49 The Holy Cross retable The altar itself (stipes and mensa) is built of simple and coarse masonry, not massive but hollow with openings on both sides providing an entrance to the inner space and access to gravestones in the floor underneath the stipes. The mensa is made of one stone slab. The stone suppedaneum is a later addition with two steps fitted to the front but not to the sides of the stipes (Fig. 72). Viewed in context with the retable, stipes and mensa are too small for the retable. The observation of gravestones in the inner structure of the stipes–visible but partly covered by the masonry of the stipes, is evidence for the late dating of the stipes or a rearrangement of the whole, which must have been carried out in the second half of the 19th century. This timing would align with the rearrangement of the gravestones in the nave and the erection of the two small altars at the frontwall of the nave. Fig. 73: About 1950; small cartouches on the front of the postaments are missing today; the retable has no lateral pedestals (with permission by the photo archive of the monument care office, Split). Fig. 74: Right postament; empty position of former attached cartouche
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTI5NTQ=