The show opened on May 21 and was originally due to run until August 22, but it was extended by a week in response to popular demand.
Entitled Astronomer Copernicus, or Conversations with God, the canvas was painted in 1873 to mark the 400th anniversary of the astronomer’s birth. It shows Copernicus kneeling awestruck against a starry sky on the rooftop of a tower at Frombork, in what is now northern Poland, near the city’s cathedral where he served as canon.
The work was a loan from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, southern Poland. It was the first time that a painting by a Polish artist was shown at the National Gallery.
Matejko is regarded as the national painter of Poland. His huge paintings, showing major events from Polish history, are part and parcel of Poland’s national identity.
The London exhibition also included Matejko’s self-portrait from the National Museum in Kraków, a copy of Copernicus’ treatise De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) from the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, and astronomical instruments from the Jagiellonian University Museum.
(mk/gs)
