Morsztyn at Chocim

Juliusz Kossak took drawing lessons in Lviv with Jan Maszkowski, but his skills were largely the result of self-education. He was the doyen of a family of artists (Wojciech Kossak, Zofia Kossak, Jerzy Kossak, Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, Magdalena Samozwaniec). The centre of his artistic activity was the cultivation of Polishness. In the collection of the National Museum in Szczecin there is a painting entitled Alexander Morsztyn pod Chocimiem [Alexander Morsztyn at Chocim]. It depicts Alexander Morsztyn, later royal secretary and voivode of Wendish, riding on a grey horse, pulling a man on an arcane. In the background on the left, there is a saddled horse and a man with a raised sabre next to it. Just above him and the horse are an unfurled Turkish flag and the outlines of an army. On the right, an army with a Polish flag is behind a tree palisade and a moat. In the background, one can see the outline of the architecture of Chocim. In the foreground, in front of the knight on horseback, one can see a figure lying on the ground, with arrows in his quiver and a sword in his twisted hand in the middle, and a shield to the left. On the right, below the palisade, bare feet are sticking out of the ground. It is a scene from a work of old Polish literature entitled Wojna Chocimska [The War of Chocim] by Wacław Potocki, written in 1670 and commemorating the events of fifty years before. The story claimed that the Polish army was victorious under the command of Hetman Karol Chodkiewicz over the Ottoman Turkish army in 1621, which is not true to history. The battle was inconclusive and ended with an armistice and an agreement. That was not the only case when Juliusz Kossak drew on Potocki's work. The Szczecin painting is one of the later versions of a composition presented earlier as an engraving for the Tygodnik Ilustrowany. It depicts a scene from the fourth part of the work.

Beata Małgorzata Wolska