The sculpture depicts Copernicus supported by a column and books and scrolls lying on it. The work is placed on a low plinth. The statue was probably created to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the astronomer's birth and the establishment of the Copernican Museum in Rome at the time (on a joint Polish-Italian initiative), to which works were donated by, among others, Polish artists Wiktor Brodzki and Henryk Siemiradzki. The statue remained in Sosnowski's Roman studio until 1883, then was exhibited at the International Exhibition of Fine Arts in Rome, after which it was donated to the Resurrectionists (since the completion of their new church in 1889, the statue has stood in its present location).

Sosnowski had already depicted prominent representatives of ancient Polish culture on several occasions, seeking a compromise between the credibility of historical costume and the classicist convention inherited from his master Pietro Tenerani. "The astronomer stands 'en face', in counterpoint (...). The only deviation from the slightly anticised [earlier statues of him] by Czacki, Mickiewicz and Fr Skarga, was to put Copernicus on his shoulders in a fur-lined coat, with a large collar with lapels. In this way, the statue of the Frombork canon became the artist's least classical work, but just as cold and lacking in naturalness as the previous ones" (Lechosław Lameński). The scholar's face also seems to have been rendered in a manner inconsistent with the classicising style; perhaps Sosnowski was modelled here on late Gothic sculpture. A plaster model of the statue can be found in the Pontifical Polish College. The Church and Monastery of the Resurrectionists contain many interesting but forgotten works of Polish painting and sculpture of the 19th and 20th centuries; the Copernicus at the entrance to their complex has become the showpiece of this forgotten art museum.