Stańczyk

Matejko finished this in 1862, at twenty-four, and it made his name. It shows Stańczyk, the court jester of Poland's kings, alone in a quiet chamber while a ball goes on brightly through the doorway behind him. On the table lies an open letter with news that Smolensk, a great border fortress, has fallen to Moscow. The court dances on, but the fool sits slumped in his red costume, staring at nothing, the only person in the palace who grasps what has been lost. Matejko painted him during the years Poland itself had been wiped off the map by its neighbours, and the sorrowing jester carried an unmistakable charge for viewers who had no country left. Through the window at upper left he set the silhouette of Wawel Cathedral in Kraków, where Polish kings were crowned, under a low comet, an old sign of coming disaster.