Resumen de Ein Kopffragment aus der Zisterzienserabtei Ebrach im Mainfränkischen Museum Würzburg, eine Zeichnung aus der Ebracher Klosterchronik von 1660/61 und das Streben nach Erlösung im Jenseits
As early as 1948 Theodor Müller recognized the fragment as an angel's head. However, the thesis of this article is that the fragment is not, as recent studies propose, a head of an angel of Annunciation, but one of Coronation. At one time, Mary was depicted as crowned by the angel during her Assumption on th tympanum of the former gate chapel of the Cistercian Abbey in Ebrach, which is only documented by a drawing in the abbey's chronicle from the seventeenth century. In this context, the angel's head is part of an iconography of the liminal zone, which embodies the subjects of death, damnation, and redemption at the gate chapel founded by the noble family Fuchs in 1276 as a funerary chapel. Moreover, the results of the analysis suggest that the sculptor of the tympanum, the converse John, was trained in the setting of Strasbourg Cathedral.
