Swabian

Swabian
Around 1515/20
Madonna
Attributed to the workshop of
Tilmann Riemenschneider
Heiligenstadt around 1460 – 1531 Würzburg
Carved lime wood
Height 38 cm

This Madonna figure is a magnificent work from the transition from late Gothic to Renaissance from the workshop of Tilman Riemenschneider. The master sculptor probably completed his studies in sculpture in Strasbourg and Ulm, where he incorporated into his repertoire certain stylistic features that found great expression in representatives of the Ulm school such as Niklaus Weckmann and Michel Erhart. He spent most of his time working as a sculptor in Würzburg, where he also produced numerous commissioned works in a sacred context for bourgeois society, but above all for the clergy. This Madonna could have been created by his workshop in one of these contexts. In addition, the figure is transparent; it is therefore likely that this Madonna was originally conceived without polychromy. Riemenschneider’s oeuvre is characterized by a large number of wood-sighted works, which show a high level of sculptural execution of the individual sculptures.

Mary wears a crown ring on her long flowing hair, which is notched with a burin. The densely fanned-out hair artfully emphasizes the elongated neck with the oval face. Her expressive face is defined by short, sharp eyebrow ridges above almond-shaped eyes and a pout under a straight nose. Typical features of Riemenschneider’s figures are also an implied double chin and a naturalistically wrinkled, shaded neck. Mary presents her child in an inclined position: it has a round head framed by thick curls and its arms and legs are playfully bent. With his left hand, the infant Jesus appears to be holding on to his mother’s cloak, a gesture that creates a closer relationship between the two.

Mary stands in a straight posture, looking forward, on a crescent moon. The crescent moon is comparable to that of the sandstone Madonna in the former Neumünster collegiate monastery in Würzburg from 1493. The rich drapery is particularly characteristic of the sculptor Riemenschneider: the loosely thrown over cloak with a folded bowl takes up the position of the child. Complex angular folds, especially the zigzag folds within the bowl fold and the bent triangular fold above the knee of the play leg, are characteristic of his works, for example in the St. Elisabeth of Thuringia around 1510 (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, inv. no. Pl.O.2413). Furthermore, the straight, tubular, open folded edges can often be seen in the Würzburg master’s sculptures. These merge into diagonal folds, which draw the viewer’s gaze downwards to the knee of the play leg protruding from beneath the coat. The raised hem above the crescent moon reveals the protruding shoe of this very leg. This emphasizes the dynamic effect of the slanted stance, underlined by the curves of the heavy coat.

Literature:

Michael Baxandall, Die Kunst der Bildschnitzer. Tilman Riemenschneider, Veit Stoß and their contemporaries, Munich 1984.
Claudia Lichte (ed.), Tilman Riemenschneider, Werke seiner Blütezeit, Regensburg 2004.