“Just as before, with wishes that neither time nor my greying hair have cooled – yours always, loving you, Jan”

The outstanding artist Jan Matejko (1838–1893) was born in Kraków into an ecumenical family. He was the son of Franciszek Matejko, a Czech Catholic who had settled in Galicia and worked as a music teacher, and Joanna Rossberg, the Protestant daughter of a Kraków saddler. The atmosphere of his family home, together with the intellectual and academic milieu of Kraków, profoundly shaped his interests. Matejko became the foremost Polish history painter and played a pivotal role in shaping the historical imagination of the Polish nation. Drawing on preserved archival sources, this article reconstructs the traditions of family gatherings and domestic music-making, his artistic and social circles, friendships and collegial relationships, bonds of brotherhood, and the various forms of interpersonal relations that emerged from his engagement in social and public affairs.