Sigismund Augustus in the Vilnius garden, sketch

Matejko brushed this sketch in 1865, the year Mikhail Muravyov ended his term as Russian governor-general in Vilnius, having spent two years putting down the January Uprising with executions, deportations to Siberia and confiscated estates. The subject is more than three centuries older. Sigismund Augustus, the last of the Jagiellon kings, married Barbara Radziwiłł of Vilnius in secret in 1547, over the objections of the Polish nobility and of his mother, Bona Sforza. Barbara was crowned at Wawel in December 1550 and died five months later. Here the king sits alone on the ground in the garden at Vilnius, in a fur-lined coat, and almost nothing in the picture is carried to a finish. It measures 31 by 38 centimetres. The National Museum in Warsaw keeps it as MP 2554, along with the far larger canvas Matejko painted two years afterwards of Sigismund Augustus and Barbara together at the Radziwiłł court.