| One of the large number of small recatngular 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 which this is one, during the abbacies of Johannes Mueller (1486-1521) and Andreas Wengi (1521-8). The donors are often depicted or represented by their coat of arms. The central figures represent Bernard, crozier in the left hand and a book in the right, on the left in a bluish grey cowl and wearing a mitre, and St Urban the pope wearing a cope and tiara and carrying a cross and book in his left hand and a bunch of grapes in his right. Below Bernard are the arms of Clairvaux and below St Urban the arms of the donor abbot of St Urban has been replaced later with those of Wettingen. The bearded head of Bernard with long hair and not tonsure is also a seventeenth century replacement. At the base of the left column are the initials of Hans Funk and at the base of the right column the date '1522'. This is one of five pre-1530 panels in the Wettingen cloister (see also GL81-4). An almost identical panel made by the same artist some four years earlier and with the original head of Bernard is found in the church at Zofingen (see GL86).
|
