Ze studiów nad gotyckimi nastawami ołtarzowymi w Gdańsku. O specyfice konstrukcji, ikonografii i funkcji gdańskich predell

Abstrakt

The article is about one of the parts of an altarpiece, which is predella. It focuses on artworks from Gdańsk from the late medieval period. In many of them some unusual and characteristic elements of their construction, iconography, and function can be found.

In about the 1300s, the first winged altarpieces were created. From the beginning every element of that kind of artwork had its own constructive and ideological role. One of these elements was the predella: a decorated „chest” located between the mensa and corpus, which played both symbolic and utilitarian role.

Among the still existing predellas from Gdańsk’s churches, seventeen were initially meant for the interior of St Mary’s Church, two for St Catherine’s Church, and two for The Holy Trinity Church. The paper also includes two predellas from outside Gdańsk, but it is believed that both were created in Gdańsk’s workshops: one from the Church of St Peter and St Paul in Hel and one from The Assumption of the Holiest Virgin Mary’s Collegiate Church in Kartuzy. Thanks to the pre-war photographic documentation that relatively low number of the existing examples could be increased by six predellas, now missing, which were a part of the interior decoration of St Mary’s Church in Gdańsk.

The newest research results emphasize that the characteristic features of Gdańsk’s predellas are combined opening solutions, where both the front wall and doors on the sides can be opened. Opening the front wall allowed the faithful to see the predella’s interior, but the space behind the doors on the sides was only visible to clerics. The predellas from Gdańsk also prove that besides their obvious roles: constructive (raising the corpus above the mensa) and symbolic (a sarcophagus with relics inside), this part of the altarpiece sometimes could also play another role: it was a place where the liturgical vessels and relics were kept and presented, or even a place where the contributions from the faithful were collected.

The specific character of the construction and diversity of functions of Gdańsk’s predellas show\ that the part of a medieval altarpiece in question could constitute a field for research and yield interesting discoveries and conclusions.