Countess Katarzyna Branicka, Katarzyna Potocka, née Branicka

Korczak coat of arms Korczak is a Polish coat of arms. It was used by several noble families of Clan Korczak in the times of the Kingdom of Poland and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. History The coat of arms has Hungarian origins; the three bars represent th ...

(1825–1907) was a Polish

noblewoman Nobility is a social class found in many societies that have an aristocracy. It is normally ranked immediately below royalty. Nobility has often been an estate of the realm with many exclusive functions and characteristics. The characteri ...

and art collector. Through her paternal grandmother, Aleksandra Branicka, she was a putative great-grandchild of Catherine the Great. She had two sisters and four brothers, the eldest of whom was the French exile, financier and philanthropist, Count Xavier Branicki.Władysław Konopczyński, "Franciszek Ksawery Branicki”, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. II, Kraków:

Polish Academy of Learning The Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences or Polish Academy of Learning ( pl, Polska Akademia Umiejętności), headquartered in Kraków and founded in 1872, is one of two institutions in contemporary Poland having the nature of an academy of scie ...

– Skład Główny w Księgarniach Gebethner i Wolff. 1936, p. 398. She married Count Adam Józef Potocki on 26 October 1847 in

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

. Chopin dedicated his Waltz in A-flat major to her. It was the last waltz by Chopin to be published in his lifetime. She was said to have been a great beauty and the subject of several portrait artists, including in 1854, the German painter,

Franz Winterhalter Franz Xaver Winterhalter (20 April 1805 – 8 July 1873) was a German painter and lithography, lithographer, known for his flattering portraits of royalty and upper-class society in the mid-19th century. His name has become associated with fashi ...

Descendants

Jennah Karthes de Branicka, the German TV Middle East reporter, who also has Lithuanian ancestry, is among the last actual descendants of the Branicki family who are associated with immense wealth and infamy in Polish history.

Descendants

References

Further reading