Jan Matejko showed through his painting the former greatness of the Republic of Poland and the glory of his armies to lift the hearts and minds of the Poles and resurrect faith in the restoration of an independent country.
Likewise, he was the first to elevate historical painting to such heights, managing to fascinate wide social circles with it, demonstrating the unique character and high artistic standards of Polish art internationally and win top prizes at exhibitions in Paris, Vienna y Berlin.
Born in 1838 in Krakow and died in 1893 in said city, he was an artist who with his history painting played a special role in a nation whose political sovereignty had been denied by the partition treaties of 1772-1795.
Matejko's father was a Czech immigrant who settled in Poland around 1807 and his mother came from a German-turned-Polish family, Matejko's home in Krakow it had a patriotic Polish atmosphere and cultivated ideas in favor of independence.
Jan's two brothers fought in Hungary at the time of the Spring of Nations. His imagination and interest in history was considerably influenced by his older brother Franciszek, an associate professor of auxiliary sciences in history and an employee of the Jagiellonian Library.
When he enrolled in the School of Fine Arts de Krakow, Matejko had already defined his area of interest. He continued to expand his historical knowledge through the study of ancient chronicles and developed his passion for documentary drawing by penciling the images of kings and Polish princes, the architecture, sculpture and decorative art objects of Krakow.
under the influence of Wojciech Korneli Stattler From the School, Matejko acquired a strict drawing discipline, a precise way of approaching the field of painting and a serious attitude towards art, which he understood as a vocation and a national mission. The other teacher of him in Krakow, Władysław Łuszczkiewicz, fueled his interest in history and generated respect for the monuments and objects from the past.
His beliefs and attitude towards art matured in the bohemian circle of Kraków in the early 1860s, when young artists, writers and historians met in the sculpture workshop of Parys Filippi. It was then that he became friends withand Jozef Szujski, the would-be co-founder of the historical school of Krakow which inspired Matejko's concept of painting.
Matejko gained international fame and recognition before he was thirty. French critics included him among the highest European representatives of historical painting. His first success was the gold medal for the Skarga's Sermon in the Hall annual Paris in 1865. Two years later he won the first class gold medal at the World's Fair in Paris by Reytan in the Sejm of warsaw in 1773.
His painting was bought by the emperor of Austria, Franz Josef. Also in 1867 Matejko received the Ritterkreuz Franz Josef Orders.
The rapid process of his maturation as a man and an artist took place in the years before the outbreak of the Lift January 1863. The patriotic demonstrations in warsaw and the hopes and aspirations for independence of the Poles deeply revived the imagination of the young artist.
Matejko's artistic production is enormous and includes more than three hundred oil paintings (portraits and historical, religious and allegorical paintings), as well as a few hundred drawings and sketches, including the famous and popular Gallery of the Polish Kings, 1890-1892.
Matejko was a distinguished Pole, a great artist, an outstanding teacher and protector of the monuments of the past of Krakow.
Its achievement cannot be analyzed in purely artistic terms, since it is inseparable from its function then and there. His synthesis of national history has forever become the canon of historical knowledge and patriotic education for subsequent generations of Poles.
The crowds, including many schoolchildren, who visited the exhibition of his historic canvases at the Warsaw National Museum on the centenary of his death in 1993, they were the best testimony of this.