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PAINTING AND POLITICS IN THE
VATICAN MUSEUM
JAN MATEJKO’S “SOBIESKI AT VIENNA (1683)”
Thomas M. Prymak
mid the splendours of the Vatican Museum in Rome, amongst the lush and abundant
canvases of Raphael and others, is hung an exceptionally large painting depicting the
defeat of the last great invasion of Europe by the Turks, the siege of Vienna in 1683 and
its relief by a grand coalition of Christian forces led by the King of Poland, John III, or Jan
Sobieski, as he is known in Slavonic Europe. Sobieski was the last great King of Poland to
attempt to restore his country’s power and glory before the steady decline and final
disappearance of that state in the eighteenth century, and he is written into the early modern
history of Europe as the man who symbolized the repulse of that powerful Ottoman attempt to
conquer Europe, or, as it was seen then, the last Muslim invasion of Christendom from the East.
Though afterwards, historians would dispute who truly deserved the most credit for this
impressive Christian victory over the armies of Islam, with several Austrian or other historians
giving primary credit to one or another of the Austrian commanders, there is no doubt that
Sobieski stood at the head of that great multinational relief force as Commander-in-Chief, led the
final and decisive cavalry charge down the Kahlenberg Mountain to break through and destroy
the Turkish lines around the city, and was the first to reach the Turkish camp and capture its flag,
which he believed was the same banner that the Prophet Mohammed had carried into battle some
thousand years before.
The painting in the Vatican Museum shows a splendidly mounted Sobieski, surrounded
by his Polish soldiers and German allies, handing down a letter to be delivered to the Pope of the
day, Innocent XI by the emissary, Jan Kazimierz Denhoff, who in spite of his German-sounding
surname was a Pole. The picture exudes the pride and satisfaction of a confident soldier and a
A

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great and hard won victory, an achievement recognised by almost all
of Christendom. This victory, quite apparent at that time, was to
finally end only several years later with the liberation of all Hungary
and the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699). By that treaty, came Turkish
recognition that their centuries old enterprise in Europe, which had
known so many impressive victories and conquests, was over.1
The questions remain, however: Who painted this great
canvas? When was it painted? Why? And how did it get to the
Vatican Museum rather than any other perhaps more appropriate
place, more central to the epochal event that it depicted?
Fig. 2: Jan Matejko, Self-portrait. 1892. Oil on canvas.
National Museum, Warsaw.
The author of this painting was in fact Jan Matejko (1838-1893), a patriotic Polish artist
from Cracow in what was then Austrian Galicia, the part of that once great Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita) that had been acquired by the Habsburg rulers, the Empress
Maria Theresa and her son Josef II, during the partitions of Poland in the late eighteenth century,
not even a century after the Relief of Vienna.2
Matejko was born of a Czech father and a
German, or perhaps one should say Austro-German, mother, but like his elder brothers before
him, had been raised by his maternal aunt and educated into the rich Polish culture that
surrounded him in the old Polish royal capital of Cracow, the traditional burial place of the
Polish kings. Although his mother was of Protestant background, his father, a music teacher, and
an immigrant from Bohemia, was a Roman Catholic, and Jan Matejko seems to have been a
pious Catholic from his early childhood. Short in stature, near-sighted, and never very good at
school, he was always good at drawing, and from his early years, he seems to have been
interested in Polish history as it fit into the history of Christian Europe, and later on, indeed, he
came to think of Sobieski himself as “the last knight of Christendom.”3
1
For the historical background, see John Stoye, The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial between Cross and
Crescent (London: Collins, 1964; Repr. New York: Pegasus, 2000); Andrew Wheatcroft, The Enemy at the Gate:
Habsburgs, Ottomans and the Battle for Europe (New York: Basic Books, 2008); and Thomas Mack Barker, Double
Eagle and Crescent: Vienna‟s Second Turkish Siege and its Historical Setting (New York: N.Y. State University
Press, 1967). Unfortunately, none of these authors reads Polish and therefore all of them have a slight Germanic
slant with regard to Polish-German relations, especially Barker, whose book in places almost approaches a polemic
against Sobieski. For a useful corrective, which gives a clearly Polish view, see L. R. Lewitter, “John III Sobieski:
Saviour of Vienna,” History Today, XII, 3 (1962), 168-76, and 4 (1962), 243-52.
2
Jan Matejko, “Jan Sobieski, King of Poland defeats the Turks at the Gates of Vienna,” oil on linen (485x894 cm),
Sobieski Room, Vatican Palaces. Inventory number: 2613. Matejko: Obrazy olejne: Katalog, ed. with an
Introduction by Krystyna Sroczyńska, 2 vols. (Warsaw: Arkady, 1993), II, 192-95. Also see Carlo Pietrangeli, The
Vatican Museums: Five Centuries of History (Rome: Edizioni Quazar, 1993), pp. 212-13, 219, who, however, states
that “the work was painted in 1883.” In fact, it was begun in 1881, painted throughout 1882, and only completed in
1883. All images in this article, except figures 9, 12, and 13 are from Wikipedia.
3
The classic introductions to Matejko’s life and work are by his contemporaries, Stanisław Tarnowski, Matejko
(Cracow: Spółka wyd. Polska, 1897), and Stanisław Witkiewicz, Matejko (Lviv: Gubrynowicz i Syn, 1912). More
recent works include: Janusz Bogucki, Matejko (Warsaw: Wiedza powszechna, 1956); Maria Szypowska, Jan
Matejko (Warsaw: ZMW, 1988); Matejko: Obrazy olejne: Katalog, I, 5-24; Poczet artystów polskich, ed. Ilona
Pisarwiewicz and Krystyna Wawrzenczak (Warsaw: Wyd. Szkołne i Pedagogiczne, 1995), pp. 221-34; and Henryk
Marek Słoczyński, Matejko (Wrocław: Wyd. Dolnosląskie, 2000), in the well-illustrated “A to Polska własznie”
series.

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Nevertheless, Matejko’s family background and upbringing seem to have made him a
patriotic Pole of a certain sort. Many, and perhaps most, politically active Poles with a patriotic
bent then pined for the re-establishment of Poland on the political map of Europe, but for
Matejko, this longing took on a special form, for in contrast to most twenty-first century Poles,
he saw the old Commonwealth as very much a multi-national, or at least, a poly-ethnic entity. In
fact, given Matejko’s Czech and German ancestry, he was to stress the “multicultural” aspect of
the Commonwealth much more than did many of his contemporaries and almost all of his
successors. So for this particular artist, the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, inhabited by
Poles, Lithuanians, Ruthenians, Germans (both Protestant and Catholic), Jews, and many other
smaller peoples, became a sort of idealized country, which he was to depict in many of his most
serious paintings done over the course of many long years.
In practical terms Austrian Poland, or the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, as it was
officially termed, was the home of both Roman Catholic Poles and Greek Catholic Ruthenians
(the latter of whom in time would progressively change their name to “Ukrainians”), and it was
to these two Galician peoples that he devoted most of his political attention and artistic creations,
though he was very much concerned with Polish history in particular, and his view was always
centred on old Poland itself.
Moreover, being of partly Czech parentage and purely Polish upbringing, and having
Ruthenians and people from Ukraine among his closest advisors, among his most talented
students, and among his most immediate neighbours, Matejko (who in his early youth even
spoke an unusual type of Polish sprinkled with Czechisms) also adopted a particular type of
“Panslavic” philosophy; that is, he sympathized more with all of these subordinate non-state
Slavonic peoples rather than the Austrians, Germans, and Russians, who then ruled the part of
eastern Europe in which he lived. But in adopting a Panslavic attitude, he immediately rejected
Russian rule over Poland, Lithuania, and “Ruthenia” or Ukraine. He rationalized this position by
claiming that the Russians or “Muscovites,” as they were then often called, were in essence not
really Slavs at all, but rather the partly Slavonized descendants of the Finnish peoples of north-
eastern Europe. This was a theory that seems strange today but was then wide-spread among
certain Poles, especially those Polish émigrés who once lived under Russian rule.4
In the Polish king, Jan Sobieski (1629-1696), who was of mixed Polish and Ruthenian
parentage, was raised in a predominantly Ruthenian populated area that was later incorporated
into the eastern or Ruthenian part of Austrian Galicia (today western Ukraine), and spent much
of his military career fighting Turks and Tatars along the south-eastern borderlands of the old
Commonwealth (today central Ukraine), Matejko saw the ultimate ideal of a good Polish king of
those earlier years. Indeed, he even considered Sobieski to have been Poland’s ideal “Ruthenian
king,” as he called him. So his defence of Christendom against the Muslims was also a poly-
For some brief appreciations in English, see Irena Piotrowska, The Art of Poland (New York: Philosophical
Library, 1947), pp. 58-62; Henryk Gotlib, Polish Painting (London: Minerva, n.d.), pp. 41-43; and “Matejko, Jan,”
Praeger Encyclopedia of Art, 4 vols. (New york, 1971), IV, 1321, which characterizes his work as being
“sumptuous” and “antiquarian,” and combining “realism” with “theatrical effects.” Also see Wanda Malaszewska,
“Matejko, Jan,” Dictionary of Art, vol. XX (London and New York: Grove-Macmillan, 1996), 809-11. For one of
the very few scholarly articles in English on Matejko, which, however, touches upon our subject only tangentially,
see Danuta Batorska, “The Political Censorship of Jan Matejko,” The Art Journal, LXI, 1 (1992), 57-63.
4
A major figure here was the Paris-based Polish/Ukrainian émigré from Kiev, Franciszek Duchiński (1816-1893),
who was the principal formulator of the theory. For an account of his ideas in English, see Ivan Lysiak Rudnytsky,
“Franciszek Duchiński and His Impact on Ukrainian Political Thought,” in his Essays in Modern Ukrainian History
(Edmonton: CIUS), pp. 187-201, which gives further references.

