A crowd of deputies, soldiers and townspeople presses through a street below the Royal Castle in Warsaw, heading for a church beneath a forest of banners. At the center, a white-haired man in light clothes is carried on shoulders, holding up the text of the constitution. At the left, King Stanisław August in a red cloak climbs the church steps, with Hugo Kołłątaj in black behind him. On May 3, 1791, after the Sejm adopted the constitution in the Royal Castle, the deputies went to St.

John's church to swear it before God, at the king's request. The Polish History Museum calls it the first written constitution in Europe. Jan Matejko chose the moment between castle and church and mixed real participants with symbols: the burgher leader Jan Dekert, who had died a year earlier, greets the king, and Tadeusz Kościuszko wears a bloody bandage for the wounds he would receive in 1794. Matejko began painting in January 1891 and let the unfinished canvas be shown in Kraków on May 3.

He gave it to the Polish nation. Hidden in the attic of Warsaw's Zachęta gallery in 1939, it was moved in 1984 to the rebuilt Royal Castle, where it hangs in the room before the Senators' Hall.