The Deposition from the Cross: Place, Polychromy, and Experience in Medieval Wood Sculpture
Date of Award
Fall 2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
History of Art
First Advisor
Jung, Jacqueline
Abstract
Polychrome multi-figure wood sculpture groups depicting Christ’s Deposition from the Cross were prominently displayed inside churches across Italy and Spain from the twelfth century to the Counter-Reformation. Today, many Deposition groups have been displaced, dismantled, or even destroyed. The removal of Deposition sculptures from their original context has occluded information of critical interest about these innovative sculptural forms. This dissertation connects the physical place (primary location and mode of display) of medieval Deposition groups within sacred spaces to the “place” of Deposition groups within the systems of meanings of medieval communities of viewers. Articulated around trans-geographical case studies on Deposition sculptures in Catalonia, Castile, and Central Italy, this dissertation examines their display and use by different communities, ranging from lay congregations in Tuscany and the Pyrenees to elite nuns in Castile. As religious practices evolved and the needs of communities changed, many Deposition groups were dismantled and their sculptures were repurposed. This material and conceptual reframing of Deposition groups beyond the Middle Ages forces us to question how medieval wood sculpture has been defined and categorized historically as well as today. Chapter One considers the twelfth-century Deposition sculptures from the Boí valley in the Pyrenees, a thriving artistic center at the crossroads of Romanesque Europe. The richly decorated interiors of the Boí valley churches were sites of artistic experimentation, where three-dimensional sculptural ensembles like Deposition groups were conceived in relation to and as extensions of the two-dimensional painted surfaces of church walls, through complementary visual effects. Chapter Two focuses on the Deposition group in the parish church of Santa Maria in Vicopisano, Tuscany, which remains a devotional focal point for the laymen and laywomen of the congregation. This chapter offers a joint reading of the Vicopisano Deposition and its visual milieu, which includes a little-known painted wall cycle of the life of Christ. Chapter Three examines the late thirteenth-century Deposition group that overlooks the tombs of King Alfonso VIII of Castile and Queen Eleanor of England and their family members in the choir of the abbey church of the royal convent Santa María de las Huelgas, near Burgos. This chapter charts unexplored connections between the sculpted bodies of the Las Huelgas Deposition and the physical bodies of the interred royals, through the study of the sculptures’ painted garments. Chapter Four explores how changing views on religious art following the Counter-Reformation impacted how sculptures from medieval Deposition groups were understood and how, on occasion, these sculptures were misinterpreted. The survival of Deposition sculptures beyond the Middle Ages led to new ways of representing the material histories and past trajectories of these objects—whether real or imagined—and to new displays that have contributed to the perpetual reshaping of meaning of Deposition sculptures.
Recommended Citation
Gambert-Jouan, Anabelle, "The Deposition from the Cross: Place, Polychromy, and Experience in Medieval Wood Sculpture" (2023). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1151.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1151
