Jan Matejko

Jan Matejko entered the Kraków School of Fine Arts at fourteen and studied in Munich and Vienna before returning to Kraków for good. At a time when Poland was partitioned and had no state, he painted its history on a huge scale: Stańczyk, Rejtan, the Union of Lublin and the Battle of Grunwald. Critics called his crowded, theatrical canvases old-fashioned, but for Poles they became a kind of national memory. From 1873 he directed the Kraków school.