Christ on the Cross, flanked by the Virgin Mary and St. John is in the center of the panel. Mary wears a blue cloak and St. John a red cloak. The event is placed within a landscape showing mountains, lake and a town in the distance. At the sides, rose colored pilasters stand behind columns to support a heavy green entablature that transitions to a thin red lintel. Above the lintel is an unidentified scene of a man on his hands and knees being stabbed by three soldiers. To the left of the scene is St. Gallus and to the right St. Othmar, both monastic saints. Flanking the Crucifixion on the left is St. Benedict standing at the bottom of the framing pilaster. The female figure on the right side and segments below her are stopgaps. A coat of arms appears at the bottom of the panel, just below Christ’s cross. On the left is the inscription and a kneeling monastic donor is on the right.

The abbey of St Gallen, a UNESCO World Heritage Site was among the most important abbeys in Europe and today is recognized as holding one of the richest medieval libraries in the world. Its origins stem from the hermitage built by St. Gall (ca. 550– ca. 646; Butler, 1846, vols 10–12, pp. 216–221). The saint is shown at the upper left blessing a bear who brought him a piece of wood. In 719, construction of the abbey began and St. Othmar, shown on the right, became the abbey’s first abbot the following year (Ott, 1911). He died in 759 after being kidnapped by local noblemen who claimed some of the abbey’s land. Ten years later his body was transferred to the monastery of St. Gall and his emblem of the wine cask is associated with the journey. The men rowing his body over the lake became extremely thirsty, but the wine barrel used to quench their thirst never ran empty.

The representation of the Crucifixion shows Christ with the sorrowing Virgin Mary and the Apostle John. This type of reduced narrative was often selected to aid viewers to meditate on relationships and their own position towards God. The presumed scene of martyrdom above the lintel is unidentified.

On the lower left is St. Benedict (480–543), the founder of western monasticism. He holds a cup with snakes. The legend recounts that Benedict was called from his hermetic life to be abbot of a monastery whose abbot had died. Within a short time, the monks rejected his rule and attempted to poison him but the poisoned wine glass shattered (Butler, 1846, p. 631, Ryan, 1993, vol. 1, p. 187). Benedict survived and then returned to Subiaco where he was joined by others who wished to follow his example. The legend of the poisoned cup, with the poison appearing as a serpent (a description not in the Golden Legend), is inspired by the widely circulated iconography of St. John holding a poisoned cup. Numerous examples of the Benedict’s cup appear in Swiss glass, repeatedly in the Cloister of Wettingen, West XIIIb, XIVb, XVa, XVa, and North Va (Hoegger, 2003). Mathias Murer (†1613), who in 1570 made the Profession and was Statthalter (steward) of the Abbey from 1590–1613, kneels to the right, holding rosary beads in his hands.

Cited in:
Hayward, Kummer-Rothenhäusler, & Raguin, 1987, p. 68.
Hayward, Kummer-Rothenhäusler, & Raguin, 1989, p. 311.