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"A Work in Which the Angels Are Wont to Rejoice": Lucas Cranach's "Schneeberg Altarpiece" Author(S): Bonnie J

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"A Work in Which the Angels Are Wont to Rejoice": Lucas Cranach's "Schneeberg Altarpiece" Author(s): Bonnie J. Noble Reviewed work(s): Source: The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Winter, 2003), pp. 1011-1037 Published by: The Sixteenth Century Journal Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20061643 . Accessed: 13/11/2011 22:07 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Sixteenth Century Journal is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Sixteenth Century Journal. http://www.jstor.org Sixteenth Century Journal XXXIV/4 (2003) "A work in which the angels are wont to rejoice": Lucas Cranach's Schneeberg Altarpiece Bonnie J. Noble University ofNorth Carolina at Charlotte This article demonstrates how Cranach the Elder's Schneeberg Altarpiece of 1539, the first evangelical retable, instructs viewers in Lutheran theology and actively perpetu s ates evangelical public devotional practice. The strategies of the retable iconography, sermons which derive from Luther's and other writings, explicate Luther's notion of justification by grace through faith. This model of salvation creates a new foundation for the pictorial interpretation of traditional subjects. The Schneeberg Altarpiece estab lishes a discrete phase of evangelical painting, still bound by devotional forms of late medieval Northern art (the retable) yet departing from the insistent didacticism of the earliest evangelical images known as Law and Gospel. Earlier scholarship has tended on to focus iconography, rendering the Schneeberg Altarpiece secondary to the theology it embodies. This article contends that the Schneeberg Altarpiece actively changes the purpose of religious art. are A work in which the angels wont to rejoice Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis a If it is not sin but good to have the image of Christ in my heart, why should it be a sin to have it in my eyes? Martin Luther, Against theHeavenly Prophets Lucas Cranach's Schneeberg Altarpiece of is 1539 the first evangelical retable at (figs. 1-3).1 Its production and installation the high altar of the Church of Saint Wolfgang in the Saxon city of Schneeberg signals the establishment of an explicitly evangelical type of polyptych altarpiece.2 Though the triptych format of the Heinrich Magirius et al.,"Der Cranachaltar in der St.Wolfgangskirche zu Schneeberg," Zeitschrift f?r Kunsttechnologie und Restaurierung 6, no. 2 (1992): 298-313, esp. 298. 2In 1477 Duke Albrecht began construction of the first stone parish church in Schneeberg, dedi cated to St.Wolfgang and the Virgin Mary. This original structure still forms the western part of the cur rent church. See Rudolf Ziessler, Die Wolfgangskirche zu Schneeberg, rev. ed., Christliche Denkmal, vol. 81 (Berlin: Union Verlag, 1984), 1;Richard Steche, Beschreibende Darstellung der Alteren Bau- und Kunst denkm?ler des K?nigreiches Sachsen, vol. 8, Amtshauptmannschaft Schwarzenberg (Dresden, 1887), 29-30. In a. December 1481, Schneeberg became freie Bergstadt or free city; Festschrift zum 450. Jahrestag derWeihe zu der St. Wolfgangskirche Schneeberg im Erzgebirge (Schneebergg: Kirchenvorstand St.Wolfgang, 1990), 5. Cf. Christian Melzer, Beschreibung der Bergk-Stadt Schneebergk (Schneeberg, 1684), 316-18; and Steche, Beschreibende Darstellung, 8:28. This as a article began chapter of my dissertation, "The Lutheran Paintings of the Cranach Workshop, 1529-1555" (Northwestern University, 1998). This work was supported in part by funds provided by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. 1011 1012 Sixteenth Century Journal XXXIV/4 (2003) Fig. 1. Lucas Cranach, Schneeberg Altarpiece, Law and Grace panels. Landesamt fur no. Denkmalpflege Sachsen Bildsammlung, 850. Reprinted by permission. Noble / Cranach's SchneebergAltarpiece 1013 Fig. 2. Lucas Cranach, Schneeberg Altarpiece, Crucifixion and two donor panels. Landesamt fur nos. Denkmalpflege Sachsen Bildsammlung, 120-39, 120-40, 170-509. Reprinted by permission. 1014 Sixteenth Century Journal XXXIV/4 (2003) rear Fig. 3. Lucas Cranach, Schneeberg Altarpiece, two panels (Lot and Moses). Landesamt fur nos. Denkmalpflege Sachsen Bildsammlung, 121 611,181 407. Reprinted by permission. Noble / Cranach's SchneebergAltarpiece 1015 Schneeberg Altarpiece derives from Catholic retables, its iconography and function set resem it apart from that tradition;3 and though the iconography and function as ble earlier single-panel evangelical paintings such Law and Gospel, discussed below, its polyptych format departs from the adamant didacticism of these single context art or panels. When considered in the of established forms of Catholic of the a conun earliest single-panel evangelical painting, the Schneeberg Altarpiece is drum, resisting the restrictions of both categories. