Painted Wood: History and Conservation

PART FOUR Investigations and Treatment 278 Monochromy, Polychromy, and Authenticity The Cloisters’ Standing Bishop Attributed to Tilman Riemenschneider Michele D. Marincola and Jack Soultanian 1975, Standing Bishop was acquired for The Cloisters collection, the Metropolitan Museum of IArt, New York. This piece—considered at purchase to be a mature work of Tilman Riemenschneider (ca. 1460–1531), a leading German master of Late Gothic sculpture—was intended to complement early works by the artist already in the collection. The sculpture (Fig. 1) is indisputably in the style of Riemenschneider; furthermore, its provenance (established to before 1907) includes the renowned Munich collection of Julius Böhler.1 The Standing Bishop was accepted as an autograph work by the great Riemenschneider scholar Justus Bier (1956), who was reversing his earlier opinion. It has been compared stylistically to a number of works by Riemenschneider from about 1505–10. In the 1970s, a research project was begun by art historians and conservators in Germany to establish the chronology and authorship of a group of sculptures thought to be early works of Riemenschneider. The Cloisters’ sculptures, including the Standing Bishop, were examined as part of the project, and cross sections were sent to Munich for analysis by Hermann Kühn. This research project resulted in an exhibition of the early work of Riemenschneider in Würzburg in 1981; The Cloisters sent two sculptures from its collection, but the loan of the Standing Bishop was not requested. Certain stylistic anomalies of the figure, as well as several Figure 1 technical peculiarities discussed below, contributed to the increasing suspi- Standing Bishop, attributed to Tilman cion that it was not of the period. Another cause for concern was that in Riemenschneider (ca. 1460–1531). H:117 cm; the nineteenth century the Standing Bishop was owned by a Mr. Kahle, a W:34.3 cm; D:22.8 cm. The Metropolitan collector and sculptor.2 By the late 1980s, the sculpture was removed from Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection, 1975 (1975.25). exhibition at The Cloisters for further study. Tilman Riemenschneider was active in Würzburg as a master sculptor of Riemenschneider and stone and linden wood from 1485 until the mid-1520s. It is evident from Monochromy the eclectic style of his early work that he received training in Ulm and had contact with Netherlandish and Upper Rhenish works. He had a large workshop in Würzburg, employing twelve apprentices at the height of his production (Baxandall 1980:259). Riemenschneider is a particularly well- documented sculptor, with a number of commissioned works firmly attributed to him. An early example of a documented shrine is the former high altarpiece for the Saint Maria Magdalena parish church in M, P, A 279 Münnerstadt, commissioned in June 1490 and completed by September 1492. This retable is particularly important because it is the earliest example of an altar that was decorated in a monochromatic, as opposed to polychromatic, technique (Staatliche Museen Berlin 1981:117). The recog- nition of the practice of creating umpolychromed works appears in the art historical literature as early as 1912 (Lossnitzer 1912:139ff.), although the observation of a distinct coating on the wood surface is not published until more than fifty years later, as first reported by Oellermann (1966). The subject has also been taken up, to varying degree, by Wilm (1923:114–18), Lill (1940), Willemsen (1962), Paatz (1963:79–82, 86–93), Taubert (1967), Baxandall (1980:42–48), Melzl and Buchenrieder (1980), Oellermann (1981), Westhoff and Haussmann (1987), Rosenfeld (1990), and Westhoff (1993), among others. Many of Riemenschneider’s early works in wood were decorated in the traditional medieval manner, with lifelike flesh tones, burnished gold robes with matte blue linings, silvered armor, elaborate textile imita- tions, and other painterly attempts at verisimilitude. Riemenschneider worked with Fassmaler (painters), who executed the Fassung (painted and gilded decoration) of wood sculptures carved by Riemenschneider and his workshop. With the Münnerstadt altarpiece, however, a radical departure from tradition is encountered: the surface of the pale linden wood is covered not with layers of preparation, metal leaf, and paint but with a thinly applied, transparent, brown-to-black pigmented glaze. Riemenschneider, while continuing to produce polychrome sculpture, created altarpieces using this technique well into the sixteenth century, as did other sculptors working in Germany, including Veit Stoss, Hans Leinberger, Niklaus Weckmann, and Henrik Douvermann. These sculptures, somewhat inaccu- rately termed monochromes,3 are sometimes further embellished with red for the lips and for wounds, and with black for the eyes; there are also examples where the flesh tones and attributes are painted, leaving the balance of the figure brown (Westhoff and Haussmann 1987; Rosenfeld 1990). Since the sculptor could not rely on painting to convey the