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ethnic and multi-national, as well as a religious enterprise, and this too comes out in his great
painting in which many different peoples are represented.5
Matejko’s philosophy of art seems to have been formed early in his career and was fairly
consistent to his very death. A child of the early romantic period, he was very devoted to art, but
not in any abstract or ethereal way. Rather he saw art as a tool or weapon to be used to fight the
good fight for the resurrection of that great Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Art was also for
him an instrument of popular education, and a means of teaching men and women of lesser
culture, and even the less patriotic aristocratic elite, about the value and glories of the old
Commonwealth, and the necessity for its rebirth. He even thought, says the historian Henryk
Słoczyński, that just as poetry had earlier embodied “the spirit of the nation,” it was now the time
of art to do so.6
However, active during the second half of the nineteenth century in Partitioned Poland,
Matejko faced some very difficult problems in his turn to painting Poland’s past. One of his first
biographers, his younger contemporary, Stanisław Witkiewicz, who in certain other ways was
very critical of Polish historical or political painting, put it thus: “Between Matejko and that
world [of the past] that he wished to paint, stood not only a great vacuum of time, not only the
darkness of memories forgotten, but also something worse: the social conveniences of bad art,
which slobbered over everything with its incompetence, and split off the past from the present.”
Witkiewicz continues by remarking that Matejko resolved these problems by using the critical
sense of a modern scholar, the passion of a painter, the persistence of a good miner, who drills
away steadily at the hardest of rocks, and the imagination of a great palaeontologist, who sifts
through ancient ruins to reveal a great culture. And in doing all this, his talent as an artist ordered
and reigned supreme over all of these varied technical methods. Indeed, Witkiewicz’s older
contemporary, Matejko’s good friend, Stanisław Tarnowski, even thought his artistic genius so
great that he compared his historical paintings to the historical plays of Shakespeare.7
Raised on the historical songs of Julian Niemcewicz, inspired by the poetry and published
lectures of Adam Mickiewicz, especially his Lectures on Slavonic Literature, originally
delivered in Paris and published in French, and deeply affected by some of the leading lights of
the Conservative Cracow School of historians, especially Józef Szujski, and others like him, who
placed much of the blame for Poland’s demise upon the internal problems of the Commonwealth
and the Poles themselves, from his very first efforts at historical painting, he applied these
techniques to spread the officially discouraged Gospel of Polish Nationalism, in which he
fervently believed.
5
See especially Adam Świątyk, “Lach serdeczny” Jan Matejko a Rusini (Cracow: Wyd. Universytetu
Jagiellońskiego, 2013), who stresses the painter’s friendship with “Ruthenians,” his Panslavic sympathies, and his
willingness to accept Ruthenian students, many of whom later became prominent Ukrainian artists. Matejko’s view
of Sobieski contrasts with that of most contemporary Polish historians, who view Michał Wiśniowecki (1640-73)
(Mykhailo Vyshnevetsky in Ukrainian orthography) as Poland’s major “Ruthenian” king, though his reign was
marked by serious setbacks for the Polish state.
6
Słoczyński, Matejko, p. 33. The Russian language Vseobshchaia istoriia iskusstva, vol. V, ed. Yu. Kolpinsky and
N. V. Yavorsky (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1964), 365-66, in its discussion of Matejko, states that he represented “an
entire epoch in Polish artistic and cultural life,” and puts him within the context of the general nineteenth century
struggle for independence among the Poles, Hungarians, Chechnians, Serbians, and Bulgarians. We might add here
two further peoples of special interest to Matejko, who joined this list towards the end of the century: the Ukrainians
(formerly called “Ruthenians”) and the Lithuanians.
7
Witkiewicz, Matejko, pp. 26-27; Tarnowski, Matejko, pp. 23-24.

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Fig. 3. Jan Matejko, Stanczyk at the Palace Ball of Queen
Bona after the Loss of Smolensk. 1862. Oil on canvas.
National Museum, Warsaw. In the early sixteenth century,
the court jester of Polish King Sigismund the Old broods
over news of the fall of the City of Smolensk to the
Muscovites, while, dimly seen, the nobles party in the
background. In Communist times, to avoid offending the
USSR, the censor shortened the title to Stanczyk, though the
painting was still well-known. Matejko, only twenty-four
years old in 1862, but already seriously interested in Polish
history, served as his own model for the jester, Stanczyk.
So his first great paintings to break through to a wider public and cause a great deal of
heated discussion over history and politics were his Stanczyk (1862), the Royal Jester in deep
thought or even despair over the future of the kingdom, while the nobles carelessly partied in the
background, his Sermon of Skarga (1864), in which the ostensibly most eloquent and charismatic
of all Polish Jesuit preachers excoriated the selfishness and egocentrism of the great Polish
aristocrats, the so-called magnates, who put their own interests before that of the Commonwealth
and set about its decline; and two years later, his Rejtan (the Partitioning Parliament of 1773),
which took this theme even farther and depicted the last debates in the Polish Parliament or Sejm
as the nobles were bought off by various foreign rulers, foreign enemies were breaking through
the doors, and the country was being torn apart by its voracious neighbours.
The painter’s Stanczyk was poorly understood outside of Poland itself, but Skarga won
Matejko some European renown as it received a gold medal in Paris in 1865; and while Rejtan
was severely attacked by several rich and influential Polish aristocrats, scions of those great
families who had betrayed the Commonwealth in its final agony, magnates from Ukraine bearing
the famous names “Potocki,” “Branicki,” and “Rzewuski,” it too was exhibited in Paris in 1867,
and in the end was even purchased by the Emperor Franz Josef, who awarded the painter a medal
for it. As early as 1863, in fact, he was offered directorships of the schools of fine arts in both
Prague and in Cracow. He chose Cracow, and was named to the post as well by the Emperor.8
These important paintings all constitute the earlier phase of Matejko’s career. During this
phase, he was part and parcel of the movement in European painting away from Greece and
Rome and the neo-classicism of the Napoleonic years towards medieval Europe and the national
histories of the countries to the north of the Mediterranean. His art studies in Cracow under W.
K. Stattler and Władisław Łuszczkiewicz taught him much about painting, Stattler a love for
historical painting, and Łuszczkiewicz about the importance of artefacts and their preservation,
but his further art studies in Munich and Vienna were brief, and he was largely “self-taught.”9
Indeed, it was above all the example of the French painter Paul Delaroche, learned from
studying photographs in Munich, who inspired him to unite historical fact and dramatic effect to
tell an interesting story about the past. Consequently, some Polish art historians even describe
him as a kind of “Artist-Visionary,” though in technique he always remained very much a
“scientist;” that is, he was systematic in his approach to materials, and strove for historical,
8
Janusz Kębłowski, Dzieje sztuki polskiej (Warsaw: Arkady, 1987), pp. 170-71; and more generally: “Matejko,
Jan,” Encyklopedia powszechna S. Orgelbranda (Warsaw, 1901), X, 30-31.
9
Pisarkiewicz and Wawrzenczak, Poczet, p. 322; Szypowska, Matejko, throughout calls him a “samouk.”

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ethnographic, and archaeological accuracy and detail. This approach was then in mode when
Matejko made his first breakthrough in the 1860s, and for a time he received some good reviews
from the Paris critics, where his work won some awards.10
But with time and experience, Matejko’s style changed. His paintings grew larger, much
more complex, even monumental, though still clearly didactic in a political sense. By the late
1870s and the early 1880s, this tendency towards “didacticism” and “titanism,” as one Polish art
historian put it, seemed to be simply overwhelming. His historical paintings became crowded
with figures and personalities, artefacts and instruments, and seemed to recall the horror vacui of
sixteenth century European art. They united heroic romanticism with an almost “frenetic vision”
of the past, but sometimes lost much in general harmony and colour, resulting in what this same
critic called “a nervous linearism,” and lack of psychological depth.11
By the time that Matejko painted The Battle of Grunwald (1879) and The Prussian
Homage (1882), these changes were becoming more clearly apparent, though the movement,
violence, and conflict so clearly displayed in Grunwald was so well done that that picture
received a considerable amount of positive attention in Paris, when it was exhibited in the French
capital. Let us pause for a moment to consider Grunwald. It depicted the great battle of 1410, in
which Poles, Lithuanians, and “Ruthenians” united to defeat the Teutonic Order, which was
pushing east into the homelands of the Poles and Lithuanians. For a time, that battle stopped the
Crusading German military order in its tracks, and secured the alliance, later union, of Poland
and Lithuania. The painting was, in fact, a clearly different narrative from the glorious
proclamation of the newly formed German Empire, which came out of the 1870 Franco-Prussian
War, and, of course, that state already ruled the northern and western parts of Partitioned Poland.
Grunwald got some mixed reviews, when it was exhibited in Paris, as the Paris art critics were
already beginning to move on from historical paintings to newly fashionable Impressionism. But
the French government, still not recovered from the country’s defeat in the recent war, loved it,
and awarded its author a special prize.12
Fig. 4. Jan Matejko, “The Battle of
Grunwald.” 1878. Oil on canvas.
National Museum, Warsaw.
10
Pisarkiewicz and Wawrzenczak, Poczet, p. 328. Also see A. Straszewska, “Matejko, Jan,” Allgemeines Künstler-
Lexikon, vol. LXXXVII (Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter, 2015), 516-18, who stresses that Delaroche’s influence was
especially strong on Stanczyk, but declined after 1863, to be replaced by that of Szujski and the Cracow
conservatives. On the Paris reviewers, see Marek Zgórniak, Matejko w Paryżu (Cracow: Instytut historii sztuki UJ,
1998), which is a detailed study with a resumé in French.
11
Tadeusz Dobrowolski, Sztuka polska od czasów najdawniejszych do ostatnich (Cracow: WLK, 1974), pp. 571-74.
The Vseobshchaia istoriia iskusstva, V, 365-66, justly concludes that the masses of people filling his later canvases
tend to overcome the central figures so clearly marked and unencumbered in his earlier pictures and weaken their
emotional effect.
12
Matejko: Obrazy olejne: Katalog, II, 151-57.

