High Altar Research Articles

Интеграция многофигурных повествовательных сцен и структурные трансформации в итальянском алтарном полиптихе XIV века

Painted polyptych altarpieces appeared on high altars in late Duecento in the churches of mendicant orders. They were characterized by a special manner of organizing visual material by juxtaposing single half-figures with each other and arranging them in rows and columns, allowing no room for narrative elements, widely used at that time in panel painting. Such narrative-free character of main altarpieces would be preserved throughout the whole period of their popularity. However, polyptychs created in late Trecento integrated narrative scenes and even entire cycles into the structure of the altarpieces, which required new approaches to composition and to the use of pictorial space. The article examines the role of narrative content in altarpieces of late Trecento and discusses the origins and development of this new style.

Assumption of the Virgin by P.P. Rubens: On a Modello from 1611

An Assumption of the Virgin (c. 1611˗13) was painted by Rubens for the High Altar of Antwerp Cathedral and is now part of the collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. On 22 April 1611, Rubens (successfully) submitted two modelli. One modello in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg is widely accepted as one of the two. The second has not been convincingly identified yet. Rubens’ Assumption of the Virgin in the Royal Collection in London (c. 1613 or later) has been the subject of much discussion. The (previously unpublished) panel that emerged in Antwerp a few years ago is therefore most interesting. Dendrochronological research (KIK-IRPA) has shown that its wooden panel (consisting of three oak planks) came from a tree cut down in about 1590. Our modello differs from the London version, for instance, in the Virgin’s right palm (turned upwards) and in two angels holding each other’s arm who appear to the right in a cloud. The question of Rubens’ Assumption of the Virgin of 1611 drew the attention of several art historians, many of them rejecting the London panel as clearly being of a later date. The comparison of the Hermitage modello with our picture supplies interesting analogies, like the representation of the young women on the left. Similarities in the faces of the angels carrying the Virgin and especially the angel with blonde hair are striking.

Conjuring Up a King

Conjuring Up a King

Deciphering the Inscriptions on “The Adoration of the Magi” by Bartholomäus Zeitblom on the High Altar of Blaubeuren

The Blaubeuren monastery (Germany) is home to one of the most beautiful religious artistic expressions of Swabian art from the end of the 15th century, a collaborative work of various artists and workshops, including Jörg Syrlin the Younger, Michel Erhart, Hans Schüchlin, Bartholomäus Zeitblom, and Bernhard Strigel. It is a high altar triptych with a double opening. On its right inner bas-relief is “The Adoration of the Magi”, a work by Bartholomäus Zeitblom (ca. 1455–1520), a prominent member of the Ulm School. In the scene, on King Balthazar’s leg, there is a short literary text and a number, “DIER ZVO LIEB 100”, as well as a crowned monogram among floral elements. In this decipherment study, we propose meanings for all of these inscriptions, based on a collection of various previous solutions. The conclusions lead us to a pious expression toward the Child God based on an old Tyrolean Christmas carol compiled in the 19th century, which we trace back to at least the 15th century, an author’s signature by Zeitblom, and an acknowledgment of the royalty of the Virgin Mother Mary.

„Megbízottam szoborral hétfőn este indul…” Az egervári Straub-szobrok múzeumba kerülésének és másoltatásának története dokumentumok tükrében

The rococo wooden statues of St Sebastian and St Roch were purchased by the Museum of Fine Arts in 1916. Earlier they had adorned the high altar of the church of St Catherine of Alexandria in Egervár (Zala county) flanking the tabernacle. Their first researcher, Mária Aggházy attributed them to the Graz sculptor Philipp Jakob Straub (Wiesensteig 1706–Graz 1774). The Egervár church of mediaeval origin belonged after the Ottoman era to the advowson of the Széchényi family who had trade and art relations with Styria, too; they had the church rebuilt and furnished in baroque style in the mid-18th century.As part of the contract of sale, the museum undertook and financed the making of exact copies of the statues to replace the original ones on the high altar, where they still are. It can be reconstructed from the correspondence of 1912–’22 preserved in and Museum of Fine Arts Archives and the Archives of the Diocesan Archives in Szombathely that probably little before 1912 the statues were transferred to the Szombathely episcopacy for conservation. Bishop János Mikes had them restored and maybe also exhibited. Their sale became necessary for the parish to be able to renovate the deteriorating Egervár church. The deal was concluded with an ordinary procedure, but World War I and the inflation it entailed greatly protracted the making of the copies and boosted the costs. Eventually, the replicas were completed in two phases by teachers of the National Royal Hungarian School of Applied Arts, sculptor Sándor Matéka (St Sebastian) and decorator and furniture designer Béla Kajdy (St Roch).

