One painting, many voices | Matejko's 'Copernicus' | National Gallery

The two great Polish heroes came together in this marvellous work. Immediately you know it's Copernicus. By the great Polish master Jan Matejko. The greatest painter in terms of the popularity in Polish art history ever. It's about geniuses being human and being vulnerable. He's got this big Polish hero. He's got this big Polish moment in the history of Poland and he's got this big Polish need to bring God into it. My name is Christopher Riopelle. I'm the Neil Westright curator of post-1800 paintings at the National Gallery and the curator of this exhibition. We are looking at a painting by the great Polish master of the 19th century, Jan Matejko. We, our exhibition at the National Gallery, is part of a growing revival of interest in a truly fascinating artist. It is his representation, as the full Polish title has it, the astronomer Copernicus' Conversations with God. It is a painting of 1873, painted in that year to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Copernicus the astronomer's birth in 1473. Matejko is presenting us with an imaginary scene. We have no idea if Copernicus had conversations with God on a rooftop or not. My name is Dr Louise Devoy and I'm senior curator of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. So Nicholas Copernicus was a Polish mathematician and astronomer who's famous for his book called On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres. Copernicus outlines his quite radical idea about having a heliocentric universe in which the planets orbit around the sun rather than the earth, the geocentric model, which was the accepted idea at that time. And so this book is really seen as marking the beginning of the scientific revolution, the period when scholars started to question, measure, and really try and verify ideas for themselves. My name is Deva Sobel. I'm a science writer and I've written a book about Copernicus and a play about him. I think his idea thrilled him. That's what I love about the painting, that look of excited understanding. A sense that he knew a secret about the way the universe worked. It seems as though Copernicus's idea wasn't such a big deal, but it really was. If you had to figure it out yourself, if no one had told you that the earth was moving, it's not at all obvious. He didn't use any new instruments. It would be another 60 years or so before the invention of the telescope. On the right-hand side, there's a very tall mast-like object with two arms coming out of it. And this is called a triquestrum, essentially an angle measuring machine. Then I think if you look in his hands, he's holding a pair of dividers that you might recognise from your school maths kit. This is a nice little clue to those ideas about perfect spherical motion. And then obviously, right next to him is that wonderful diagram that really shouts out, this is Copernicus, with the sun at the centre, the planets in their sequence. And I wonder whether Matejko saw the original manuscript. When I saw the real page, there was a hole in the centre. And that was the moment Copernicus became real to me, because you could see his process. He had a pair of those geometric compasses, and he was drawing all those concentric circles. And he couldn't help but drill a hole in the paper. I'm Waldemar Januszczak, art critic of the Sunday Times, and I'm Polish. Pretty much every single Polish textbook that I was exposed to had Matejko in it. I mean, he was the most omnipresent figure in my education, for a very simple reason, which is that a lot of the things in Polish history that I was being taught, the great battles, the heroes, the kings, the queens, who did what when, all of that existed as historical fact, but there were no illustrations to it. There's nothing to look at. And what Matejko did in the 19th century was basically supply Polish history with a set of illustrations. My name is Julia Griffin. I'm a Young Poland project curator at the William Morris Gallery in London. I first encountered Jan Matejko when I was five, and I saw one of his biggest paintings, The Battle of Grunwald, and I was absolutely amazed, intrigued, but I was also scared to enter the room because it looked so realistic. He was a real genius, and I think he was far more than a history painter. Matejko was one of the last to carry that great tradition of history painting as it had existed in the 16th, 17th, 18th century, right to the end of the 19th century. He will paint the great moments, the tragic moments, the moments of victory, the moments of loss in that very complicated history of a nation that, at that point, was no longer a nation. In the whole of the 19th century, there was no Poland. As a country, it didn't exist. My name is Andrzej Szczerski. I'm director of the National Museum in Kraków and lecturer in art history at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. At the end of the 18th century, three neighbouring states, namely Russia, Prussia, and Austria, divided the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth into three parts and effectively erased it from the political map of Europe. Imagine in a state where there is no country called Poland anymore, but you're trying to maintain a Polish identity, a sense of who you are. Your art becomes critical, crucial in those circumstances, and I think Matejko gave himself this self-appointed task of filling the void. In the year of Copernicus's 400th anniversary, there was a great attempt by the Germans to claim him as a true German. And so one of the reasons Matejko paints the picture is to reinforce that he was a true Pole. Since we were very young, when we were learning about planets, about how to name planets in general, we've been learning about Copernicus. Learning about Copernicus, we very often get to know him through the works of Matejko, through the painting of Matejko. He painted Copernicus in the small city of Fromberg, which lies on the Baltic coast. And he hinted very clearly at the background that this is a city in Poland. Namely, he paints the Vistula Lagoon. It's a lagoon of the main Polish river. He is surrounded by astronomical instruments that are based on the collection of astronomical instruments from the Jagiellonian University collection. He amassed a reference collection of some 3,000 decorative arts and crafts. On the left-hand side, the lantern was based on a Polish 19th century prison lantern. And then on the right-hand side, the Gothic chest is also based on an example from Matejko's collection. He also had a reference collection of photographs, including of the Fromberg Cathedral. He was a Pole. He is in a Polish city. He is on a Polish tower. He's overlooking a Polish river. And every Pole will be able to recognize that and see an affirmation of his Polishness. So in fact, what appears to be a depiction of a scientific moment is in fact deeply political. My name is Dr. Jennifer Slifka. I'm an art historian, and I'm a lecturer in Christianity in the arts. The representation of Copernicus here makes me think of representations of saints in key moments in their life. They often represented falling to their knees in this particular way. The way his arms are thrown out, wind seems to have come out of nowhere and is blowing his hair, and he's looking up to a light that we soon realize is otherworldly. This is a revelation to this person. Matejko has framed the composition at the right using this scientific instrument, this parallactic ruler. That ruler would have continued outside the picture plane, beyond what we can see in this composition, to create a kind of triangle shape. But in cropping it in this way and shifting it to the right, to me, those rulers have become a kind of cross. It ties the Copernican revolution, which is a scientific development, with religion, with Roman Catholicism, with the Catholic Polish idea of God. I'm David Wilkinson. I teach at Durham University. My background is in theoretical astrophysics. I now teach Christian theology. This is a painting that I've admired for some years and indeed have used it in my teaching. It's a wonderful depiction which poses questions about the nature of science today, the importance of observation, the way that models change, the interaction today of science and culture and Christianity, because a lot of people simply think that theology and science are in conflict. Now, this painting actually states that in history that wasn't the case, that the relationship between the two was much more fruitful. Copernicus, of course, was a canon. It's debatable whether he was ever ordained or not, but he certainly was a firm Christian believer. And he saw some of his astronomy as glorifying God. He wrote about it a number of occasions. He talked about how he admired the works of God's hands. Since the 1880s, it is hung in the Aula, the grand senate chamber of the Jagiellonian. And every one of the great ceremonies of that university takes place underneath this painting. It is a symbol of the university and it is a picture known to every Pole. When I became interested in art history, I think it was through Matejko definitely and through this painting too, which when I realized how important art is, and I think I owe it to Matejko and I owe it to Copernicus. We can learn our own history and share it with our neighbours here in Great Britain.