Skarga's Sermon

Skarga's Sermon is a large oil painting by Jan Matejko, completed in 1864 and among his most celebrated works. It shows a political sermon delivered by the Jesuit Piotr Skarga, a leading figure of the Counter-Reformation in Poland, who criticises the Polish elite for neglecting the national good. Skarga stands at the upper right, dressed in black with his hands raised, caught mid-speech; his face resembles Matejko himself, aged, although another account suggests a different model posed for him. He is the only figure in motion, while everyone else stays still, standing or seated, and their postures reveal Matejko's view of their historical roles. At the centre, the magnate Janusz Radziwiłł wears a golden robe, while King Sigismund III Vasa, to the left, looks distracted and dressed in foreign fashion, a visual hint at his distance from his subjects. A glove on the floor foreshadows the civil war to come. Matejko took liberties with strict historical accuracy in favour of his message. The painting was a triumph in Kraków and in Paris, where it won a gold medal in 1865, and it brought him recognition across Europe.

Painter

Jan Matejko

Date

1864

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

224 × 397 cm

Museum

National Museum in Warsaw, Warsaw

Genre

history painting

Depicts

Anna Jagiellon, Mikołaj Zebrzydowski, Ipatii Potii, Jerzy Mniszech, Jan Piotr Sapieha, Elizaveta Ostrogska, Jan Zamoyski, Stanisław Karnkowski

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