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Similarly, The Prussian Homage (in which the last Grand Master of the Teutonic Order,
predecessor of the new German Kaiser/Emperor, knelt to do homage for his Prussian fiefdom
before the King of Poland) was a different narrative from that dominant in Germany, and
attracted much international attention. Matejko’s secretary, Marian Gorzkowski assures us that it
almost won a prize in Berlin itself, but that the award was vetoed by the Kaiser upon the advice
of the Iron Chancellor, Bismarck. Of course, given the political circumstances in which The
Prussian Homage was exhibited (only a little more than a decade after the creation of the
Prussian-dominated German Empire), such a reaction, the exact opposite of that of the French
government, might be expected from the German political authorities. If Gorzkowski’s story is
true, what is really surprising is that the Berlin jury singled out Matejko’s controversial canvas
for praise in the first place.13
It is much less surprising that the picture was well received when it was exhibited in
Vienna, where Franz Josef liked it. That was most probably not only an expression of the
Austrian Emperor’s Schadenfreude over the embarrassment of his old Prussian rival, soon to be
his senior German ally, but also a reflection of sympathy for his own Polish subjects and those of
the German Kaiser, who in Pomerania, Silesia, the Poznań Region, and Prussia itself, were still
suffering from some of the lingering effects of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, or political attack on the
Catholic Church, as Franz Josef was then still the personal embodiment of traditional Habsburg
Catholicism.14
Both The Battle of Grunwald and The Prussian Homage were, of course, sensationally
popular in Poland. But as pointed out above, the mood in Paris was already changing, and later
Polish art historians would be much more critical of these pictures, as well as of his later works.
Even the painter’s eminent friend, the highly cultured Stanisław Tarnowski, could clearly see the
difference between his earlier and his later phases, and he would eventually write of Matejko’s
Stanczyk: “After it, there were greater, more illustrious, more
glorious pictures; more beautiful, deeper pictures, there were not.”15
The year 1882 was the year of The Prussian Homage. But the
very next year, 1883, saw great festivities planned for the two
hundredth anniversary of the Relief of Vienna from the Turks, and
Matejko seems to have immediately seen the opportunity to express
in another picture his strong Catholic faith, his equally strong Polish
patriotism, and his loyalty to the Emperor in Vienna, whom he saw
(with some justification) as personally sympathetic to Polish
interests. In fact, idea of painting Sobieski at Vienna had long been
in his mind. Years before, he had already painted a deeply pious
picture of Sobieski at Częstochowa, with his immediate family,
praying for victory before the expedition set out.16
(Fig. 5 left)
13
Ibid., II, 183, citing Marian Gorzkowski, Jan Matejko: Epocha lat dalszych do końca życia artysty (Cracow,
1898), pp. 351-2.
14
See the note on Franz Josef in Słoczyński, Matejko, p. 167.
15
In ibid., p. 61.
16
Matejko: Obrazy olejne Katalog, II, 60-61. This picture (1859) has been variously titled “King Sobieski with his
Family at Częstochowa,” “John III before the Vienna Expedition,” “The Last Knight of Christendom,” etc. There is
a colour reproduction of it in Słoczyński, Matejko, p. 56. Sobieski left Warsaw, and traveled through Cracow, where
the core of his army was assembling, then on to Częstochowa, the great religious centre of Poland, where he took
leave of the queen, and then went on to Austria.

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Throughout all of 1882, the painter worked on the larger picture with great intensity. He
was then personally beset with family problems, most especially with his difficult wife, whom he
loved dearly and painted often, but who suffered from certain rather severe mental problems, at
one point even destroying one of Matejko’s best portraits of her. He also had considerable
difficulty with his sons. At his wit’s end about all this, the master seemed to simply throw
himself into his work to escape these recurring torments. His personal secretary, Marian
Gorzkowski, was a witness to it all, and recorded the following in his journal about Matejko:
The only escape that remained to the artist was work. In fact, from July to December [of
1882] he worked without a break on his great picture of Sobieski at Vienna. Never before
had he ever put so much effort into a picture. His enthusiasm for work was both
extraordinary and passionate. Because he had already painted so many earlier pictures of
this kind, he had the experience and the technique, and the work on Sobieski went very
quickly. He only used eight or ten different colours of paint, exclusively of natural
colours, because he thought only these would last. Other colours, he made from these. In
this way, so he said, of all his pictures Sobieski would endure the longest time, and its
colours would remain intact across the centuries.17
Simultaneously, Matejko did an enormous amount of research for this painting. He visited the
museums and art galleries in Cracow, Lemberg, and Vienna to study the costumes, armour,
weapons, and portraits of people and objects to go into the picture. Several Capuchin friars were
brought to him from their friary so that he could pick a model for Marco d’Aviano, the
charismatic Capuchin preacher, who had inspired the Army of Relief approaching Vienna.18
From faraway Lithuania, portraits of “Sarmatians,” noble warriors appropriately dressed and
armoured, were brought to him, as was an icon of the Mother of God from the Radziwiłł estate at
Nieśwież, said to have been carried to Vienna by one of the Radziwiłłs. In this regard, he
approached Antony Radziwiłł, General Adjutant of the Prussian Kaiser, who ironically
considered Radziwiłł to be “the most Prussian of all the Prussians.” (The original Prussians were
a Baltic-speaking people like their close relatives the Lithuanians.) He visited, the Potocki estate
in Krzeszowice nearby Cracow, to study horses and horsemanship.19
He made a special trip to
Podhorets in eastern Galicia, where he viewed the Sobieski family treasures and studied military
paraphernalia, and he surveyed the Kahlenburg Mount outside Vienna to get a feel for the place
where the event he was to depict took place. Indeed, he spent so much time in Lemberg and other
places in eastern Galicia that he considered it necessary to explain to a curious local “Ruthenian”
population that “our heroic king was indeed a Ruthenian and lived for a long time at Oleskiv,
Zholkva, Lviv and so on… [and that] the great Ruthenian king, while having so much love for
his country, was at the same time an admirer of Poland as our common homeland.”20
In this regard, it is especially important to note the great influence of Matejko’s personal
secretary, Marian Gorzkowski, who was deeply devoted to him and on whom he came to rely
quite heavily, not only in his professional work, but also in his private life. Gorzkowski had been
born and raised in Bila Tserkva in central Ukraine, educated at Kiev University, and always
retained a close interest in Ukrainian affairs, which he linked to Poland, not Russia. In fact,
17
Marian Gorzkowski, Jan Matejko: Epoka od r. 1861 do końca życia artysty z dziennika prowadzonego w cińgu lat
siedemnastu, ed. K. Nowacki and I. Trybowski (Cracow: Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Sztuk Pięknych w Krakowie,
1993), pp. 229-30. Unless otherwise noted, this is the edition referred to in subsequent references.
18
Ibid., p. 248; Szypowska, Matejko, pp. 309-10.
19
Słoczynsky, Matejko, p. 156.
20
Gorzkowski, Matejko, p. 239. Lviv is, of course, the Ukrainian name for Lemberg (German name), Lwów (Polish
name), and Léopol (French name), all refering to “the City of Leo,” an early Ruthenian/Ukrainian political figure.

