€ARLY G€RMAN PAINTINGS from TH€ ALT€ PINAKCTH€K, MUNICH BARTHEL BRUYN: Right Wing of an Altarpiece, Detai I: Donors I°Tn U
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
€ARLY G€RMAN PAINTINGS FROM TH€ ALT€ PINAKCTH€K, MUNICH BARTHEL BRUYN: Right Wing of An Altarpiece, Detai I: Donors i°tn u. €ARIYG€RMAN PAINTINGS FROM TH€ ALT€ PINAKDTH6K, MUNICH THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM Cf ART CREDITS This long-term international loan exchange was conceived by Erich Steingraber, General Director, Bayerische Staatsgemalde- sammlungen and Thomas Hoving, Director, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The negotiations were conducted by Philippe de Montebello, Vice Director for Curatorial and Educational Affairs; the text was written by J. L. Schrader, Curator in Charge, The Cloisters; edited by Margaretta Salinger, Curator Emeritus, European Paintings Department; and the brochure was designed by Donald Colflesh. The installation was the responsi bility of Katharine Baetjer, Associate Curator and Administrator, European Paintings Department. INTRODUQION The present installation of German paint portant schools: that of Cologne and that ings in gallery 26 highlights four long-term of the Danube. loans from the Bavarian State Collections The four loans represent painting for the of Paintings (Bayerische Staatsgemalde- Church between approximately 1485 and sammlungen), housed in the famed Alte 1530, the years of Diirer's lifetime and the Pinakothek in Munich. Not an exhibition in years during which German artists gradually the usual sense, this represents The Metro succeeded in throwing off the bonds of politan Museum of Art's first major applica medievalism, becoming artists in the true tion of what may become a standard form of sense rather than craftsmen. Cologne-- museum "collecting" in the future: namely, "das heilige Koln"—was the Mecca of to secure from foreign museums on a long- German civilization at that time, and it is term exchange basis, in this instance two significant that three of the loans are paint years, typical examples of the artistic her ings from Cologne. itage of other nations not strongly repre Cologne's proximity to the Netherlands sented in the Museum's own collection. accounts not only for the influx of Nether In return for the German paintings The landish artists into this Rhenish city but Metropolitan Museum of Art has sent to also gives the reason for the strong influ Munich for display in the Neue Pinakothek ence of Netherlandish painting there. One three Impressionist paintings of a type not of Cologne's most important painters around owned by Munich's Museum of Modern Art, 1500, the Master of the St. Bartholomew namely, Manet's Boy with a Sword, Monet's Altarpiece, came to Germany from the Ne lie aux Fleurs, and Renoir's A Young Girl therlands. with Daisies. That one of the foremost painters from Unlike many a western European nation, one of Germany's leading centers should Germany and its neighbor, Austria, have remain anonymous is also significant. Un succeeded in keeping most of their histor like Italian Renaissance artists who re ically important, indigenous paintings from corded their names for posterity, northern the late Gothic and Renaissance eras with artists in general were accustomed to the in their own boundaries. One can, for ex medieval tradition whereby the patron ample, still pay homage to Michael Pacher's rather than the artist was glorified. On the St. Wolfgang Altarpiece in its original set other hand, the names of nearly all the most ting, and Stefan Lochner's glorious Altar- important Netherlandish painters from the piece of the Three Magi can still be admired fifteenth century and the early sixteenth in Cologne Cathedral. Rarely outside of century are known. A curious observation Germany does one have such an opportunity which this loan brings out is the fact that to see important German late Gothic paint only in the German school of painting of ings as in London, where the St. Ursula the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are cycle by the anonymous Cologne painter, there so many superlative pictures by artists the Master of St. Ursula, is preserved in whose personalities are clear and strong the Victoria and Albert Museum. but whose names have been lost. Documents These paintings from Munich's reposi and inventories have not yet been linked tories will fulfill while they are here the with a rich assemblage of works by anony need in New York for a representative se mous masters, who are still doomed to travel lection of late Gothic and Renaissance under names taken from their finest, earliest German painting, especially from two im discovered, or most complete works. THE MASTER OF THE HOLY KINSHIP THE LAMENTATION OVER THE BODY OF CHRIST This anonymous painter of the school of Cologne takes his name from an altarpiece This central panel from an altarpiece shows