The Hanging of the Sigismund Bell at the Cathedral Tower in 1521 in Kraków – Jan Matejko | #visual arts

The Hanging of the Sigismund Bell at the Cathedral Tower in 1521 in Kraków – Jan Matejko

Matejko’s small painting depicting the consecration of the Sigismund bell, painted on the margins of the artist’s great historiosophical works, is in fact a vision of the splendour of the First Polish Republic at the moment of its greatest power. At the same time, it was painted at the most appropriate moment for this – by a thirty-six-year-old artist at the peak of his career.

Created shortly after Stephen Báthory at Pskov, the painting, painted on a mahogany board of relatively small size (94 x 189 cm) in the winter of 1874, does not depict a spectacular military or political triumph, unlike the artist’s great, ‘programmatic’ canvases of the period, but an event of somewhat lesser gravity – at least seemingly. For regardless of the symbolic significance of the Sigismund Bell itself, the scene, which falls within the conventions of history and genre painting, is ideologically similar to a series of paintings created from the end of the 1860s which depict moments of triumph rather than errors and faults which led to the downfall of the First Polish Republic, or Rzeczpospolita. Although Matejko did not avoid critical elements or discreet harbingers of coming troubles in the layered iconography of the painting, The Hanging of the Sigismund Bell at the Cathedral Tower in 1521 in Kraków ostentatiously celebrates the moment of greatest power and splendour of the Jagiellonians. Even Stańczyk, one of the important actors in Matejko’s theatre of historical imagination, can be seen here as a court jester, not as the nation’s concerned conscience.

In the Hanging of the Sigismund Bell, Matejko synthesises two events – the taking of the bell from its foundry mould and its consecration by Bishop Jan Chojeński in the presence of the royal family. The bell’s founder, King Sigismund the Old, stands under the canopy in a solemn and commanding pose, with his head proudly lifted up, his left hand on his heart, the other resting on the head of a less than a year old prince, the future heir to the throne Sigismund Augustus (slightly aged by the painter). Next to him, we have the young Queen Bona Sforza, her daughter Isabella Jagiellon and a group of courtiers sitting in contemplation. On the right is a group of workers under the direction of a master bell-foundryman, pulling a bell out of its mould with the help of thick ropes. The scene takes place at the now non-existent Vistula Gate in Kraków where, according to the legend, the Nuremberg bell-founder Hans Beham was supposed to work. The silhouette of the Wawel Cathedral looms in the background, whilst the action itself, like in the earlier Stephen Báthory at Pskov, takes place in one tight space.

The bell itself, gleaming with golden novelty, is rendered with attention to detail typical of Matejko. We can see a fragment of the meticulously reproduced ornamental decoration, the iconography consisting of images of saints Stanislaus and Sigismund and the coats of arms of Poland and Lithuania, as well as the Latin inscription, translated into Polish, declaring: ‘For God, the best, the greatest, and the Virgin Mother of God, his holy patrons, the illustrious Sigismund King of Poland had this bell, worthy of the greatness of his mind and deeds, made in the year 1520’.

The bell, called ‘the heart of Poland’ and ‘the king of Polish bells’, occupied a prominent place in Matejko’s imagination. Izydor Jabłoński recalled:

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As soon as he heard the Sigismund bell he would fold up his pallet and listen. [...] It was enough to tell Jan: today they will be ringing the Sigismund bell! – He would reply: ‘That’s right, let's go to the Planty’. After a stroll he would sit on a bench with his back to Straszewskiego street, opposite the mansion of the retired officers of Mr Potocki, and if that spot was occupied, out of a strange prejudice he would not sit on another further away, but preferred to listen to his favourite sound whilst walking, during which he would recall well-known facts from history, adding: ‘I see them as if they were alive.’

Although the painting does not feature figures of saints appearing in the sky, a rainbow signalling divine protection over the Poles, as in Sobieski at Vienna, or other supernatural accents more and more boldly entering the historical scenes in Matejko’s late works, the bell itself is surrounded by an almost metaphysical aura. The artist, superstitious by nature and with the passing of years more inclined towards mysticism, was not alone in personifying the bell and treating the events related to it as signs. Amongst other things, he strongly experienced the breaking of Sigismund’s heart on New Year’s Eve from 1859 to 1860, about which he wrote in Czas:

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Although the Sigismund Bell bade farewell to the passing year with its sound, it no longer welcomed the new one, for its iron heart broke; we do not know whether from regret for the past year, or from despair, as hearts that feel emotions break, because they are not made of iron.

The Wawel Cathedral bell also returned in the literature of the time. In a poem by Władysław Bełza entitled Zaklęte Dzwony (Enchanted Bells), written a year after the creation of Matejko’s painting, Sigismund is personified in the context not of a triumph but of mourning, after the last of the partitions – in the 19th century, its sound evoked funerary associations, as it resounded mainly on the occasion of funerals of eminent personalities:

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The bells on Wawel Castle toll,

Loudly our Sigismund grieves!

And with the winds sad tones,

On the Vistula waves flow...

Old Sigismund cries like a baby...

The winds carry the fleeting moans...

And with Sigmund, all the world’s

Bells rang out at once...

