Altarpiece
As an altar retable (the reredos , from Latin retabulum , meaning "back panel", also pala ) is any altar piece - in German usage often simply equated with an altar - that is, a display wall that is either directly on the cafeteria of an altar with or without Predella is placed on a separate substructure behind the altar table or attached to the wall behind the altar. There are also altarpieces painted on the choir wall, see below. In occidental art history, an altar shrine is the central section of a carved retable that opens up like a cupboard. The counterpart to the reredos is the antependium , which, according to the name, was attached to the front edge of the cafeteria and hung in front of the altar table at the celebrant's leg. This form of altar design appeared in the Middle Ages .
history
The Romanesque altarpiece, as well as the antemensale , made of stone, stucco or metal, is decorated with reliefs . If it is made of wood, it is often decorated with gold leaf fittings or paintings. Its outline is rectangular, semicircular or rectangular with a semicircular elevation in the middle.
In the Gothic period , the retable was expanded with painted panels ( winged altar ). Occasionally, individual scenes were surrounded by additional architectural frames consisting of pillars , eyelashes and pinnacles . A construction made of architectural elements with set figures above the cabinet is called a burst . The largest Gothic altarpiece (27 mx 18 m) is in Seville Cathedral . Centers for the production of late Gothic retables are z. B. Lübeck and Antwerp .
In the Renaissance and Baroque periods , the reredos standing behind the altar became common, with wings mostly being dispensed with and only the central image (also known as the altar leaf) remaining. Its architectural framework consists of an aedicule (aedicule altar), with which the architecture of the choir and the entire church space merges into a stylistic and compositional unit.
Known copies
- Seville Cathedral - the largest altarpiece in the world.
- Antwerp reredos
- Clear altar , formerly in the Poor Clare Monastery of St. Clara , Cologne; today in Cologne Cathedral
- Holy blood reredos in the town church of St. Jakob von Rothenburg ob der Tauber
- Crucifixion reredos in St. Peter and Paul in Detwang
- Landkirchen reredos in the Schleswig-Holstein State Museum for Art and Cultural History Schloss Gottorf
- Marian reredos in the Herrgottskirche in Creglingen
- Pala d'oro in St. Mark's Basilica in Venice
- A reredos painted on the choir wall is e.g. B. the Gothic 14 Holy Helper altar of St. Peter and Paul Church in Westerbuchberg .
literature
- Josef Braun SJ: Altar retable (altar piece, altar back wall) (A. In the Catholic Church) . In: Real Lexicon on German Art History . Volume 1: A - Construction. Metzler, Stuttgart 1934 (1937), col. 529-564.
- Helmuth Eggert: Altar retable (B. In the Protestant Church) In: Reallexikon zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte . Volume 1: A - Construction. Metzler, Stuttgart 1934 (1937), col. 565-602.
- Ralf van Bühren : Church building in Renaissance and Baroque. Liturgical reforms and their consequences for spatial planning, liturgical disposition and image decoration after the Council of Trent . In: Stefan Heid (Ed.): Operation on a living object. Rome's liturgical reforms from Trent to Vatican II . Berlin 2014, pp. 93–119 - full text online .
- Klaus Krüger: The early image cult of Francis in Italy. Change in shape and function of the panel painting in the 13th and 14th centuries. Gebr. Mann, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-7861-1662-8 (= at the same time: Munich, Univ., Diss., 1987).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ This meaning of the term “shrine” should not be confused with the meaning of “shrine” in the sense of “reliquary”. The designation as a shrine for the middle part of a carved altar does not refer to a possible safekeeping of relics, but the word "shrine" here refers to the timbered wooden box - cf. Friedrich Kobler: Flügelretabel. I. In: Real Lexicon on German Art History . Volume 9: ridge crowning - wing retable . Munich 2003, Sp. 1450-1536, especially Sp. 1450.