| One of the large number of small rectangular donor panels from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the cloister of Wettingen. They were introduced after the cloister was rebuilt following the fire in 1507, the first of them during the abbacies of Johannes Mueller (1486-1521) and Andreas Wengi (1521-8). The donors are often depicted or represented by their coat ot arms and represent other Cistercian abbeys, individual monks, abbots and abbesses, secular priests, and laymen. One of three Amplexus panels from before 1530, one from before the fire (see GL81) and one contemporary with this one (see GL83). The central scene of the Amplexus has Bernard in a dark bluish grey cowl receiving Christ's lifeless-looking body with both arms hanging down in a Swiss mountain landscape with trees, a church, a castle, and a lake, and flanked by columns supported by two small figures and surmounted by two angels and the date - 1521 - at the top in the centre. The small figure of the Cistercian donor abbot, Wolfgang Joner from Kappel (1519-27), in a brown cowl and carrying a crozier and identified by his coat of arms, is in the lower right corner. In the style of the Danube School of painters.
|