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Gorzkowski’s journal describing the painter’s life was probably strongly coloured by these
facts.21
Similarly, Platon Kostecki (1832-1908) was another of Matejko’s close contacts with
Ruthenians. Kostecki, a Lemberg resident, who formally welcomed him to the City of Lemberg,
when the city honoured the artist, was one of those famous gente Rutheni, natione Poloni figures
in Galicia, who at first published in Ukrainian, but eventually edited a Polish language
newspaper, and to quote an impeccably Ukrainian source, “became a proponent of the Polish
cause.” 22
However at that time, the Polish-Ruthenian split, which later became an open Polish-
Ukrainian conflict, was not nearly as fierce as it later became.
As to Sobieski, most of the work on it was done in Matejko’s studio in Cracow itself. The
labour had begun in 1881, went on through all of 1882, and also continued throughout most of
the year 1883, since the festivities were set to climax later that year, that is, on September 12 on
the exact anniversary of the final battle in Vienna. Occasionally, however, his intensive work on
Sobieski would be overwhelming, and needing a psychological break, he would turn to painting
something else. So at that time he also worked on a portrait or two, and finished his striking
picture of the legendary eighteenth century Ukrainian seer or visionary prophet Vernyhora
(Ukrainian spelling). Originally from Zaporozhia or perhaps eastern Ukraine under the Russians,
it was said that Vernyhora had got into some kind of family trouble and killed both his mother
and brother. He escaped to Right Bank Ukraine under the Poles, and he had a series of visions,
which prophesied the great peasant/Cossack rising called the Koliivshchyna or “Rising of the
Pikes” (as the rebels were armed with pikes) in which much of
the Polish gentry, Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic clergy,
and Jews of the area perished, then the fateful partitions of
Poland, and later on, its rise again. In many ways, Wernyhora
(Polish spelling used in the name of the picture) was a return to
Matejko’s earlier style in which he had painted Stanczyk,
Skarga, and even Kopernik (Copernicus) (1873), and such. It
was simpler both in content and design, with a striking colour
scheme, unusual pose, and shocking psychological intent. It
was also filled with symbolism referring to the prophesies of
Vernyhora and the Koliivshchyna.
Fig. 6. Jan Matejko, “Wernyhora.” 1883. Oil on Canvas. National Museum,
Cracow. The seer’s name literally meant “Topple the Mountain,” and
through the 1768 Koliivshchyna and the 1790s extinction of the great
Commonwealth, he did indeed metaphorically “topple the mountain.”
But Matejko now felt his real mission was in grand historical panoramas, and he returned
frequently to Sobieski and gave that picture his most serious attention and energy. Out of pure
exhaustion, he grew noticeably older in the work.23
21
On Gorzkowski, see the article on him in the Polish language Wikipedia. Accessed 6/24/2018. This article lists
several of his books on the “Ruthenian Question” (Polish-Ukrainian and Russian-Ukrainian relations) in both the
Habsburg and Romanov empires.
22
“Kostecki, Platon,” Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. II (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 627-28. Also
see Świątyk, Lach serdeczny, pp. 7-8.
23
On “Wernyhora,” see Matejko: Obrazy olejne Katalog, II, 199-200, citing M. Gorzkowski, Wkazówki do nowego
obrazu Jana Matejki “Weryhora.” Z pobieznym opisem o Kozakach w ogóle (Cracow, 1884), and other works. The

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However, both patriotism and religious faith pushed him on. The patriotism was above all
Polish, but also Ruthenian and Slavonic, with a soft-spot for Austrian Galicia in particular, and
the example of his two older brothers, who had taken up arms against the Russians in 1863, was
always before him. He himself would have done likewise, but he seems to have had other things
on his mind. The religious faith was above all Christian and Roman Catholic, though with
considerable respect for the Greek Catholicism, which was the second largest confession in
Austrian Galicia, and at that time, still not completely forgotten in other parts of Partitioned
Poland, especially in the Russian Partition.
And while his commitment to Christianity was firm, it was also
unostentatious and good humoured. At the same time, his
passionate nature caused him to sometimes be too idealistic,
even romantic, and he was given to a certain kind of pious
superstition, everywhere seeing signs of the supernatural. He
seems to have actually believed that Vernyhora was a real
person who so accurately predicted Poland’s future troubles and
eventual rebirth, and later on, he naïvely painted the miraculous
appearance of Saint John of Dukla in the sky above the City of
Lwów/Lviv (1885), warning the Ukrainian Cossack Hetman
Bohdan Khmelnytsky, and his ally, the Tatar Khan, to turn back
and not sack the nearly defenceless city.24
(Fig. 7 Left.) So
Sobieski’s great victory over the Turks, of Christendom over the
Army of Islam, was a natural subject for him, and one on which
he became quite passionate. He had secret plans for this great
Sobieski canvas, which no one else yet knew.25
But it was known in Cracow that Matejko was working on this politically important
historical subject, and as the project was nearing completion, he let various persons in to view his
great canvas, which, like Grunwald, was of enormous size and completely filled his studio. In
May, the Austrian Minister of Education, and the Viceroy of Galicia visited the artist’s studio to
see the picture and they were simply stunned by it; so too were the Galician ministers
Ziemialkowski, Dunajewski, and the President of the Galician Sejm or Parliament, Smolka.
Finally, the Archduke Wilhelm, who was then resident in Cracow (and who later under the name
Vasyl Vyshyvanyi became famous among Ukrainians as one of their First World War heroes)
wished to see the picture, but was offended when Matejko prescribed a suitable hour to come.
The offended archduke, who was not accustomed to such prescriptions from a commoner, did
not show up. But Matejko, says Gorzkowski, surrounded in his paintings by emperors, kings, and
great aristocrats of all kinds was not in the least put out by this misunderstanding.26
story of Vernyhora may have been inspired either by Ukrainian folk legend or by some historical personality of the
time of the Confederation of Bar at the end of the eighteenth century. The writers Michał Czajkowski and Juliusz
Słowacki both used him as a protagonist in their works, and the painters Artur Grottger and Leon Kapliński both had
the idea of painting a picture on this theme. The latter actually did so (1855). Also see Słoczynsky, Matejko, pp.
170-72, with a reproduction of this canvas.
24
On “Bohdan Chmielnicki and Tuhai Bey before Lwów,” Oil on Canvas, National Museum, Warsaw, see Matejko:
Obrazy olejne Katalog, II, 210-11. There is a good reproduction of this painting accompanying the article on
“Bohdan Khmelnytsky” (Ukrainian spelling) in the English language Wikipedia. Accessed 7/17/2018.
25
For some general remarks on Matejko’s character and ideals, see Pisarkiewicz and Wawrzenczak, Poczet, p. 279,
et passim.
26
Gorzkowski, Matejko, pp. 252-53.

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Left: Fig. 8. Daniel Schulz (?), “Jan Sobieski
as King of Poland and Grand Duke of
Lithuania.” Late seventeenth century. Oil
on canvas, National Museum, Warsaw.
Right: Fig. 9. “Der Kaiserlichen Residenz,
Stadt Wien.” A contemporary Broadside
from an album in the Library of Congress,
Washington, reproduced from Hoskins,
Victory at Vienna (note 35 below),
showing the Relief of Vienna by Sobieski,
who leads the mounted commanders on
the left of the engraving, with the city and
the steeple of the Church of Saint Stephen
in the far distance on the upper right.
Images such as these provided Matejko
with models that he could and did explore.
However, by the summer of 1883, the painting was still not finished. The artist still
needed to put the final touches to Sobieski’s face. He had many old portraits and pictures to work
from, but for a long time could not find a suitable living model. As well, in his studio, though it
was quite large, he could not yet see the picture as a whole and get a truly panoramic view of it.
So he arranged to have it transferred to Cracow’s famous Sukiennica or Cloth Hall in the Town
Square, which housed the city’s main art gallery. There on August 22, 1883, he actually
completed the picture. Upon completion, however, very unusually, he did not sign it only with
his name, but also added the simple descriptive Polonus. Gorzkowski makes a point of noting in
his journal that he did not sign it Austrian (Austriacus); we might add, as well, that despite his
strong Catholic faith, similarly neither did he sign it Christianus.27
The finished canvas was of enormous size (just under five meters high and nine long) and
completely followed the style of his second or monumental phase. It was simply filled with
people and artefacts from top to bottom and from side to side. At the very centre, Jan Sobieski,
King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, the victorious Commander-in-Chief of the Allied
Relief force (with what Gorzkowski calls a shining “transfigured” visage), mounted on a
glittering charger and dressed in shining light blue/whitish Polish costume, came forth, a bulawa
or commander’s mace in his left hand and in his right a letter to Pope Innocent XI, which he
handed down to his envoy to Rome at his lower side, Jan Kazimierz Denhoff. As is well known
to all historians of the event, the letter contained Sobieski’s famous words to the Pope, echoing
in part Julius Caesar of ancient times: Venimus, vedimus, Deus vicit! (We came. We saw. God
conquered!) Though Sobieski’s use of the Royal “WE” may have been partly intended to reflect
his exalted kingly status, it may also have been done more modestly, to emphasize that the
victory was a cooperative enterprise achieved by a great coalition of Christian forces backed up
by the Almighty Himself. This, of course, stood in obvious contrast to the pagan Caesar, who
wrote with an innocent arrogance that echoed down through the ages: Veni vidi vici! (I came. I
saw. I conquered!)28
Sobieski is surrounded by his subordinates and his most famous allies, including to his left,
Charles Duke of Lorraine, to whom Austrian historians often gave most credit for the
27
Ibid., p. 256. Also see Matejko: Obrazy olejne Katalog, II, 192.
28
Shortly after he had finished the painting, Matejko, equally innocently, wrote to a colleague: “Certainly, no one
knows how much artistic endurance I managed to get out of myself, how [very] often my powers collapsed, but after
all of this, I can say of it today….echoing the words of Sobieski: Venimus, vidimus, Deus fecit!” In Szypowska,
Matejko, pp. 310-11.

