WENDY NELSON
SCULPTOR

DOLL TRIPTYCH

(not suitable for children) with martyred Saints Victor of Marsailles; Lawrence; Stephen; 

Genesius; Alban; Sebastian; Agatha; Lucy; Barbara; Simon the Zealot; Joan; Erazmus; Peter; Sebinus; Bartholomew; Lorenzo Ruis 

and associate; Luke and Michael. Found boxes, frames and dolls eyes; fabric; kapok

The lowest part of an altarpiece  the pradella  often contains a series of small paintings depicting the life of the saint the church is named after. As many of them were horribly and imaginatively tortured to death the subject matter can be gruesome. Or hilarious. Or both. At a National Gallery show of early Italian altarpieces I began to wonder how children through the ages had reacted to these conveniently placed, comic book like little pictures which brought back my own ambivalent childhood memories of religion and the church.