Inaug.-Diss.--Halle-Wittenberg. / Lebenslauf.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / The Deploration cycle includes those scenes which deal with the Descent from the Cross, the Lamentation, and the Entombment. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the distinctions between these scenes become minimized in the Netherlands, and the dominant theme results as the lamenting over the dead Christ. This paper examines the iconography of this theme in the Deploration cycle in this period of Netherlandish painting. The earliest literary sources for the Deploration cycle are the passages dealing with the theme in the writings of the Evangilists. After these, the first literary description of the scene of the lamentation itself seems to be in the Sermons of Georges de Nicomedie in the ninth century. The scene is described in greater detail in the thirteenth century in the Meditations on the Life of Christ formerly attributed to St. Bonaventure; from this description a division of types may be made in the paintings under discussion. Contemporary mystical literature also influenced the iconography of the paintings of this period. Not only is the general atmosphere of intimacy amd spirituality similar in the literature and the paintings, but points of iconography were also established in the writings of the Mystics, as, for instance, in the Meditations on the Life of Christ by Thomas A Kempis, in the fifteenth century. Mystical literature of the period also dealt with the theme of the Sacred Heart: the idea that the wound in Christ's side was opened in order to permit the sinner to enter into His Sacred Heart. Although the bloody side wound is shown in most of the scenes treated in this paper, it never gains the predominance that it does in scenes of the Man of Sorrows. Therefore, the direct influence of this phase of mystical literature on the scanes of the Deploration cycle is doubtful. The scenes of the Lamentation are considered first in the paper, followed by those of the Descent and the Entombment. The sources in painting for all three subjects may be found in illustrated manuscripts executed in the "International Style". The fifteenth-century scenes of the Lamentation are divided into four general categories: the Pieta' proper, including only the Virgin and dead Christ; the Pieta group surrounded by other figures; the representation of Christ on a shroud; supported by Joseph of Arimathaea, St. John, or the Virgin; and the depiction of half length figures bewailing the dead Christ. In the first category, the Virgin usually sits upright with the dead Christ on her lap, but in the second she may either sit upright or lean down to kiss Him. One composition of the Virgin kissing Christ was so influential that it was repeated and reinterpreted many times: the Lamentation at the Royal Museum in Brussels, attributed to the workshop of Roger van der Weyden. The third category corresponds to the second moment described in the thirteenth century Meditations, when Christ lies on a sheet after having been prepared for the tomb. All of the works of the last category, of half-length figures, were influenced by a lost composition by Hugo van der Goes. In the sixteenth-century scenes of the Lamentation, the same general categories may be followed, with the addition of two types: Christ being supported on a sheet by both the Virgin and St. John, and His being supported without a sheet by a Holy Woman. Descriptions of the Descent from the Cross also occur in the Meditations already mentioned. In the fifteenth-century scenes, the first category includes those scenes which are depicted in full length, and may be divided into two types: those in which the Virgin faints and those in which the Virgin kisses the hanging right hand of Christ. The second category, including scenes representing half-length figures, is closest to the spirit of the Lamentation. In these, Christ is depicted in a vertical position, in constrast to His horizontal position in the half-length Lamentations. At least twenty copies of a lost composition by Roger may be classified under this type. The sixteenth-century Descent scenes may also be divided into full-length and half-length representations. A third type in the first category includes those scenes in which the Virgin neither faints nor kisses Christ's hand. Few examples of the Entombment exist in this period of painting in the Netherlands. The reason for this fact is that the themes of the Lamentation and that of the Entombment are essentially the same; it has even been suggested that the former grew out of the latter. The fifteenth-century scenes are represented by two examples of the horizontal Italian type of Entombment, a unique "Last Farewell before the Entrance to the Sepulcre" by Roger, and three works in which the body of Christ is being carried into a gaping hole in a rock. The first three examples of the scene in the sixteenth century include works in which Christ is being lowered into a diagonal, foreshortened sarcophagus. The last example in this century is a unique work with threequarter-length figures. The sixteenth-century scenes of the Deploration cycle generally show a decrease in emotionality from those of the fifteenth. The influence of these scenes in both centuries may be recognized in the numerous copies of lost works, as well as in the carrying over of the dead Christ on the Virgin's lap to other countries. The cycle of the Deploration scenes in this period of Netherlandish art is united not by the contemplation of the sacred Heart, but by the theme of the grieving over the crucified Christ. / 2031-01-01

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Leiden, 2001. / "Stellingen" (2 p.) tipped in. Includes bibliographical references (p. 486-500) and index.