Andachtsbilder

Andachtsbilder (singular Andachtsbild, German for devotional image) is a German term often used in English in art history for Christian devotional images designed as aids for prayer or contemplation. The images "generally show holy figures extracted from a narrative context to form a highly focused, and often very emotionally powerful, vignette". The term is especially used of Northern Gothic art around the 14th and 15th centuries, when new subjects such as the Pietà, Pensive Christ, Man of Sorrows, Arma Christi, Veil of Veronica, the severed head of John the Baptist, and the Virgin of Sorrows became extremely popular.

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. In churches such images were often given a side-chapel, and sometimes are given special places in the rituals of Holy Week. For example, consecrated hosts might be stored in the cavity of the spear wound in a sculpted Pietà between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Traditional subjects from the narrative of the Passion of Christ such as the Ecce Homo and the Crucifixion of Jesus were also treated in the same way. Though the Crucifix had been treated as an intense, isolated image for centuries, at least as far back as the 10th century Gero Cross in Cologne, many images showed a new emphasis on graphically depicted streaming blood, wounds and contorted poses. This process started around 1300, so the influence appears to be from the Crucifixion to other subjects. The traditional Ecce Homo is a very crowded scene, in which the figure of Christ is often less prominent than those of his captors, but in the andachtsbilder versions the other figures and complex architectural background have vanished, leaving only Christ, with a plain background in most painted versions (see the example by Antonello da Messina in the gallery below).

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