Conversations with God: Jan Matejko’s Copernicus exhibition National Gallery ★★★★★

There was a time when the most learned folk in Christendom believed that the Earth sat at the heart of the heavens. It was thought that the heavenly bodies – the sun included – circled our planetary home, and that God had put humans at the centre of his grand plan. But Nicolaus Copernicus, a Polish mathematician and astronomer, had a theory; the Earth, he posited, orbited the sun. A free exhibition at the National Gallery explores a very special portrait of Copernicus, painted by a fellow countryman 400 years after his death.

Jan Matejko (1838-93) was an artist working at a time before Poland became an independent nation. But a sense of Polish identity was building, and Matejko was an active member in the movement for independence. He painted notable figures and chapters from Poland’s history and Copernicus, whose mathematical treatise on heliocentrism had an immeasurable impact on astronomy, was a perfect subject.

Matejko’s 10-foot wide portrait is titled Copernicus Conversation with God (1873). Although Copernicus had proved that the Earth is not at the centre of the solar system, he saw no contradictions between his discoveries and his faith, unlike Galileo, who would come into conflict with the Catholic Church. Here he gazes up at the stars from a rooftop in his hometown Frombork, a diagram of his crucial theory at his side. The town’s cathedral spires pierce the starry heavens behind him and he raises his hand in a gesture of listening, as though a godly voice has spoken.

This is the first time this painting has been exhibited in the UK. It is a well-loved image in Poland and usually resides in the Jagiellonian University Museum, Kraków. It is accompanied here by a few items, including a copy of Copernicus’s On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, published in 1543, the year of his death. It is a nice touch also that the stars painted on the wall of gallery space depict the constellations as they would have appeared on the night of Copernicus's death in 1543.

Although this exhibition occupies a single room, it tells a fascinating story about two men who called the region of modern-day Poland their home, while bringing to light a portrait dripping in narrative atmosephere.