Andachtsbilder

The images "generally show holy figures extracted from a narrative context to form a highly focused, and often very emotionally powerful, vignette".

Their use was encouraged by movements such as the Franciscans, the Devotio Moderna and German mysticism in late medieval Europe, which promoted affective meditation on the sufferings of Christ by intense mental visualization ("imitation") of them and their physical effects.

[5] The most extreme, even gruesome, examples often came from the eastern edge of the Holy Roman Empire and beyond in Poland, Lithuania and the Baltic states, where large carved gobbets of congealed blood can cover the body.

The term was first devised for a group of mainly sculptural subjects, including the Pietà and Pensive Christ, that were thought to have emerged in convents in south-western Germany in the 14th century, although their history is now believed to be more complicated.

By the mid-15th century andachtsbilder were influencing large monumental works, a process James Snyder discusses in relation to major works such as Rogier van der Weyden's Prado Deposition,[9] the Isenheim Altarpiece of Matthias Grünewald,[10] and the carved Altarpiece of the Holy Blood by Tilman Riemenschneider at Rothenburg ob der Tauber.