Religious works of art, like paintings, sculptures, gold and silver vessels, liturgical vestments and a parament cabinet from 1608 are on display in the exhibition entitled “Testimonies to Faith of Pious Women – Religious Art at Heiligkreuztal Convent” (Glasubenswzeugnisse frommer Frauen – Religiöse Kunst im Kloster Heiligkreuztal) in the late Romanesque Church of Brothers (Bruderkirche).
The exhibits shown are primarily testimonies to the piousness of the common people in the 17th and 18th century, and are part of the decoration of the former convent church. They are mainly the works of local and Upper Swabian artists.
Among the artistically most valuable pieces of the exhibition is a crucifix produced in the first half of the 15th century in a sculptor’s workshop in Ulm – most probably in that of Hans Multscher. The figure of Christ impresses the viewer with the three-dimensional nature of anatomical details like the rib, shoulder and stomach sections. The crucifix once hung in the nave of the former convent church.
Another highlight of the exhibition is the “Infant Jesus of Prague” (Prager Jesulein). It is a magnificently clothed wax figure contained in a wooden shrine with glass windows and adorned with elaborate Rococo carvings. The wax figure is a smaller copy of the infant Jesus that has been venerated in Prague since the 17th century. More than 100 copies were, for example, produced in 1739 by the sculptor Johann Georg Schlansovky. It is known from accounts books that the nuns of Heiligkreuztal ordered a shrine from Johann Baptist Bommer from Trochtelfingen for the figure in 1754.
A large number of other works in the convent, which were produced by the nuns themselves from a wide variety of materials as settings for smaller relics and skeletons of Roman catacomb saints, are also worthy of mention.
