Our Lady of Sorrows, from the Charterhouse, Freiburg in Breisgau

Description

The Mater Dolorosa is one of the set of 25 large figure panels of which eight were purchased for Basle at the spectacular auction of the Graf Douglas stained glass collection in 1897. When it was dissolved in 1782, the cycle made for the Charterhouse in Freiburg in Breisgau about 1520 was reused in the newly built early Neoclassical church of the Benedictine abbey of St. Blasien in the Black Forest. The transfer of the Late Gothic stained glass windows, subsequently supplemented by other appropriate contemporary pieces, represents a unique example of the return to religious use of large scale ecclesiastical stained glass in the C 18. Our Lady of Sorrows, wrapped in a blue cloak and with a countenance expressive of grief, was presumably the counterpart of an Ecce Homo. The grape vine forming an arch above her head also points, as a symbol of the Eucharist, to the death of Christ. The donor figure at her feet has hitherto been taken to be Canon Johann Wanner from Constance.