Bohdan Chmelnyzkyj mit Tuhaj Bej bei Lemberg

When Matejko painted this in 1885, Poland had not appeared on any map for 90 years, carved up among Russia, Prussia and Austria. That absence is the reason his history paintings mattered so much to Poles. He made the national past visible when the nation itself was not. Here he reaches back to 1648 and the great Cossack revolt led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky, shown beside his ally Tugay Bey, a Crimean Tatar commander, as their forces threaten Lviv. Above the two leaders Matejko sets a vision of Saint John of Dukla, the friar whom legend credited with saving the city. He worked on scenes like this near the end of his life, and he died in 1893, still Poland's uncrowned national painter.