Christ Dead or Alive on the Edge of Christendom

The 15th century painting Christ and Donor, depicting the full-length figure of the Man of Sorrows and a kneeling donor, came to the Strossmayer Gallery in Zagreb from a Franciscan monastery in Kraljeva Sutjeska, Bosnia and Herzegovina. To the Bosnian friars the painting's iconography was highly suitable for inferring spiritual and political content connected with the Bosnian king Stjepan Tomaš, whose cult they fostered during the centuries of Ottoman rule. Tradition claims that he, like his namesake, St. Thomas, had a vision of Christ resurrected, after which the king converted from the 'heresy of Manichaeism' to the Roman Catholic faith. Thanks to its powerful meaning and emotional appeal, this strong provenance narrative persisted over centuries, revealing its complex and interwoven connections of traditional meaning and historical fact. As a case study it points to the adaptative flexibility and specific permutations of the iconographic theme Imago pietatis.