Il Giuramento di Leopoli del re Giovanni II Casimiro

Matejko painted this through the spring and summer of 1893 and did not live to finish it. He died that November at 55, and along the right side of the huge canvas you can still see figures left as bare sketch, the work simply stopped. The scene itself reaches back to 1656, to the cathedral in Lwow, where King John II Casimir knelt during a Swedish invasion and swore to protect his peasants and to take the Virgin Mary as Poland's queen. Matejko, who spent his life painting the nation's past to keep it alive under partition, gave his own face to the kneeling commander in the foreground. It was the last of the hidden self-portraits he tucked into his crowds.