Wernyhora

Description

Jan Matejko created a symbolic portrait of Wernyhora, an 18th-century Ukrainian bard regarded as a prophetic figure. Wernyhora’s prophecies regarding the future fates of Poland and Ukraine appear in various Polish sources.

According to tradition, Wernyhora predicted the Partitions of Poland, the national liberation uprisings, and the restoration of the Polish state with the assistance of England and Turkey. In Matejko’s painting, the bard personifies the “old Ukraine of Poles  and Ruthenians, a land of national and social harmony” from the pre-partition era. The lyre lying at his feet is a symbol of the song that preserves a shared Ukrainian-Polish heritage.

We invite you to explore the information about this object in the digital catalogue of the National Museum in Kraków’s collections. Author of the entry: Wacława Milewska