Brightening up Lower Austrian devotional prints. Unrecorded.

[Hand-colored devotional prints]. S. Leopoldus. S.l.: s.n., s.a. [12.3 x 7.9 cm], [1] f. etching, stenciled with gray and pink pigments. Minor edge wear, contemporary inscription on verso.
[with:]
Weil ich hab an Dich gedacht Hab ich dieß Bild Dir mitgebracht. Maria Zell. S.l.: s.n., s.a. [10.4 x 6.8 cm], [1] f. etching, with added green and red pigments. Minor edge wear.
[and with:]
Consumatum est. M. Zell. M. Schatkamer. M. Taferl. Sontagberg. S.l.: s.n., s.a. [8.7 x 5.8 cm], [1] f. etching, stenciled with orange and blue powdered pigments. Minor edge wear.
 
 
Group of 3 unrecorded early 19th-century devotional prints notable for being overlaid with brightly colored patterns which are both unrelated to the subject matter and executed without regard to the design of the prints.
 
The prints depict subjects of typical interest to pilgrims visiting Lower Austrian pilgrimage sites, namely the venerable icons/statues of Maria Zell, Maria Schatkamer, Maria Taferl and Sonntagberg, as well as Saint Leopold the Good, Margrave of Austria (1073-1136), the region’s patron saint.
 
Copperplates of these subjects were engraved by the thousands, and those plates often were printed until worn out. In the first years of the 19th century, prints pulled from tired plates (and simply featuring tired designs) were sometimes ‘revived’ by being boldly stenciled with colors corresponding in no way to the subject matter of the print. These wildly tinted devotional images—only very rarely encountered today—are sometimes called Regenbogenbildchen (“rainbow pictures”; see Spamer, p. 261).
 
The inscription on the verso of the St. Leopold print refers to someone born in 1795.
 
 
None of these prints are located by OCLC, KVK, or the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek.
 
*A. Spamer, Das kleine Andachtsbild vom XIV bis zum XX Jahrhundert.