Kamień crucifix - figure

A crucifix is a Latin cross with a hanging figure of the Crucified Christ. Due to the supreme importance of the cross among Christian symbols, crucifixes constitute the essential equipment of churches. In medieval churches, they took the form of monumental works and were placed high on the choir screen or the rood beam in front of the altar space. In medieval art, two basic types of crucifixes developed: the heroic ones from the Romanesque period with the representation of the living Christ, without signs of torment and often wearing a royal crown on his head, and Gothic with a naturalistic image of the tormented Saviour in the crown of thorns. The Kamień work, with its highly subtle and harmonious expression, ranks between the two. Christ with closed eyes, whose idealised body of slightly elongated proportions slides away to form a soft sigmoid shape, is shown when dying, without the crown of thorns and any visible signs of suffering. The stigma of suffering is only marked by eyebrows drawn together in a painful grimace; however, it does not disturb the atmosphere of lyricism and beauty in the spirit of the scholastic philosophy of the 13th century.The crucifix from the Cathedral in Kamień Pomorski is the most magnificent and the most valuable work of this type from the Pomeranian region. It represents the characteristics of the full Gothic, developed within the art of the 13th-century great cathedrals, which, together with the workshops of itinerant craftsmen, reached from the Rhineland to the main centres of European art. The softly and precisely moulded form in the stern, complex material of oak bears witness to the sculptor’s extraordinary skills equal to the masters of the sculptural decoration of Strasbourg Cathedral, as well as to the refined taste of the founder, who was familiar with the trends in European court art at the time.

Kinga Krasnodębska