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Fig. 10. Jan Matejko. Central Figures in “Sobieski at Vienna, 1683.”
victory. Lorraine, in full armour, also with a riding stick in his left hand, and his hat in the other,
holds out both arms in welcome to greet the king. (Charles’s wife, Eleanor, was the widow of the
former Polish king, Michał Wiśniowecki and he was a former candidate for the Polish throne,
greatly liked by Sobieski, so Gorzkowski assures us.) One of the figures beside him is another
Austrian hero, Ernst Rudiger von Starhemberg, who led the defence of the city until help arrived.
A truly heroic figure, he doggedly sallied forth with the remnants of his exhausted garrison to
warmly greet Sobieski as they met in the Turkish camp. Behind him is Cardinal Wilczek,
excitedly pointing to the distant rainbow in the sky beyond. Also behind Starhemberg is Prince
Hieronim Lubomirski, who with his own regiment was serving with the Austrians and had been
one of the first Polish leaders to engage the enemy on the Kahlenburg.
To the right of the king stand various Polish military figures. These include the Crown
Field Hetman, Mikołaj Hieronim Sieniawski with a bulawa, next to him the Grand Crown
Hetman Stanisław Jabłonowski in a helmet, who from far-away Trembovlia was the first to
answer the call and arrive at Vienna, and the Captain of the Light Horse, Atanazy Miaczyński,
and in front of them another Captain of the Horse holding a “Bunczuk” or horse tail standard. A
little behind them in a feathered hat is John George III, the Elector of Saxony, a Protestant, and
the most northerly of the German princes to come to the aid of the Emperor, whom with more
than a touch of missionary irony, Matejko has painted gazing at an icon of the Virgin Mary held
by the sainted preacher, the Capuchin friar, Marco d’Aviano. (His son was years later elected
King of Poland as Augustus II “the Strong”.) Next to John George in a black hat is Max
Emmanuel, Elector of Bavaria, and a Catholic, who rushed to the aid of the Emperor in Vienna
and is also looking closely at the icon. (He was later to marry Sobieski’s daughter Kunegunda.)
To the front of d’Aviano is an unnamed Dominican friar with clasped hands looking upward.
To Sobieski’s immediate left, is his son and heir, Jacob or “James,” dressed in western
style. (It is important to note that the son’s western garb stands in complete contrast to that of his
father, whose dress is completely Polish or eastern European.) Significantly, his horse’s head is

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lowered and it even appears about to stumble. Behind Sobieski are clearly displayed the White
Eagle on a Red field of the Polish flag and the flags and feathered wings of the Polish Hussaria
or heavy cavalry, which first broke through the Turkish lines to reach the Turkish camp and
capture the fading Green or rather colourless Flag of Islam, which lies at the feet of Sobieski’s
horse and is held downwards by the Captain (Rotmitrz) of the Hussars, Zbierzchowski. (Like
many in 1683, Matejko too erroneously believed this flag to have been the banner of the Prophet
Mohammed himself.) As to the hussars or heavy cavalry, their feathered wings gave off a
terrifying hissing sound as they charged forth and crashed through the Turkish ranks to win the
battle: Hence the name “hussar.” Gorzkowski says that they are also meant to remind us of the
mystical half-bird-half-man heroes of ancient Slavonic mythology.
Seated down on the left is a moustached warrior brandishing a captured sabre and
surrounded by loot and various victims of the battle, including a partly naked woman, probably
German. That warrior is the Royal Master of the Horse, Marek Matczyński, known in his time as
an arms collector. But perhaps the sabre can also be seen as a symbol of the Ukrainian Cossacks,
who often used eastern-style weapons and had accompanied Sobieski to Vienna.29
(Some
Ukrainian Cossacks from Podolia, like some Hungarians, had also fought on the other side.) The
king had wanted more Cossacks to come along on his expedition, as they were a necessary
infantry force needed to clear the difficult way down and across the rough terrain of the
Kahlenburg Mount, cluttered as it was with numerous ravines, hedges, and other obstacles, to the
plain before the city below. Once they had reached the plain, where they could charge without
impediment, the heavy cavalry took over. But most of the Cossacks could not be mobilized fast
enough and come in time over so great a distance to Vienna. (Those far away Ukrainian
Cossacks did however make a diversion against the Turks in Moldavia.)30
The Cossack or captured sabre points across at the defeated enemy symbolized by a
bearded man in a turban, who is looking downward, seemingly in despair. Although Gorzkowski
describes him simply as an old man who could not flee the battle, the richness of his dress
probably indicates that that man represented Kara Mustafa Pasha, the Ottoman Grand Vizier and
Commander-in-Chief, the principal advocate of the attack on Vienna, who pushed for it against
the better judgement of the Sultan and the rest of his council, and who, in fact, escaped the defeat
to fight Sobieski again in Hungary, though Vienna was so great a catastrophe for the Turks that
the Sultan had Kara Mustafa strangled shortly afterwards.
29
This possibility was pointed out to me by Professor Vsevolod Isaijiw of the University of Toronto, to whom the
connection was immediately apparent, when he viewed the canvas in Rome.
30
The Ukrainian participation in the Relief of Vienna, like the general Polish contribution, is often underestimated
or overlooked in the western scholarly literature on the subject. Ukrainian historians maintain that about two thirds
of Sobieski’s army came from lands that today are part of Ukraine. These included Roman Catholic, “Uniate” (or
Greek Catholic as they were later called), and some Orthodox gentry, as well as about 2,000 Cossacks. Papal
subsidies helped to recruit them. See, for example, Taras Chukhlib, Viden 1683: Ukraina-Rus‟ u bytvi za „Zolote
Iabluko‟ Ieropy (Kiev: Klio, 2013), and Ivan Nimchuk, Ukraintsi: Vidsich Vidia 1683 roku (Lviv: n.p., 1933). Of
course, some Hungarians and Cossacks also fought on the Turkish side. In fact, some Orthodox Christians believed
that they enjoyed more rights under the Muslim Turks than under the Roman Catholic Poles. See for example, Yury
Kuchubei, “Zv’iazky ukrainskoi literatury z literaturamy Blyzkoho i Serednoho Skhodu,” in Ukrainska literatura v
zahalno-slov‟ianskomy i svitovomu konteksti, vol. III, ed. T. N. Denysova and others (Kiev: Naukova dumka, 1988),
pp. 404-454, esp. p. 414, who, in particular, quotes Palinodiia, the 1621 polemic of the Kievan Orthodox
churchman, Zakhariia Kopystensky, to the effect that “an Eastern Christian entering a land under Turkish rule is not
killed or bothered in any way, but rather his faith experiences not the slightest bit of oppression.”

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Hovering above Sobieski is a dove which, of course, symbolizes good news, love, and the
Holy Spirit, and around the whole spectacle the rainbow, which reminds us of the promise of the
Lord God to Noah after the Flood: never again would He so punish humankind! The centre of
the picture is all light, while only at its lower sides remains some darkness representing the
defeated enemy. And it too is dissipating as Sobieski rides forth. At the upper left of the picture
in the far distance is the Kahlenburg Mount, down which Sobieski led the charge to the Turkish
tents before the city, and through which, so Gorzkowski assures us, Matejko sought to elicit the
mystical ancient barrows or “kurgans” (kurhany) of the Ukrainian steppes, about which the
common folk told many tales; while on the upper right, also in the far distance, can be seen the
great Church of Saint Stephen in central Vienna and some Viennese houses. In this manner,
spiritual motifs extend to both the extreme left and extreme right of the upper part of the canvas.
There are a few white clouds around the hovering dove, while off to the far left fly away a few
black coloured birds representing evil.31
The whole picture exudes confidence, victory, and acclamation. But the faces are all
solemn, even severe. There is not yet any sign of relief, but rather merely continuing
determination. In fact, there is not the slightest hint yet of any relieved smile or cathartic
laughter, nor even exhaustion after such a hard won battle. Perhaps Matejko painted the picture
this way in the knowledge that the war was not yet over and there were still more battles to fight.
But also it may be a reference to his own time, that is, because the master painter felt that despite
all of its past troubles, achievements, and much effort, Poland was not yet politically reborn.
Moreover, it could also simply be that Matejko himself was so very unhappy in his personal life
that he just could not paint happy people, even in so fortunate an hour. Of course, these
explanations are not all mutually exclusive.
However, this highly stylized, almost expressionless, aspect to the picture can be put
within a much wider context, that of older Christian religious painting in general, and that of the
Holy Icons of the Eastern Churches in particular. Matejko very much considered his work to be
an act of religious devotion as well as a political statement, and he was very aware of the various
traditions of religious painting. Only two years later, he himself would paint a large composition
on Saints Cyril and Methodius to commemorate their mission to the Slavs of some thousand
years before. Sobieski at Vienna was done in a rather similar way, but on a much greater scale,
every single figure completely expressionless, every single figure grouped in concentric circles
around the central figure with a shining white visage and dress, with light emanating from above
and through him to the assembly around. This religious tradition in particular, “theology in
colour,” as more than one Orthodox scholar has called it, can perhaps partly explain the highly
stylized and quite peculiar lack of emotion and expression in the picture, which was quite
unusual for the romantic and post-romantic periods in European art, though certainly not for
Matejko himself. Sobieski at Vienna is, in fact, an unusual kind of religious icon with truly
mythical implications, as well as a well-researched historical painting, a quasi-romantic work of
art, and a political statement about European unity and Poland’s place in history as a bulwark,
fore post, or “Antemurale,” as it was often put by patriotic Poles, of Christendom as a whole.32
31
For descriptions of the painting, see the pamphlet by Marian Gorzkowski, Wkazówki do nowego obrazu Jana
Matejki „Sobieski pod Wiedniem‟ (Cracow: The author, 1883), which was composed under Matejko’s direction, and
clearly reveals what the painter wished his viewers to see, and Matejko: Obrazy olejne Katalog, II, 192-95, which
contains an extensive bibliography, mostly contemporary reviews of the picture.
32
Matejko painted Saints Cyril and Methodius (1885) in connection with a planned pilgrimage to Velehrad in
Moravia to commemorate their Mission to the Slavs and the Millennium of Christianity among the Slavs, which had
been officially proclaimed as a Jubilee Year by the Pope in 1880. According to Gorzkowski, Matejko saw his

