Prayer Before Battle is a grand scale painting by Jósef Chelmonskí where we see foot soldiers of the forces of the Polish Uprising against the Russian Empire take to their knees under their banner before the onslaught at Raclawice in 1794. The red caps of the drummers and the homemade scythes of the infantry were to become emblematic of Polish nationalism. In the expressions of some of the participants and the golden skies, the artist seems to idealise both faith and the national vision. It was painted in 1906.
Jósef Chelmonskí’s’ Prayer Before Battle is in the National Museum in Wroclaw, Poland.