Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 21, ROT-Siam

565
GERMAN.]
SCULPTURE
our-
.eentli
lentury.
tliat mannerism which grew so strong in Germany during
the 15th century. Of special beauty are the statuettes
which adorn the “beautiful fountain,” executed by Hein¬
rich der Balier (1385-1396), and richly decorated with gold
and colour by the painter Rudolf.1 A number of colossal
figures were executed for Cologne cathedral between 1349
and 1361, but they are of no great merit. Augsburg pro¬
duced several sculptors of ability about this time; the
museum possesses some very noble wooden statues of this
school, large in scale and dignified in treatment. On the
exterior of the choir of the church of Marienburg castle
is a very remarkable colossal figure of the Virgin of about
1340-50. Like the Hildesheim choir screen, it is made
of hard stucco and is decorated with glass mosaics. The
equestrian bronze group of St George and the Dragon
in the market-place at Prague is excellent in workmanship
and full of vigour, though
much wanting dignity of
style. Another fine work in
bronze of about the same date
is the effigy of Archbishop
Conrad (d. 1261) in Cologne
cathedral, executed many
years after his death. The
portrait appears truthful and
the whole figure is noble in
style. The military effigies
of this time in Germany as
elsewhere were almost un¬
avoidably stiff and lifeless
from the necessity of repre¬
senting them in plate ar¬
mour ; the ecclesiastical
chasuble, in which priestly
effigies nearly always ap¬
pear, is also a thoroughly
unsculpturesque form of
drapery, both from its awk¬
ward shape and its absence
of folds. Pig. 13 shows a
characteristic example of
these sepulchral effigies in
slight relief. It is interest¬
ing to compare this with a
somewhat similarly treated
Florentine effigy, executed in Fm. 13.—Sepulchral effigy in low
, , , .i “V • relief of Gunther of Schwarzburg
marble at the begin 0 (cl. 1349), in Frankfort cathedral,
the next century, but ot
very superior grace and delicacy of treatment (see fig.
16 below).
Fifteenth The 15th century was one of great activity and origin-
century. ality in the sculpture of Germany and produced many
artists of very high ability. One speciality of the time
was the production of an immense number of wooden altars
and reredoses, painted and gilt in the most gorgeous way
and covered with subject-reliefs and statues, the former
often treated in a very pictorial style.2 Wooden screens,
stalls, tabernacles, and other church-fittings of the greatest
elaboration and clever workmanship were largely produced
in Germany at the same time, and on into the 16th century.3
Jorg Syrlin, one of the most able of these sculptors in
wood, executed the gorgeous choir-stalls in Ulm cathedral,
richly decorated with statuettes and canopied work, be¬
tween 1469 and 1474; his son and namesake sculptured
1 See Baader, Beitrage zur Kunstgesch. Numbergs ; and Rettberg,
Niirnbergs Kunstleben, Stuttgart, 1854.
2 This class of large wooden retable was much imitated in Spain
and Scandinavia. The metropolitan cathedral of Roskilde in Denmark
possesses a very large and magnificent example covered with subject
reliefs enriched with gold and colours.
3 See Waagen, Kunst und Kunstler in Deutschl., Leipsic, 1843-45.
the elaborate stalls in Blaubeuren church of 1493 and the
great pulpit in Ulm cathedral. Veit Stoss of Nuremberg,
though a man of bad character, was a most skilful sculptor
in wood ; he carved the high altar, the tabernacle, and the
stalls of the Frauenkirche at Cracow, between 1472 and
1495. One of his finest works is a large piece of wooden
panelling, nearly 6 feet square, carved in 1495, with central
reliefs of the Doom and the Heavenly Host, framed by
minute reliefs of scenes from Bible history. It is now
in the Nuremberg town-hall. Wohlgemuth (1434-1519),
the master of A. Diirer, was not only a painter but also a
clever wood-carver, as was also Diirer himself (1471-1528),
wTho executed a tabernacle for the Host with an exquisitely
carved relief of Christ in Majesty between the Virgin and
St John, which still exists in the chapel of the monastery
of Landau. Diirer also produced miniature reliefs cut in
boxwood and hone-stone, of which the British Museum
(print room) possesses one of the finest examples. Adam
Krafft (c. 1455-1507) was another of this class of sculp¬
tors, but he worked also in stone; he produced the great
Schreyer monument (1492) for St Sebald’s at Nuremberg,
—a very skilful though mannered piece of sculpture, with
very realistic figures in the costume of the time, carved
in a way more suited to wood than stone, and too pictorial
in effect. He also made the great tabernacle for the Host,
80 feet high, covered with statuettes, in Ulm cathedral,
and the very spirited “ Stations of the Cross ” on the road
to the Nuremberg cemetery.
The Vischer family of Nuremberg for three generations Vischer
were among the ablest sculptors in bronze during the 15th family,
and 16th centuries. Hermann Vischer the elder worked
mostly between 1450 and 1505, following the earlier
mediaeval traditions, but without the originality of his
son. Among his existing works the chief are the bronze
font at Wittenberg church (1457) and four episcopal
effigies in relief, dated from 1475 to 1505, in Bamberg
cathedral; this church also contains a fine series of bronze
sepulchral monuments of various dates throughout the 15th
and 16th centuries. Hermann’s son Peter Vischer was
the chief artist of the family; he was admitted a master
in the sculptor’s guild in 1489, and passed the greater
part of his life at Nuremberg, where he died in 1529. In
technique few bronze sculptors have ever equalled him;
but his designs are marred by an excess of mannered
realism and a too exuberant fancy. His chief early work
was the tomb of Archbishop Ernest in Magdeburg cathedral
(1495), surrounded with fine statuettes of the apostles
under semi-Gothic canopies; it is purer in style than his
later works, such as the magnificent shrine of St Sebald at
Nuremberg, a tall canopied bronze structure, crowded with
reliefs and statuettes in the most lavish way. The general
form of the shrine is Gothic,4 but the details are those of
the 16th-century Italian Renaissance treated with much
freedom and originality. Some of the statuettes of saints
attached to the slender columns of the canopy are modelled
with much grace and even dignity of form. A small
portrait figure of Peter himself, introduced at one end of
the base, is a marvel of clever realism : he has represented
himself as a stout, bearded man, wearing a large leathern
apron and holding some of the tools of his craft. In this
work, executed from 1508 to 1519, Peter was assisted by
his sons, as is recorded in an inscription on the base—
“ Petter Vischer, Purger zu Nurmberg, machet das Werck
mit seinen Sunnen, und ward folbracht im Jar mdxix . . .”
This gorgeous shrine is a remarkable example of the un¬
commercial spirit which animated the artists of that time,
4 This great work is really a canopied pedestal to support and en¬
close the shrine, not the shrine itself, which is a work of the 14th.
century, having the gabled form commonly used in the Middle Ages
for metal reliquaries.