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Fig. 11. Artur Grottger, “The Meeting of King
Jan Sobieski and the Emperor Leopold I
outside Vienna, 1683.” 1859. Oil on Canvas.
National Art Gallery, Lviv, Ukraine. Grottger
(1837-1867) was almost an exact
contemporary of Matejko. He too was a
patriotic Polish native of Galicia, though from
the eastern part, today in Ukraine. He did,
however, study under the same teachers in
Cracow. As a youth, he had shown much
promise, but he died very young.
Missing from the picture, of course, is the Austrian Emperor, Leopold I, who had fled
Vienna upon the approach of the Turks. Leopold only returned to the city well after the battle
had been won. Indeed, he did not get there before Sobieski had undiplomatically entered the city
in triumph before him. Sobieski’s first victorious entrance into Vienna was to cause considerable
friction between the supposedly presumptuous King and the actually jealous Emperor, and in the
end, it helped to deprive young Jacob Sobieski of a principality to rule on his own before the
death of his father. (He got no cooperation for it from the influential Habsburg monarch.)
Certainly, the fact that Matejko chose the immediate moment of victory rather than the battle
itself, or the subsequent meeting of Leopold and Sobieski, as the subject of his painting, was
quite important. By doing this, he could stress the ultimate superiority of peace over war, and
avoid putting the Emperor (as form would require) at a higher level than the King, which
previous artists, such as even the Pole Artur Grottger, had already done, to the detriment of both
a religious focus and Poland’s political glory.
Also missing from the picture is the Grand Hetman of Lithuania and his army. From the
first, the far-off Lithuanians, jealous of royal prerogatives, and perhaps also concerned about
military threats from the north-east, dragged their heels about the expedition, and they never did
join in the Vienna campaign. So Matejko, probably with some regret, had to leave them out,
though pointedly, he did include that icon of the Mother of God from Nieśwież.
On August 24, 1883, the painting was exhibited for the first time in Cracow. It was
exhibited for only five days, since time was flying past, and September 12, the date it was to
open in Vienna was swiftly approaching. About this same time, the painter visited his good
friend, Count Artur Potocki to tell him the secret that he had held so close to his heart all those
long months that he had been slaving away at the painting. In 1883, Potocki headed a committee
to celebrate Matejko’s “Jubilee,” the twenty-fifth anniversary of his work as a professional
painting most especially as support for the persecuted Greek Catholics in the Russian Empire, whom the Poles,
supposedly as the best educated (najwykształceńszy) among the Slavonic peoples, were obliged to help. A great
public pilgrimage and large delegation from the Polish lands was planned, but the Austrian government, under
pressure from some unsympathetic Roman Catholic prelates, and fearing its Panslavic implications, banned the
project. In the end, only a very small delegation headed by Matejko’s friend, Platon Kostecki, managed to go and
take his Cyril and Methodius to Velehrad, where it remains to the present day, a tribute to the two brothers, accepted
as saints by both Catholics and Orthodox, who since the time of Pope John Paul II have been considered as “Patron
Saints of Europe,” together with Saint Benedict of Nursia, the founder of western monasticism. See Matejko:
Obrazy olejne Katalog, II, 211-12, and more extensively, Świątyk, Lach serdeczny, pp. 51-55.

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painter. Although still relatively young in terms of age, hard work and family troubles had aged
him far beyond his years, and he already looked to be a very old man. The committee, which
knew much about his current project on Sobieski, had been raising funds to buy the picture from
the master and display it in an appropriate place in Cracow. But on this day, Matejko broke the
news to Potocki: he would neither sell the picture, nor donate it to the people of Galicia. This
was in spite of the whole country expecting this to be done, especially in view of the fact that the
painting was not just a work of art, but also an important matter of state, which impinged upon
Polish, Austrian, and even German national pride. Rather he would send it as a gift from the
whole Polish nation to Pope Leo XIII in Rome, where he hoped it would be well received and
displayed in a suitable setting. Count Potocki must have been shocked, but Gorzkowski, who
records the incident in his journal, says nothing more about it. 33
Shortly later, in a grand ceremony at the Royal Castle in Cracow (Wawel), in connection
with the exhibit of his works on the occasion of his jubilee, a hushed audience listened in
amazement as Matejko publicly announced to the world, in what one witness called “a quiet and
trembling voice,” the same message that he had just told Potocki: “I give this picture to the
[entire] Polish people on condition that it be sent on to the Pope in Rome.” He then explained:
“From the Vatican our services, rights, and continuing pain will be expressed [to the whole
world] as it could nowhere else.” Matejko’s biographer, Maria Szypowska adds that it was no
coincidence that both Poland and the Papacy were then deprived of their places on the political
map of Europe, and that in taking this action, Matejko was renewing the old ties between the
Holy See and the medieval Piast dynasty of Poland, which had once before saved the country
from German expansion eastward.34
Meanwhile in Vienna, celebrations of the victory were already well under way.
Ceremonies, pageants, exhibitions, and publications of all kinds, especially new histories of the
siege and battle, poured forth. As well, the Viennese newspapers were filled with articles
explaining to the public at large the significance of the conflict, and they usually concentrated
upon the heroic defence of the city led by Starhemberg and the relief plan worked out by
Lorraine. If Gorzkowski is to be believed, all too often the papers ascribed the Victory of
September 12 to the Germans alone, and Sobieski’s role was minimized.35
For this reason, Matejko and Gorzkowski were both fearful as to how the Viennese
public would react to the picture. Again, Matejko surprised everyone by announcing that
admittance would be entirely free, which was heretofore completely unheard of in Vienna. This
sacrifice on Matejko’s part, for it was expected that he would have derived considerable income
from the event, simply astounded the Viennese public, and they turned out in great numbers.
Simultaneously, under Matejko’s advisement, Gorzkowski published a brochure in both Polish
and German editions discussing the contents of and figures in the picture. As a result, the crowds
attending the exhibit were enormous. Matejko’s fears of a negative reaction turned out to have
been completely unfounded.36
33
Gorzkowski, Matejko, pp. 255-56.
34
Szypowska, Matejko, pp. 307-308.
35
Gorzkowski, Matejko, pp. 257-59. For an enormous bibliography of works published on 1683, see Walter
Sturminger, Bibliographie und Ikonographie der Türkenbelagerungen Wiens, 1529 und 1683 (Vienna: H. Böhlaus
1955), and for another bibliography, but with many illustrations and annotations in English, see Janina W. Hoskins,
Victory at Vienna: The Ottoman Siege of 1683 (Washington: Library of Congress, 1983).
36
For the pamphlets, see Gorzkowski, Wkazówki do …„Sobieski‟ and Erlaüterungen zu dem Gemalde Johannes
Matejko‟s „Sobieski vor Wien‟ (Cracow: The author, 1883). The German edition was unavailable to me de visu. An
Inter-library Loan search of July, 2018, revealed that the only German library to hold this item, the Bavarian State

