Younger Bible Window (Cologne Cathedral)

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Younger Bible window in Cologne Cathedral

The younger Bible window in the Stephan Chapel of Cologne Cathedral was in the first southern 1892 chancel used. It shows 20 scenes from the Old and New Testament .

history

The stained glass windows comes apart from four discs that were created in 1891/92, from the former Dominican Church of the Holy Cross in Cologne . The Dominican monastery was abolished in the course of secularization and demolished in 1804. Parts of the saved windows, which were made around 1280, came into the possession of Cologne Cathedral in 1823. The Bible window dealt with here was located in the center of the choir of the Dominican church, according to its importance. In Cologne Cathedral it was installed in the Stephanus chapel, as the old windows were missing there.

The Bible window in the St. Stephen's Chapel is called the younger Bible window , because there is a second, older Bible window in the Epiphany Chapel of the cathedral. This axis window occupies the highest-ranking window space within the cathedral. It was created in the period between 1250 and 1260. Due to the circumstances described, curiously enough, there are now two Bible windows in Cologne Cathedral.

Image content

The two narrow lanes, each with eleven fields of view, show scenes from the salvation history of the Old and New Testaments. According to medieval tradition, they are to be read line by line from bottom to top. This results in the following 11th lines with their image pairs:

The right New Testament window strip is traversed by two entwined vines that frame the individual scenes. Half-length portraits of kings from the Old Testament are shown above the picture medallions, holding tapes with their names on them. The left Old Testament window strip embeds the picture medallions in an ornamental carpet. A wide central band connects the picture windows with one another.

From a protocol from 1803 we know that there were originally three additional pairs of images, but they have been lost. The four lowest panes, which probably represented the founders Siegfried von Westerburg (Archbishop of Cologne) and Albertus Magnus , are also missing .

  • Gideon and the Fleece (1891/92)

  • Annunciation to Mary (around 1280)

  • Moses in front of the burning bush (around 1280)

  • Birth of Jesus (around 1280)

  • The Queen of Sheba before Solomon (around 1280)

  • Adoration of the Magi (around 1280)

  • Naaman's bath in the Jordan (around 1280)

  • Baptism of Jesus (around 1280)

Theological program

The Bible window takes up the long tradition of typological comparison of scenes from the Old and New Testaments. The unity of both testaments in terms of salvation history is assumed and the New Testament is seen as the fulfillment of what was announced in the Old Testament.

Style and workshop

The younger Bible window stands out from the tradition of the Rhenish jagged style with its flowing, gently rounded, soft style . The Gothic style emanating from Paris thus found its way into Cologne glass painting. Further discs, which are ascribed to the same workshop, are in the Westphalian State Museum in Münster . In the years 1901/1902 a reconstruction of the Younger Bible Window was carried out by the Cologne workshop for glass painting Schneider and Schmolz , in which the distance between the bars was redesigned, some panes redesigned and a new lead was made.

literature

  • Ulrike Brinkmann: The younger Bible window. Cologne Cathedral Publishing House, Cologne 1984, ISBN 3-922442-02-8 .

Web links

Commons : Younger Bible Window  - collection of pictures, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Herbert Rohde: Corpus Vitrearum medii Aevi Germany IV / 1. The medieval stained glass of Cologne Cathedral , Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaften, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-87157-046-X , p. 85.

Coordinates: 50 ° 56 ′ 27.7 "  N , 6 ° 57 ′ 27.4"  E