 Thank you so much for this introduction, Professor Merweckand. I'm so pleased to be here with you this afternoon. In a recent psychological experiment involving around 5,000 participants, Matthew Killingworth and Daniel Gilbert demonstrated that almost half of the time we are awake, our mind doesn't pay attention to what we are doing, but strays to other thoughts. The main result of their study suggests that people are significantly gloomier when their mind wanders, no matter whether the objects of their attention is pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant. As Killingworth and Gilbert conclude, the human mind is a wandering mind. The wandering mind is an unhappy mind. This recognition is hardly a new wonder. The wandering mind and its accompanying sadness form the central concern for thinkers from ancient philosophy to late medieval pastoral theology. Philosophers and theologians both had endeavored to offer various remedies for this aspect of human nature. In this talk, I will demonstrate that not only words, but also images were employed to anchor the straying mind as a unique late medieval panel painting testifies. The painting, now kept in estergum, was probably executed in the circle of the master of the Albrecht Altar, the leading painter in Vienna in the 1440s. In the estergum panel, the young woman dressed in a heavy grass-green velvet robe trimmed with fur being inspects her image in a little round mirror. She sits on a chair in the center for domestic interior in a railroad room. She's surrounded with objects of worldly pleasure. Small boxes filled with jewels and money are placed at her feet. Shiny metal wares are lined up on a shelf behind her and the precious and precious fabrics hang from a road above her head. The left wall of the room is missing, thus opening a view to a town or modest vista with barrels and a harness black horse in the foreground and houses in the back. And what are these red lines running all around? The panel, you might wonder. We will get back to them later. At first sight, the painting appears to be a primitive genre scene set in a richly detailed cityscape, but we will see that the estergum panel is more complex. It depicts the fantasies of a wandering mind. To get a better understanding of the painting, I will first unpack the theoretical discussion underlying the theme of the image, which addresses the psychological problem of the wandering mind in late medieval pastoral care. Then I will demonstrate how the estergum panel might have been employed to focus one's minds on prayer. As an instrument for concentration, this painting had, I will contend, a distinct therapeutic function which doesn't conform to the traditional art historical understanding of late medieval art as mere devotional aid. In other words, a study of the performative potential of the estergum panel offers a path to explore the various ways in which works of art participated in personal piety in the late middle ages. To understand the medieval discourse on the wandering mind, we must first recognize that the presence of the mind was crucial in communicating with God, as it is also attested by the comments of such an influential authority as Thomas Aquinas. The tension Aquinas stated is absolutely necessary for prayer. By praying, man surrounds his mind to God since he submits and in a certain sense gives it to him through reverence. Our mind, however, is incapable of maintaining the necessary level of attention by praying. Because of the weakness of human nature Aquinas observed, the human mind cannot long remain aloft and thus, by the weight of human weakness, the soul is brought down to the level of inferior things. Thus, when the mind of one praying ascends to God in contemplation, it quickly wanders because of weakness. By accepting Aquinas' notion that the string of tension is inherent to humankind's fallen nature, one also acknowledges that the wandering mind needs to be disciplined through spiritual exercise. To train one's attention and to reinforce the conscious presence of the mind when praying, various mnemonic techniques had been developed since early Christianity. Yet, by the late Middle Ages, these intricate methods, primary tailored to monks, didn't meet the needs of emerging lay piety. For this reason, theologians concerned with pastoral care developed new devotional means to spiritually train the light. For example, in Nuremberg, the Dominican Johannes Nieder, one of the most prominent refund theologians of the early 15th century, preached about therapeutic methods for depressing issues of private devotion, such as the correct mode of praying. In his sermon on the wandering mind, Nieder advocated, when someone wants to pray, then he shouldn't immediately begin with his mouth. Beforehand, he should turn his heart to God and should visualize Jesus Christ for the eyes of the mind as if he corporally stood in front of him. That is, the Dominican theologian understood imagination and memory as internal visualization process where the quality of images people restoring their mind determines the state of their inner self. Thus, people are responsible for what kind of images they bear in mind. They should strive for expaling the wrong and keeping the right ones. For Nieder, this anthropology had significant consequences for the praying practice, generating the assumption that the correct disposition of the mind for focused prayer depends on feeling the cognitive faculties with sacred images. And the easiest way to achieve this correct mental state is looking at pictures of the passion. It is hardly a coincidence that around the same time Nieder preached in Nuremberg, a woodcut was printed somewhere in southern Germany that formulated the very essence of Nieder's ideas in pictorial terms. This woodcut delineates two men kneeling in prayer at the foot of a monumental crucifix. Their clothing reveal daily identity. The modestly dressed pious man clasping rosary is devotedly immersed in his prayer to Christ on the cross as lines running from his head to Christ's wounds visualize his mental disposition. Meanwhile, the other extravagantly dressed man's mind wanders away from the contemplation of the holy wounds. Verlite thinks divert his attention from the focus of his devotion. The sources of his distraction are diagrammatically represented behind him in six small fields. From the top left to the bottom right, a woman's, oh, sorry, a woman sitting in a table and looking herself in round mirror, a bed chamber, precious fabrics and vessels, a box filled with jewels and belts, a man riding a horse next to some barrels, and here a house in the middle of a garden. This image of the piously praying and distracted man seems to