Optical Illusion

The central panel of this three-part altarpiece (triptych) creates the illusion of carved figures. And the painted wooden sculptures of the saints also seem to come to life! The Resurrection of Christ is anticipated as it were by this sophisticated game with the media. Moreover, the illusion continues on the outside of the wings: the everyday side in shades of grey suggests niches containing sculptures which, however, were to be envisaged as carved in unpainted stone. These profound, at times humorous illusions or »trompe-l’oeil« effects permit us to assume that the work was commissioned by a discerning client with a well-trained eye. Like the St Thomas Altar, the Altarpiece of the Holy Cross was commissioned by the lawyer Dr. Peter Rinck, who later bequeathed this triptych to a cloister of the Carthusian Order in Cologne. He may well have viewed this as the altar’s ultimate location from the outset, because the inside of the right-hand wing depicts such a Carthusian cloister. The background on the inside of the left wing shows a riverscape that is meant to be the Valley of Jordan, and thus the region where John the Baptist (front left) performed his mission. Typical of this painter’s extraordinary precision is the trilingual (Hebrew-Greek-Latin) inscription on the cross, which only shortly before was believed to have been rediscovered in Rome (in 1492). The passages of text that were destroyed through material loss to the relic have been discreetly covered over in the painting. Moreover the artist has corrected a demonstrably wrong letter in the »original inscription«. Since the wording on the cross was ultimately a legal document, it was clearly of great importance to Peter Rinck.