Jacques Morel, often considered to be the prime mover behind the “easing up,” ensured the continuity of the muffled and peaceful manuer of the early fifteenth century, accompanied by the habitual penchant for individualized features and heavy fabrics with soft and ample folds. Among the works created during the itinerant career which led Morel from Lyous, where he is mentioned iu 1418, to Toulouse, Rodez, Avsgnon, Souvigny aud Angers, where he died in 1453 in the service of King Ren ofAujou, there is preserved only the funerary monument of the Duke of Bourbou at Souvigny (Allier), commissioned in 1448 on the model of the tombs of Champmol.
The latter left Dijon in s456. and it was Antoine Le Moiturier of Avsgnon, assumed to be the pupil of Jacques Morel, who in 1466 was given the job of completing the tomb ofJohn the Fearless and who helped to reorient the Burgundsan style in accordance with the general trend towards a “relaxed” art. The two angels surviving from the altarpiece, now destroyed, of SaintPierre-le-Vieux at Avignon, conimissioned from Le Moiturser in 1463, enable us to define the plastic language of this sculptor who simplified forms, accentuating the angular lines and large empty areas of the breaking folds; precisely dehneated the fringes and braid of the clothing on the surface of the stone; and enhanced the sweet and childlike expressions of the rounded faces. There was no superfluous complication in this style. quiet and sober but without roughness, in which the formal vocabulary, blending with the specifically Burgundian tradition, was abundantly and diversely utihzed by the prolific workshops of the Auxois and the Autunois in the late fifteenth century.
Several sculptured groups are doubtfully attributed to Le Moiturier, including the Entombment of Semur-enAuxois (1490). On the other hand, the famous tomb of Philippe Pot (Louvre, Paris) cannot be from the master’s hand: the idea of enlarging the mourners almost to hfessze and making them carry the slab on which the tomb effigy lies is daring, and testifies to an original conception that gives the old formula a new lease of life; but in detail the execution is weak and the handling dry and perfunctory.
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The temperament of Claus de Werwe, who completed the tomb of Phihp the Bold after the death of his uncle Claus Slutcr in 1406, opposed Sluterian vehemence by a calmer sensibility, full of a lyricism tempered with gentleness, as revealed in the Christ on the Cross at Saint— Bnigne in Dijon, which is attributed to him. Jean de La Huerta, of Aragonese origin, who after Claus de Werwe’s death in 1439 was made responsible in 5443 for carving the tomb of John the Fearless and Margaret of Bavaria, brought more forcefulness and complexity into his creations; more search for effect into the drapery of his figures.
Some fifty years after Champ mol, the Virgin and Child and the John the Baptist in the church of Rouvres, probably carved by Jean de La Huerta for the mayor of Dijon, Philippe Mchefoing, still followed in the tradifion of Sluter’s works but without retaining their unusual vitality, despite the remarkable beauty of the flowing draperies, owing to a certain heaviness acquired by the figure types.
Numerous sculptures of the first half of the fifteenth century have been located in the two masters’ sphere of influence by comparison with rare authenticated works like the angels and mourners of the ducal tombs. A charac teristi series of Virgins of meek aspect small, thick—lidded eyes, slightly elongated and pointed nose, ball-shaped chin and round cheeks , enveloped with clothes that are heavy but animated by simple and subsiding folds, seems akin to the art of Claus de Werwe (Virgin and Child of Mcillysur—Rouvres). Other feminine figures in stone or alabaster exhibit square faces with more sharply defined features, often slightly sulky expressions and hair sprinkled with little hook—like curls, typical of the sculptures attributed to the chisel ofJean de La Huerta.
Reproduced in a workshop or imitated by various hands, the same models with minor variants were thus adopted for the facial types, the iconographic formulas and compositional schemes of the draperies (Virgin and Child statues at Auxonne, about 5447, at Pluvault, in the cathedral of Autun and at Sully). The short silhouette of some Virgins could be particularly broadened by the movement of the large mantle passing over the free arm, which moves far out ftom the body. This type of drapery, distantly derived from the art of Champmol, gave rise to different stylistic intcrpretafiuns of lugh quality (Virgin and Child at Bzouotte, at Poligny, and in the rue de la Porte-auxLions in Dijon, today in the Louvre). But the less skilful Burgundian sculptors did not always prevent the solid plasticity of these figures from becoming ponderous, the fullness of the drapery from verging on heaviness, and their expressive values from lapsing into monotony.
