The entombment of Christ

The relief with the scene of Jesus being laid in the tomb is a remnant of the main altar from St Mary's Church in Dąbie, which was destroyed by the church fire in 1894. Old descriptions and surviving fragments approximate its original form. The retable, in the type of a triptych popular in the Middle Ages, was filled with relief panels depicting Passion scenes with the Crucifixion in the centre as well as representations of the Resurrection and Coronation of Mary. Similarly composed Passion altars from Zwischenahn (Lower Saxony) and Bad Segeberg (Schleswig-Holstein) are cited as analogues for the Dąbie altar.

It is assumed that the retable from Dąbie is the initiating piece of the late medieval work of the Szczecin centre. The workshop that made it was familiar with sculptural realisations from both the Westphalian area, especially the works of the Master of Osnabrück (c. 1500-1530), as well as the art of southern Germany, as indicated by the many parallels to the work of Tilman Riemenschneider (c. 1460-1531). In its sculptural works, the Szczecin workshop used the graphic patterns popular at the time. In the scene of The entombment of Christ, Hans Schäufelein's engraving published in Ulrich Pinder's work Speculum passionis in 1507 in Nuremberg is clearly recognisable.

Other surviving reliefs of the Passion Altarpiece from Dąbie – Group of Apostles: Bartholomew, Simon, Andrew (inv. no. MNS/Szt/8), Group of apostles: Paul, Thomas, James the Greater (inv. no. MNS/Szt/9), Lamentation (inv. no. MNS/Szt/170) – together with the scene in question, are presented in the permanent exhibition Mystery of Light. Medieval art in Pomerania.

Kinga Krasnodębska