rich vari- ation of texture and gloss that was appreciated on medieval sculpture, he often elaborated the surface with a range of knives and punches to create a similar effect. Monochromatic relief sculpture can display a particularly impressive range of surface embellishment in this fashion. For a number of reasons, the identification of a sculpture as a monochrome is especially complex. The pigmented glaze layer itself, as much a penetrating colorant as a distinct coating, can be difficult to recog- nize during examination and is usually preserved only in traces. The medieval sculptor’s practice of painting the eyes directly on the wood during manufacture (perhaps to set the gaze of the figure or to help position the form during carving) can be mistaken for the finished eyes of a monochrome work. In addition, a transparent surface coating applied directly to the wood may serve as a final, intentional decorative layer, or as a wood sealant for subsequent ground and paint layers. After their creation, monochromes were occasionally brightly overpainted, obscuring the original appearance of the sculpture. The most famous example of such an alter- ation is the Münnerstadt altarpiece, which was finished and delivered as a monochrome, then redecorated twelve years later with a traditional polychromy by Veit Stoss (Staatliche Museen Berlin 1981:117). This redecora- tion was later removed from the sculptures, taking with it much of the 280 Marincola and Soultanian monochromy. Sculptures that are sometimes confused with monochromes may actually be polychrome figures that had been stripped with lye, a practice common to the nineteenth century. During an investigation, therefore, it is important to bear in mind that a suspected monochrome may actually be an unfinished sculpture (Rosenfeld 1990), or a work that has lost its original polychromy. Samples of the wood from the support of the Standing Bishop were Techniques of removed for microscopic identification and radiocarbon dating analysis. Manufacture: The The wood was identified as a species of the genus Tilia, exhibiting the Standing Bishop Support physical characteristics of limewood, or linden (Quirk 1989). Radiocarbon dating analysis, using accelerator mass spectrometry, gave an adjusted calendar age range for the wood of 1280–1440 .., indicating that the tree was felled in the medieval period (Tamers 1989). Examination of the techniques used to sculpt the figure yielded several interesting observations. Macroscopic and radiographic examination of the Standing Bishop revealed that the figure was carved from a single piece of relatively knot-free wood, except the hands and attributes, which were attached separately. The back of the Standing Bishop was not hollowed out, as is customary with late medieval wooden figural sculpture, but was flattened with an adze; several practice cuts with a chisel are to be found on the back as well (Fig. 2). Although (to the best of the authors’ knowledge) no other Riemenschneider sculptures of this size carved three-quarters in the round were treated in this manner, there are other Late Gothic sculptures of a similar scale with flattened backs (Tångeberg 1989:161). Marks from the sculptor’s bench, which held the log in a horizontal position while it was carved, are preserved on the sculpture. A hole (diameter approx. 2.2 cm; depth approx. 3.7 cm), now filled with wood and painted, remains in the top of the miter, where a dowel or pin had held the log fast at one end. Beneath a modern pine base, added to the bottom, are found rectangular impressions from the knives that had secured the log at the other end (Fig. 3). Since they are so close together, it Figure 2 is likely that the impressions in the bottom resulted from separate skewer- Standing Bishop, back view. ings in the bench. Although sculptors’ benches are thought to have been used in Germany until the early twentieth century, these marks are almost identical to those found on indisputably medieval works of art (von Ullman 1984). Restorations to the figure include sections of the hands and crosier staff, the sudary (handkerchief held by a bishop), and the plinth. It was also detected that carved decoration is obscured by the thick ground layer; this is noticeable especially at the edge of the cope, where an undu- lating craquelure has developed that follows the punch work beneath. In addition, the backs of the gloves have been incised with a pattern of over- lapping circles (executed with a compass?) surrounded by shallow half- moons. Detailed carving that is covered by subsequent paint layers does not alone provide proof of the sculpture’s original monochromy, since Fassmaler sometimes obscured or corrected details of carving when they decorated sculptures. Rather, it may be taken in this case as corroborative evidence of a change of appearance for the Standing Bishop. M, P, A 281 At first glance, much of the polychromy appears to be medieval. There Polychromy are traces of several different restoration campaigns on the surface.

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