Les Macchabées

The November Uprising against Russian rule collapsed in 1831, and a generation of Poles scattered into exile. The poet Adam Mickiewicz, by then the voice of that emigration, handed Stattler the subject for this canvas. Take the Scriptures, he said, and find something that resembles the situation of our country. Look in the Maccabees. What Stattler painted is the moment an officer reads out the decree of Antiochus ordering the Jews of Judaea to give up the faith of their fathers, with the old priest Mattathias on the right refusing, his sons around him. Prince Adam Czartoryski, who led the Polish exiles in Paris, paid for the work. It took about 12 years to finish, and the Paris Salon gave it a gold medal in 1844. The canvas is nearly 4 metres across, and it hangs in the Cloth Hall in Krakow.