Two Epochs

Two paintings from the artist’s oeuvre takes us into his world where contemporary art meets ancient art. Both paintings refer to the presence of the contemporary viewer in museum interiors (at Pieskowa Skała Castle and Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, respectively), supplementing the historic paintings presented in the old rooms of Wawel Castle and providing a counterpoint to them. In the foreground of both of them, there are women representing two different epochs – the wife of Sigismund III Vasa, frozen in a dignified, representative pose, and a contemporary woman, pensive and shown in a casual pose.

The painting Constance of Austria (Pieskowa Skała Castle) is inspired by a 19th-century copy of the portrait of Constance Habsburg (inv. no. ZKnW-PZS 8557), seen during the Long Night of Museums at Pieskowa Skała Castle. The 17th-century original is in the collection of Wawel Royal Castle (inv. no. ZKnW-PZS 1783). ‘I was drawn to this large, almost abstract, dark, undulating canvas in a room full of visitors,’ says the artist. In Maciejowski’s personal interpretation of the painting, it is shown not directly, but from behind the head of an anonymous contemporary viewer looking at the work hanging on the wall, from a perspective in which the figure of the princess became somehow monumental. In this version, her image supplements and provides a counterbalance to the male gallery of historical representational portraits present in the Battle of Orsha Hall.