3-071-943 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

The Lamentable Apostolic Mission, 1866. The artist, freely operating with groups of figures in the space of a vast landscape, depicts an event from the period of the conquests of the pagan Polabian Slavs by Christianised Germanic tribes. The pretext and justification for rape and Germanization was the spread of Christianity, hence next to the Germanic leader the bishop appeared in the painting under a cross and a banner with a crucifix. The work, completed only two years after the fall of the January Uprising, was immediately read in a political and national context. The Slavs, beaten by a ruthless, cruel invader who, under the guise of spreading his own faith, killed, robbed, burned and enslaved, was seen as an analogy to the policy pursued towards Poles by the Russian tsar.