The poisoning of Queen Bona

This is early Matejko, painted in 1859 when he was about 21 and years away from the vast history canvases that made him Poland's national painter. The subject already points that way. Bona Sforza was an Italian duchess who became queen of Poland, and after decades of power she went home to Bari in southern Italy, where in 1557 she was almost certainly poisoned. The man blamed was her own trusted courtier, Gian Lorenzo Pappacoda, who stood to gain from an enormous loan she had made. Matejko keeps it small and close, a single grim chamber. The scenes he would later be known for would fill whole walls.