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Towards the end of the allotted time, the Emperor Franz Josef himself visited the exhibit
and viewed the painting. Matejko was in Cracow at that time and it fell to Gorzkowski to explain
the contents of the picture to the Emperor, which he did in French as his German was not good
and the Emperor himself knew very little Polish. Franz Josef seemed to be impressed with
Gorzkowski’s lesson in art and praised the painting. He then asked a surprised Gorzkowski why
Matejko had decided to give it to the Pope in Rome rather than keeping it in Austria. A
somewhat startled and confused Gorzkowski could not very well say anything about Matejko’s
true reasons for sending it to Rome, which entailed Polish nationalism directed at curtailing
extravagant German pride about the battle, but he explained to the Emperor that the painter’s life
had been very difficult and his wife very sick with mental problems, and that by giving it to the
Papacy, Matejko was asking God for mercy and relief in the matter. Franz Josef, himself a good
Catholic, and also plagued with family problems of various sorts, was deeply impressed by this
explanation, and after he left for the palace told other members of the Imperial family about it. A
few days later, when the Archduke Albert came to visit, he too asked Gorzkowski about why
Matejko had given the picture to the Pope, and he did not await an answer, but rather
immediately supplied it himself, saying that it was because the artist was “malheureux dans sa
vie conjugale.”37
Fig. 12. The Emperor Franz Josef (Francis Joseph), circa 1905. Press photo. Franz
Josef was reigning monarch of the formally titled “Kingdom of Galicia and
Lodomeria,” as well as Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary.
Though Gorzkowski’s explanation was very much a knee jerk
reaction to an unexpected question, there may still have been a grain of
truth to it. Several times in his journal, Gorzkowski stressed Matejko’s
devotion to Christianity and the Catholic Church. Certainly religious
motives were part of the reason why Matejko had chosen to paint
Sobieski in the first place, and this came out very clearly in the
finished product. But there were also significant non-religious motives
for sending it to Rome, and they were purely national. Gorzkowski,
repeating Matejko, explains them quite clearly in his journal, writing that “in general, we [Poles
in Galicia] did not understand the motivation for giving this picture to the Vatican,” and that the
Galicians simply did not see the publicity value to both Polish art and the Polish cause generally
of the move.38
But sending the painting to Rome was no simple matter. The painter understood and
Rome requested that a suitable delegation from Poland be sent along with the masterpiece to
present it to the Pope. With this in mind, it seems that Matejko approached several Galician
public figures to join the delegation. Not all of them immediately understood the logic of the
mission, and some, thinking it an affront to Galicia, at first refused to go. This was the case, for
example, with the Marshal of the Galician Sejm in Lemberg, Mikołaj Zyblikiewicz. When
Gorzkowski went to the Galician capital in Lemberg to invite him, the Marshal was at first
completely opposed and was, in fact, quite upset about Matejko’s idea and openly showed his
Library, appeared to be missing its copy. As I had already obtained the Polish edition, I did not follow up with a
search of Austrian libraries.
37
Gorzkowski, Matejko, p. 260.
38
Ibid., p. 263.

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anger. Only after a long explanation by the unfortunate secretary was Zyblikiewicz convinced to
come along.39
When the delegation was at length put together, it contained a number of high-ranking
figures, who stood at the top of Polish society from almost all parts of Partitioned Poland. Two
counts, both scions of great Polish families and long-time friends of Matejko, Artur Potocki and
Stanisław Tarnowski, made most of the arrangements and headed the delegation. Both
represented Austrian Galicia, though both families also held lands to the east in the Ukrainian
parts of the Russian partition, most especially in the Podolian region, where the neighbouring
City of Ternopil was named after the Tarnowski family. However, for obvious political reasons,
no one actually came directly from the Russian partition. From the Poznań region came Prince
Chotkowski and, in theory, the Cardinal Bishop and Primate of Poland, Mieczysław
Ledóchowski. (Some time before, the cardinal had actually been exiled from his homeland by the
German government and was by then resident in Rome.) In Rome itself, Prince August
Czartoryski, son of the famous Prince Adam Czartoryski, long known as “the uncrowned King of
Poland,” joined the delegation. Matejko himself insisted upon the inclusion of two peasant
representatives: one a Roman Catholic Pole, and the other a Greek Catholic Ruthenian, both
from Galicia.40
The painting was formally received by Pope Leo XIII in the Vatican on December 16,
1883. Matejko himself stayed about a week in Rome and was a central figure in the presentation,
though he did not say much, as he could not speak either Italian, French, German, or Latin.
Stanisław Witkiewicz, critical of Matejko’s honest but “naïve” religious piety, has left us a
scathing description of the ceremony. He writes:
[Pope] Leo XIII put his hand on Matejko’s head and spoke at length to him. Matejko
understood little or nothing of this, because he could speak no foreign language [but only
Polish]. But Leo XIII himself understood even less than language, as he knew not a
single page of Polish history, or the historical relationship between the Papacy and
Poland. [The painter] stood like a silent lamb before what was taking place, before the
Vicar of Christ, who hung above him the Order of the Star [of Pope Pius IX]. [This was
the Pope] for whom the Uniate [Greek Catholics] were killed without any protest [from
Rome], who never defended the weak against the strong,….who put the German Dinder
on the throne of the Primates of Poland, [and] who allowed the Slavonic bishops to use
their native tongue only in so far as it did not contradict the interests of the states to
which their peoples belonged.
[The Pope] then stood up and spoke in thanks for the gift, and at the same time
reminded us “that this was not the triumph of one people but of all Christendom,” that it
had happened thanks to Innocent XI, “that the picture testifies to the faith and devotion of
the Polish people,” and also that “one can find in the Catholic religion the power to raise
up the talent of remarkable artists.” The light of truth develops art, and the Catholic
39
Ibid., p. 266.
40
Jan Gintel (comp.), Jan Matejko: Biografia w wypisach (Cracow: Wyd. Literackie, 1966), p. 381. Also see
Słoczyński, Matejko, pp. 164-65. With regard to the two peasants, Szypowska, Matejko, pp. 315-16, notes that since
the entire delegation consisted of just eight members, twenty-five per cent of it was made up of peasants, which
stood in stark contrast to the Galician Sejm of that time, in which, she says, peasants were entirely excluded. She
sees this as clear evidence of Matejko’s sympathy for the country folk. Perhaps it is no coincidence that her book
was published in 1988 by the “Young Villagers League of Poland.”

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religion is founded entirely on truth and ennobles the talents [of artists] with the examples
of great and most significant deeds devoted to it.41
Fig. 13. Dominico Torti, “The Polish Mission Presenting Pope Leo XIII with
Jan Matejko’s “Sobieski at Vienna, 1683.” December, 1883. Vatican
Museums. From: Carlo Pietrangeli, The Vatican Museum: Five Centuries of
History, p. 213. Stanisław Tarnowski is standing before the Pope and
pointing to Matejko’s picture on the wall, while the bearded figure in the
background, standing before the painting, is probably Matejko himself. The
cardinal standing next to the Pope is probably the Primate of Poland,
Ledóchowski. And Artur Potocki, with a prominent moustache, is the third
of the three kneeling nobles behind Tarnowski. The two peasant
representatives, Polish and Ruthenian, are not shown.
Witkiewicz wrote these words as a secularist, who represented a younger generation already
turning away from historical paintings glorifying past times, scenes dominated by kings and
aristocrats, to more contemporary themes and lighter subjects as represented by the French
Impressionists and others.
The context, of course, was the conservative position of the official Catholic Church in
both dogma and international politics. Only in theory had the First Vatican Council of a few
years before strengthened the Church with its declaration of Papal infallibility; even many loyal
Catholics were opposed to it, and a few very prominent ones even split with Rome. In general,
the Church was then in full political retreat before the national states of Europe, especially Italy,
which had just annexed the Papal States and informally confined the secular power of the Pope
to the Vatican in Rome. Also, the Papacy was exceedingly cautious as to its relations with newly
secularist France, the traditional ally of Poland, which had just been defeated in the Franco-
Prussian War (1870), and with Bismarck’s new German Empire, which had recently been
persecuting Catholics in Pomerania, Silesia, and in Prussia itself. Moreover, in the eyes of
Witkiewicz, it seemed that the Papacy had already written off the Greek Catholic Churches in
Eastern Europe, in which Matejko had placed so much hope.42
At the same time, however, it should also be noted that in recognizing Matejko’s work so
openly, Franz Josef and the Pope alone in all of Europe had openly placed some faith in the
Polish people, and in a way, recognised the existence of Poland. Neither German Kaiser, nor
Russian Tsar, nor English King, nor French President went quite so far as they. Tarnowski later
recalled that at a time when the German papers were filled with “hatred” toward Poland, and the
41
Witkiewicz, Matejko, pp. 38-40. Also in Gintel, Biografia, pp. 381-82.
42
At the time, there was even considerable talk about Matejko being the dupe of an ultraconservative Catholic
conspiracy. See Słoczyński, Matejko, pp. 163-65, who prints some newspaper caricatures to this effect. Słoczyński
also believes that with time, Matejko became increasingly religious, and that this even showed in the “mystical”
tinge to some of his later paintings, including Sobieski at Vienna. Similarly, Juliusz Starzyński, Jan Matejko
(Warsaw: Arkady, 1973), pp. 25-26, stresses Matejko’s growing religiosity, thinks it a negative influence on his art,
and claims that there were already clear signs of it as early as when he painted Grunwald. For a contrasting view,
which stresses the positive side of Matejko’s humility, simple “villager’s” faith, and piety, see Elżbieta
Matyaszewska, “Wierzę w cuda nie od dziś”: Religia w życiu i twórczości Jana Matejki (Lublin: Towarzystwo
naukowe KUL, 2007).

