Maurycy Gottlieb Gottlieb settled in Kraków and began working on his new major project. He died in the same year from health complications. Matejko attended his funeral and promised his father to look after his younger brother Marcin. Gottlieb won a gold medal at the Munich art competition for his painting, "Shylock and Jessica" (1876), portraying a scene from Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice". The painting was exhibited in Lviv in 1877, and in 1878 at "Zachęta" in Warsaw and widely acclaimed. Gottlieb based Jessica's face on that of Laura Rosenfeld, to whom he had proposed marriage. However, Laura rejected his proposal
Maurycy Gottlieb and wed a Berlin banker. Gottlieb planned to marry Lola Rosengarten, but when he heard about Rosenfeld's marriage, he knowingly exposed himself to the elements, dying of complications from a cold and sore throat. Despite his premature death at the age of 23, more than three hundred of his works survive (mostly sketches, but also oil paintings), though not all are finished. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, many Polish collections unknown in the West were popularized, and his reputation grew greatly. His brother Leopold Gottlieb was born five years after his death and became known as a painter