Jan Matejko art hero of Poland & Europe

Okay, this video is about Jan Matejko, the great artist from Poland, one of the great European artists. He lived from 1838 to 1893. I had just been reminded of his paintings when I did the story of Saint Cyril and Methodius yesterday for a video and I'm like, gosh, I got to review Jan Matejko and I love this painting of Copernicus and Stanczyk. So he's the most popular painter ever from Poland. He was a self-taught history painter and he was a Polish patriot. He loved Poland and he lived, you know, in the 1800s during the time of the Polish partition where Poland had been separated between Austria, you know, and Germany or Prussia and Russia and this was really the enslavement of the Polish people. We're going to come back to that in a moment with one of his paintings, paintings called Reytan. In a sense, Poland didn't even exist on the map in the 1800s but Matejko was determined to keep Poland alive in the minds of the Polish people. As a young man, he had vowed to keep the glory of Poland alive, to resurrect the history of the nation. He was a painter with a mission. From the beginning, he knew what he wanted to accomplish, to shine a light on Polish history and to keep it alive for posterity. When he was young, he was so poor he could barely afford to buy paint for his artwork and some people now have called Matejko the painter who kept Poland alive. Painting, in a sense, conveys a sense of a right to life, to respect, as it did in the Catholic Counter-Reformation. During the partition, the sellout trader rulers of Poland in the 1800s, they were harassing Matejko and Poland. But his paintings, meanwhile, in other countries like in Paris, France, they were winning gold medals for their extraordinary artistry and storytelling abilities. He, you know, really helped the Polish people to learn and remember their history and to clarify artistically their sense of destiny and identity. Poland celebrates the paintings of Matejko and they're used on currency and in other settings and in the school books, the history books, the science books like with Copernicus. You know, for hundreds and hundreds of years, Poland has been harassed by its neighbors, Germany, Austria, and Russia. And I understand what it's like because my father was from Ireland and Ireland has been harassed by England for about a thousand years. And I also understand this because my wife, my ex-wife was from Poland and I have lots of Polish friends. I talk to them all the time and so I'm very familiar with the Polish people. I love the Polish people. And one learns a lot of history from art, music, reading of history, and talking to people. In the schools, kids should be learning how to draw. It is a powerful school. Most people don't remember anything from grade school and high school except how to drive and, you know, typing. They should also be learning how to draw. In the 1800s, the unveiling of a painting was like a premier opening of a movie and it drew big crowds, the paintings of Matejko. Krakow is the cultural center of Poland and the School of Fine Arts in Krakow is the Jan Matejko Academy. This is Jan Matejko when he was older, a year before he died, and here is a painting of him self-portrait as a young man. Now here is a very interesting painting by Matejko. This is called Stanczyk. Stanczyk was the court jester to the King Sigismund. This is in the 1500s. Stanczyk was well known, so the people of Poland were partying at this time. Stanczyk was well known for being very well read. He was a renaissance educated man and he knew, you know, the classics and he was witty, intelligent, and funny. He provides humorous satire at the court of King Sigismund the Old. He was a funny fool who was actually a wise sage. And this painting is divided in three parts. There's the outside window, there's the party going on in here, and then there's Stanczyk sitting in a chair brooding and thinking. And it's kind of like one of those religious triptych three-part paintings. The red color of the party and of Stanczyk implies that they should be together, but they're not, they're separated. And actually the curtain sets a fold here, a door, and it puts, you know, Stanczyk into like a frame to emphasize him. It's interesting, very skillfully done this painting. It was done when Matejko was very young, he's only about 24 years old when he made this masterpiece of a painting. Stanczyk has his back to the party, so they're quite separate in mood and activity. The dwarf here carrying a lute is a sign of decadence for that time. The comet falling here from the sky is an omen, a bad omen, if you will, and if only the king had more common sense. Stanczyk, dressed like a court jester, sitting in the other room, is preoccupied. He's got inward body language, a concerned look on his face, and he's not in the mood for joking. His rattle has dropped to the floor. On the table is a letter that says Poland has lost its battle to Smolensk, and Stanczyk is a sad patriot. He knows that despite all his smarts, he has no real power to save Poland. The wisdom that he imparts flies over the head of the king and the people. He's like a Cassandra of ancient Greek times. He can see the future, but no one cares. Stanczyk in the painting looks, of course, like Jan Matejko. Both are Polish historians, both long for the freedom of Poland, both represent the conscience of Poland. Days later in the streets, some ruffians accosted Stanczyk, and they stole some of his clothes. They ripped them off, and King Sigismund laughed at Stanczyk, but Stanczyk said, I have been stripped of my clothes, but you have been stripped of Smolensk, and that is far worse. My wife, by the way, gave me the nickname of Stanczyk, and she meant it as an insult, multiple simultaneous insults. He's kind of a dwarf. He's only, you know, I'm only 5'9", so she teases me that I'm short. He's a party pooper. He doesn't want to drink. He's kind