The Kiss of Judas

Everhard Rensig (German)

or Gerhard Remisch (German)

1522–1526

Medium
pot-metal and white glass, silver stain and sanguine
Classification
Glass
Dimensions
Overall: 73.7 x 71.8 cm (29 x 28 1/4 in.)
Culture
Germany, Cologne
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art, Medieval Art
Credit line
Gift of S. Livingstone Mather, Constance Mather Bishop, Philip R. Mather, Katherine Hoyt Cross, and Katherine Mather McLean in accordance with the wishes of Samuel Mather
Rights
Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed

View at the Cleveland Museum of Art

About this work

These two stained glass panels originally belonged to an extensive program of Old and New Testament subjects that originally decorated the cloister of the Cistercian Abbey of Mariawald, near Cologne. The original placement of glass at Mariawald involved windows composed of two openings. Each comprised three large glass panels plus a smaller tracery panel. Two scenes in each window represented Old Testament subjects (below) and the New Testament (above). Above the biblical narrative panels were smaller messenger panels depicting images of prophets with scrolls. At the base of each window were donor and patron saint panels. In this way, the Old Testament was shown to prefigure the events of the New. These two panels depicting scenes of Christ’s Passion were originally located in the north corner of the east cloister gallery with the Kiss of Judas on the left, and Christ in Gethsemane on the right. Mariawald was founded in 1480 and closed in 1802 when the stained glass windows were removed. Recent scholarship has attributed the glass to the Rhenish glass painters Everhard Rensig or Gerhard Remisch.