Aachen Altar Aachen Altar The Aachen Altar (de: "Aachener Altar") or Passion Altar ("Passionsaltar") is a late gothic passion triptych in the Aachen Cathedral Treasury, made by the so-called Master of the Aachen Altar around 1515/20 in Cologne, Germany. The open, three winged polyptych altar image shows scenes from the Passion of Christ to his Ascension in continuous sequence from left to right. At the assumed time of composition, this type of depiction was already well-established. On the left wing of the altar, Jesus is crowned with the Crown of thorns and confronts Pontius Pilate. The central panel depicts the Stations of
Altar in the Catholic Church used, thus forming, with the top slab, a stone chest containing the relics. This no doubt brought about both a change of form, from that of a simple table to that of a chest or tomb. Latin Church liturgy, before the reforms of the second half of the twentieth century, had complex rules about a distinction between a "fixed altar" and a "portable altar". The former term then meant an altar table (the top slab) with its supports, all of which had been consecrated as a single unit, while the latter term meant the (usually small) altar stone or any