Jan Matejko

Matejko enrolled at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts at fourteen, shaped by revolutions he witnessed and brothers gone to military service. After studying in Munich and Vienna, he returned to Kraków in the 1860s, settling debts by selling paintings and producing the works that made his name: Stańczyk in 1862, Rejtan in 1866, Union of Lublin in 1869, Astronomer Copernicus in 1873, Battle of Grunwald in 1878. Critics called his style antiquarian realism, too theatrical, and foreign audiences missed the historical weight embedded in each scene. He gave money and materials to the January Uprising of 1863, later became director of the Kraków academy - renamed for him after his death - and taught a generation including Gottlieb, Malczewski, Mehoffer, Wyspiański. He received the Légion d'honneur and, oddly, an unsolicited letter from Nietzsche in January 1889 as the philosopher slipped into breakdown in Turin. Matejko died in Kraków in 1893, having spent nearly all his life there.