A winged altarpiece (also ''folding altar'') or winged retable is a special form of

altarpiece An altarpiece is a painting or sculpture, including relief, of religious subject matter made for placing at the back of or behind the altar of a Christian church. Though most commonly used for a single work of art such as a painting or sculpture, ...

(

reredos A reredos ( , , ) is a large altarpiece, a screen, or decoration placed behind the altar in a Church (building), church. It often includes religious images. The term ''reredos'' may also be used for similar structures, if elaborate, in secular a ...

, occasionally

retable A retable is a structure or element placed either on or immediately behind and above the altar or communion table of a church. At the minimum, it may be a simple shelf for candles behind an altar, but it can also be a large and elaborate struct ...

), common in Northern and Central Europe, in which the central image, either a painting or

relief Relief is a sculpture, sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces remain attached to a solid background of the same material. The term ''wikt:relief, relief'' is from the Latin verb , to raise (). To create a sculpture in relief is to give ...

sculpture (or some combination of the two) can be hidden by hinged wings. It is called a

triptych A triptych ( ) is a work of art (usually a panel painting) that is divided into three sections, or three carved panels that are hinged together and can be folded shut or displayed open. It is therefore a type of polyptych, the term for all m ...

if there are two wings, a

pentaptych A polyptych ( ; Greek: ''poly-'' "many" and ''ptychē'' "fold") is a work of art (usually a panel painting) which is divided into sections, or panels. Some definitions restrict "polyptych" to works with more than three sections: a diptych is a ...

(but this is rarely used in English) if there are four, or a

polyptych A polyptych ( ; Greek: ''poly-'' "many" and ''ptychē'' "fold") is a work of art (usually a panel painting) which is divided into sections, or panels. Some definitions restrict "polyptych" to works with more than three sections: a diptych is ...

if there are four or more. The technical terms are derived from : ''trís'' or "triple"; πέντε: ''pénte'' or "five"; πολύς: ''polýs'' or "many"; and πτυχή: ''ptychē'' or "fold, layer". There are often images on both the insides and outsides of the wings, enabling the altarpiece to display completely different views when open and closed. It was usually the custom to keep the wings closed except on Sundays or feast days, although very often the

sacristan A sacristan is an officer charged with care of the sacristy, the church, and their contents. In ancient times, many duties of the sacrist were performed by the doorkeepers ( ostiarii), and later by the treasurers and mansionarii. The Decretal ...

would open them for tourists at any time for a modest tip. Small winged paintings, usually triptychs, were also owned by the wealthy for private devotions, and services in the house; they had the advantage that the open view was fairly well protected when covered up during travel. The form was especially popular in the later Middle Ages, and during the

Northern Renaissance The Northern Renaissance was the Renaissance that occurred in Europe north of the Alps, developing later than the Italian Renaissance, and in most respects only beginning in the last years of the 15th century. It took different forms in the vari ...

. In the 17th century,

Rubens Sir Peter Paul Rubens ( ; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat. He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens' highly charged compositions reference erudite aspects of clas ...

was one of the last major painters to use it. It was never as popular in Italy, where there were many polyptychs, but usually built without hinges, so always "open", even if there were also images on the back, as in the ''Maestà'' by Duccio for

Siena Cathedral Siena Cathedral () is a medieval church in Siena, Italy, dedicated from its earliest days as a Roman Catholic Marian church, and now dedicated to the Assumption of Mary. Since the early 13th-century the Siena Cathedral has been an important pa ...

. Above the retable may be found the crowning or superstructure,

pinnacle A pinnacle is an architectural element originally forming the cap or crown of a buttress or small turret, but afterwards used on parapets at the corners of towers and in many other situations. The pinnacle looks like a small spire. It was main ...

s and flowers of the cross.

Relic In religion, a relic is an object or article of religious significance from the past. It usually consists of the physical remains or personal effects of a saint or other person preserved for the purpose of veneration as a tangible memorial. Reli ...

s can be housed below it, in a

reliquary A reliquary (also referred to as a ''shrine'', ''Chasse (casket), chasse'', or ''phylactery'') is a container for relics. A portable reliquary, or the room in which one is stored, may also be called a ''feretory''. Relics may be the purported ...

in the

predella In art a predella (plural predelle) is the lowest part of an altarpiece, sometimes forming a platform or step, and the painting or sculpture along it, at the bottom of an altarpiece, sometimes with a single much larger main scene above, but oft ...

lying on the

altar stone An altar stone is a piece of natural stone containing relics in a cavity and intended to serve as the essential part of an altar for the celebration of Mass in the Catholic Church. Consecration by a bishop of the same rite was required. In the Byz ...