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In this rapid survcy of German lands wherc thc richcst talents tuo oftcn leave secondary but important masters in thc shade, the West and North of Germany and their ties with the Netherlands may be referred to only in broad terms.
The episcopal city of Utrechr was the most active art centre of the northern Netherlands in the second half of the fifteenth centory. Gradually moving away from the international Gothic style and recepnve to the snfluences of the southern Netherlands, in particular Brabant sculpture and Flemish painting, the art of this city had its own specific language. Several sculptors are recorded in Utrecht, such as Jan Nude, mentioned from 1450 to 1494, and Adriaen van Wesel from 5447 to 1489-1490. The latter carved numerous altarpieces, notably the one, now dismembered, for the brotherhood of Our Lady at ‘s Hcrtogenbosch (1475—1477). As in the southern Netherlands, the scenes were composed of small polyehrome wood reliefi,juxtaposed in the compartments of the shrine, and affirming a pronounced taste for anecdote, for concrete and picturesque elements. Adriaen van Wesel caught the familiar gestures and the expressive features of his figures with a charming vivacity, but also with a sweetness that places him still in the mainstream of international Gothic.
His contemporaries often handled their forms with a certain hardness. Thus many feminine figures, slim and straight, combine stiff drapery falling in cylindrical folds with delicate and gracious facial types, and show extreme accuracy in rendering the finely chiselled details in oak or stone (St Ursula in the Beguine convent of Amsterdam, attributed hypothetically to Jan Nude; male and female saints of the Master of Koudewater).
This elegant and biting style had direct extensions in the regions of the Lower Rhine, close geographically and historically, since Cleves and Kalkar formerly belonged to the bishopric of Utrecht, itself part of the archbishopric of Cologne.
The most influential personality here was that of Master Arnt, who had a workshop at Kalkar (from 1460), then at Zwolle (from 1484 until his death sn 5492), which carried out important commissions such as the choir stalls for the church of the Franciscans at Cleves (i474) and the altar— pieces of Sr George (around 1480) and of the Passion (1490—1492), for the high altar of the St Nicholas church at Kalkar. The mark of Arnt’s style, at once tense and gracious, linear and solid, and of his incisive treatment of the surface, was determinant for the sculptors of Kalkar and Cleves,Jan van Halderen and Dries Holthuys, and also influenced the chief master established in Cologne at the end of the fifteenth century, Tilmann van der Bruch (first mentioned in 1467). A new stylistic modulation was later added by much sought-after sculptors like Heinrich Douvermann (mentioned at Cleves and Kalkar from 1510 onwards), the Master of Elsloo (active in the Middle Meuse, early sixteenth century) or Arnt van Tricht (active c. 15 22—1560 at Antwerp and Kalkar).
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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.
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The progress of the long, fertile and illustrious career of Tilmbn Riemensehneider is well known a rarity in the Middle Ages thanks to the abundance of documents and works that have been preserved. Born at Heibgenstadt in Thuringia towards i4o, journeyman in 1483 and master in i485 at Whrzburg, where he was in charge of a large workshop receiving extensive and numerous commissions, the sculptor held an established position in the city, of which he was mayor in 1520-1521. The conditions of his apprenticeship and first professional engagements, however, are unknown. His first recorded commission, in 1490, for the parish church of Munnerstadt, was the Mary Magdalene altarpieee installed in 1492 and today dismembered. There followed the sandstone statues of Adam and Eve (i49i-i493) for the gate of the chapel of the Virgin, the tomb of the prince-bishop Rudolph von Seherenberg (1496-i499) at Wurzburg and that of the Emperor Henry II (1499—1513) at Bamberg, as well as many other sculptures in stone, marble, alabaster or wood and ieveral large altarpieces, some still preserved in situ, such as those of the Holy Blood (Heiligh Into/tar) at Rothenburg (1499-1505) and of the Virgin at Creghngen (around io). The stylistic vocabulary of Riemensehneider is easy to characterize. His feminine figures, with some minor variants, all have a slender stature—narrow bust, frail limbs, fine hands—, hair set in peaceful waves, a sweet face with smooth modelling and a broad flat forehead, eyes slanted towards the temples and circled by a fold of skin, a long nose and small mouth with a slight swelhng of the lower lip. The maseuhne faces, built on the same plan, with, of course, thicker and more rugged features, present some distinct types found in many combinations in Riemenschneider’s various works, as witnessed by the apostles of Rothenburg and Creghngen. The play of draperies, animated by uneven folds broken into multiple facets, is compheated but without excessive agitation. The calm features, delicate gestures and tranquil attitudes show a melancholy sweetness even when emotion or pain are expressed.