have been fabricated for a similar therapeutic purpose as neither's instruction on the same topic. With its clear mode of representation, the woodcut encapsulates neither's teaching in a compelling schematic picture. It delineates both the conundrum of straying mind and the possible solution proposed by neither in a single image. On the one hand, the harmful thoughts that the man distracted in his prayer is supposed to drive out from his mental faculties are comprehensively enumerated in the six small fields in the right half of the woodcut. On the other hand, looking at the visual exemplar of the man devotely praying, the viewer is reminded of how to avoid the burial of the wandering mind. Now, we can return to the astragum panel. This painting is in fact a part of a much larger tableau. What we see today in the panel is the visual manifestation of the distracted man's mental preoccupation. The same worldly things that are itemized in the six fields of the woodcut appear again here, neatly arranged in a genre scene. The conceptual link between the distracted prayer and the sources of his diversion is highlighted by the red lines that you can see them here and here, running from the woman and the horse and the objects to the other half, no lost half of the painting. So it might have looked like something like that originally. If we accept that the astragum panel with the counterpart panel constituted the original composition, we can hypothesize on the original state of this work of art. It seems reasonable to assume that the two panels together represented the piously praying and the distracted man in the closed wings of a composite object. The rivers of the astragum panel, featuring a lavishly gilded and two at agony in the garden, supports this reconstruction. Until very recently, no other part of the original was known, but last year some fragments were found in the astragum museum. And here I'm showing you this fragment. And I put you together, so that's what we have so far and that was found very recently. And here you can see the two phases when these missing pieces have been to put together. So sorry, back again. So here you see one phase when the shutter, the wing was closed and the other phase when the shutter was open. And here is my hypothetical reconstruction of the whole ensemble. Looking at the reconstruction, we can conclude that the original polyptych followed the tradition of similar composite artifacts and their hierarchical distinction between plain exterior and embellished interior. The image of the piously praying and distracted man form part of the exterior, along with the nativity and the ascension, while the agony, the betrayal and the caring of the interior of the polyptych. But why was the image of the piously praying and the distracted man presented in the exterior of the closed polyptych? This composite work of art conveyed a more elaborate, multilayered image program than a woodcut could represent. Compared to the stasis of a single image, a polyptych of this size required active participation of the viewer. Folding of the wings encouraged performative reception of the images, both in the closed and the open phases, thereby structuring the visual experience of the viewer. The intact polyptych I propose was intended to solve an enduring problem of Christian devotion by the means of art. It was not a mere visual reminder of good spiritual exercise, but a vehicle for mental recollection which could prompt the spiritual exercise itself. Placing the image of the piously praying and the distracted man in the exterior side of the wings suggests that the closed polyptych was intended to prime the beholder for prayer. In other words, it might have provided visual means for a prolonged stage of mental recollection before the actual act of immersed praying. To this end, the wings presented a compelling visual juxtaposition. The objects of earthly pleasure depicted in the right wing furnished the eye with pleasant material to gaze at, which stood in striking contrast to the painfully tortured body of Christ on the cross in the right wing. Meanwhile, the crucifix supplied the most perfect image to the viewer to refresh his mental faculties. Thus, why Nida could remind his audience only with words, the estergon polyptych actually showed the viewer thus facilitated the mental process of focusing. Mobilized by the image, the beholder could absorb Christ's wounds to cleanse his mind of distracting thoughts. A lingering contemplation in front of this closed polyptych could imprint the viewer's mind with the sacred image of the crucifixion, thus deflecting his thoughts from the worldly to spiritual while demanding him to be present at the very moment. After transposing the beholder from his mundane surrounding to the desired focus mental state, the wings could be opened, revealing the lavish inside of the polyptych. At this moment, the viewer was exposed to strikingly different visual realm, resplendent scene of the passion unfolded in front of his eyes. Compared to the sumptuous inside, the closed wings appeared utterly austere. Not even the luxurious worldly objects painted in the exterior side could reach up to the heavenly opulence represented in the open polyptych. The shimmering gilded background could engross the viewer, thereby further enhancing his spiritually elevated state. Ideally at this stage of praying, the viewer was in a focused mental state to be immersed in the contemplation of Christ's suffering. In conclusion, the late theme of the piously praying and the distracted man in the closed wings, as well as the sumptuous application of gold in the inner panels suggests that the estergon polyptych was commissioned by a worthy layman who might have been well aware of the distracting power of false goods in his praying practice. Perhaps unable to gain control over his wandering mind on his own, he relied on this image to help to anchor his attention to the sacred. Our polyptych was a prompt of personal devotion. The folding of its wings enabled an ingenious interplay between external and internal, richly animating the various levels of the praying practice. The disposition of the scene on the polyptych's exterior indicates a very consciously designed program in so doing enriching the experience of the viewers in ways impossible in other media. The closed face could facilitate a preparatory recollecting stage, so the open polyptych might have allowed a more focused meditation on the passion. In this performative function, this work of art was a finely orchestrated vehicle of personal devotion, the sophisticated visual aid for self-discipline and focused praying, and the visual remedy for the sickness of the wandering mind. Thank you.