The study aims at accentuating the connexions between the pictorial edition and the function of the crucifix that – as one may assume – had served both the friars’ devotion and private devotion of the faithful (indulgencies). They analyse the relation of the Tree-of-Life Crucifix with the mystic’s text and various aspects of its artistic impact. The authors – for the first time in the studies on this artwork – focus on original pictorial solutions that make the Toruń artwork – the only preserved sculpted version of the theme – different from the iconographic tradition of St Bonaventure’s Tree of Life. ![]() This Toruń historic artwork is a unique in European art example of transferring the symbolic narration of that literary work, based on associating the image of a tree with the history of Salvation, into the third dimension. The St Bonaventure’s Lignum Vitae Treatise and the Dominican Tree-of-Life Crucifix in Toruń The paper concerns the analysis of iconography and artistic form of the Tree-of-Life Crucifix from the Dominican church in Toruń (presently in St James’ church) in direct relation to its literary source: the ascetic and mystical treatise Lignum Vitae by St Bonaventure. In absence of written sources that would allow for a thorough recognition of the scope and contents of sermons in the Monastic State of Teutonic Order, the role of that painting as a source material can hardly be overestimated. Exclusive language of western forms can also be interpreted in aspect of the preachers’ ad status rhetoric. Interpretation of style is hindered by extensive overpainting and reintegration, but assuming those features as dating ones, one should abandon the so far dating of the work to the last quarter of 14th century and set it in times about 1350. General formal character as well as costume, arms and armoury features indicate inspirations with western painting of the first half of 14th century. For general analogies for that complex composition one can search among the courtly pastoral codices made in France and England. The artistic language of that work reveals a Western provenance and is based on miniatures’ pattern. Particular elements could have been selected out of it and one could lead their exegesis in whichever direction, using whatever rhetoric for sermons suitable for various occasions. The painting could have been a compendium, facilitating logical development of the contents of a sermon and building its general structure based on the tree-scheme. The general message of that artwork seems to be obvious, while the proper reception and right interpretation of all it contents was possible only at the proper level of theological knowledge and erudition. In visually the most interesting part – purgatory torments and the hell – the choice of stigmatised sins and individual attributes was addressed to the large-town auditorium, as was the Legend of the three living…being the warning against excessive passion for mundane goods in the spirit of the ad status preaching. Each of the zones has its own detailed development and uses a suggestive pictorial rhetoric of an emotive impact on the viewer. Three-zoned structure of composition can be interpreted as three parts of the preachers’ dilatation, while the particular elements and their mutual relations make a four-step homiletic reasoning. Iconographic elements of the mural match the most important threads of mediaeval homiletics, and the moralizing message has been adjusted to the assumption of large-town sermons. A discerning comparison of its potential with the structure, contents and social model of the mediaeval ars praedicandi proves, that it might have been serving as the preachers’ aid. Despite the abundant studies the detailed contents and form of that work have been so far only drafted. ![]() In an unique way around the motif of Crucifixion concentrated are here numerous iconographic motifs of diverse origin: evangelic, old-testament, mystic and moralizing ones. The theme of that study is a monumental mural painting on the north wall of the chancel of the former parish church of the Old Town in Toruń.
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