If the taste of late Gothic artists for ornamental luxuriance became more pronounced in architectural decoration, as in Picardy or the Iberian peninsula , without any genuine renewal of plastic language, in the Germanic lands on the contrary sculpture moved into a strange and violent world reshaped now by the social and religious upheavals of the age. The afterglow of a style, this “baroque Gothic” is fascinating to an eye and mind willing to accept its excesses and vagaries. Within a broad movement essentially affecting the southern part of the Empire and involving a new generation of sculptors active from about 1510 on, the tendency described as “Danubian” asserted itself with force and originality.
Over and above controversies concerning the notion of a “Danube school” in painting (Doriaustil), there is general agreement on a close community in spirit and forms between the works of the main representanves of the Danubian style and the sculptures produced concurrently in the same Austro-Bavarian region. The genesis of the new plastic style occurred within the late Gothic tradition, taking .the old methods a step further while developing new rhetoric in perfect osmosis with the contemporary graphic and pictorial language, as shown by the sculptures of Hans Leinberger, mentioned at Landihut from iio to 1530. If, for example, the tumultuous draperies clothing his figures and soaring far out from the body in arbitrary folds spring from the previous Gothic conception, their treatment avoids angles and breaks in favour of floating undulations at the edges and large inflated folds, tracing long diagonals interrupted here and there by little stiff crinkles on the surface of the fabric: a treatment closely corresponding to the manner of Albrccht Altdorfer (Re— gensburg, c. 1480*1538), as seen in his pen and ink drawings on a dark ground where white highlights bring out the forms and billowing folds with festooned curves and parallel bands.
Leinberger, who, moreover, worked in 1518-1519 at the same rime as the painter for the new Sehiine Maria pilgrimage church inRegensburg Augsburg Danube , seem quickened by the same inner movement as the figures, their hair, their clothing and even some accessories. The lines play freely and mingle in an apparent but skilfully controlled confusion. Both in works of very small format and in monumental figures, the poses and drapery, far more than the faces, render the emotions with a power of expression and a capacity ofinvennon that puts Leinberger in the front rank of the sculptors of his time and makes him the equal of the great Danubian painters. His influence pervades a large number of anonymous Bavarian sculptures of varying qualities, often hard to classify into distinct groups, like the one formed by the works of the Master of the Altotting Doors, a personality more independent than the mere imitators of the master.
Leinberger also exerted a certain influence on the Salz— burg andPassau workshops, connected by their common links with the Danube school. The Master of lrrsdorf, Andreas Laekner, or the sculptors who worked with the painter Wolf Huber (c. 1485 — Passau
The mysterious Master l.P., maker of several small panels in pearwood without polychromy carved with a subtle virtuosity, was active during the I520s, perhaps at Pasiau or Salzburg, and more doubtfully in Prague, where sculptures attributed to his workshop are preserved (altar— pieces of Zlichov and the Tyn church). The Mourning over the Dead Christ in Leningrad, signed with the monogram I.P., shows how the master absorbed and transformed Leinberger’s vision, amplifying the pathos and sense of space, which he developed further in depth and suggested by foreshortened bodies, delicate shadings and increased emphasis on natural setting. In the Original Sin reliefs at Gotha and Vienna (the latter dated 152i), inspired by a Drer engraving of 1504, the accent is placed on the fabulous landscape, the fantastic rocks and tall trees with rough and knotty trunks, made in the image of the Danubian painters. The free attitude of the two nude figures, Adam turning seen from behind, and Eve animated by a slight contrapposto, shows a concern for the representation of the body marked by the humanism of cultivated circles, for whom, moreover, these small cabinet pieces highly prized by collectors were intended. Master I.P. thereby links up with the new art of the Renaissance, although his tall slim figures with their rngged features remain alien to antique balance and regularity, and later seemed to evolve towards a mannerist formulation.
On the edge of theDanube region and outside it, countless works of traditional use, altarpieces and devotional images, were made in ateliers that followed the general trend of style in the iins and I520s and seem more resistant to the Renaissance spirit even when they resort abundantly to an antique repertory of ornament, with garlands, pilasrers and putti. Regional or individual nuances shift the common tendencies towards an overwrought accentuation of forms, lines and expression:
the leering and gesturing figures in the altarpiece of Mauer near Melk (Lower Austria); the giddy swirling movement that galvanizes the Zwettl sculptures (Lower Austria); the monsfrously overblown tulip of Hans Witten’s pulpit in the cathedral of Preiberg (Saxnny); the brutal dynamism of Claus Berg’s apostles in the cathedral of Cstrow (Meeklenbnrg); or the rentacular sprouting of the Tree of Jesse in Douvermann’s alrarpiece at Kalkar (Rhineland).
In addition to the garments buffeted by a violent wind, as in Claus Berg, or blistered and quivering as in the sculptures nfLeinberger and Master I.P., a type of drapery with parallel folds had a widespread success in quite different regions such as Carinthia, Tyrol and Swabia, where the ourpn,t of the Memmingen workshops was characteristic of this Parallelfaltenstil. Thus the Master of Ottobeuren (possibly Hans Thoman, active at Memmingen from 1514 to 1525), named after the Annunciation and Nativity reliefs preserved in the great Benedictine abbey of Ottobeuren, patterns the limewood surface with a strange network of curved and regular lines which is carefully organized and sets up a play of light and shadow. At the same time the forms of his figures, whose quiet self— possession is very much in the Swabian tradition, acquire a genuine plasticity which seems to echo the new humanism; it recurs in most contemporary works, beginning with those of Leinberger and the Danubian sculptors. On the other hand, the reliefs place the figures in tiers on ascending levels in almost complete contempt of the representation of space.
