The souls of purgatory, set of five sculptures in carved and polychromed wood, hollowed out back. The characters are in bust, coming out of flames, some have their arms raised, their mouths open, their hair in disorder, their eyes revolted, their faces are emaciated and all have an expression of pain, some have a bracelet on their arm. Two of them are dated 1756. Southern Germany or Central Europe, 18th century (1756) H. 35 cm (resumption of the polychromy) The first representations of purgatory did not appear in Christian iconography until the mid-thirteenth century. The Parisian Catholic theologians of the 12th century overturned the idea of the purgation of faults by developing the idea of a place for this purification, whereas previously it had been envisaged as a time. It is the second council of Lyon in 1274 which ratifies this idea. The souls are thus represented here with irons on their arms, symbolizing the faults that still hinder them from the blessed contemplation; they are writhing in pain in the ordeal of the purifying fire and stretch out their arms towards the spectator to implore their liberating prayer. Baroque piety placed pictorial or sculpted representations of this purification in the predella of altarpieces. It is possible to compare these figures with those preserved in a chapel of the cathedral of Varazdine in Croatia (fig).