An extreme care is taken over details and the treatment of the surface. The hmewood is often left exposed and merely accented by a partial polychromy which brings out the iubrlety of the polished volumes and emphasizei the finesse of the varied motifs barely chiselled on the surface of the wood. The process was used, in particular, for the altarpiece of Miinnerstadt, afterwards painted by Veit Stoss between i502 and 1504 (this colouring has now disappeared).
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The training and early career of this sculptor born at Horn on the Neckar, who left Nuremberg in 1477 for Cracow where he stayed nearly twenty years, remain obscure. At all events the teachings of Strasbourg were assimilated and transgressed by the passionate, deeply original temperament of Veit Stoss.
His two chief undertakings at Cracow were the marble tomb of King Casimir IV and the great altarpiece in polychrome wood in the church of St Mary which he and his workshop carved from 1477 to 1489. In the central scene of the Death of the Virgin the dramatac emphasis and intensity of expressions, heightened by the gesticulation and mamicry of the figures, are admirable. The bodies disappear beneath tumultuous flights of draperies as if buffeted by a violent wind, but an extreme care is lavished on faces and hands, chiselled with the prodigious virtuosity that was the master’s hallmark. The powerful and craggy features of the apostles, the full oval of the Virgin’s dehcate face, the exuberant curls of the voluminous beards and hair were the many characteristic features displayed as well in the works Veit Stoss carried out after returning to Nuremberg in 5496.
There he worked in sandstone to produce the three scenes of the St Sebaldus Passion commissioned by Paul Volckammer (1499), which vied with the anecdotal reliefs of the stone carver Adam Kraft, maker of the celebrated tabernacle in the Nuremberg church of St Lawrence (1493-1496). But Stoss carved mainly in hmewood, which he coated either with an ultra-refined polychromy, as in the Annunciation (5557-1558) hanging in the choir of the St Lorenzkirche, or, preferring to bring out the material itself, with faint coloured highlights. Several figure carvings attesting to the growing preference for this prqcesi in the early sixteenth century rank among the master’s finest creations, namely Tobias and the Archangel Raphael in
• the Nuremberg museum, St Andrew in the Nuremberg church ofSt Sebaldus or St Roch in Florence celebrated by Vasari in the Lives, which in each case exhibit new formal inventions. Thebroken and arbitrary lines of the draperies show with a still more heightened spiritedness in the copperplate engravings made by the scnlptor.
Unlike the Nuremberg bronze-founders, Peter Vischer the Elder (1460—5529) and his sons, Stoss remained a stranger to the Italian novelties introduced by Albrccht Dtircr (Nuremberg, 1471—1528). Stoss’s last work, the altarpiece of the Carmelites (5520—1523), today in Bam— berg, once again affirms his mastery and the force of his personal genius, which had a tremendous impact on many sculptors, whether pupils or followers, such as Master Pave1, active at Levoa in Slovakia.
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Upper and Lower Franconia display contrasting faces in their two main art centres, Nurcmberg and Wflrzburg, where two outstanding creators, Veit Stoss and Tilman Riemcnschneider, occupied the first rank.
At Nuremberg, after the middle of the fifteenth century, the influence of Hans Multscher, which confirmed a traditional taste for calm and compact figures with mild expressions, was challenged by the influence of the Upper Rhine transmitted through the prints of Master E. S. and Martin Schongauer or by direct contact with actual works (Nordlingen is not far from Nuremberg). It was a mobile style, angular but marked by mildness and a fragile grace, that prevailed in Nurembcrg in the years 1470-1480, and which is notably illustrated by the sculptured parts of the altarpieces painted by Michael Wolgemut (Nuremberg, 5434 or 1437—1519). Veit Stoss shattered this relatively tranquil art.
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