Daniel Gran und die Anfänge seines Schaffens in den böhmischen Ländern

Paintings by François Roëttiers (1685–1742) delivered in 1732 for the side altars of the Church of St John of Nepomuk in Krahulčí near Telč, whose builders and patrons were Count Franz Anton of Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn and his wife Marie Anna of Halleweil, are the unique contribution in the Czech Lands of this painter of Flemish origin, who later settled in Vienna. However, the artist of the original image on the high altar of the same church, St John of Nepomuk adoring the crucifix, now missing, is not this painter. The original Baroque painting was replaced in 1890 by the current painting by the academic painter and restorer Čeněk Neumann. Contemporary records of his painting refer to it as a copy of the original Baroque painting. However, the distinctive visages of St John of Nepomuk and the attending angels evoke strikingly the work of the famous Viennese painter Daniel Gran (1694–1757), whose first contacts with clients in the Czech Lands are documented in the late 1720s. Apart from several indirect indications, Gran's presumed authorship is significantly supported by the finding of a Baroque graphic sheet with the figure of John of Nepomuk adoring the crucifix, whose very specific rendered face evidently corresponds to the matching part of Neumann's copy of the Baroque original. Johann Ernst Mansfeld (1739–1796), the creator of the graphic transcript, identified Daniel Gran as the author of the original which was used.

Cultural Encounter, Race, and a Humanist Ideology of Empire in the Art of Trecento Venice

Cultural Encounter, Race, and a Humanist Ideology of Empire in the Art of Trecento Venice

Inter-faith relations and their spatial representation in the Late Medieval Aegean: the double-apsed churches of Kythnos in the Western Cyclades

This article discusses the double-apsed churches (single-naved churches with two high altars) of Kythnos in the western Cyclades. The reasons for this uncommon configuration, although much debated, are not entirely clear. According to local tradition, during the period of Latin rule (thirteenth–seventeenth centuries) double-apsed churches were designed to accommodate both Orthodox and Catholic liturgies, or even some combination of the two. Combining information from written sources with architectural surveys at Oria Kastro, the island's ruined medieval capital, an attempt is made here to document Kythnos’ double-apsed churches and identify how these small provincial monuments reflect socio-religious conditions and inter-faith relations in the late medieval Aegean.

The evolution and development of pop art in the visual field of digital art design

Pop art originated in Britain in 1950, became popular in the United States in the 1960s, and then spread to Italy, Japan and other countries. It pulled art from the high altar, obliterated the boundary between art and life, and made art less inscrutable and obscure, but more affinity. This paper focuses on the pop art style in modern and contemporary art and design works, and discusses the audience's demand for pop art pop culture in the context of contemporary multiculturalism. As a common, popular and commercial art form, pop art has exerted a subtle influence in many fields of design. It emphasizes interest and rebellious spirit, affecting the diversified development of design. This paper is an accurate control of the current design trend, and also a practical exploration of digital redesign of pop art style.

New Findings about the History of the Church of Riešė

The present church of St Stanislaus the Bishop in Riešė (Pol., Rzesza) was built in the first half of the twentieth century, but its history reaches the fifteenth century. In those years, there were several wooden Catholic churches or chapels in the area of Riešė. The article describes the history of the Church of the Name of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was built in 1790 in the territory of the manor of Didžioji Riešė. Only some details have been mentioned in scholarly literature so far. The church, which was built on private property, actually belonged to the parish of the Dominicans of Verkiai. Between 1868 and 1906, the small church of Riešė was unable to provide services because of the tsarist colonial policy. At the beginning of the twentieth century, it became a filial church of Verkiai, and in 1919 the parish of Riešė was established. Early in the twentieth century, the church was renovated and extended, but it was burnt to ashes by the Wehrmacht in 1944. Thus, the photographs by Jan Bulhak, which are kept at the Lithuanian State History Archives, is all that can give us a picture of the past. These photographs depict the painting The Vision of St Stanislaus Kostka by Szymon Czechowicz (1689–1775) from the high altar of the old church, which is actually a copy of the altarpiece painted for the church of Sant’Andrea al Quirinale in Rome by Carlo Maratta in about 1686. This piece of art has never been mentioned in any article on Czechowicz. The presumption made in the article is that the piece of art could have arrived to Riešė some time between the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century, when the manors of Didžioji Riešė and Gulbinų Raudondvaris belonged to Jan Kazimierz Zyberk (Sieberg zu Wischling, 1742–1820), a general lieutenant of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and his wife Jadwiga Plater (c. 1780–1833).

