The paintings by Jan Henryk Rosen in the so-called Chapel of John III Sobieski (Guardian Angels) at St Joseph's Church on the Kahlenberg (Vienna) were created in 1930. The overall painting decoration of the interior of the chapel consists of three separate paintings: "Pope Innocent XI asks God for help". (on the altar wall, opposite the entrance); "King John III Sobieski attending a Mass celebrated by the papal legate Marc d'Aviano". (on the wall opposite the window, to the left of the entrance); "Polish knight folding the Turkish flag at the feet of Sts Joseph, Leopold and John Capistrano" (above the entrance) and coats of arms on the walls and vault (designed and executed by Kazimierz Smuczak), as well as the ornamental glazing of the window, designed by Jan Henryk Rosen.

According to the Austrian tradition (there are two parallel - contradictory - traditions and it seems that, in view of the inaccuracy of historical sources, which often allow for multiple interpretations, neither of them can be authoritatively given precedence and resolved, It seems that, in view of the historical sources which often allow for multiple interpretations, none of them can be authoritatively given precedence to determine where the event actually took place), this mass was supposed to have taken place in the ruins of the church on Leopoldsberg, another of the hills surrounding Vienna, which in Sobieski's time was called Kahlenberg, and its present name was only established after 1683, after the construction of St Leopold's church there. The current name was not established until 1683, after the construction of St. Leopold's Church there. The hill that is now called Kahlenberg was originally called Schweinberg. In the ruins of the church on Kahlenberg (a temple belonging to the Camaldolese hermitage that had existed there since the first half of the 17th century, destroyed by the besieging Turks), on the morning of 12 September 1683, before the decisive battle of Vienna, the papal legate Marco d'Aviano celebrated Mass, with John III Sobieski serving. The celebrant, instead of the customary "Ite, missa est" at the end of the Mass was to say the prophetic words: "Ioannes vinces".

After 1683, the Camaldolese monks returned to the hermitage and the church was rebuilt. However, at the end of the 18th century, as part of the Josephine reforms, the hermitage was dissolved and the site fell into private hands. It was not until the middle of the 19th century that the new private owners restored the church and in 1852 it was rededicated. On 23 March 1906, the Resurrectionist Fathers residing in Vienna took over the Kahlenberg church. The first rector of the church on behalf of the Resurrectionist Fathers was Fr Jakub Kukliński (1871-1946), who held this office until 1923. It was at his initiative that the church, which was in a dilapidated state, was rebuilt. It was then that the plan was to decorate the chapel with murals, which were designed by Józef Mehoffer in 1911 at the request of Father Kukliński (sketches preserved in the collection of the National Museum in Kraków, Branch of the Józef Mehoffer House). In addition to the mosaic coats of arms of the knights who took part in the Battle of Vienna, the chapel was to be decorated with:

"three historical paintings alluding to the events that took place in the memorable September of 1683. The first depicted King John III receiving Holy Communion, in the clouds above him the figure of Our Lady with the Child Jesus can be seen, and at their feet are the words that the papal legate was to prophetically utter at the end of the Mass: 'Joannes vinces'; below the painting on the drapery was a white Polish eagle. The second painting depicted Pope Innocent XI praying to St Joseph for the prosperity of the arms of the united Christian armies; the third depicted St Michael the Archangel with his left hand shielding the cross on the tower of St Stephen's Cathedral, and holding a fiery sword in his right hand. The designs for the paintings were exhibited in 1912 at the XXIII International Eucharistic Congress'.

The outbreak of the First World War prevented the realisation of Mehoffer's designs (only the grille closing the entrance to the chapel was made to his design), and the need for further renovation work on the church and subsequent financial difficulties postponed the execution of the paintings until 1930, when the commission was referred to Jan Henryk Rosen. 'This was already the second case (besides the painting decoration of the Armenian Cathedral in Lviv) when Rosen replaced Mehoffer - after many years of negotiations with the commissioning party (mainly concerning the question of the Krakow painter's remuneration). Jadwiga Mehoffer wrote bitterly: "Mehoffer did not anticipate that if, in that moment of happy inspiration, he had been able to relinquish the Armenian polychrome in favour of Axentowicz, he would have spared himself the future clashes and unnecessary deals that lasted for several years and, finally, the acute disappointment he suffered after completing the unused large painting 'Mass on Kahlenberg'. This painting, as well as the decoration of the Armenian Cathedral, went to waste for similar austerity reasons. Polish artists rightly complained about the usual ways of doing good business when it came to art commissions. Alleged patrons established the law of gratuitousness by ensuring that artists were workers, that their work was not worth less than others, and perhaps even, if it was good, required more effort'.