The painting from 1874 is Matejko’s best-known work featuring the bell, though it is not the only. In 1883, he created a painting depicting the king listening to the sound of Sigismund ringing. An early attempt to work on the subject can be found in the 1860s, amongst the plans for the decoration of the new magistrate’s building in Kraków, which was never completed. Its iconographic programme was to be a kind of miniature of the general current of Matejko’s painting in relation to Kraków itself, depicting the dark pages of the city’s history on the one hand, and its moments of glory on the other. In the design, the artist emphasised the participation of the city councillors and prominent representatives of Kraków’s bourgeois families, including Jan Boner and Seweryn Bethman.

Their figures also appear in the 1874 composition. They are accompanied by images of the royal lute player and the architect Bartolomeo Berrecci, the creator of the Sigismund Chapel. Not all the figures visible here could have actually taken part in the scene of the bell’s consecration – some of them were already dead in 1521, whilst others came to the court later. These inaccuracies, however, cannot be blamed on the artist’s historical ignorance. Slight bending of historical facts is a regular practice in Matejko’s art. Although the painter was famous for his archaeological care in reconstructing details of the costume or artistic craftsmanship, the very selection of the figures is dictated by their historical merits in the period rather than by considerations of strict probability.

The scene is thus, in a way, a symbolic synthesis of the golden age of Rzeczpospolita, albeit draped in a meticulously recreated period costume. The artist, who collected his own drawing ‘treasury’ and preceded the painting of historical compositions with thorough source studies, did not hesitate to apply conscious anachronisms where they served the painting’s message. Fidelity is one thing, but in the end it was the stirring of imagination and the message of the work that counted most. If the facts did not agree with the historiosophical vision – so much the worse for the facts. A single scene was always a kind of synthesis, which Matejko, according to Stanisław Tarnowski, treated as an illustration of ‘the whole process of aspirations and efforts of various people, who were not present at that moment, at that place, where the fact finally happened’.

Similar deviations, on a smaller scale, can be found in the costumes. Although Matejko’s knowledge of the fashion of the Renaissance was impressive compared to other historical painters of his time, even here he allowed himself to twist some of the facts. Damasks, satins, brocades and golden embroideries are usually recreated with great accuracy, as is the fur-lined robe of Sigismund the Old, resembling the king’s attire from the miniature by Stanisław Samostrzelnik. But the bishop, for example, is wearing a magnificent baroque mitre, historically definitely later than the beginning of the 16th century, although it fits the artist’s overall image of the splendour of the golden age of the Jagiellonians.

In accordance with his usual practice, Matejko gave the key figures the features of his relatives. The queen’s face was given the physiognomy of Teodora Matejko, the artist’s wife, and the royal children, his own offspring Jerzy and Helena. The features of the remaining two Matejko children can be found amongst the young courtiers and pageants. Amongst the background figures, we can also find camouflaged portraits of the painter’s mother-in-law and one of his nephews. Even one of the dogs in the painting belonged to Matejko.

The painting’s colour scheme is less boisterous than in many of Matejko’s large-format compositions, devoid, amongst other things, of the rasping violets characteristic of him. As in the slightly later Homage to Prussia, which bears clear traces of admiration for Titian and Veronese following the painter’s Italian journey, the palette was narrowed down to gold tones, emphasising the wealth and courtly splendour of the period, as befits the name ‘the golden age of Rzeczpospolita’.

The painting, depicting of the peak power of the First Rzeczpospolita coincided in the artist’s biography with the climax of his own career. In Poland, he was already an unquestionable icon and authority for young painters, and a year earlier he had become head of the School of Fine Arts. Abroad, i.e. at the Paris Salons, the most important artistic event of the era, he also enjoyed success even in the early 1870s. In 1870, he received the Legion of Honour for his Union of Lublin. However, it was the inconspicuous Hanging of the Sigismund Bell exhibited at the Salon of 1875, as pointed out by Marek Zgórniak, who researched Matejko’s French reception, that marked the moment of transition and the beginning of the end of his career in France.

The small format of the painting, whilst retaining the accumulation of figures crowded around each other and the detailed reproduction of the details of the scenery instead of synthesising them, typical of Matejko’s mature style, made the features of his painting style even stronger. After the first exposition in Kraków, according to Stanisław Tarnowski, the work was accused of being ‘so full of confusing figures that it is difficult to distinguish one from the other, all of them are crushed and suffocated by the castle seen in a perspective that is not well chosen; there is also the abuse and great disharmony of colours with everything being yellow.’ The painting, exhibited in one of the side rooms at the Salon of 1875, was not widely discussed by French critics, whilst a few references echoed the accusations made in Kraków. Gustave Le Vavasseur wrote:

It seems that the painting’s content is forced into our eyes here, we hear the infernal tolling of this new, glittering bell. [...] The viewer’s first instinct [...] is to plug his ears.

Hanging of the Sigismund Bell was purchased a year after its completion by Countess Walewska, née Lenkiewicz. For several decades, the painting was in private collections; in the interwar period, it was deposited with the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts. In 1940, together with the rest of the society’s collection, it found itself in the building of the National Museum in Warsaw, from where it was stolen by the Nazis. It was restored to the museum just after the end of the war.

‘If Sigismund could ring for me, that would be nice...’ the artist said to his wife shortly before his death. His wish came true. Less than two decades after the painting was completed, the bell rang in Kraków on the day of Matejko’s funeral.

Originally written in Polish by Piotr Policht, translated into English by P. Grabowski, July 2021

jan matejko

The Hanging of the Sigismund Bell at the Cathedral Tower in 1521 in Kraków

historical painting

wawel cathedral