Per Krafft the Elder, Swedish
“Here’s How This Works: If I’m Pleased With Your Portrait, I Shall Leave This Lever Just So. However, If I Am Displeased, I Shall Pull Said Lever and Drop You Into the Fetid Sewers Beneath the Castle. But the Important Thing Is To Have Fun With It,” ca. 1767
Oil on canvas
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Info, or perhaps links that point to more info, about this artist can be found here, and here (Google translated), perhaps in addition to what’s in his Wikipedia page (Google translated Swedish Wikipedia page has more).
/// Poniatowski, the King of the Poles,
was defamed by pre-internet trolls:
Claimed his subjects are fools
who believe that he rules
over long wooden rods and not souls.
/// True, he’s holding a pole in his hand,
but these critics did not understand
that real-life Polish folks
ain’t like Poles in those jokes.
(Telling Polish jokes now gets you banned.)
/// As a youth, sent to Russia, he’d “date”
future Empress, called Catherine the Great.
Years would pass since they dated
and things got… complicated,
as they would, when they’re both heads of state.
/// In their twenties ‘twas sexual lust
which caused passions to heat and combust.
Later, each on a throne,
such concerns were outgrown.
An ex-lover was not one to trust.
/// Kate’s opinion young lover Stan,
was that he was OK… for a man.
Not one in a battalion
can compete with a stallion.
Stan can’t measure up, but no one can.
/// The base rumor that Catherine’s smile
was the leer of a lewd hippophile
is a lie critics wrote.
True, she had a hoarse throat;
she was “deep” and, it seems, versatile.