Skargas Predigt

When Matejko finished this in 1864, Poland did not exist. It had been carved up between Russia, Prussia, and Austria, and the year before, another uprising against the Russians had just been crushed. So a painter in his mid-twenties reached back two and a half centuries, to the Jesuit preacher Piotr Skarga standing in Wawel Cathedral, warning the Polish nobility that their pride and their quarrels would one day cost them their country. You can see the effect he wanted. Skarga leans out over the crowd, arm raised, and the kings and magnates around him look uneasy, distracted, unwilling to listen. It was Matejko's first really large canvas, and it made his name. He gave Skarga his own face.