"Coloured panes": watercolour documentation of mediaeval stained glass of St. Mary's Church

In 1864, in Kraków, an unusual initiative was undertaken to create an illustrated corpus of stained glass of Galicia. The proponent of the idea was the painter Ludwik Łepkowski. In the years 1864–1865, he made watercolour-tinted drawings of all the mediaeval stained-glass panels in the area of Galicia that survived at that time. The work was financed by Baron Edward Rastawiecki, with whom the painter had previously collaborated in developing the Wzory sztuki średniowiecznej [Models of Mediaeval Art] series, published since 1835. The drawings sent to him by Łepkowski were later transferred, along with other items from Rastawiecki’s collection, to the Society of the Friends of Sciences in Poznań. Unfortunately, they were lost during the World War II. Having said that, in the collection of the Institute of Art History of the Jagiellonian University there has survived an album with working drawings, which is a unique testimony to the state of preservation of the stained glass prior to their first documented conservation. The article analyses this set of watercolours, with particular emphasis on those depicting stained glass in St. Mary’s Church against the background of the practice, prevailing at the time, of documenting this type of works of art. The Kraków initiative, undertaken with a view to creating illustrative material for research in the field of art history, was one of the few such comprehensive inventories of the sets of stained-glass panels. The format of watercolours testifies to the growing awareness of the criteria that should be met by scientific documentation.