Client: Saint Joseph Church

Location: Crestline, Ohio

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Daniel DeGreve designed this triptych retable altarpiece in 2010 to frame the sanctuary Crucifix and to reconcile a work of Modernist artistic expression with the broad east wall of a Gothic church. The stained wood tableau, featuring a sunburst pattern behind the pin-mounted Crucifix, was designed and crafted in 1985 by two brothers who were artists, art teachers, and lifelong members of the parish. The parish's desire to retain the tableau was combined with aspirations to fundamentally change its Modernist outline and to magnify the Crucifix.

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Employing the geometry of the equilateral triangle and pointed arch found throughout the church interior, Daniel devised a three-panel frame in quarter and rift sawn white oak that enhances both the scale and liturgical narrative of the Crucifix, transforming it into a fuller artistic re-presentation of the Sacrifice on Calvary. The sacred number 12 and 12+1, representing Christ the head of the Mystical Body and the firstfruits of the Resurrection, repeatedly appear in the motifs of the triptych.

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As part of his work scope, Daniel generated sketches of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint John the Beloved figures for the artist to use as a basis, modeling them on the figures in a Crucifixion panel painted by the fourteenth-century Florentine artist, Nardo di Cione.

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