of paranoid, always worried about things in the future. He's a nerd, always reading, and so she means it as an insult, but I consider it a compliment. Stanczyk was the smartest man in Poland, and he's the one who knew the truth for Poland, and tried to do the best he could for Poland, and for the people, and he was good, well read, and wise. Yeah, I'll be happy to take that nickname any day. So here is the painting of Copernicus, who recognized that the earth goes around the sun, rather than the opposite. Painted, of course, by Jan Matejko, bathed in divine light here. You can see a Polish cathedral in the background, the river of Vistula from Poland in the background as well. He's got a compass in his hand. This is more of a measuring instrument for the planets, and it sort of looks like a Christian cross. There's the map of the earth rotating around the sun, and Copernicus is, in a sense, portrayed as like a saint of science. This book is in all the textbooks, okay, and it shows the scientist as a hero, like a saint, and as you know, it's a Copernican inversion, where the perspective on things takes a big, almost upside down change, a eureka moment, an academic orgasm. Okay, and this painting is in the Jagiellonian, it's hard for me to say, University Museum in Krakow, and it's a symbol of Jagiellonian University, as it should be. Now, here's a very famous painting of Matejko that got him into big trouble, because during the 1800s, Poland was still under partition. The partition was from approximately 1795 until the end of World War I in 1918, and this was painted in 1866, when there were still a lot of people around who had sold out the country of Poland and benefited from the money of selling it out into the triple partition, whereby it was controlled by Russia, Prussia, which is, you know, Germany we think of nowadays, and Austria, okay, and so these are the elites who are traitors to the country of Poland and have sold out the country, and here's the common man, Ratan, and they are now about to make a vote on the partition in 1795 to sell out Poland and give it over to foreign powers, so money from foreign powers is selling out the country of Poland, and Ratan, this brave, patriot man, he blocks the door, because once they exit the door, that is their approval sign that Poland will be partitioned, and Ratan says, no, don't, he physically blocks the door, lays on the floor, he tears his shirt apart, and he says, don't do it, step on me, kill me, but do not kill our motherland, Poland, okay, so it's a very heroic gesture, okay, and the people of that time, they were very pissed off at Matejko for, you know, putting it into a painting, this was a very famous painting, everybody wanted to see it, showing what traitors they were to the country of Poland, and after they threatened him and harassed him, they retaliated against Matejko, he made another painting called Death Sentence of Matejko, I'll show that on the next slide, the painting itself now is in Warsaw, you know, some of the things you ask yourself is what holds a country together, the religion, the Poles were fiercely Catholic, the language, Polish language is notoriously difficult, and if you speak it, you're in the club for the most part, cultural heritage of writers like Henry Sienkiewicz, who wrote Pol Vadas, artists like Matejko here, of course, composers like the great Chopin, okay, so Reitan blocks the door and says, no, no, no, step on me, kill me, but do not kill Poland, okay, so when they were harassing him, meanwhile, by the way, Matejko's paintings were sent all over Europe in the competitions, especially Paris, France, and he would win gold medals for the greatness of his paintings, so he didn't even have enough money in 1867 to go to the Paris, France competition, but while these guys were hassling him, the powerful sellout scumbags in Poland, Matejko made a painting called the Death Sentence of Jan Matejko, and then he sold this painting, and he took the money to go to France, to Paris, France, where this painting won another gold medal in the competitions, and Matejko was becoming famous all over Europe, so he finally, you know, he's able to sell his painting for some more money, and he got enough money to buy more art supplies, so he'd make more, make more paintings, the Austrian police, they banned Matejko from unveiling his paintings in the partitioned Poland, because they didn't like the fact he was showing that they're a bunch of scumbags enslaving the Polish people, so his next painting he made was called the Union of Lublin, and it's basically the Union of Poland in Lithuania, it was done in the city of Lublin, which is in Poland, and it's really the commonwealth of Poland in Lithuania, it was done by Matejko in 1869, he won another gold medal for this painting, his fame was growing over Europe, and you know, the point of it is Poland needs an ally to survive, okay, because Germany and Russia are just not going to leave Poland alone, so Poland needs an ally to strengthen them, so that they can tell their allies to, you know, piss off, leave them alone, and they can live in peace and have their freedom. Here's one of his paintings of Saint Cyril and Methodius, I talked about them in a recent lecture, basically they're two Christian monks, Saint Cyril is the inventor of the Cyrillic alphabet, and they sort of brought the gospel to the Slavs, to Eastern Europe and Russia. If you're interested in learning about Polish history, this is the best book, it's by James Michener, it's called Poland, and the entire book goes through all the history of Poland, through how it's perceived by a family in Poland, it's a magnificent book, I read it cover to cover very quickly, I loved it. Okay, next painting here is called Skarga's Sermon, or the Sermon of Skarga by Matejko, 1864, so Piotr Skarga is castigating and scolding the king of Poland, the king of Poland at this time was a bit of a phony, he was from