The paper examines two mid-18th century poems, Sujān vilās and Dīrghnagarvarṇan, composed in Brajbhasha (Braj Bhasha) by Somnāth, at the then recently established court of the Jat rulers. It focuses on the description of the city, i.e. nagaravarṇana convention rooted in Sanskrit poetics and common in Sanskrit kāvya literature, further adopted by the authors belonging to the courtly ornate poetry of the Hindi literary tradition. In Somnāth’s works which offer three instances of the nagaravarṇana, this convention sees its transformation into a fully-fledged literary genre. The poetics of the Brajbhasha literary production have been by then enriched to a considerable extent by Persian literary practices, with both courtly literary cultures, the Persian and the Brajbhasha, enjoying patronage of the Mughal center of power leading thus to diffusion of its various cultural practices, including the literary, to many neighboring states and dominions. The present inquiry situates Somnāth’s works in this historico-literary settings with a view to define features of the nagaravarṇanas and thus trace the development of this literary genre and map its changing functions. Those functions, as argued here, point to disparate forms of patronage that underlie both compositions – probably a single, composite literary project.

I am going to collect dispersed items of information which clearly refer or seem to be suggestive of the Aeolic, Pergamene or Attalid school of art historians which developed in the first half of the 2nd century BC and discuss their idiosyncratic methods and original contribution to the Greek intellectual life of the Hellenistic period. Even the fragmentary history of the Attalid art collections which can be reconstructed from the archaeological data and the scarce information in the literary sources shows that the collections grew as a result of various factors: 1. wartime robbery. 2. purchases of artworks. 3. a well‑thought out programme of reproducing original Greek artworks. The Attalids must have had professional art historians at their side as consultants. We can identify two of them by name: Antigonus of Karystos and Polemon of Ilion. A number of passages testify to a lively academic debate between them. In the course of their professional polemics they discussed the problems of authorship and authenticity of artworks, they adduced biographical details in their efforts to establish the personal identities of the artists and paid tribute to their heroes with colourful anecdotes. They attributed artworks to alternative authors. They also constructed complicated genealogical trees of schools of painting and sculpture, along the principle of master/pupil relations. Their epigraphic studies must have been inspired and influenced by the editors of the Aeolic Archaic poets.

This article attempts to refute the generally accepted view that Jan Wojciech (Albert) Łubieński, Pantler of Sieradz, was the patron of Piotr Baryka,, the author of the comedy Z chłopa król ( The Peasant Become King), first staged in 1633 (editio princeps, 1637). The attribution results from a conjecture, which has never been properly verified, formulated by Ludwik Bernacki in 1904. Yet in the 1630s Jan Wojciech Łubieński held no public office (he was probably completing his education) and, crucially, did not become Pantler of Sieradz until 1643. In consequence, we presume that Baryka's patron may well have been Łubieński's uncle, a wealthy man renowned for his generosity, who had the same first name.