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the in which the a ways Schneeberg Altarpiece establishes discrete phase of evangelical painting, still bound by the devotional forms of fifteenth- and early sixteenth- century Northern art, yet moving away from the insistent didacticism of the earlier single-panel evangelical images.4 The is a a Schneeberg Altarpiece complex monument, encompassing total of eleven, originally twelve, painted surfaces and three different viewing positions: the rear the closed or and the or panels, weekday position, opened feast day position.5 rear On the panels (fig. 3) the Last Judgment appears in the center, with the stories of Lot andHis Daughters andNoah and theFlood on either side.6 The defining subject of art known as Law and across evangelical Gospel spreads the front panels in the closed or These to or weekday position (fig. 1). panels open reveal the feast day opened position (fig. 2), with a Crucifixion in the center panel.7 In the feast day position the donors kneel in the lower half of each wing, with the Agony in the Garden on the left and the Resurrection on upper the upper right. On the front of the predella appears the Last Supper.The missing panel depicting the Raising of the Dead on the back of the predella was burned in 1945.8 No substantive research on the Schneeberg Altarpiece has been published in One s English. explanation for this dearth of scholarship may be the retable location in the former East to Germany, inaccessible until recently English-speaking and ^Christiane Andersson, "Religi?se Bilder Cranachs im Dienste der Reformation," in Humanismus und Reformation in der deutschen Geschichte. Ein Tagungsbericht, ed. Lewis W. Spitz, Ver?ffentlichungen der historischen Kommission zu Berlin, vol. 51 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1981), 43?79, esp. 43, notes that in his on 1525 Sermon the First Commandment, Luther explains that images are neither good nor bad, but their (mis) use determines their value. 4Most scholars agree that the evangelical identity of the Schneeberg Altarpiece is beyond dispute. Magirius, "Der Cranachaltar," 298; Oskar Thulin, Cranach alt?re der Reformation (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1955), 33. 5See Steche, Beschreibende Darstellung, 8:42-46. Magirius, "Der Cranachaltar," 299; Melzer, Beschreibung, 80-85, Herbert von Hintzenstein, Lucas Cranach der?ltere. Altarbilder aus der Reformations zeit, 3d ed. (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1980), 94?98; and esp. Thulin, Alt?re, 33?53, on Schnee berg for full formal description and detailed reproductions. Reproductions of the Last Judgment panel are not available. 7Heinrich Magirius, Schneeberg St. Wolfgang (Passau: Kunstverlag Weick, 1996), 20-21, calls the Crucifixion the "feast day side" (Festtagsseite) and the Law and Gospel panels the "everyday side" Cf. "Der (Alltagsseite). Magirius, Cranachaltar," 299; Frank Meinel, Der Lucas Cranach altar zu Schneeberg (Schneeberg: Bergstra?e Aue, 1996), 36, 41-60. 8Magirius, "Der Cranachaltar," 303, 305; cf. Max Friedl?nder and Jakob Rosenberg, The Paintings of Lucas Cranach, trans. Heinz Norden (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978), cat. no. 379. Meinel, Altar zu and a Schneeberg, 75, Magirius, "Der Cranachaltar," 299, provide reproduction of the destroyed Raising of the Dead panel. 1016 Sixteenth Century Journal XXXIV/4 (2003) West German scholars alike. The prolonged restoration and the retable 's virtual invisibility in the Institut fur Denkmalpflege in Dresden from 1960 to 1996 may also to this help explain enduring obscurity.9 The rather on consists limited German literature the retable of general descrip tions of and and of reviews of iconography style, scholarly Schneeberg's history.10 Other studies address the Schneeberg Altarpiece within the framework of Cranach's art or art of the Reformation in Oskar Thulin's general.11 important and funda mental book presents all three of Cranach's major evangelical retables?the Schnee bergAltarpiece (1539), the Wittenberg Altarpiece (1547), and the Weimar Altarpiece a His (1553?55)?as thematic group. discussion consists primarily of detailed formal analysis, basic historical background, and the fundamentals of evangelical as a a theology. Thulin presents the Schneeberg Altarpiece passive vehicle, conduit for in essence the expression and clarification of
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