11 Christ Crucified, attributed to Tilman Riemenschneider

CHRIST CRUCIFIED

GEORG PETEL attributed to

Weilheim, 1601/02–1634, Augsburg

Related Literature: Feuchtmayr Karl/Schädler, Alfred/Lieb, Norbert/Müller, Theodor. Georg Petel, 1601/2–1634, Berlin 1973.

Georg Petel, 1601/02–1634. Bildhauer im Dreißigjährigen Krieg, exh. cat., Haus der Kunst, Munich, 9 May–19 August 2007, ed. by Krempel, León, Munich 2007.

Georg Petel. Neue Forschungen, ed. by Krempel, León/ Söding, Ulrich, Munich 2009. Christ as ‘Christo vivo’ with his head tilted and wide open eyes is looking up to the right. The body is wiry and very naturalistically carved. Christ’s full weight can be felt pulling down on the Cross.

Due to close stylistic features with other Christ Crucified figures by Georg Petel out of ivory, an attribution to his œuvre seems plausible.

The smaller crucifix in the Treasury in the Munich Residenz1 can be taken as a comparison, for example. The head is tilted to the other side, the pleading look – gazing upwards with wide open eyes – is similarly expressive, as are the contracted eyebrows and the open mouth that reveals the teeth. The torso is similarly worked with a very realistically executed ribcage. The right knee is also drawn forward slightly and the right foot placed partially over the left one. The folds of skin on the foot are equally drastically pulled together, being held in place with a nail. The modelling of the musculature on the reverse of the sculpture is similar.

There are also analogies to another work by Georg Petel, the scourging group in the National Museum of Bavaria in Munich, where Petel used wood as well as ivory. In this way, he effectively differentiated between the two henchmen carved in pearwood and the Corpus Christi fashioned in ivory. The delicately ridged puckering of the henchmen’s shirts correspond exactly to the folds on Christ’s loincloth.

1 Feuchtmayr, Schädler, Lieb, Müller, op. cit., cat. no. 11, ill.;

Georg Petel, exh. cat., 2007, op. cit., cat. no. 8, ill.

Fig. 1 Georg Petel, The Scourging of Christ, circa 1624, Christ: ivory, height 55.9 cm; henchman on left: height 51.4 cm; henchman on right: height 49.8 cm, stained pearwood, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich, on loan from the Kirchenrektorat Sankt Michael in Munich, inv. no. L NN 1351 Georg Petel is considered one of the great Baroque sculptors north of the Alps. In the 18th century he was referred to as the ‘German Michelangelo’,2 although he is relatively unknown in Germany today. He travelled to Italy, France and Flanders where he became friends with Peter Paul Rubens. Rubens owned at least three works in ivory by Petel3 and may have made him aware of the study of the nude that is particularly evident in Petel’s modelling of figures.

From around 1620 onwards Petel travelled around the Netherlands, France (Paris in 1621) and Italy, having completed an apprenticeship, probably in the workshop of his guardian, the sculptor Bartholomäus Steinle in Weilheim, and with the court sculptor Christoph Angermair in Munich. Around 1622–24 evidence exists that he was in Genoa, Livorno and Rome.4

In 1625 he moved to Augsburg, was granted citizen’s rights and married there. He travelled repeatedly to Antwerp where he was in contact with Rubens in 1620, 1628 and probably again in 1630. Petel began his career primarily as a carver in ivory and especially of crucifixes. However, he also had no difficulty working on a larger scale, as several works, especially in Augsburg testify. He died at the young age of 33 in Augsburg, during the Thirty Years War, probably as a result of the Black Death.

Despite his short life his œuvre is extensive. A recurring theme is the Crucifixion of Christ, whom he depicts poignantly and with drastic naturalism.

2 Georg Petel, exh. cat., 2007, op. cit., p. 8 3 Ibid., p. 20 4 Ibid., p. 28

Relief with Lot and his Daughters Daniel Neuberger the Younger

(ATTRIBUTED TO)

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RELIEF WITH LOT AND HIS DAUGHTERS

DANIEL NEUBERGER THE YOUNGER attributed to

Augsburg, 1621–1674/81, Regensburg

Polychrome wax relief with partial gilding Height: 41.8 cm, width: 32.5 cm Within the original frame, height: 62 cm, width: 52 cm

Literature: Lipinska, Aleksandra. Moving Sculptures: Southern Netherlandish Alabasters from the 16th to 17th centuries in Central and Northern Europe, Leiden 2015, pp. 259–60, fig. 184.

McGrath, Maeve. Daniel Neuberger the Younger and Anna Felicitas Neuberger. The Ciroplastic Œuvres 1621–1680 and 1650–1731, Regensburg 2016, p. 82, fig. 24 and pp. 164–66, no. 6.

