O assassinato de Wapowski durante a coroação de Henrique de Valois

The event is February 1574, at the festivities for the coronation of Henry of Valois, the French prince who had just been chosen as Poland's first elected king. During a tournament a quarrel broke out, and Andrzej Wapowski, a Polish official trying to calm it, was struck down and mortally wounded by the nobleman Samuel Zborowski. Matejko painted the scene in 1861, when he was only 23 and Poland itself had been wiped off the map, divided among its neighbours. Pictures like this let him put Polish history back in front of Polish eyes. The canvas then had a strange afterlife. It was lost for more than a century, turned up in a private collection in South America, and came back to public sale only in 2017.