Introduction / Using ARAS: The Symbolism of the Cross

[aras-image:5Ga.052,a,9,292,264,Scene from Mathias Grünewald's Isenheim altarpiece]
  ... One cannot find a sharper contrast than that of Mathias Grünewald in the scene from his Isenheim altarpiece
(5Ga.052,). In it the tortured, twisted, agonised and bloody body is on a roughly-hewn wooden cross only slightly about the witnesses, the Virgin Mary collapsed in the arms of St. John, and John the Baptist on the right pointing towards the figure on the cross. The lamb with a cross in its mouth at the feet of John the Baptist confirms the sacrificial import of this presentation.

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