Al a bas ter is a rock with low hard ness, high co her ence, fine-crys tal line de vel op ment and forms an op ti cally "warm" sur face when pol ished. It has been used as a sculpt ing, dec o ra tive and ar chi tec tonic stone, of ten by civ i li za tions of the Med i ter ranean Sea Ba sin. Al a bas ter in the ar chi tec ture and sculp ture of Kraków is mainly from the Mid dle Mio cene (Badenian) and comes from de pos its within the Ukrai nian Carpathian Foredeep Ba sin, chiefly along its north ern mar gin in the "Podolia rim". It was quar ried around the mid-part of the Dnister River and its trib u tar ies, from Lviv (Lwów) to Khotyn (Chocim), and mostly at Zhuravno (¯urawno). The al a bas ter quar ried here was called Ruthenian, Pol ish, or Lvov "mar ble". Small quar ries were also lo cated at the front of the Carpathian overthrust, in clud ing the known de posit at £opuszka Wielka. The Mio cene al a bas ter has shades of white, yel low, green, brown, usu ally with dif fer ing spots or veins; of ten the rock is brecciated and partly semi-trans par ent. Al a bas ter has been quar ried in the Pol ish Re pub lic since the 16th cen tury, peak ing (also in fin ished stone prod ucts) be tween the world wars. The au thors pres ent ex am ples of al a bas ter us age in ec cle si as ti cal ed i fices of Kraków, for in stance in the Wawel Ca the dral, St. Mary's Church, the churches of Do min i can, Carmelite and Mis sion ary clergy, and also in some sec u lar build ings, e.g. the Jagiellonian Li brary.

Current research on Rococo sculpture in Mazovia and northern Lesser Poland has not taken into consideration Lvov Rococo sculpture. A total of thirteen works by a yet unidentified woodcarving workshop, probably of Lvov provenance, was located at the intersection of these two artistic regions, in the vicinity of Końskie, Opoczno, Przysucha and Rawa Mazowiecka. Its activity, commenced after 1780 in Pełczyska near Wiślica, lasted until ca. 1800, when the reredoses and lesser works of sculpture in Studzianna-Poświętne, Skrzyńsko, Nowy Kazanów, Końskie, Gowarczów, Drzewica, Rawa and Regnów were created. In formal terms, the anonymous “Master of Pełczyska”, as an epigone of the Lvov school of Rococo sculpture, shows a far-reaching dependency on the style of sculptures similar to that in the side altar of the Virgin Mary of Dzików in Tarnogród, in the Zamoyski family fee tail. This reredos was indirectly attributed to master Franciszek Olędzki from Lvov (active since 1771, d. 1792). The oeuvre of the “Master of Pełczyska” constitutes the second-largest assembly of Lvov Rococo sculptures outside the historical Ruthenian lands of the Crown of Poland. At the current stage of research, the discussed works, located at the intersection of the former Sandomierz and Rawa voivodeships, indicate the maximal influential range of these remarkably mobile artists towards the north-west of the Crown of Poland. Their migrations were directly connected, on the one hand, with the artistic crisis that followed the First Partition of the Commonwealth in 1772 and the annexation of Lvov by Austria, and, on the other hand, with the liquidation of monasteries after 1780 and the termination of existing ecclesiastic commissions. The short-lived activity of this workshop in the vicinity of Rawa is an important contribution to the research on the mosaic of external influences on provincial late Rococo sculpture in the fourth quarter of the 18th century in Mazovia.

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