Prayer of Christ inGarden of Olives

The relief with the scene of The Prayer of Christ in the Garden of Olives begins the cycle of 11 relief paintings on the Passion theme coming from the monumental Passion Altar from the St. Mary's Church in Wkryujście. The fortunately preserved fragments allow to reconstruct the original form as a typical for the medieval art altar set in the shape of a triptych, commonly called an altar cabinet. The most important part, both ideologically and structurally, was the central part. There were located the main representations to which the altar was dedicated. Movable wings for the double-sided presentation were attached to it. On weekdays, the wings were closed, showing on their reverses mostly painted representations supplementing the main ideological content, and in the late Middle Ages, often also the image of the pious founder. The ceremonial opening of the wings only takes place during the celebration of festive liturgies. It is then that the participants see a wealth of colours and artistic shapes immersed in the ubiquitous gold symbolising the divine - heavenly sphere. The Wkryujście sculptures filled the interior of a vast, nearly seven-metre-long wardrobe. Eight smaller reliefs, including a panel with the Holy Sepulchre, were placed four at a time in the quarters of the side wings. The chronology of the events of the Passion, known from the biblical descriptions, makes it possible to locate the panel in the upper left quadrant of the left-wing. The narration of successive scenes runs from left to right and from top to bottom.The composition of the representation demonstrates good knowledge of the extremely popular Passion-related graphics of the turn of the 15th/16th century. Clear analogies are visible primarily to the copperplate of the same title by the outstanding German engraver Martin Schongauer.

Kinga Krasnodębska