The Renaissance winged altar in the Evangelical Lutheran church in Sebeş is the largest altar in Transylvania, measuring thirteen metres in height and almost six metres in width. Its creation dates back to between 1518 and 1523, as indicated by both the coat of arms of King Louis Jagiellon (1516–1526) in the predella and the inscription on the corpus of the altar shrine, which was legible until recently: “altare hoc extructum 1418” (obviously, this must have originally been “1518”). The upper limit of 1523 results from the earthquake of that year, which caused the collapse of the vault in the church choir. It is difficult to imagine that the retable reaching the keystone of the vault would have emerged from this disaster unscathed. The figure of the Virgin Mary with the Child, on the axis of the Tree of Jesse in the corpus of the altarpiece, is a Baroque copy of the original, which was moved in the mid-eighteenth century to the castle chapel in Coroi in the distant region of Mureş. The sculptural furnishings of the lunette of the pinnacle and the niche of the predella have also not survived. Fortunately, its carpentry structure and ornamentation remain intact. On the decorative consoles of the predella, there are two shields with coats of arms: on the heraldic right side, the coat of arms of King Louis Jagiellon of Hungary, and on the left, the coat of arms of the city of Sebeş. The royal coat of arms shows the Árpád stripes on a red background around the Jagiellonian eagle, a two-armed cross on a hill, the coat of arms of Dalmatia in the form of three crowned leopard heads and a raised lion in a crown symbolising Bohemia. The town coat of arms, on the other hand, features a red, two-tailed lion with a crown on a silver background, facing heraldically to the left. The lion’s crown symbolises the status of a free royal town.
It is difficult to identify the creators of this work. Veit Stoss, his son Veit the Younger, who worked in Transylvania, and even Paul of Levoča have been suggested, but the evidence is at the level of generalities and is not convincing.
Sebeş, Evangelical Lutheran parish church (originally St. Mary’s), Predella of the high altar, 1518
© Wojciech Marcinkowski
Cat. 1.7
