Jan Matejko

Jan Alojzy Matejko was a Polish painter who lived from 1838 to 1893 and a leading 19th-century exponent of history painting, known for depicting nodal events from Polish history. His works include the large-scale oil paintings Stańczyk, Rejtan, Union of Lublin, Astronomer Copernicus, or Conversations with God, and Battle of Grunwald. He was also the author of numerous portraits, a gallery of Polish monarchs in book form, and murals in St. Mary's Basilica in Krakow. He is considered by many the most celebrated Polish painter and sometimes the national painter of Poland, and he spent most of his life in Krakow, enrolling at the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts at the age of fourteen.