Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn

Painting workshops, working to meet the needs of rural consumers, prepared a wide range of paintings differing in price, purpose, and quality. They were painted on various bases, for example, on zinc or iron sheets in the 17th and 18th centuries. Paintings on such a surface were mainly intended for roadside shrines; most of them were created in the first half of the 19th century. Paintings on linden or poplar planks were more valued than sheet metal. They were made in guild workshops, mainly as copies of the Jasna Góra painting, and were intended for churches. A special group among them were the so-called decorated paintings, in which only the faces and hands were painted, while the parts of robes and the background were made of plastic mass using the decorative comb technique. However, the basic assortment of craft workshops – from Częstochowa, Lesser Poland or Silesia – were paintings on canvas. The cheapest but also the least durable paintings were created on paper. At first, they were painted with varnish paints on cardboard made of cotton. In the second half of the 19th century tempera water paints started to be used with rye clay or gelatine sometimes added in order to increase the covering function.