ABSTRACT
This chapter presents hitherto unknown iconographic sources, complemented by printed and handwritten accounts, as its guides to the artistic lexicon used by Vladislaus IV Vasa, king of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, hereditary king of Sweden and elected Grand Duke of Muscovy. In this connection, the chapter refers to triumphal entries to Gdansk, Warsaw, Cracow, Vilnius, Elblag, Torun and other cities of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Accompanied by visual elements created for the occasion, literary works, musical pieces, fireworks and the like, ephemeral architecture entered into a dialogue with urban space. Vladislaus's public entries were clearly envisaged as an aemulatio of the ancient Roman triumph. The dynamic nature of the entry made it possible to represent the king as the successor of historical precedent, which was, in the case of Vladislaus, the Jagiellonian succession in particular, making him the master of time and space. Vladislaus IV frequently attended personally to the details of royal entries.