Fra Angelico's The Miracle of the Black Leg: Skin Colour and the Perception of Ethiopians in Florence before 1450

For the high altar of San Marco in Florence, Fra Angelico painted a scene in which Saints Cosmas and Damian graft the black leg of a deceased Ethiopian onto the body of a white European devotee. The white man, upon awaking, ‘saw nothing wrong’. Did he, or his audience around 1440, really have no objection to his new black leg? It would seem that to them the issue was not that the leg was black, but whether or not it came from a Christian. This essay uses Fra Angelico's image to ask broad questions about the contingency of skin colour and its associations in Florence before the advent of the transatlantic slave trade. It reviews the polarized position of recent scholarship on race in premodern Europe and seeks to follow a middle path. The development of this imagery after 1500, especially in Spain, shows racialized hostility towards the Ethiopian, which was not necessarily the case in the early fifteenth‐century examples discussed here. Instead, ideas of unity, rather than difference, will be employed as a framework for interpretation.

Johann Lucas Kracker: új kutatási eredmények

Johann Lucas Kracker: új kutatási eredmények

The Dominican High Altar in Bern and the Failure of Iconography

THE IDIOSYNCRATIC ICONOGRAPHY of the high altar for the Dominican church in Bern has long resisted scholarly interpretation. Indeed, the seeming incoherence of the iconographic program has led recent scholars to call into question the authorship and location of the six surviving panels, rejecting outright that panels belonged together at all. My article, however, demonstrates that the unusual iconography represents an attempt by the Dominicans to commission an innovative program designed to salvage their tarnished reputation in the wake of an inquisitional trial that saw four of their brothers executed as heretics. Moreover, I argue that its perceived iconographic incoherence replicates a breakdown in the altar’s intended persuasive function; just as scholars could not decode its polemic four centuries on, it failed to cohere into a convincing argument for the friars’ redemption. The high altar thus offers an opportunity to reflect on what it means for a new iconography to come into being and, in turn, to lose its legibility for Reformation and modern viewers alike.

Die "Taufe Christi" im Werk von Johann Lucas Kracker

In recent years, the set of drawings by Johann Lucas Kracker (1719–1779) has been enlarged with 12 pieces. The sheets preserved in the museum of Debrecen include a sketch showing the baptism of Christ in the Jordan. It is the first variant of the high altar of the Premonstratensian abbey in Jasov. Two exquisite painted oil sketches for the enormous picture of the high altar signed in 1762 (Košice / Jasov, Bratislava, Slovak National Gallery) have long been known. The drawing is a far simpler composition with few figures, reminiscently of Daniel Gran's painting for the high altar of Vienna's church of the Brothers Hospitallers (1736). The painted sketches were extended with genre figures from the motivic set of Paul Troger (1698–1762) and with the large angel holding a drapery behind Jesus. Kracker painted another two reduced versions on the basis of the sketches: for a side altar in the remonstratensian church in Nová Říše and a small mural for the church of Rancířov (1763). To the picture of the high altar in Jasov a monumental fresco cycle belongs narrating the legend of John the Baptist; their epic character suggests the inspiration of the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark and Luke, while the drawn sketch was presumably inspired by St John's Gospel. The commission was given by abbot Andreas Sauberer (1700–1779).

Figure pontificale et maquette ecclésiale au cœur de l'abside à Rome (VIe -IXe siècle)

The visual formula of the church founder as a model bearer highlights the close links between the founder himself, the martyrs and God. In the Roman basilicas of Santi Cosma e Damiano (6th century) and Santa Prassede (9th century), the pope perpetuates his presence on the apse of the donated church by staging the gift of the building, thus fixing the act of donation of the church - depicted in miniature - within the donated church itself. Through these mosaic decorations above the high altar, the pope is inscribed in the collective memory and in a system of commemorations to ensure his salvation. By reappropriating architectural, textual and iconographic formulas that have been authoritative since the 4th century, the pope inscribes himself in a tradition and legitimises the exercise of spiritual power. Thus, the micro-architecture of the church echoes the basilica perceived as a monumental reliquary and offers a vision of a spiritualised materiality. In a church that prefigures the heavenly Jerusalem, the pope presents the ecclesia that he offers to the martyrs and to God and represents the Ecclesia, the necessary intermediary between the faithful and God.

