Jan Kochanowski – Jan Matejko. On the 440th anniversary of the poet’s death

Abstract

The text is a result of work on a scenario prepared by the author in 2021 for the exhibition “Jan Kochanowski in the works of Jan Matejko. Around the hero and the image”, referring to Jan Matejko’s (1838–1893) interest in the figure of the Renaissance poet. Matejko repeatedly depicted events and figures important to the history of culture, including Jan Kochanowski (1530–1584). He made portrait sketches, compositional sketches for paintings, historical paintings, and imaginative portraits of the poet. He also immortalized him in the work Ubiory w Polsce 1275–1795. The artist collected artifacts related to the era. In the early years of Matejko’s career, the painting Jan Kochanowski z Urszulką (1862) was created, depicting the poet, the author of the “Laments”, suffering after the loss of his daughter.

In 1884, the Cracow Academy of Sciences commemorated the three-hundredth anniversary of Jan Kochanowski’s death with a scientific congress in his honour. Matejko donated a whimsical portrait of the poet with a humorous verse of his own composition placed on the back of the painting. The artist was also involved in the cultural and social activities surrounding the exhibition held in the Cloth Hall Art Museum. Among other things, he made artifacts from his own collection available to the public, and his portrait of the poet welcomed visitors to the exhibition.