[2] Stattler was born in Kraków five years after the third of the military partitions of Poland by the three neighbouring Empires and the suppression of the Polish Kościuszko Uprising by the occupying forces.

A year later, he enrolled at the drawing class of the School of Fine Arts and made quick progress in the workshops of professors Antoni Brodowski, Józef Peszka and Franciszek Lampi.

In 1818–27 he went to Italy, and continued his art studies at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome under Andrea Pozzi and privately with Vincenzo Camuccini and Bertel Thorvaldsen; as well as at the Academy of Vienna since 1822 under Antonio Canova.

He was friends with Juliusz Słowacki, Aleksander Fredro, Antoni Odyniec and prominent others, including Adam Mickiewicz with whom he corresponded.

Juliusz Słowacki described it as the Polish epic in Roman costume, with Antiochus demanding submission and subservience from the Jews like Russians from the Poles in the November Uprising.

[11] Financial needs prompted them to leave Kraków for Warsaw around 1870, nevertheless Stattler refused the lucrative offer to paint 50 copies of the Russian Tsar Alexander.