Multispectral Imaging and p-XRF for the Non-Invasive Characterization of the Anonymous Devotional Painting ‘Maria Santissima delle Grazie’ from Mirabella Imbáccari (Sicily, Italy)

This work presents the results of the in situ, non-invasive diagnostic investigations performed on the canvas oil painting depicting Madonna and Child, venerated as ‘Maria Santissima delle Grazie’ by the local religious community. The work of art (72 cm × 175 cm) is located on the high altar of the main Church in Mirabella Imbáccari, near Catania (Sicily, Italy). The painter is anonymous, and the supposed dating is the late eighteenth century. Although the painting has never been studied before, it has been attributed to a Sicilian workshop in the literature, raising the doubts of the art historian who conducted this study and who hypothesized a Neapolitan manufacture. Furthermore, due to the good conservation state detected by a macroscopic examination, doubts also arose about dating. To shed light on these aspects, a technical-scientific examination proved necessary. Multispectral imaging techniques (IR Reflectography, UV-induced visible Fluorescence, X-ray) are carried out for the study of the execution technique, the identification of underlying remakes, sketch drawing and the evaluation of the conservation conditions. XRF spectrometry analysis is performed for the identification of the chemical elements constituting the pigments (inorganic chromophores). The diagnostic results allowed this research to confirm the dating suggested by the historical-stylistic knowledge and to highlight new technical peculiarities supporting the attribution to a Neapolitan workshop.

Retooling Medievalism for Early Modern Painting in Annibale Carracci’s Pietà with Saints in Parma

Annibale Carracci (1560–1609) drew on the Italian Renaissance tradition of the Man of Sorrows to advance the Christological message within the altarpiece context of his Pietà with Saints (1585). From its location at the high altar of the Capuchin church of St. Mary Magdalene in Parma, the work commemorates the life of Duke Alessandro Farnese (1586–1592), who is interred right in front of Annibale’s painted image. The narrative development of the Pietà with Saints transformed the late medieval Lamentation altarpiece focused on the dead Christ into a riveting manifestation of the beautiful and sleeping Christ worshipped by saints and angels in a nocturnal landscape. Thus eschewing historical context, the pictorial thrust of Annibale’s interpretation of the Man of Sorrows attached to the Pietà with Saints was to heighten Eucharistic meaning while allowing for sixteenth-century theological and poetic thought of Mary’s body as the tomb of Christ to cast discriminating devotional overtones on the resting place of the deceased Farnese Duke.

The Henry of Blois Enamels: A(nother) Reassessment

The so-called Henry of Blois enamels in the British Museum have received much attention over the years, but there is still no consensus as to their original function. This article reassesses the evidence, first in order to outline some fundamental doubts about the argument that has been championed most recently in the scholarship: that they were the terminals of a great cross; secondly, to offer new arguments, largely drawn from the nature and iconography of the plaques themselves, in favour of the claim that they belonged to an item of altar furnishing, most probably an altar frontal. A final section considers the evidence, such as it is, for that frontal belonging to the high altar of Winchester Cathedral.

Valuing the Work of Jaume Huguet: A Painter and his Materials

The Consecration of Saint Augustine in the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona (Fig. 1) comes from the high altar retable of the church of Sant Agustí Vell in the city, whose paintings were commissioned from Jaume Huguet in 1463, but not completed until 1486.1 The panel shows the imposing figure of the saint in elaborate vestments presented full face, enthroned before a cloth of honour and flanked by a press of full-length figures, two of whom, symmetrically arranged, place a bishop’s mitre upon his head: this is Augustine consecrated as bishop of Hippo Regius. The viewer’s attention is caught by two prominent features: the dense array of individualised and characterful heads occupying a band in the top third of the painting, and the opulent decoration which involves a profusion of surface ornament. The jewels on the mitres and liturgical gloves of the principal figures, their...

What Is That To You?

What Is That To You?