The Interior of the Tomb of King Casimir the Great

In 1869 Poland did not exist on the map, its lands split among three empires, and Krakow sat under Austrian rule. That summer workmen restoring Wawel Cathedral opened the crumbling tomb of Casimir the Great, the medieval king who had died 500 years before, and found his bones inside. Matejko was one of the men called to examine the vault, and he painted this small, dim study on the spot, the crown and sceptre laid among the stones by candlelight. A few months later the king was reburied with an enormous public funeral that drew tens of thousands, one of the last great Polish kings honoured at a moment when Poles had no state of their own. What Matejko caught here is the quiet hour before that crowd arrived, underground, with the bones freshly uncovered.