ABSTRACT
This chapter reconstructs and analyzes the performance of a late medieval German sculpture of the crucified Christ (c. 1510) using the lens of puppetry. Such movable sculptures were found across medieval Europe, evidence of their central importance to the religious life of the Church. I argue that their combination of visual and kinetic mimesis allows us to consider them as a type of puppet, a categorization that also provides new avenues for understanding their devotional function. Like the puppet, this sculpture negotiates between the animate and the inanimate, resulting in complex reflections on life, death, and the relationship between the representation of the divine and the divine itself.
