Angel at the Tomb of Christ

This angel, a major achievement of Romanesque art in Cologne, is announcing to the women who have come to visit the tomb of Christ that He has risen. Missing are the group of women themselves (one of them is in the Keresztény Múzeum in Esztergom, Hungary), the angel’s wings, and probably a sceptre in his left hand. Architectural representations of the tomb of Christ (such as that at Gernrode), or sculptural groups showing the figures at the tomb, played a key role in the Easter liturgy for centuries. The workshop that made this angel evidently followed Cologne merchants to Jutland, the principal trade junction in the Baltic; among the works made there was the Madonna of Viklau, now in the Historiska Museet in Stockholm.