Studenti che lasciano Cracovia nel 1549

Late in 1892, ill and in his final year, Matejko painted a bitter episode from 1549: after town servants attacked a student hostel and killed one of them, and the trial that followed proved anything but fair, a body of Kraków's students packed up and walked out of the city for good. He staged the moment on Kleparski Square at sunrise, the Barbican and St Florian's Gate rising behind the crowd. The subject was close to home. Matejko had just lost his own fight with the city council to save an old church and hospital, and had thought of leaving Kraków himself. He died the following year, and this was among the works first shown at his posthumous exhibition in 1893.