Martin Kober

In 1583 a painter from Breslau in Silesia, today Wrocław, arrived at the Polish court after years on the road as a wandering journeyman, learning the trade in one German workshop after another. His name was Martin Kober, and King Stephen Báthory, the Transylvanian prince who then ruled the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, took him on as court painter.

Kober did something no one in the Commonwealth had made a specialty before him. He painted the king and queen the way a monarch wished to be fixed for history, in full regalia and cool composure, and that formal state portrait became his life's work. When Báthory died he moved on, first to Prague and the court of Emperor Rudolf II, who freed him from the ordinary guild rules, then back to Poland under the new king, Sigismund III Vasa, working between Kraków and Warsaw.

At court he married another painter, Dorothea, who specialised in painting coats of arms. In 1595 he travelled to Graz to portray the Habsburg archducal family for the young queen. His portraits of Sigismund in black Spanish court dress are among the earliest images to show a Polish king in that severe fashion.