Bayern (außer der Gem. Icking)

We didn’t come to Forstenried to watch angels. Our destination was the ancient life-size cross you see here in the middle. On the left of it, St. Bartholomew, former patron of the church; on the right, Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, who successfully searched for the original cross in Jerusalem.

I hope viewers can appreciate the on-going drama: the previous picture showed most of the church interior, and now we’re slowly zooming in. Some day, we’ll get even closer, I promise! The stained-glass windows are modern, and don’t fit in well.

The colors aren’t natural, but resulted from clicking the “effects” button in iPhoto. Sorry, it won’t happen again.

The book carried by the angel refers to Ezekiel chapter 9: “Unehrenbiethigkeiten in den Hauß Gottes” (cases of irreverence in the house of God). The message seems to be that disrespectful behavior in the church will be punished the same way as the sins of Jerusalem’s population in Ezekiel’s vision. Not an agreeable prospect. Behind the door was a small baptistery.

Not exactly a famous church, and visiting it, we were most of the time alone. Yet its interior is quite interesting, and contains not only one of the oldest life-size crucifixes (ca. 1020 AD), but also other works of art of a surprisingly high quality.

St. Ulrich plays a prominent part in the church’s decoration. Hard to say why.

In post-production, the photographer had to work hard on this door, but was rewarded...

Artistically, the Schaftlach crucifix isn’t quite on one level with the one at Enghausen, but it is powerful in its own way.

An intimate look on Bavarian folklore.

There are four very old life-size crucifixes in Bavaria. The oldest one is in the church of Jenhausen, and we’ve seen it. Then, there are others in Schaftlach, Forstenried, and here, in this Schlehdorf chapel. A week ago, we traveled a long way to visit it, but found it closed: the “Day of the Open Monument” was over... OK, we’ll return later. Perhaps we'll “do” Schaftlach next week.

“Day of the Open Monument”: everywhere doors opened which are normally closed. We visited the church of Mauern to view a crucifix from around 900 AD. I’m no art historian, but I doubt if the large cross in the Mauern church was much older than 1900 AD. Looking again at our papers, we saw our stop should have been Enghausen, a part of Mauern, and a few miles away... We left Mauern with this photo, and no regret.

The cross itself isn’t original, nor is the paint on the Christ figure, but research of the material (basswood) surprisingly resulted in a date around 900 AD, centuries earlier than art historians had estimated. The C-14 method isn’t very precise, but a stylistic classification is outright hazardous: only very few comparable crucifixes have survived. For a long time, the charwoman had complained about sawdust she had to clean up from under it: clearly, it was urgent to do something for its preservation. An exhibition, a couple of years ago, offered a good opportunity. A close examination revealed how old and rare it really was, and the Enghausen citizens feared it wouldn’t return to their church. Lucky for them, it did.

Well, why not? From Ferrara Cathedral back to Enghausen Cathedral... Including a lesson in “foreground interest” (Nigel?). ;-)