Monumental work by Polish artist Wyspiański showcased at Copernicus exhibition in Rome

A massive stained-glass window designed by Polish artist and playwright Stanisław Wyspiański is the centrepiece of a major international exhibition that opens in Rome on Friday to mark the 550th anniversary of the birth of the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.

A massive stained-glass window designed by Polish artist and playwright Stanisław Wyspiański will be one of the centerpieces of the exhibition in Rome.

Photo: PAP/Łukasz Gągulski

Entitled Copernico e la rivoluzione del mondo (Copernicus and the Revolution of the World), the exhibition runs at the Curia Iulia, next to the Forum Romanum, until January 20.

Wyspiański’s work depicts the sun god Apollo tied up and attached to a lyre, which crushes him with its weight. Some art historians say this is a reference to Copernicus "stopping the sun to move the earth." The work shows other planets of the solar system around Apollo.

Nicolaus Copernicus' ground-breaking 1543 treatise "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) marked a turning point in human understanding of our place in the universe. Image: Nicolaus Copernicus, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Wyspiański based his design on his pastel drawing of the same title, which is in the collection of the National Museum in Kraków, southern Poland.

The Apollo stained-glass window measures 4 by 1.2 metres. Its transportation to Rome was a complex logistical effort as the work’s 12 sections had to be dismantled for the journey.

(mk/gs)