The Passion in Cinemascope

Canvas as a support was adopted very early on by the Cologne painters as an alternative to wood. And just as planks were joined together to make wooden panels, several pieces of cloth would be sewed together for larger canvases. The results – as here – were attached to wooden stretchers, and decorative wooden battens would be glued to the edges. The canvas and the battens would then be grounded, painted and adorned. In this way the painting and frame formed an entity, as with the wooden panels.

The oldest existing canvases from Cologne were done around 1350 for the Poor Clares. Now in the keeping of the cathedral, they were conceived as wings of an altarpiece: this was practical, because canvas is lighter than wood and easier to move. Canvas also lends itself especially to large-scale pictures. This depiction of Christ’s Passion is the largest painting that exists from Cologne at that time.

The late mediaeval canvases from Cologne were constructed in much the same way as panel paintings: first the support was painted with a white ground and then, on top of that, the painting was executed in oil-based paint. Gilding was not possible, though, due to the softness of the surface. Instead of this, our painter filled the backgrounds of the various parts of this painting with landscapes and city scenes. Thus the properties of the picture support forced him to employ a very modern solution.