This work represents a copy of Henryk Hector Siemiradzki earliest works and it is considered one of his best masterpieces. I created this artwork in 2000. Oil on canvas.

The many versions of The Sword Dance, each slightly different (as we can conclude from the pencil-made study held in the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw, the artist resolved fundamental composition dilemmas at the drafting stage), are flagship examples of Siemiradzki's idyllic paintings. On the one hand, they wholly fall into the academic canons, but on the other, they display his realistic tendencies.

This particular version is a copy of the original painting, the first one in a row and now it belongs to the Tretyakov gallery in Moskow, Russia.

The scene depicts a nude girl dancing amidst Roman swords stuck upright into the ground, accompanied by three women playing on instruments. A group of patricians sitting in the shade observes the dancers. Thus, the anecdote is a little more complex than in idylls which usually depict merely scenes of repose next to a fountain or wine-drinking in the open air. The architectural background is relatively modest but not devoid of eye-catching decorations typical to Siemiradzki – meticulously reproduced colourful ornaments, fragments of Pompeian-style paintings, and tiger skin spread out on a stone step. There is a lot of open space in the painting and the foreground is dominated by lush, Mediterranean flora through which rays of sun seep in. In the background, a bay stretches out together with sun-bathed hills. Thanks to notes left by the artist's son, Leon, we know that the scene is located somewhere around Taormina in Sicily.