landscapes to scenes of antiquity.

A separate section is made up of polonics, among which the Portrait of Stanislaus Augustus in the Attire of Henry IV, painted by Louise-Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun in 1797, deserves special attention. This representation is one of the last portraits of the ruler made before his death. For the first time after two hundred years, the Castle is also hosting two paintings from the collection of the last king of Poland, taken deep into Russia in the early 19th century and long considered lost.

Bohdan Chanenko (1849-1917) was a lawyer, sugar industrialist and great art enthusiast. Together with his wife Varvara, he collected paintings, sculptures and handicrafts over several decades, which together formed the largest and most valuable art collection in Ukraine. This collection could compare with the most distinguished private collections built at a similar time in Paris or Vienna.