showing the Virgin and Child and Saint an unusual combination of iconographic Anne, the Virgin's mother, and their kins motives taken from standard representations folk. The Hackeney family of Cologne of the Descent from the Cross, the Lamen commissioned this work for a monastery tation over the Body of Christ, and the no earlier than 1500, but before 1504. It Carrying of the Body to the Tomb. For its is now in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in composition it depends on the central panel Cologne. Recently an attempt has been of the Altarpiece of Gerhard Tersteegen by made to link with the master the name of the Master of the Life of the Virgin, painted Lambert von Luytgens (Lambert of Liege), around 1480 (Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz who died in 1508. Museum). From the earlier composition the Master of the Holy Kinship borrowed the The master of the Saint Bartholomew placing of the cross, the Virgin and St. Altarpiece was working in Cologne at the John at its foot, and the form and posture same time and a third anonymous painter, of the body of Christ. He altered slightly the Master of the Aachen Altarpiece, was the pose and appearance of Joseph of a pupil or follower of the Kinship Master. Arimethea and Nicodemus, the bearers of All three of these artists show their famil its weight. To this basic scheme the Kin iarity with the art of the Netherlands and ship Master added the two crucified thieves the Kinship Master may even have traveled and the kneeling Magdelen, and replaced in the Low Countries. He was especially the elder apostle who stood at the right in influenced, however, by the painters of the earlier Lamentation with a second rep Westphalia and the Lower Rhine. Through resentation of St. John the Evangelist out his career he clung to the traditions of (with chalice). the Cologne school as formulated by Stefan Lochner, owing a special debt to the works Late Gothic realism is the keynote of of the Master of the Glorification of Mary this picture. Whereas the Master of the and the exquisitely delicate paintings by Life of the Virgin had used a gold back the Master of the Life of the Virgin. ground for the sky in his Tersteegen Altarpiece, the Kinship Master, painting The Kinship Master must have begun around 1485-1490, employed naturalistic working by the late 1470's, judging from colors and aerial perspective for the sky his altarpiece, the Seven Joys of the Virgin, in the Lamentation. He opened up the based partly on a work by Stefan Lochner. background at the right with a wide view His Altarpiece of Count Gumprecht von of a lake, and he exploited to the fullest Neuenahr, was doubtless completed before degree the tactile values of the rich fab 1484. An altarpiece wing in The Metropoli rics in the costumes. tan Museum of Art, painted on both sides by him around 1490 and showing the Nativity This painting entered the Munich col and the Throne of Grace, was formerly in lections in 1804, having previously been the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. in the Princely Cabinet of Paintings at Kempten. Oil on wood, 51 3/8 x 40 1/4 inches Munich, Bayerische StaatsgemSldesamm- lungen, Inv. no. 37a ANTON WOENSAM VON WORMS Woensam's paintings are particularly (before 1500-1541) rare outside Germany, and only two of his paintings have found their way into Anton Woensam is a name known today museums in the United States. principally to book and print collectors, as he was Cologne's most important and prolific sixteenth-century woodcut illus TWO WINGS FROM THE ALTARPIECE trator. His large, multi-sheet woodcut OF SAINT GEREON view of the Cologne skyline, dated 1531, is one of the few examples of German Left wing (outside): the Martyrdom of the xylography that even approaches the Theban Legion monumental concept expressed in Diirer's (inside): Saint Anno and Saint Triumphal Procession and Triumphal Arch Gregory the Moor of Maximilian I. A younger contemporary Right wing (outside): the Martyrdom of the of Barthel Bruyn the Elder, Woensam Theban Legion earned a reputation as a painter in (inside): Saint Stephen and Cologne second only to Bruyn's during Saint Mauritius the third and fourth decades of the six teenth century. The altarpiece to which these wings be Woensam seems to have been born in longed came out of Saint Gereon, one of the middle Rhenish town of Worms and to Cologne's leading churches. The central , have emigrated to Cologne with his father panel belongs today to the museum of the Jaspar, also a painter. He is often re priests* seminary at Freising, near Munich, ferred to in Cologne documents as "Tho- It shows in the center an altar surmounted nis", a diminutive form of Antonius. by a cross, flanked at the left by Saint Gereon and Christ as the Salvator Mundi, It is not known whether Woensam re and at the right by the Virgin and Child ceived his artistic training from anyone and Saint Helena.