Rosen made the decoration with the help of Kazimierz Smuczak (1906-1996), with whom he had begun his collaboration - as a contractor for decorative parts (i.e. non-figural parts such as ornaments, borders, etc.) and larger areas of uniform backgrounds - around 1927 when painting the Armenian Cathedral in Lviv. A document that Rosen issued to his assistant has survived: "I certify that P. Kazimierz Smuczak worked with me at the Armenian Cathedral in Lviv from 1927 to 1929, where he made the ornamentation in the chancel and on the rainbow. In 1930 he made ornaments in the chapel of the Latin Seminary in Lwow and of the same year in the Armenian Cathedral. In the same year, he went with me to Vienna, where he made, according to his own design, a coat-of-arms decoration for the Jan Sobieski Chapel on the Kahlenberg [...]', dated Lviv, 27 July 1935 (original spelling; photocopy of the document from the collection of Professor Władysław Kucharski of Lublin, received courtesy of Monsignor Anastazy Nadolny of Pelplin, in the collection of Joanna Wolańska). Smuczak was Rosen's full-time assistant until the latter's departure for the United States in November 1937. He also painted with him at Castel Gandolfo, and ornamental decorations of his own design were also executed alongside Rosen's paintings in the baptistery at the Church of St Mary Magdalene in Lviv (not preserved), the parish church in Krościenko Wyżne and the seminary chapel in Przemyśl. He painted the coats of arms a second time in the parish church in Lesko, on the occasion of his last joint project with Rosen. Smuczak designed and made the coats of arms himself, whose heraldic correctness and styling, however, met with devastating criticism from specialists.

The work lasted from the summer to the late autumn of 1930. The themes of Rosen's paintings do not in principle differ from the iconographic programme of the decoration planned in 1911 and designed by Mehoffer. It can therefore be assumed that the themes were subjected to both artists by Fr Kuklinski.

The Kahlenberg chapel is a small single-span room on a roughly 3.5 m square rectangular plan, covered with a cross vault. Only the walls to the left of the entrance and opposite it (the altar wall) form an uninterrupted plane; the wall to the right is pierced by a window in a deep bifold and the entrance wall by a wide arcade. Larger figural scenes could therefore decorate the altar wall and the wall to the left of the entrance and above it; the other planes - the vault and the window glyphs - are not suitable for depicting monumental compositions. The paintings decorate the altar wall (opposite the entrance, "Pope Innocent XI asks God for help"), the wall to the left of the entrance ("King John III Sobieski attending mass, celebrated by the papal legate") and the wall to the left of the entrance ("King John III Sobieski attending mass, celebrated by the papal legate"). celebrated by the papal legate Marc d'Aviano') and above it ('A Polish knight folding the Turkish flag at the feet of St Joseph, Leopold and John Capistrano ' ). All paintings are provided with the author's signature and date, framed by Baroque-style gold cartouches.

As far as the form is concerned, the paintings in the Sobieski Chapel show all the characteristic features of Rosen's style: clear drawing combined with vivid, saturated colours and richness of detail, especially in the decoration of the clothes or the form of the weapons, modelled on authentic objects from the period or their images (Andrzej Pieńkos characterised Rosen's paintings as follows: "This intimate realisation presents scenes related to the Battle of Vienna in 1683. in a simplified stylisation, using bold colours and blunt symbols. It is neither avant-garde painting nor historicism, but one of the more outstanding mural realisations of the 'golden mean' trend, which came to prominence in many European countries in the 1920s and 1930s"). This is the case, for example, with the green 'Prophet's Banner', which a Polish knight places at the feet of three patron saints (Joseph - patron saint of the church on Kahlenberg, Leopold - patron saint of Austria and Vienna, and John Capistrano - leader of the anti-Turkish crusade in the 15th century.), very faithfully reproduced on the basis of its widespread graphic representations (the painter could have traced it, for example, from an engraving published in Fr Kukliński's work 'Kahlenberg. Die Belagerung und der Entsatz Wiens 1683', p. 69, which in turn is, as evidenced by the original descriptions accompanying the drawing, a reprint from an earlier publication in French). In addition, the painter used his favourite golden background twice here - used especially for unrealistic, symbolic representations (as in the above-mentioned scene presenting the three saints or the allusion to the crusade of Louis IX, sketchily depicted in the background of the 'Mass at Kahlenberg'). Finally, as was his custom, he portrayed contemporaries in the figures depicted in the paintings, including his assistant Casimir Smuczak (his features include the face of St Leopold). Rosen was unable to paint convincing physiognomies 'from the head', so when painting faces he always asked someone to pose (for more on Rosen's painting practice and technique, including the pigments and binders he used, see Joanna Wolańska, 'The Armenian Cathedral in Lviv in 1902-1938', passim).

In the window located in the wall to the right of the entrance there is an ornamental stained glass, or rather a one-ton painting on honey-coloured glass, designed by Rosen, depicting the coat of arms of the Republic in an ornamental cartouche with panoplies and horns of plenty, founded by Adam Gubrynowicz. The vault and the wall surfaces between the above-mentioned paintings, framed in Baroque profiled copper sheeting, are filled with the coats of arms of over a hundred families whose members took part in the Battle of Vienna (the coats of arms were a kind of bric-a-brac as their painting in the chapel depended on a financial donation from the descendants of the participants in the battle, which made it possible to finance the paintings in the chapel). In 1989, a statue of John III Sobieski, salvaged from the monument to the "liberation from the Turks" ("Türkenbefreiungsdenkmal"), erected in St Stephen's Cathedral for the 200th anniversary of the relief, was placed in the window niche.