Sweden, and he sort of wanted to be in Sweden, and you know, the Poles wanted their own king, and there's a lot of symbolism in this painting, for example, the aristocrat is sleeping, like they just didn't care, as long as they had a high position in society, many of them didn't care about the rest of the people, okay, and you can see this king's not too happy to be hearing this, the Sermon of Skarga, and there's a glove thrown down on the floor, symbolizing an upcoming civil war in Poland, okay, you know, and the strength of the Polish people, you can see it in several parts, the Christianity, as we talked before, it unites them, it disciplines them, and it unifies their culture, gives them shared values, shared understanding of history, and idioms, shared events, you know, saints days, church day, and all everything that goes with that, Christmas, Easter, their language, history, and culture, of course, unite them, their hands-on skill, if anybody knows Polish people, I know tons of them, they're very good at doing physical things, you know, they're great contractors, builders, plumbers, electricians, like if you have a Polish friend, and you have a problem, he can fix it, okay, you know, I had a bought a reverse osmosis filter for my house, I'm trying to call somebody to put it in, my Polish friend goes, oh, I can put that in five seconds, and puts it in real fast, okay, some attempts at Polish preservation have been very good, there used to be a lot more Polish people in the USA, a lot of them left when America started going down in the garbage can, you know, over the course of the last 10 years, but there's Polish schools, and if you're at all Polish, you should send your kids to a Polish school, but what are some of the weaknesses of the Polish people, what I've seen as weaknesses is, they tend to be jealous of each other, I couldn't believe it, like when I was writing my books, my wife's Polish doctor friends, they were so jealous of me, they wouldn't even look at my book, not all of them, one of them at least looked at it, and gave me some good, honest feedback, she was very nice about it, but most of them were really jealous of me, and I was like, you're so petty, you know, kind of an attitude, well, if I grew up in America, I could go to Harvard, and I'm like, you know, instead of helping me out, or you shouldn't be so jealous of me, the other thing is, the Polish women, a lot of them have been corrupted by feminism, and that's very bad, because feminism, the purpose of it, is to destroy families, to abort babies, you know, to get divorced, okay, feminism is the destruction of women, and society, and Christianity, feminism is based on Satanism, I gave an entire previous lecture about that, so let's continue with Matejko, okay, here's Matejko's painting, The Battle of Grunwald, when Poland and Lithuania, unified together, defeated the Germans, the Teutonic Knights, in 1410, this painting by Matejko in 1878, and during World War II, the Polish had to hide this from the Germans, who were trying to destroy it, they sent the Gestapo to find it, but the Polish kept it hidden, and a couple Polish men died for their refusal to reveal the whereabouts of the painting, but they saved the painting, and here's another painting that pissed off Germans, and a lot of other people in Europe, it's King John III Sobieski, sending news of victory to the Pope, after the victory of the Battle of Vienna, over the Ottoman Turks, it was in 1683, and this is sort of like a 200 year anniversary of it, in 1883, when Matejko made this painting, there's John Sobieski, and so, see, the Germans wanted to claim that they were the ones who had defeated the Ottoman Turks, the Muslims, okay, from taking over Europe, as because once Vienna fell, they felt much more of Europe would have fallen to the Ottoman Turks, but that Sobieski had saved the day, and so Sobieski was a true hero of the battle, okay, so anyways, the Germans also wanted to get this painting away, and there's another painting, too, it's called Homage to Prussia, where they show the Prussians having, you know, surrendered, been conquered by the Poles, okay, so they were still holding a grudge after the poor Poles, you know, in World War II, trying to find that painting, too, so anyways, this is a real famous guy, Sobieski, in the Polish world, well, here's just a painting about the alchemist, alchemy was a big popular thing, you know, for a long time in Europe, and I kind of like this painting in a sense that here's the worker guy, the engineer, if you will, trying to figure out how to create something useful, if he succeeds, maybe the pretty lady will reward him with her favors, but in the meantime, the well-dressed men coming to take a look are hoping to steal his ideas, some are probably his friends, some of the onlookers, and maybe they're going to help him start a company or something, but there's still something funny about that painting, okay, next painting here is the Hanging of the Zygmunt Bell, and it's a symbol of freedom, and a symbol of Poland's cultural renaissance, and note that Stanczyk became an iconic figure, and Matejko would put Stanczyk into other paintings, so here he's like startled by the noise of hearing the clapper clang and the bell, so he has a funny look on his face, and he's portrayed it in a humorous way, at the time of Matejko's death, the bell of Zygmunt was rung in his honor, and here is the grave of Jan Matejko in Krakow, and he rightfully so is honored with the big prominent grave in Krakow, the cultural center of Poland, and a country's heroes, they should be remembered and honored, and taught to the younger generation, that's how culture is maintained, civilization is maintained, so the next generation knows where it came from, and understands the baseline that they can improve upon, so Jan Matejko was a magnificent person, and a magnificent artist, and I hope you have found this helpful, this video.