Examples

* Pacher Altar of St. Wolfgang im Salzkammergut *

Kefermarkt Altarpiece The Kefermarkt altarpiece () is a richly decorated wooden altarpiece in the Gothic art, Late Gothic style in the parish church of Kefermarkt in Upper Austria. Commissioned by the knight Christoph von Zelking, it was completed around 1497. Saint Pe ...

Kefermarkt Kefermarkt is a municipality in the district of Freistadt in the Austrian state of Upper Austria. The church in Kefermarkt houses the late medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from t ...

* Krakow High Altar in St. Mary's Basilica by

Veit Stoß Veit Stoss (, also spelled Stoß and Stuoss; ; ; before 1450about 20 September 1533) was a leading German sculptor, mostly working with wood, whose career covered the transition between the late Gothic and the Northern Renaissance. His style e ...

. *

Ghent Altarpiece The ''Ghent Altarpiece'', also called the ''Adoration of the Mystic Lamb'' (), is a very large and complex 15th-century polyptych altarpiece in St Bavo's Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium. It was begun around the mid-1420s and completed by 1432, and it ...

Jan van Eyck Jan van Eyck ( ; ; – 9 July 1441) was a Flemish people, Flemish painter active in Bruges who was one of the early innovators of what became known as Early Netherlandish painting, and one of the most significant representatives of Early Nort ...

Isenheim Altarpiece The ''Isenheim Altarpiece'' is an altarpiece sculpted and painted by, respectively, the Germans Nikolaus Hagenauer, Nikolaus of Haguenau and Matthias Grünewald in 1512–1516. It is on display at the Unterlinden Museum at Colmar, Alsace, in Fra ...

Matthias Grünewald Matthias Grünewald ( – 31 August 1528; also known as Mathis Gothart Nithart) was a German Renaissance painter of religious works who ignored Renaissance classicism to continue the style of late medieval Central European art into the 16th cent ...

* Herrenberg Altarpiece,

Staatsgalerie Stuttgart The Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (, "State Gallery") is an art museum in Stuttgart, Germany, it opened in 1843. In 1984, the opening of the Neue Staatsgalerie (''New State Gallery'') designed by James Stirling transformed the once provincial galler ...

* Antwerp Retable * The largest collection of medieval reredoses in Germany is to be found in St. Anne's Abbey, Lübeck, including the

Passion Passion, the Passion or the Passions may refer to: Emotion * Passion (emotion), a very strong feeling about a person or thing * Passions (philosophy), emotional states as used in philosophical discussions * Stoic passions, various forms of emotio ...

Altarpiece by

Hans Memling Hans Memling (also spelled Memlinc; – 11 August 1494) was a German-Flemish people, Flemish painter who worked in the tradition of Early Netherlandish painting. Born in the Middle Rhine region, he probably spent his childhood in Mainz. During ...

and the Schonen Altarpiece by

Bernt Notke Bernt Notke (; – before May 1509) was a late Gothic artist from the Baltic region. He has been described as one of the foremost artists of his time in northern Europe. Life Very little is known about the life of Bernt Notke. The Notke fa ...

* ''

The Last Judgment The Last Judgment is a concept found across the Abrahamic religions and the ''Frashokereti'' of Zoroastrianism. Christianity considers the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to entail the final judgment by God of all people who have ever lived, resu ...

'' by

Gdańsk Gdańsk is a city on the Baltic Sea, Baltic coast of northern Poland, and the capital of the Pomeranian Voivodeship. With a population of 486,492, Data for territorial unit 2261000. it is Poland's sixth-largest city and principal seaport. Gdań ...

* Schwabach Altarpiece in the Church of St. John and St. Martin in

Schwabach Schwabach () is a German city of about 40,000 inhabitants near Nuremberg in the centre of the region of Franconia in the north of Bavaria. Together with the neighboring cities of Nuremberg, Fürth and Erlangen, Schwabach forms one of the three me ...

, a high altar from the workshop of Michael Wolgemut * The Altar Wings of Roudníky * Altar of Saint Mary,

Alpirsbach Abbey Alpirsbach Abbey (''Kloster Alpirsbach'') is a former Benedictine monastery and later Protestant seminary located at Alpirsbach in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The monastery was established in the late 11th century and possessed considerable fre ...

Literature

* Herbert Schindler: ''The Schnitzaltar. Meisterwerke und Meister in Süddeutschland, Österreich und Südtirol.'' Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 1978. * Karl-Werner Bachmann, Géza Jászai, Friedrich Kobler, Catheline Périer-D'Ieteren, Barbara Rommé, Norbert Wolf:
Flügelretabel
', in: '' Reallexikon zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte'', Vol. 9, 2003, , cols. 1450–1536.

References

External links

Website des Kirchspiels Felsberg: Felsberg winged altar
{{Authority control Altars Christian art * Polyptychs

Examples

Literature

See also

References

External links