Touching the Passion: seeing late medieval altarpieces through the eyes of faith

Abstract

In 'Touching the Passion - Seeing Late Medieval Altarpieces through the Eyes of Faith', Donna Sadler explores the manner in which worshipers responded to the carved and polychromed retables adorning the altars of their parish churches. Framed by the symbolic death of Christ re-enacted during the Mass, the historical account of the Passion on the retable situated Christ's suffering and triumph over death in the present. The dramatic gestures, contemporary garb, and wealth of anecdotal detail on the altarpiece, invited the viewer's absorption in the narrative. As in the 'Imitatio Christi', the worshiper imaginatively projected himself into the story like a child before a dollhouse. The five senses, the sculptural medium, the small scale, and the rhetoric of memory foster this immersion.

Contents

Coming to terms with the late medieval altarpiece -- A tale of two retables from the Benedictine Monastery of Crisenon in the Musée-Abbaye Saint-Germain, Auxerre -- The aesthetics of immersion : the reception of the retable by the worshipers -- Engagement with the pathos of the Passion -- The role of the frame -- Epilogue: the late medieval altarpiece as house of memory.