Coffin portrait

The tradition was limited to Commonwealth countries,[citation needed] although the term may also describe the Ancient Egyptian mummy portraits.

[citation needed] They were commonly painted on sheet metal (copper, tin or lead plates) and fixed on the narrow ends of the coffins at the side where the head of the deceased lay.

Historian Bernard O'Connor in his memoirs of 1696 wrote: "There is so much pomp and ceremony in Polish funerals that you would sooner take them to be a triumphant event than the burial of the dead".

Until the 20th century, the coffin portraits were ignored by scholars; those painted on silver or tin were stolen from churches and monasteries and then melted down, others were destroyed by treasure hunters and thieves, or simply fell to the ravages of time.

Today the surviving coffin portraits provide a wealth of knowledge about culture (clothing, hairstyles and jewellery) of the Commonwealth nobility.