There is some thought that these great architectural forms of the altar screen arose out of the medieval practice of setting up grand images (e.g. the Pala d'Oro behind the high altar of St. Mark's in Venice) or displays of relics behind the altar, but the primary function of these decorative screens seems to be (or at least came to be), much like that of the ciborium magnum, to draw attention to the altar itself -- the one difference here being that, unlike the ciborium or even the dossal curtain whose use is typically reserved for the main altar of a church, reredoses seem to frequently appear in multiples, appearing not only on the main altar of a church but also on all its secondary altars; that said, the most grandiose screen in both scale and ornamentation is always that of the high altar, thereby separating that altar from the rest in scale and prominence. These screens come in various forms and styles, the most common though being gothic, baroque, Rococo and gothic revival -- aligning to the periods when these structures were particularly popular.
Reredoses are always particularly popular precisely because they were made, by design, to be impactful by their sheer scale and ornamentality. Today we are going to take a moment to give you a brief survey of just a few reredoses, coming in different styles and from different periods.
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| St. Catherine Church, Krakow, Poland |
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| Parish of St. Veit, Glan, Carinthia, Austria |
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| Location unidentified but from the surrounding architecture I would guess Germany or Austria |
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| Franziskanerkirche, Salzburg, Austria |
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| Location unknown |
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| Votivkirche, Vienna, Austria |
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| Michaelskirche, Munich, Germany (1583) |
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| Cathedral of Lugo, Spain |
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| Church of St. Laurentius, Obing, Germany (1491) |
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| Kaiserdom St. Bartholomäus, Frankfurt, Germany |
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| Shrine of the Sacred Heart, Dublin, Ireland |
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| Klosterkirche, Rheinau, Switzerland |
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| St. Blasius, Kaufbeuren, Germany |
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| St. Anne, Berchtesgaden, Germany |
