Resumen de Neupräsentationen und Umdeutungen des Heiligen Kreuzes von Polling vom 13. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert
The center of the baroque altarpiece of the Augustinian Monastery of Polling in South Germany forms the so-called Holy Cross. Its current presentation, dated from 1763, is the last of a sequence of four well-documented presentations of a Romanesque wooden cross since 1230. This cross is an excellent example for analyzing and comparing several methods of re-presenting a historic art object as well as for understanding the motivation for such re-presentations, which are grounded on changes of the spiritual function of the object. In its first reframing, the cross received a covering of gilded parchment and a painting of the crucifix on this ground coat. In a fundamental publication from 1994, this covering was compared with a reliquary holding the old venerated wooden cross. However, looking at the context of medieval instructions for painters and the material evidence of extant contemporary paintings, this interpretation becomes questionable: the covering with parchment was a common and technically motivated procedure rather than a spiritually motivated one.
