ウィーンのヤン・ソビエスキ

In September 1683 the Polish king Jan Sobieski led one of the largest cavalry charges in history down the slopes outside Vienna and broke the Ottoman siege of the city. Two hundred years later, in 1883, Matejko painted the aftermath on a canvas nine metres wide: Sobieski on a pale horse, handing over a captured banner and a letter to be carried to the Pope, with the message that God had granted the victory. Matejko meant it as a gift, and that December he and a Polish delegation presented it to Pope Leo XIII. It still hangs in its own room in the Vatican. He had timed the whole thing to the anniversary, down to the year.