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French were already starting to become charmed by their new Russian friends, all of Europe
recognized this. Consequently, in terms of contemporary politics, Matejko’s artistic gesture still
made considerable sense, even though it may have been founded in part in a rather naïve form of
Catholic piety.43
We might add here as a brief footnote to Witkiewicz’s remarks that he was not quite
exact about Matejko’s ignorance of “foreign” languages. In fact, we know from the memoirs of
the Ukrainian painter Mykola Murashko, who once visited Cracow on his way home from Italy,
that Matejko spoke to him in fluent Ukrainian. Of course, to Witkiewicz, as to Matejko himself,
Ukrainian, or rather “Ruthenian,” as they would have it, was not quite a “foreign” language.44
It was only ten years later, at the relatively young age of fifty-five, that the master painter
who had created Sobieski at Vienna died, completely worn out by family problems and incessant
work. During his brief lifetime, he had created an extraordinary number of great historical
canvases: from The Union of Lublin (1866), to Grunwald, to The Prussian Homage, to Sobieski
at Vienna. Even after Sobieski at Vienna, he continued to work on such pictures. These included
Kościuszko at Racławice (1888), The Constitution of May Third 1791 (1891), and several other,
lesser known canvases, such as Bohdan Chmielnicki‟s Oath of Vassalage to Moscow (1887), a
painting depicting a very unhappy Khmelnytsky that was long suppressed during Communist
rule in Poland.45
But of all these pictures, the three greatest, biggest in physical size, and most
controversial, were undoubtedly Grunwald, The Prussian Homage, and Sobieski at Vienna. And
only the last of these three remains outside of contemporary Poland in Europe’s greatest centre
of pilgrimage, where the entire world can see it.
However, by the time that the painter died, the Polish art world had already moved on,
most especially from historical painting. So in the 1890s, Witkiewicz penned a scathing attack on
historical painting and its sponsors, people and critics, who ignored “artistic values” for the sake
of historical and archaeological accuracy, or other philosophical ideals. Witkiewicz was a clear
proponent of “art for art’s sake,” of the freedom of the artist, and purely artistic criteria in the
evaluation of painting, and he simply could not bear art criticism that put social or political
success and nationalism before purely aesthetic principles.
Consequently, while pointing out Matejko’s great talents, especially his archaeological
veracity, and the fact that he was almost “the father” of Polish historical painting, Witkiewicz
wrote that the Polish critics and the Polish public, who were much taken up with politics,
nationalism, and the social significance of Matejko’s works, simply did not appreciate the artistic
side of his compositions, his treatment of perspective, lighting, and shading, his use of colour,
and his uniquely painted characters, all of which weakened their appreciation for what one would
today call the “painterly” quality of his work. In particular, Witkiewicz saw his Sobieski at
43
Tarnowski, Matejko, pp. 271-72. Also see Szypowska, Matejko, pp. 306-12. Adam Bochniak, “Matejko, Jan,”
Polski słownik biografichny, vol. XX (1975), 189, observes that his proud Sobieski at Vienna was addressed to the
Austrians, just as his victorious Stefan Batory at Pskov (1872) was addressed to the Russians, and his Grunwald and
The Prussian Homage to the Prussians, thus completing a public address to the trio of Partitioning Powers, which
had collaborated in the humiliation of Poland, and, of course, were still doing so.
44
Świątek, Lach serdeczny, p. 156.
45
See Matejko: Obrazy olejne Katalog, II, 222-23. This painting, of which (tellingly) I could not find a good
published example, stands in complete contrast to Soviet versions of this 1654 event, which supposedly “reunited”
Ukraine and Muscovy. See the interpretations glorifying the event by the Soviet artists Mykhailo Khmelko and O.
A. Khmelnytsky. They are reproduced in the Polish translation of Robert Paul Magocsi’s magnum opus titled:
Historia Ukrainy: Ziemia i ludzie, trans. M. Król and A. Waligóra-Zblewska (Cracow: Księgarnia akademicka,
2017). Plates.

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Vienna as a mature development and reflection of many of these artistic qualities. Moreover,
although he believed that Gorzkowski’s detailed descriptions (based upon Matejko’s own views
and instructions) missed much of the point of the artist’s success, he still thought it a marvel that
so many individual themes and interesting stories were told in this rather complex panorama.46
At the same time, however, to anyone unacquainted with Gorzkowski’s explanations,
these themes and stories can seem to be a bit much. The defects of the canvas, as even
Witkiewicz admitted, are clearly revealed in the overcrowded nature of the picture, the disjointed
and jarring effect of so many people, objects, structures, and implements scattered in not quite
concentric circles around Sobieski, and in the very fact that the strikingly original faces of so
many of the characters (seen almost as a miracle by some) are pointed in every which direction,
this way, that way, down or up, or off in the distance, which results in a chaotic weakening of the
focus and of the whole idea of the painting. And with the perspective of time, and what we now
know about Matejko’s biography, all of this can be put within the context of what those
extremely varied but uniformly expressionless faces reveal to have been the basic “pessimism”
of the artist, not only with regard to the Polish history of his day, but also towards life in general;
and this, despite his valiant and partially successful attempt to overcome this dogged pessimism
through the pious act of faith in Providence, Poland, and the vanished Rzeczpospolita or
Commonwealth that was this creation.
After his death, there was, in fact, no one in Poland to carry on Matejko’s tradition of
historical painting. In Cracow, he had many students, and several of them went on to become
important painters: Wyspiański, Mehoffer, and Malczewski. He also had many Ukrainian
students, mostly from Galicia, like Ivan Trush and Oleksa Novakivsky, and several Jewish
students, among whom the most famous was Maurycy Gottlieb, whom the master greatly
admired, but who died very young. None of these adopted his style or subject matter, all of them
rather going forward in the popular wave of Impressionist and Modernist painting, which by then
had captured the soul of bourgeois Europe. Next to their gentle, touching, and sometimes even
contented pictures, Matejko’s creations seemed quite romantic and far-fetched, though at the
same time severe, over-posed, and even rather “provincial and conservative,” as the Polish
historian Agnieszka Grygiel puts it.47
Rejected by the younger generation in Cracow, Paris, and even Munich, Matejko was still
admired by others, who could not quite do what he had done. So Ilya Repin, the painter from
Ukraine, who became the most loved artist in late Tsarist Russia, and who was Matejko’s close
contemporary, never joined the chorus of criticism against the Polish painter. Indeed, he so
highly valued Matejko’s pictures that he even went to Cracow to paint a portrait of the master.
He arrived too late. Matejko passed away only hours before Repin set foot in the old Polish
capital.
But Repin made sure to devote several pages to him in his memoirs. In these pages, he
praised his pictures filled with “magnificent” characters. Perhaps it was no coincidence that in
46
Stanislaw Witkiewicz, Sztuka i krytyka u nas (1884-1898) (Lviv: Nakładem towarzystwa wyd., 1899), pp. 250-61,
401-11, 414, and especially 298-99. Half a century later, Manfred Kridl, Survey of Polish Literature and Culture,
trans. O. Scherer-Virski (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956), pp. 468-69, called this work of Witkiewicz
“splendid and truly epochal,” and “the first appreciation of Matejko from the artistic rather than the patriotic
standpoint.”
47
Agnieszka Grygiel, Encyklopedia sławnych Polaków (Poznań, 2002), pp. 230-31. On Matejko’s many students,
see Artyści ze szkoły Jana Matejki : Wystawa jubileuszowa (Katowice: Museum śląskie, 2004). On the Ukrainians,
see Świątek, Lach serdeczne, pp. 158-61; and on Gottlieb, see in Polish on-line:
https://culture.pl/pl/tworca/maurycy-gottlieb

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the 1890s the Ukrainian patron of the arts, Yevhen Chykalenko, impressed with Repin’s highly
imaginative yet deeply authentic vision of The Zaporozhian Cossacks Writing a Satirical Letter
to the Turkish Sultan, compared its author to Matejko, and urged the Ukrainian painter to do for
Ukraine what Matejko already had done for Poland.48
It never happened that Repin followed in the path of Matejko. And so, Matejko remains
unique in the history of both Poland and Ukraine, perhaps even of eastern Europe generally. His
visions of Polish history and Polish historical figures, kings, princes, grand aristocrats, city folk,
and even simple peasants, were enormously popular in Poland and were sincerely accepted by
the Polish people as national motifs; and, for good or for ill, they are ground into the
consciousness of almost all modern Poles. His Sobieski, the “last knight of Christendom,”
became modern Poland’s Sobieski. In his time, the dedicated painter from Cracow, modest,
humble, and naïvely religious, short of stature, near-sighted, and astigmatic, but with a single-
minded determination that impressed almost everyone who met him or knew his work, enlivened
the foundations of Polish art and culture in a way that would be long remembered, and never
repeated. And his Sobieski at Vienna mediated this to all of Catholic Europe and much of the
Christian and secular world beyond it.
Fig. 14. Undated photo: Jan Matejko in later life
48
On Chykalenko, see my extensive study of Repin: “A Painter from Ukraine: Ilya Repin,” Canadian Slavonic
Papers, LV, 1-2 (2013), especially pp. 40-41. This article is also available in an illustrated on-line version. See
https://www.slideshare.net/ThomasMPrymak/ilya-repin-a-painter-from-ukraine-version-with-pictures or
https://www.academia.edu/23138602/A_Painter_from_Ukraine_Ilya_Repin For Repin’s view of Matejko, see
Władisława Jaworska, Stasow i Riepin o Matejce (Warsaw: Sztuka, 1953). Like Chykalenko, the Russian art critic,
Vladimir Stasov compared Repin with Matejko, thinking them both admirable “national” and “Slavonic” painters,
though Stasov, like the French and others, was more critical of Matejko during his later period.