Related Literature: Lessmann, Johanna and König-Lein, Susanne. Wachsarbeiten des 16. bis 20. Jahrhunderts, Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum Braunschweig, Sammlungskatalog Band IX, Braunschweig 2002. The scene is erotically laden: two scantily clad young women have a rendezvous with an elderly man. One is holding a jug filled with wine; the other places her arm around the old figure who is obviously already drunk, as he approaches her with a lecherous look in his eye. The beauty, with a gossamer cloth draped over her thigh and arm that wraps around her body like a snake, has a Venus-like appearance – not only to the man at her side but, and in particular, to the viewer of this skillfully worked relief. The other female figure, also dressed like a goddess from Antiquity, is depicted in profile. She reveals her sensuously bared back, arm and shoulder as well as her right leg.

What is actually shown here, however, is the story of Lot as described in the Book of Genesis, chapter 19:30–38. Lot has fled the lost city of Sodom together with his wife and his two daughters. During the escape from Sodom, Lot‘s wife turns into a pillar of salt. Lot and his daughters take shelter in Zoar, but afterwards go up into the mountains to live in a cave. One evening, Lot‘s eldest daughter gets Lot drunk and has sex with him without his knowledge. The following night, the younger daughter does the same. They both become pregnant; the older daughter gives birth to Moab, while the younger daughter gives birth to Ammon.

Lot’s daughters see things pragmatically. As the only female survivors of the catastrophe, the destruction of Sodom, they are afraid that they are the last in the human race. In their desperation they decide to weaken their father’s will by plying him with wine before having intercourse with his own offspring.

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Fig. 1. Lot and his Daughters, alabaster relief, South-Netherlandish or German, circa 1560, height: 42.2 cm, width: 29.2 cm, Herzog Anton UlrichMuseum, Braunschweig (Brunswick), inv. no. Ste 27

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During the Counter-Reformation, Lot’s relationship to his daughters, born of pragmatism and desperation, is interpreted moralistically. Both the act of incest with the father as well as intercourse without mutual consent with someone intentionally made drunk are taken as being symptomatic of the Catholic Church’s immoral behaviour: luxury items such as jewellery and the valuable jug underline this scene which, in addition to being a depiction from the Bible, is also an allegory of sexual pleasure. The beautiful, naturalistically depicted, naked women’s bodies stand for lust and embellishments of worldly trumpery. Lot’s two daughters, however, make an appealing subject for admirers of art, readily revealing the double standards of the times with the viewer shuddering at the horror and simultaneous sensuality of the scene.

For this depiction the artist uses one of the oldest raw materials – beeswax. Since Antiquity wax has been valued as a material for its aesthetic and intrinsic qualities. Purified and bleached wax bears similarities to the human skin like no other material used in sculpture. Wax is easy to model, cast and rework at a later stage, something that is not possible with clay or cast metals. Wax can easily be mixed with pigments as well or painted in different colours. By mixing additives wax can also be made softer or harder. Every workshop had its own recipes. In his treatise on sculpture, Della Scultura, Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) writes that wax becomes softer after adding fat, less malleable after adding terpentine and hard when mixed with pitch.1 Wax was also a popular material for portrait medallions.

1 Lessmann, op. cit., p. 12

There are three reliefs carved in stone with the same composition that exist: one is a marble relief in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and two almost identical alabaster reliefs are to be found in Schloss Löwenburg, Kassel, and in the Herzog Anton UlrichMuseum, Braunschweig (Brunswick, fig. 1). Aleksandra Lipinska argues that all three reliefs were created by the same sculptor who probably came from the Netherlands and was active in Germany in the middle of the 16th century.2

Another composition addressing the same subject is a bronze relief that is now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It was made in the imperial foundry by Balthasar Heroldt. Heroldt worked in Vienna from 1654 onwards as a ‘weapon or bronze caster’ 3 where he earned 400 fl. In a list with works that he cast in 1657 for the imperial ‘Kunstkammer’, a relief with ‘Lot and his Daughters’ is mentioned that can be identified as the relief in the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. As in the case of our wax relief it has a rocky background whereas the other versions made of stone depict the burning of Sodom in the distance. The details in the bronze and wax reliefs also show a number of similarities such as the armlet worn by the daughter on the left, the cloth pulled up over the upper arm on the right and the shape of the vessel. Even the dimensions are identical. Neuberger and Heroldt both worked at the court in Vienna at the same time and certainly knew each other. It can also be assumed that Heroldt, who made his casts based on the works of other artists, picked up Neuberger’s subject. Whether Neuberger based his work on a print or whether he was familiar with the Berlin relief which has the same dimensions, is unknown. Whatever the case, Neuberger modernised and modified the composition of the marble relief which had been created 100 years previously.

Daniel Neuberger the Younger worked as a sculptor and wax embosser in Augsburg, Regensburg and Vienna. From 1661 he worked as wax embosser at the court of Emperor Ferdinand III and received a monthly wage. Among other works, he created 110 small wax reliefs for Ferdinand III with scenes taken from Ovid, on which his daughter Anna Felicitas also worked. These reliefs are now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

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2 Lipinska, op. cit., pp. 257ff., esp. p. 259 3 Ibid., p. 18 and p. 259, fig. 183 and p. 260, notes 31+32