The Kiss of Judas

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.