SWABIA

The artistic landscape of Swabia in the third quarter of the fifteenth century was profoundly marked by the art of the Ulm sculptor Hans Multscher, who died in i467. On that tradition built the new generations active towards the end of the century, from which emerged the personal- sty of Michael Erhart, whose name appears in Ulm from 1469 to 1522. With the exception of the Ctucifix of  Schwbisch Hall signed and dated ‘494, practically all the sculptures which documents ascribe to him have disappeared, as for example the figures of the high altar of  Ulm Cathedral, commissioned from the joiner Jorg Syrhn the Elder In 1473 and destroyed during the Reformation. For that reason the attribution to him of doubtful works continually sparks off fresh controversies.
Erhart is, however, credited by general consent with the Virgin of Mercy from Ravensburg (State Museums, Berlin) who shields two groups of the faithful from divine wrath beneath the skirts of her protective mantle. Her svelte and uprsght figure, scarcely bowed, exhibits firm outlines and a placid sweetness inherited from Multscher and ahen to the open and dynamic volumes characteristic of Upper Rhenish sculptures. Erharr introduced a new grace evoked by the elegant but reserved bearing of the Virgin, the debcacy of her gesture and her fine face carried on a long thin neck and skilfully set within the round outbne of the veil. As with Riemenschneider, his search for an idealized beauty is expressed in the creation of images of the Virgin Mary: harmonious, serene, almost disembodied. At Blaubeuren, the figure carvings of the altarpiece dated 1493 and 5494 and probably made in the workshop of Michael Erhart in collaboration with his son Gregor (born at Ulm, died at Augsburg in i540), possess more ample forms and drapery and have more broadly modelled faces; but they present a nobility of tone and a quiet grace in the same spirit.
The Ulm workshops, numerous and very active around 1500, adopted and enriched this Erhartian language, reflected in the languid look of many figures with subtly balanced attitudes, full but elegant forms and gentle features. Partial inlierituri of this style, the wurks of Niklaus Weekmann (mentioned at Ulm from i48i to 1526) and his workshop revived the types of drapery animated by more complex folds with voluminous bulges between deep hollows (Thalheim altarpieee). The rapid propagation of formulas devised by Weekmann, repeated or interpreted by his pupils and followers throughout all Swabia and even beyond, maintained a relatively uniform, at times somewhat monotonous style for several decades. In the least successful works the forms verged on flabbiness and the expressions seemed drowsy, which rendered the fashionable types uninteresting.
The refined and subtly shaded art of Daniel Maueh (Ulm, 1477 Liege, i540) led to a simdar infatuation. Marseb, coming from an Ulm milieu, interpreted the traditional elements in a personal manner, inventing his own compositions and intensifying the lyricism of expressions. In the Holy Kinship altarpieee of Bieselbach, signed and dated s5so, which he chose to leave in monochrome, he also adopted Renaissance decorative motifs transmitted by Augsburg, which was rapidly penetrated by southern influences.