Entombment

The relief-carved scene of the Entombment is a fragment of a late Gothic Passion altar from St. Mary's Church in Wkryujście. As the reconstructed altar, preserved in the form of 11 reliefs, showed that it was placed in the left upper quadrant of the right-wing obverse.Compared to the preserved examples of medieval art from the Pomeranian region, the Wkryujście altar is distinguished by its scale and artistic class. Its author was an unknown master familiar with the then sculptural works from Westphalia, upper Saxony and northern Germany. In his sculptural compositions, one can recognise the graphic patterns popular at the time. Many of them refer to copper engravings by the outstanding German engraver Martin Schongauer (c. 1435-1491), who masterfully developed the engraving technique. The numerous surviving graphics, mainly on religious themes, inspired many artists throughout Europe for the next century, including Albrecht Dürer. Schongauer's composition The Laying in the Tomb (c. 1475-1480) was translated almost verbatim by the master of the Passion Altarpiece from Wkryujście.The Wkryujście depiction of The Laying in the Tomb constitutes a significant part of the Eucharistic iconography. According to the Gospel accounts, Jesus' body wrapped in a shroud was laid in a tomb carved in the rock. In the 14th century, the motif of a stone sarcophagus, into which the naked, exposed body of Jesus is placed, became established in the art of Western Christian Europe. The popularity of the motif depicted in The Laying in the Tomb was undoubtedly influenced by the Eucharistic cult development and proclamation of the Corpus Christi mystery in 1317. The form and the horizontal position of the sarcophagus refer in meaning to the altar mensa. From this point of view, the representation becomes a mystery of Corpus Christi, namely, a liturgical adoration of the Host treated with tenderness, reverence and anointing.

Kinga Krasnodębska