ABSTRACT
While the Sebeş example documents public reaction to the removal of religious art from the church and provides evidence concerning lay attitudes to imagery, it also attests to the survival of Marian statues in Lutheran churches into the eighteenth century. Sebeş is not unique in this respect, as statues of Mary have also survived unscathed in the shrine of the altarpieces of Boian (Bonnesdorf, Alsóbajom), Băgaciu (Bogeschdorf, Szászbogács) (see Figure 6.3), and Şmig (Schmiegen, Somogyom), while the full story of Mary’s life is told in a visual narrative on the interior of the movable wings of the altarpiece of Biertan (Birthälm, Berethalom) (see Figure 6.4). Finally, Mary is a prominent subject of Infancy cycles, rather frequently represented in Transylvanian altarpieces, which always include the Annunciation and Visitation.2 ese survivals probably represent a fraction of the numerous images commissioned by pious people for Transylvanian churches during the middle ages. First of all, Mary was depicted as an iconic (sometimes three-dimensional) image, as the eotokos, the Maria Regina, as Maria Mediatrix, or as the Woman of the Apocalypse (see Figure 6.5) from the vision of St John at Patmos.3 Mary’s life was the subject of narrative cycles based on both the Gospels and the Apocrypha (at Mălâcrav, Sebeş and Biertan). While the episodes of the Infancy of Christ relied upon the canonical Gospels,4 the story of Mary’s conception, birth and early life were based on the Protoevangelium of James and the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, while the story of her dormition and assumption are told in the writings of John the Divine.5