Master H.L. carried the tension and instability of lines to their peak. His monogram appears on several prints dated from 1511 to 1522 as well as on the Breisach altar— piece, completed in 1526, without our being able to ascertain whether this engraver was also the sculptor or merely the designer of the carvings. And his training remains equally obscure, since the manner of this sculptor, who has affinities with Danubian art, is strikingly original. The swirling eddies of the clothing, hair, vegetation and clouds tend to submerge the figures in the Breisach Coronation of the Virgin and completely fill the area of the shrine. But extravagance here is restrained with supreme mastery. The intricacy of the forms does not weaken the expressive force, and the overall view of the work is never blurred by excessive ornament. The monumental effects peculiar to late Gothic German altarpieces full of large figure carvings are enhanced here by the power and plastic authority of the divine personages. A sublime work, this Breisach altarpiece, which, as against the serene assurance of the Renaissance, opens up a magic world and points the way to Baroque.
Over and above controversies concerning the notion of a “
Leinberger, who, moreover, worked in 1518-1519 at the same rime as the painter for the new Sehiine Maria pilgrimage church in
Leinberger also exerted a certain influence on the Salz— burg and
The mysterious Master l.P., maker of several small panels in pearwood without polychromy carved with a subtle virtuosity, was active during the I520s, perhaps at Pasiau or Salzburg, and more doubtfully in Prague, where sculptures attributed to his workshop are preserved (altar— pieces of Zlichov and the Tyn church). The Mourning over the Dead Christ in Leningrad, signed with the monogram I.P., shows how the master absorbed and transformed Leinberger’s vision, amplifying the pathos and sense of space, which he developed further in depth and suggested by foreshortened bodies, delicate shadings and increased emphasis on natural setting. In the Original Sin reliefs at Gotha and Vienna (the latter dated 152i), inspired by a Drer engraving of 1504, the accent is placed on the fabulous landscape, the fantastic rocks and tall trees with rough and knotty trunks, made in the image of the Danubian painters. The free attitude of the two nude figures, Adam turning seen from behind, and Eve animated by a slight contrapposto, shows a concern for the representation of the body marked by the humanism of cultivated circles, for whom, moreover, these small cabinet pieces highly prized by collectors were intended. Master I.P. thereby links up with the new art of the Renaissance, although his tall slim figures with their rngged features remain alien to antique balance and regularity, and later seemed to evolve towards a mannerist formulation.
On the edge of the
the leering and gesturing figures in the altarpiece of Mauer near Melk (Lower Austria); the giddy swirling movement that galvanizes the Zwettl sculptures (Lower Austria); the monsfrously overblown tulip of Hans Witten’s pulpit in the cathedral of Preiberg (Saxnny); the brutal dynamism of Claus Berg’s apostles in the cathedral of Cstrow (Meeklenbnrg); or the rentacular sprouting of the Tree of Jesse in Douvermann’s alrarpiece at Kalkar (Rhineland).
In addition to the garments buffeted by a violent wind, as in Claus Berg, or blistered and quivering as in the sculptures nfLeinberger and Master I.P., a type of drapery with parallel folds had a widespread success in quite different regions such as Carinthia, Tyrol and Swabia, where the ourpn,t of the Memmingen workshops was characteristic of this Parallelfaltenstil. Thus the Master of Ottobeuren (possibly Hans Thoman, active at Memmingen from 1514 to 1525), named after the Annunciation and Nativity reliefs preserved in the great Benedictine abbey of Ottobeuren, patterns the limewood surface with a strange network of curved and regular lines which is carefully organized and sets up a play of light and shadow. At the same time the forms of his figures, whose quiet self— possession is very much in the Swabian tradition, acquire a genuine plasticity which seems to echo the new humanism; it recurs in most contemporary works, beginning with those of Leinberger and the Danubian sculptors. On the other hand, the reliefs place the figures in tiers on ascending levels in almost complete contempt of the representation of space.
Master H.L. carried the tension and instability of lines to their peak. His monogram appears on several prints dated from 1511 to 1522 as well as on the Breisach altar— piece, completed in 1526, without our being able to ascertain whether this engraver was also the sculptor or merely the designer of the carvings. And his training remains equally obscure, since the manner of this sculptor, who has affinities with Danubian art, is strikingly original. The swirling eddies of the clothing, hair, vegetation and clouds tend to submerge the figures in the Breisach Coronation of the Virgin and completely fill the area of the shrine. But extravagance here is restrained with supreme mastery. The intricacy of the forms does not weaken the expressive force, and the overall view of the work is never blurred by excessive ornament. The monumental effects peculiar to late Gothic German altarpieces full of large figure carvings are enhanced here by the power and plastic authority of the divine personages. A sublime work, this Breisach altarpiece, which, as against the serene assurance of the Renaissance, opens up a magic world and points the way to Baroque.
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