PAUL LAUTENSACK's LIFE and WORK I. Bamberg1 Lautensack Was Born in 1477 Or 1478,2 and He Must Have Received the Usual School

CHAPTER ONE

PAUL LAUTENSACK’S LIFE AND WORK

I. Bamberg1

Lautensack was born in 1477 or 1478,2 and he must have received the usual schooling for craftsmen – writing and basic mathematics, but no Latin.3 Nothing is known about his apprenticeship; most likely he was at some point associated with the workshop of the Master of the Hersbruck Altarpiece (Meister des Hersbrucker Altares), probably based in Bam berg, and maybe also with the emerging Danube School.4 By 1501 he had established his workshop in Bamberg, a small yet prosperous town domi- nated by a cathedral and several monasteries, which provided reliable patronage for artists. From this year until 1514 he undertook large commissions for the church of the short-lived pilgrimage in Grimmenthal near Meiningen (today in Thuringia).5 In addition, between 1506 and 1521 he received regular payments for works (in most cases small-scale decorative

1 Lautensack’s Bamberg period was studied in Renate Baumgärtel-Fleischmann, “Bamberger Plastik von 1479 bis 1520,” 104. Bericht des Historischen Vereins für die Pflege der Geschichte des ehemaligen Fürstbistums Bamberg (1968): 53–65, 107–21, 223–37, 315–21, 349. I discovered some new material on this period, which I intend to publish separately. 2 According to an etching by Hans Lautensack (Frontispiece) Paul was 74 years old in 1552. 3 In an autograph manuscript Lautensack quoted the Vulgate version of John 19:37 as “videbund in quem tranß fixerunt,” thus spelling the Latin phonetically according to the Franconian dialect with softened ts (9a:N8r). 4 Baumgärtel-Fleischmann, “Bamberger Plastik,” 235. 5 The still definitive history of this pilgrimage is Georg Brückner, “Grimmenthal als Wallfahrtsort und Hospital,” in Neue Beiträge zur Geschichte Deutschen Alterthums, vol. 1 (Meiningen: Brückner & Renner, 1858), 99–311 (pp. 115–27 deal with the church and its decoration), some corrections appear in the introduction to Johannes Mötsch, Die Wallfahrt zu Grimmenthal: Urkunden, Rechnungen, Mirakelbuch (Cologne: Böhlau, 2004). Accounts related to Lautensack’s works are edited in Baumgärtel-Fleischmann, “Bamberger Plastik,” 315–20, A73–74, 76–79, 81, 83, 85, 87, 89, 91, 93, 95, and again in Mötsch, Wallfahrt zu Grimmenthal, 219–66, R6–7, 10–13, 18–20. Lautensack also worked at the nearby chapel of St Wolfgang in Hermannsfeld; see Hermann Pusch, “Die Wallfahrt zum heiligen Wolfgang bei Hermannsfeld,” Henneberger Blätter: Sonntagsbeilage der Dorfzeitung Hildburghausen 7–10 (1921/24): 25–49 [published 1922/23]; Johannes Mötsch, “Die Wallfahrt St. Wolfgang bei Hermannsfeld,” in Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter: Festschrift für Matthias Werner zum 65. Geburtstag (Cologne: Böhlau, 2007), 673–700.

12 chapter one painting) done for the Prince Bishops of Bamberg.6 As a wealthy and respected citizen he lived in one of the most prosperous parts of Bamberg, and by 1520 he had become both Gassenhauptmann [alderman] and churchwarden. His first son, Paul, who later like his father moved to Nuremberg and eventually was appointed organist of St Sebald, was born in 1506.7 Another son, Heinrich, who became a goldsmith in Frankfurt, was born in 1522 as the son of Lautensack and Barbara Graffin, and two more sons, Michael and Hans, the well-known etcher, were probably born around this time, too.8 No extant paintings by Lautensack can be linked to the documented commissions – the church in Grimmenthal fell into decay after the Reformation, and the only surviving elements of its furnishing are reliefs which Lautensack must have subcontracted.9 It is unclear if he had any role in their design,10 or if he collaborated regularly with their (unknown) sculptor.11 A signed panel painting allows us to identify parts of five

6 Baumgärtel-Fleischmann, “Bamberger Plastik,” 317–21, A80, 82, 84, 86, 88, 90, 92, 94, 96–98. 7 This date appears in a horoscope (Stadtbibliothek Nuremberg, Nor. H. 1,006, see Paul Oskar Kristeller, Iter Italicum, 7 vols. (London: Warburg Institute, and Leiden: Brill, 1967– 97), 3:696). Since there are more than 10 years between Paul’s birth and that of his siblings his mother was probably not Barbara Graffin but an earlier wife, probably the wife who collected payments for her husband in 1514 (Mötsch, Wallfahrt zu Grimmenthal, 265, R20). 8 Documents about Lautensack’s children are collected in Annegrit Schmitt, Hans Lautensack (Nuremberg: Edelmann, 1957). 9 These are reliefs with scenes from the Passion that probably come from one large altarpiece (a precise reconstruction is difficult), and which are now part of the Baroque altar of the parish church of Gräfentonna, see Herbert von Hintzenstern, Der Kreuzaltar von Gräfentonna: ein unbekanntes Meisterwerk (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, [1957]) and, for color photographs, Peter Denner, Peter und Paul-Kirche zu Gräfentonna (Gräfentonna: Evangelische Kirchengemeinde, [1992]). A large relief with the mystical Unicorn Hunt, a common devotional scene, is now in the Herzogliches Museum in Gotha (Allmuth Schuttwolf, Sammlung der Plastik: Schloßmuseum Gotha (Gotha: Gothaer Kultur- und Fremdenverkehrsbetrieb, 1995), 58–61). 10 Their style has nothing in common with that of Lautensack’s paintings (Baumgärtel- Fleischmann, “Bamberger Plastik,” 231), but parts of the Gräfentonna altarpiece as well as some panels by Lautensack borrow scenes from Hans Schäufelein’s Speculum Passionis (see the analysis in von Hintzenstern, Kreuzaltar von Gräfentonna), therefore Lautensack and the sculptor may have shared models (cf. p. 13 n. 12). 11 They also collaborated for the altar at Nankendorf, completed in 1515. Several sculptures by the same master, probably fragments of altarpieces, survive. They are sometimes called products of the ‘Lautensack workshop’ but we do not know if Lautensack was involved in the production of these altarpieces. Baumgärtel-Fleischmann, “Bamberger Plastik,” 116–20, describes the altarpiece in Nankendorf and two statues in Bad Königshofen im Grabfeld; Sculptures allemandes de la fin du Moyen Âge: dans les collections publiques françaises, 1400–1530, exh. cat. Paris, Louvre, 1991 (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1991), 235–37 no. 66, a relief in Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, inv. P 482; Annette Faber,