Polonia – L'anno 1863

Matejko painted this in 1864, right after the January Uprising against Russian rule had been put down. It is an allegory. A dark-haired woman in mourning, her hands held to an anvil, stands for Poland herself as a blacksmith prepares to lock her in irons, while tsarist officers look on. He drew on what he had lived through, and he understood that showing it could bring reprisals down on his family, so he never exhibited it. For years he kept the canvas hidden behind the stove in his own house. It was never quite finished. In time it passed to the Czartoryski family in Kraków, where the manifesto that had proclaimed the uprising is still just visible, painted into the background.