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The altarpiece of St. George church in Sopron is one of those rare Baroque compositions which are not a simple devotional picture or a copy of one, but a so-called picture in picture. This type of composition, apart from intensifying the pictorial effect, always refers to some important aspects of the history of devotion of the central picture.
In the middle of this altarpieces, in an elegant Louis XIV. style golden frame set out whit laurel festoons and bows of ribbons, is shown the image of the Virgin of Genazzano, at that time famous all over the world, with her special appellation written in a banderole: Maria von guten, Rath, Mother of Good Advice (Aurenhammer 1956. 110-111).
The prototype of the Eleousa-type devotional picture was an Albanian Treccento fresco from the church of Skutari, delivered from the Turkish invaders in 1467 the Augustinian hermits in Genazzano near Roma. Its veneration spread by means of copies made for other churches of the order, and won popularity through the pious brotherhoods founded for its honour. The cult of the Mother of Good Advice - obviously because of its anti-Islamic aspects - was encouraged by Pope Innocent XI, so in the 17th and 18th centuries it flourished not only within the order but throughout the whole Catholic Church.
In Hungary the altarpieces representing the Mother of Good Advice sometimes also show the angels who, according to the legend, flew with the devotional picture and brought it to its place.
The representation of this scene may come from a copperplate of Sebestyén Zeller, an engraver in Pozsony. In Sopron, however, the substitution of this usual environment for an allegorical natural landscape transmits an entirely original, thus far unknown meaning of the iconography of the picture. The tree struck by lightning and the shattered ancient idol with lire, in his hand had already lost much of their topicallity at the time as symbols for the enemies of the pervious centuries (pagans, Turks, the Reformation). The literary products of the Enlightenment which spread even by way of leaflets, engendered a grave spiritual crisis, disrupting even the traditional unity of the clergy. The verse of psalm written in front of the flashing thunderbolts at the two sides of the picture: Verstummen müssen - falsche Lettzen, Ps. 30. v. 19. (Let the lying lips be put to silence, Psalm 31, 18) gives us a very perceptible rendering of the mood of the belivers confused in their traditional religiosity. With the dark clouds in the background Dorffmaister presents us with a picturesque and inventive representation of the shock that befell the faith before omnipotence of reason, and makes us feel the atmosphere of the crisis caused in many contemporaries by awareness of helplessness.
It is in this stormy, almost pre-Romantic landscape in this "mirror of the soul" that the gentle look of the Mother of Good Advice and that of the Child on her breast might have been an "apology" of orientation and inner satisfaction for everybody having recourse to her.
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