Třeboň Altarpiece
[2][3] It was created for the Augustinian Church of St Giles in Třeboň and is now part of the permanent collection of medieval art of the National Gallery in Prague.
On the missing fourth wing there would most probably have been a scene following on from the Resurrection of Christ, for example Noli Me Tangere (the altarpiece was consecrated to St Mary Magdalene).
[8] In contrast to earlier panel painting, the painter used lead white underpainting only in specific places, instead modelling the portraits and drapery by gradually building up translucent layers of egg tempera.
[9] The composition is dominated by the striking diagonal of the rock faces that divide the central figure of Christ from the two accompanying scenes: the sleeping apostles in the foreground and Judas bringing the soldiers in the background.
The praying Christ has drops of bloody sweat (the Gospel of St Luke) and the angel presents him with the Cup of Bitterness.
In comparison with earlier simplistically depicted crystalline rock faces (the Vyšší Brod (Hohenfurth) cycle) however, this landscape comes closer to reality.
Christ, who is portrayed as an almost immaterial figure swathed in transparent fabric, is laid in the tomb by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus.
This conception corresponds with the period of the late 14th century and the Augustinian movement Devotio Moderna that encouraged the faithful to seek personal piety.
The radiant colours with the dominant red of the robe and the light that Christ radiates contrast with the grey background of the landscape that is the setting in which earthly figures are situated.
The original arrangement in all likelihood respected the heavenly hierarchy (according to Pseudo-Dionysius): the apostles, male and female saints (Confessors).
[13] In terms of their portrait character and the time they were made, these faces have much in common with Petr Parler’s busts in the triforium of St Vitus Cathedral.
It thus anticipates the International Gothic style, which is a synthesis of precise observation and free imagination, individual characterisation and a universal idealised type.
The painter abandoned the linear drawing-based style and used soft colour tones and chiaroscuro painting in which light, falling from somewhere above, unifies the picture and works more as a principle than a natural phenomenon.
Interest in details and elements observed from reality are typical of Franco-Flemish art, as is the symbolic red background with gold stars replacing the night sky in the Passion series.
The soft and plastic landscape comes close to reality, but only creates an accompanying scene and is an expression of transcendental idealism – an illustration of a prayer ascending to heaven.
With its overall softening of portrayal, transcending of localised colour and bringing the image closer to specific optical experience, this work marks the nascence of the International Gothic and its Bohemian variation – the Beautiful Style.
The deepened space is not constructed according to optical laws; instead, the impression of depth is evoked by the diagonally inserted substance of the rock faces and sarcophagus.
The altarpiece was dismantled in 1730; in the place where it had stood, relics connected with the consecration of the Church of St Giles were discovered.
