"The acquisition means the altarpiece can be displayed as a whole, the Madonna reunited with the original altar shrine, on permanent loan to the Städel from the Braunfels castle museum, and with the painted wings of the altarpiece, which the Frankfurt museum has owned for 100 years. The wings are the oldest examples of German painting in the museum's collection."
"The Altenberg Altar is one of the earliest examples of a "convertible" altarpiece, with a folding mechanism that could meet the changing liturgical requirements of church ceremonies on weekdays, Sundays and holidays.On weekdays, the altarpiece showed the Passion of Christ against a dark background. On Sundays, the partial opening of the altar retable revealed the Madonna figure flanked by images showing scenes from the Virgin Mary's life."
Frankfurt's Städel Museum acquired the Virgin and Child Enthroned (around 1320/1330), a key medieval Cologne sculpture made for the Altenberg abbey church in Hesse. The sculpture had been protected from export and remained in private ownership since the 1920s, on loan to the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum from 1981 until its purchase this year with funding from the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States, the Ernst von Siemens Art Kunststiftung, and the Städel Museum Association. The acquisition reunites the Madonna with its original altar shrine on permanent loan from the Braunfels castle museum and pairs it with painted wings the Städel has held for a century. The Altenberg Altar exemplifies an early convertible design with folding wings to vary imagery for weekdays, Sundays and holidays; the central sculpture depicts Mary and the Christ child clad in gilded robes with hems studded by glass flux pieces resembling precious stones.
Read at The Art Newspaper - International art news and events
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