April 2025 marks the 500th anniversary of the ‘Prussian Homage’, when Duke Albrecht von Hohenzollern, the last Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, knelt in the main market square in Krakow to pay homage to Sigismund I, King of Poland and Great Duke of Lithuania. The Teutonic Knights had been defeated in their final war against Poland; as a result, their master became a secularised Lutheran duke. Poland and Lithuania, under the rule of Sigismund, were entering their ‘Golden Age’ politically, economically, and culturally.

Sigismund I, the Old, was the son of Casimir IV of the Lithuanian House of Jagiellon, and Elisabeth of the House of Habsburg; his daughter, Catherine, married King John III of Sweden in 1569. Almost a century after the Prussian Homage, in 1610, at the zenith of Polish-Lithuanian power, Sigismund’s grandson, Sigismund III of the House of Vasa, would defeat Russia and receive the homage of the former Tsar, Vasili IV Shuysky, in Warsaw as Polish troops occupied the Kremlin.

On Christmas Eve 1879, Jan Matejko (1838-93) must have been reflecting on all of this with profound sadness. His father was Czech, his mother half-Polish and half-German, but he considered himself a Pole. He felt that his mission was to preserve Polish identity and memory during one of the darkest periods in the nation’s history. In 1879, Poland was nowhere to be found on the maps of Europe, having been partitioned in 1795 between Prussia, Austria, and Russia. Poles were trying to remain a nation without a state. Matejko believed that his art was not a pastime, but a spiritual vocation and a powerful weapon against the empires oppressing Poland.

Matejko was already recognised internationally as one of the greatest painters of Europe. Awarded the Médaille d’or at the Salon de Paris in 1867 for his Rejtan, and the Légion d’honneur in 1870 for his Union of Lublin, he became a member of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1873 and was to receive both the Star of the Order of Pius IX and the Papal Gold Medal of Leo XIII in 1883. A few years later, when Friedrich Nietzsche was already descending into madness during his sojourn in Turin, he began writing letters to prominent figures ranging from King Umberto I of Italy, and the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Mariani (to arrange a meeting with the Pope), to the playwright August Strindberg, and Jacob Burckhardt, the art historian who had once been his colleague at the University of Basel.

One of Nietzsche’s short notes, written on 4 January 1889, mentions Jan Matejko:

To the Illustrious Pole, 

I belong to you, I am more a Pole than I am God, I shall bestow honours on you such as only I am able to bestow… I live among you as Matejko,

The Crucified.

Nietzsche claimed that his ancestors were Polish nobles, and he believed that the Poles of the ‘Golden Age’ were much closer to his ideal of the Übermensch than his own contemporary German compatriots. It’s not clear from his note, however, whether he was convinced that his soul literally inhabited Jan Matejko, or else that the artist was merely his representative among Poles. In any case, the note demonstrates the artist’s stature at the time.

Before starting the Prussian Homage, Matejko finished one of his grandest paintings, the Battle of Grunwald, depicting the resounding victory of Poland and Lithuania over the Teutonic Knights in 1410. Matejko began work on this in 1872; it was clearly his response to the triumph of Prussia over the French in 1870, and the resulting creation of the German Empire in 1871, which was followed by the Kulturkampf (an anti-Catholic campaign launched by Otto von Bismarck during the 1870s) and the enforced Germanisation of Poles in Germany.

The Prussian Homage continues Matejko’s meditation on the history of German-Polish relationships, giving an ambiguous interpretation of the 1525 homage. Poland-Lithuania is victorious, and a Prussian duke kneels before Sigismund I. However, the king’s fool, Stańczyk (a self-portrait of Matejko in the painting) is pensive and concerned, while a gauntlet lies on the ground next to Duke Albrecht. Matejko shows that the decision to accept the autonomy of the Duchy of Prussia was a political mistake, for which Poles of his time would have to suffer.

The painting is characterised by a rich, beautiful, predominantly red and gold palette. It resembles Paolo Veronese’s Feast in the House of Levi, which Matejko studied during his trip to Venice in 1879. The group of Prussians, which includes Albrecht kneeling before Sigismund, seems ‘chiseled in bronze’ and ‘inviolably perfect’, as a prominent painter of the younger generation, Stanisław Witkiewicz, put it. What is interesting, however, is the way the Germans are portrayed.

The historical oppressors of Matejko’s fatherland are not depicted as monstrous or wicked. Albrecht is magnificent and knightly on his knees. Matejko, who continually studied old chronicles while working on his paintings, was aware that a medieval feudal homage wasn’t supposed to be a spectacle of humiliation and dominance, but a celebration of mutual respect, and loyalty of a paternal and filial kind. Only Albrecht’s brother, George, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach, gives an impression of pride and cruelty, manifesting some anti-German sentiment.

Perhaps it is this kind of nuance, in addition to the sheer artistry of the painting, that led to a very curious reception in Berlin for this masterpiece. Exhibited in 1884 at the Paris Salon, the Prussian Homage made little impact, perhaps because Impressionism was already on the rise. However, when it was presented at the exhibition of the Royal Academy of the Arts in Berlin in June 1884, the jury voted unanimously to award Matejko the great gold medal. The decision was unprecedented, since it could have been given only to someone who, unlike Matejko, had already received the small gold medal.

In the end, Matejko didn’t receive any award in Berlin, because Bismarck saw the painting, was furious, and intervened with Emperor Wilhelm I Hohenzollern to prevent this from happening. The Iron Chancellor believed the painting to be rabidly anti-German. But, was it? The members of the Royal Academy in Berlin either didn’t see it that way, or else were able to rise above national conflict to appreciate great art.

The word ‘academy’, alas, no longer seems to refer to individuals who are capable of appreciating things with which they don’t agree. In an era of all-pervading propaganda and the politicisation of everything, the story of Matejko’s Prussian Homage can be read as a lesson in respect – particularly a  respect for timeless beauty and greatness, which can save us, sometimes, from the suffocating pettiness of Realpolitik.