Veit Stoss cieco con la nipote

Matejko paints a great artist at his lowest. Veit Stoss, in Polish Wit Stwosz, had carved the towering altarpiece in Kraków's St Mary's church, the finest wooden sculpture of its age. But late in life he was ruined. He had forged a promissory note, was convicted, and was branded on the cheek for it, and here, old and blind, he is led by the hand into a church porch by his granddaughter, groping toward the foot of a crucifix. Matejko gave the girl the face of his own young wife, Teodora. He finished the picture in 1865 and first showed it beside the very altar Stoss had carved, in the priests' house next to St Mary's, so Kraków could see its disgraced master honoured at last.