MATEJKO, JAN. - Polish painter, b. in Kraków on 30 June 1838, d. there on 1 Oct. 1893. He studied in Kraków, in Munich (1859-60) and in Vienna (1860), then returned to Kraków where he spent the rest of his life.

He painted sacred subjects and scenes from Polish history, interpreting well the taste of his milieu and his generation and giving proof of excellent representational faculties translated into a serious coloristic language, which sometimes seems to link up with the models of the Venetian masters of the sixteenth century. M. was also a portraitist. Among his works are remembered the frescoes of the church of the Virgin Mary in Kraków (1889-93). Of his grandiose paintings the best known are: The Battle of Grunwald (1878), in the Lacheta of Warsaw, Homage of the Duke of Prussia to King Sigismund of Poland (1882), in the National Museum in Kraków, and John III Sobieski at the Battle of Vienna (1883), in the Vatican Museum in Rome.

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: I. Tarnowski, J. M., Kraków 1897 (in Polish); F. Kopera, s. v. in Thieme-Becker, XXIV, pp. 234-35;

Witold Wehr

@incollection{ec8_mateyko_jan, author = {Wehr, Witold}, title = {Mateyko, jan}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VIII}, pages = {395}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1952}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/mateyko-jan} }

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Matejko, Jan

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