SOUTH GERMAN, FIRST QUARTER 16TH CENTURY

This relief most likely represents the Pentecost, the moment when the Holy Spirit miraculously descended upon the Apostles and Virgin Mary (Acts 2:1-4), during the celebration of the Jewish festival of Shavuot, 50 days after the Resurrection. The artist has delighted in translating the excitement surrounding the event into a contained frenzy of tightly packed, gesticulating figures. Overwhelmed by the divine presence, the Disciples of Christ begin speaking in tongues and assume a variety of impassioned facial expressions and fanciful poses. The composition and figural types relate to works produced by the German painter and sculptor, Hans Multscher (c. 1400-1467) and artists in his circle working in Ulm. Several figures from Multscher's painted panel of the Pentecost from the Wurzach Altar (1437, Staatliche Museen, Berlin) closely parallel those from the present composition, such as the bearded Apostle dressed entirely in white, sitting frontally at the far right of the Wurzach panel, who finds an analogue in the frontally oriented figure standing at the back of the relief, next to the cross. Other links are found in the kneeling Apostles, represented with their backs to the viewer in the foreground of the Salander relief as well the foreshortened face of the Apostle on the far left of the sculpted composition, who crosses his arms against his chest while gazing upward toward the Holy Dove (no longer present). The inclusion of liturgical objects such as the wine chalice, prayer books, processional cross, aspergillum and situla suggest that this relief may actually conflate the Pentecost with a subsequent moment in the life of Mary, namely the Dormition of the Virgin. It is likely that the present relief was created by a later artist working in the style initiated by Multscher.