The Constitution of May 3, 1791 (Polish: Konstytucja 3 Maja 1791 roku) is an 1891 Romantic oil painting on canvas by the Polish artist Jan Matejko. It is a large piece, and one of Matejko's best known. It memorializes the Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791, a milestone in the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the high point of the Polish Enlightenment.
Like many Matejko works, the picture presents a grand scene populated with numerous historic figures, including Poland's last King, Stanisław August Poniatowski; Marshals of the Great Sejm Stanisław Małachowski and Kazimierz Nestor Sapieha; co-authors of the Constitution such as Hugo Kołłątaj and Ignacy Potocki; and other major contemporary figures such as Tadeusz Kościuszko. Some twenty individuals have been identified by modern historians; another ten or so who had been reported in older sources as being present, await definitive identification.
The picture was painted between January and October 1891 to commemorate the Constitution's centenary. It was one of the last works by Matejko, who died in November 1893. The painting was displayed in Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) until 1920, when it was moved to Kraków. It was hidden during World War II and later moved to Warsaw, where it now hangs in the Royal Castle.
The Constitution of May 3, 1791 was adopted as a "Government Act" (Polish: Ustawa rządowa) on that date by the Sejm (parliament) of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It has been called "the first constitution of its type in Europe" and the world's second oldest constitution.
It was designed to redress long-standing political defects of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Commonwealth's system of "Golden Liberty", which conferred disproportionate rights on the nobility, had increasingly corrupted the Commonwealth's politics. The Constitution sought to supplant the existing anarchy fostered by some of the country's magnates with a more democratic constitutional monarchy. It introduced political equality between townspeople and nobility (szlachta) and placed the peasants under the protection of the government, thus mitigating the worst abuses of serfdom. The Constitution abolished pernicious parliamentary institutions such as the liberum veto, which at one time had put the Sejm at the mercy of any deputy who might choose, or be bribed by an interest or foreign power, to undo the legislation adopted by that Sejm.
The adoption of the May 3 Constitution met with hostile political and military responses from the Commonwealth's neighbors. In the Polish–Russian War of 1792 (sometimes called the "War in Defense of the Constitution"), the Commonwealth was attacked by Catherine the Great's Imperial Russia allied with the Targowica Confederation, a coalition of Polish magnates and landless nobility who opposed reforms that might weaken their influence. The Commonwealth's ally Prussia, under Frederick William II, broke its alliance, and the Commonwealth was defeated. In the end, the Constitution of May 3 remained in force for little more than one year. Despite the Commonwealth's defeat in the Polish–Russian War and the ensuing partitions which eliminated the Commonwealth, the May 3 Constitution remained for more than 123 years a beacon in the struggle to restore Polish sovereignty. In the words of two of its co-authors, Ignacy Potocki and Hugo Kołłątaj, it was "the last will and testament of the expiring Country."
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