Touching the Passion — Seeing Late Medieval Altarpieces through the Eyes of Faith

Download or read book Touching the Passion — Seeing Late Medieval Altarpieces through the Eyes of Faith written by Donna L. Sadler and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.