Michal Walicki (1904–1966) studied Art History at the University of Warsaw (1924–1929), where he received his doctorate for his dissertation on the murals in the Chapel of the Holy Trinity in the Castle of Lublin (1418), under the guidance of Prof. Zygmunt Batowski. He worked in the Department of Polish Architecture at the Warsaw Technical University, at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts (later the Academy of Fine Arts), at the National Museum, and the Art History Institute of the Warsaw University. In 1933, his earned his habilitation for his thesis on the stylistic development of panel painting in fifteenth–century Poland. During World War II, he participated in the resistance movement; he was arrested (in 1949) and put in prison. After his release (in 1953), he combined work at the Institute of History of Art at the Warsaw University and the State Institute of Art (later the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences). Michał Walicki’s academic activities encompassed a surprisingly wide spectrum of subjects, though his particular field of interest was painting. He had a ‘positivist’ temperament, concerned with a painstaking search for new works of art and the collecting of material, and above all with cataloguing and sharing the collections. In texts written before the war he built a firm foundation for the study of panel painting in fifteenth–century Poland, although his narrow national perspective is now certainly difficult to accept. After his employment at the National Museum in Warsaw, he changed his profile of research, focusing on modern painting (particularly Dutch), but also on the best understood popularization and education through art. After the war, he initiated and coordinated the work on a series of syntheses, setting new standards of quality in Polish academic studies. He belonged to the narrow circle of great humanists who could write about art with passion, in a manner accessible and understandable to all. He developed his own, easily recognizable style, impressionistic in character, well–suited to aesthetic experiences. As an outstanding university lecturer and museum official, he became one of the founders and most important authorities of the Warsaw school of art history, and as a personality had a profound impact on students and friends led by Jan Białostocki. Above all, he instilled in them a broad outlook on matters of art and the importance of publishing in foreign languages.

In the early modern period, there were around 40 religious confraternities in the agglomeration of Cracow, one of the oldest and most important being the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary at the Dominican Church of the Holy Trinity. It is not known when it was founded, but it was probably already operating in the late Middle Ages. In 1600, this confraternity, existing “ab immemorabilis tempore”, was reformed by Fr. Abraham Bzowski, who on this occasion prepared and published an extensive dissertation, having the character of its “statutes”. From 4 February 1601 the seat of the renewed confraternity was in the Chapel of the Three Kings, at the far end of the northern nave of the church. It contained the Brotherhood’s altar which was transferred, probably after 1688, to the church of St. Giles and placed on the altar’s stone in the apse of the presbytery. The altar contained the holy picture of the Virgin Mary of the Salus Populi Romani type, connected by tradition established in the first half of the 17th century with Pope Clement VIII, who was to grant it indulgences. Bernard Maciejowski, then Bishop of Łuck, later Bishop of Cracow and finally Primate, is considered as the donor of the painting. Every first Sunday in October, the Cracow copy of the Roman image was carried out by the brothers out of the chapel and in a solemn procession around the Main Square. This custom was linked to the victory of the Christian fleet over the Turkish one near Lepanto in 1571, after which Pope Pius V established its liturgical memory (7 October). In Poland, this tradition gained a new dimension after to the successful defence of the Chocim fortress against the Turks in 1621. The devotion to the Rosary was cultivated not only in the Brotherhood’s chapel, but also in the Conventual Church, where the altar of the Holy Rosary stood to the left of the choir entrance. Symmetrically to it, on the right side of the rainbow arcade stood the altar of the Confraternity of the Holy Name of Jesus, founded in 1585 by Fr. Bartłomiej of Przemyśl. Its aim was to eradicate the sinful custom of swearing oaths, and because of the connections with the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary it was called the Archconfraternity of the Rosary of the Most Holy Name of Jesus. The spreading of the rosary prayer by the Order went beyond the Conventual Church. A special role in this work was played by the Gothic Church of St. Giles, which the Dominicans took under their protection in 1588. An important caesura in the history of the Archconfraternity of the Holy Rosary was the move to a new spacious oratory, which was erected on the site of the medieval Chapel of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the far end of the southern nave of the church. One of the reasons for undertaking this new work is considered to be the desire to commemorate the victory of John III Sobieski over the Turks at Vienna on 12 September 1683. The opulent decor and interesting ideological programme have only partially survived, but they can be reconstructed on the basis of preserved written sources, as can be the character of the Brotherhood’s celebrations. Particularly interesting monuments include those connected with the so-called Century of the Rosary, established with the consent of Pope Innocent XII (1694). It was a congregation of 100 brothers and 100 sisters, whose task was to pray continuously for the souls suffering in Purgatory. Among other things, a book of this association has been preserved, which contains illuminations showing the salutary effects of the prayer of the Rosary.