Poniatowski was the son of the elder Stanisław Poniatowski, a powerful Polish noble and a onetime agent of Stanisław I; in youth he was a lover of Catherine II of Russia and as such enjoyed strong support from that Empress's court. Legacy Patron of arts Augustus III was a great patron of the arts and architecture. During his reign the Baroque Catholic Church of the Royal Court in Dresden (present-day Dresden Cathedral) was built, in which he was later buried as one of the few Polish kings buried outside the Wawel Cathedral in Kraków. He greatly expanded the Dresden art gallery, to the extent that in 1747 it was placed in a new location at the present-day Johanneum, where it remained until 1855 when it was moved to the newly built Semper Gallery. In 1748 he founded the Opera House (Operalnia) in Warsaw and the Collegium medico-chirurgicum, the first medical school in Dresden. During his reign, the extension of the Saxon Palace in Warsaw, begun by his father Augustus II, was completed, and the reconstruction of the eastern façade of the Royal Castle was ordered, thus creating the so-called Saxon Facade, an iconic part of the Vistula panorama of the Warsaw Old Town. In 1733, the composer Johann Sebastian Bach dedicated the Kyrie–Gloria Mass in B minor, (early version), to Augustus in honor of his succession to the Saxon electorate, with the hope of appointment as Court Composer, a title Bach received three years later. Bach's title of Koeniglicher Pohlnischer Hoff Compositeur (Royal Polish Court Composer, and court composer to the Elector of Saxony) is engraved on the title page of Bach's famous Goldberg Variations. Augustus III was also the patron of composer Johann Adolph Hasse, who was granted the title of the Royal-Polish and Electoral-Saxon Kapellmeister by his father, Augustus II, in 1731, and thanks to Augustus III the same title was obtained in 1716 by composer Johann David Heinichen. Personal life and criticism In 1732, a French priest named Gabriel Piotr Baudouin founded the first orphanage in Poland, situated in Warsaw's Old Town. The facility was later moved to the nearby Warecki Square (now Warsaw Uprising Square), and in 1758 Augustus III decreed that the new institution be called Szpital Generalny Dzieciątka Jezus (The General Hospital of Infant Jesus). The newly established hospital expanded its operations into treating not only orphans but also the sick and the poor.