Branches

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Branches on the font of Worms Cathedral
Branches in the form of tracery on Ulm Minster, around 1475

Branches ( Engl. Branch tracery, branch work ; fr. Bois mort, branchage ; it. Intreccio di rami ) is an architecture-related ornament of late Gothic and northern Alpine Renaissance consisting of gnarled, tangled and leafless branches. Branchwork was particularly widespread in Central European art between 1480 and 1520 and occurs in all genres. This boom in the branches has its origin in the discussion of Renaissance humanism with ancient theories of the origin of architecture from nature.

Origin and meaning

Branch portal of the former monastery church in Chemnitz (1525)

The branchwork probably developed formally from wood carving and was also used by stone sculptors within the framework of the architectural theory of the Renaissance . Recently, the programmatic connection between the vegetal architectural forms of the branches and the theories of early Renaissance humanism about the origin of architecture has been recognized. Parallel to the increased occurrence of branches in art since the last third of the 15th century, there are references in the treatise literature to an architectural- theoretical background of this form of design, which is reminiscent of Vitruvius's original hut . In De architectura libri decem he sets up a model of the emergence of architecture from nature, according to which the first people built their dwellings from vertical forks with branches overlying them. Also Filarete takes up this idea in his manuscript Trattato di Archittetura on, in which he explains the origin of the arc as the first door form. Similar explanations can be found in the early 16th century, among others. a. with Raffael .
The derivation of the Gothic pointed arch from branches tied together from trees that have not yet been felled finds a historical basis in Tacitus De Germania . He reports that the Germanic tribes worshiped their gods in the forests. The peculiarities of the northern Alpine Gothic architecture - pointed arches in analogy to the canopy of Germanic groves - are interpreted by Tacitus as a separate, national antiquity. Cardinal Francesco Todeschini-Piccolomini (1439–1503), who was in possession of the Germania edition of his uncle, Pope Pius II , played a decisive role in the reception of Tacitus by German scholars . Several copies of this copy found their way across the Alps via Regensburg.

use

In northern Alpine art of the 15th and 16th centuries, architectural elements were often replaced by branches. Particularly in stone sculptures, the juxtaposition of architectural and natural elements, such as branches, is given a further level. First, a wooden branch is imitated in stone, which in turn replaces a component.

An early example from architecture are the Astrippen in the west choir of Eichstätter Dom from 1471. There, a round rod made of branches is placed in front of the architectural ribs. Wilhelm von Reichenau , humanist and bishop of Eichstätt, can be accepted as the source of ideas . Wilhelm v. Reichenau had studied together with Johannes Pirckheimer , Willibald Pirckheimer's father, in Padua and is a typical early representative of early humanism in Germany . In Johannes Pirckheimer's library there was also a copy of Germania , which he presumably already had when he was a student in the 1460s had acquired.

In Eichstätt there is another, later example of the use of branches with the so-called "beautiful column" from 1489 in the mortuary of the cathedral. At the same time, this pillar with a twisted shaft is an early example of the resumption of Romanesque construction forms in 15th century architecture. The Romanesque, understood as specifically north-alpine antiquity, was initially used in Dutch painting in the first half of the 15th century to depict ancient buildings and, from around 1470, was also received as a stimulus for new architectural motifs.

Tilman Riemenschneider's Holy Blood Altar (1501/05) is an example of the combination of architectural and vegetal form . Here the keel-arched canopies are formed by intertwined branches, which in turn are crowned by an architectural pinnacle . In the architecture, too, trimmed ribs , twisted pillars or columns and crooked vaults were staged in a virtuoso manner. These ' mannerisms ' deliberately broke with the expected order and with the comprehensibility of the architectural system. The branches go well with the Romanesque-antique pillar in the Eichstätter Mortuarium as a further reference to the historical past and the origin of the architecture itself.

In a similar way , the monumental north portal of the Benedictine monastery church in Chemnitz, created by Franz Maidburg in 1525, combines pre-Gothic forms and branches. Both the round arches , the ornamentation and the figure program with the donors of the 12th century (Emperor Lothar III ) refer to the high medieval foundation of the monastery and emphasize the age and venerability of the complex. Even Bramante tree pillars in the cloister of S. Ambrogio in Milan are one such implementation of architectural theory discourse. The Ingolstadt Donautor (mid-16th century, broken off in 1877) also possessed an architectural order made of branches, which presumably followed graphic models from the treatise literature.

gallery

Commons : Astwerk  - collection of images, videos and audio files

  • Ribs of branches in Eichstätt Cathedral (1471)

  • Branch vault in the cloister of the collegiate church in Ellwangen (around 1475)

  • Branches in the upper part of the Pappenheimer Altar in Eichstätt Cathedral made of Jura marble

  • Eichstätter Dom, Mortuarium, "Beautiful Column"

  • Branch portal, 15th century, Berlin, Bode Museum

  • Bramante, tree column in the cloister of S. Ambrogio , Milan (1498)

  • Branches as decoration of a pictorial architecture in Dürer's Marienleben (1504)

  • Holy Blood Altar (1501/05)

  • The tulip pulpit in Freiberg Cathedral (around 1505/10)

  • Liebfrauenmünster Ingolstadt , branch vault (1515)

See also

proof

  1. ↑ Hubertus Günther: The branch and the theory of the Renaissance of the origin of architecture. In: Michèle-Caroline Heck, Fréderique Lemerle, Yves Pauwels (eds.): Théorie des arts et création artistique dans l'Europe du Nord du XVIe au début du XVIII siècle, Villeneuve d'Ascq (Lille). 2002, pp. 13-32.
  2. ^ Vitruvius: De architectura libri decem. II, 1.3.
  3. ^ Filarete: Trattato di Archittetura. Book VIII, fol. 59r, 1460/64.
  4. ↑ Raffael: Memorandum on the Rome plan Leo X. 1519: "[...] però che nacque dalli arbori non anchor tagliati, alli quali piegati li rami, et rilegati insieme, fanno li lor terzi acuti." n. Vincenzo Golzio: Raffello nei documenti, nelle testimonianze dei contemporanei e nella letteratura del suo secolo. Farnborough 1971 [Vatican City 1936], p. 86.
  5. ↑ Tac. Germ. 9.3.
  6. ^ H. Günther: The branch. 2002, p. 63f.
  7. ↑ Dieter Mertens: The instrumentalization of the Germania of Tacitus by the German humanists. In: Heinrich Beck (Hrsg.): On the history of the equation Germanic - German. Language and names, history and institutions. (= Supplementary volumes to the Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde. 34). Berlin et al. 2004, pp. 37–101, pp. 39 and 59–61.
  8. ↑ See Mertens 2004, p. 63f.
  9. ↑ Stephan Hoppe: Romanesque as antiquity and the structural consequences. Conjecture about a forgotten discourse . In: Norbert Nussbaum et al. (Ed.): Paths to the Renaissance. Observations on the beginnings of the modern conception of art in the Rhineland and neighboring areas around 1500, Cologne 2003, pp. 89–131 online version ; Stephan Hoppe: The imagined antiquity. Image and building constructions of the architectural past in the age of Jan van Eyck and Albrecht Dürer. Habilitation. Cologne 2009, unpublished.
  10. ↑ Including Hans Körner: The "disturbed form" in the architecture of the late Middle Ages. In: Christoph Andreas, Maraike Bückling, Roland Dorn (eds.): Festschrift for Hartmut Biermann. Weinheim 1990, pp. 65-80.
  11. ^ Stephan Hoppe: Style discourses, architectural fictions and relics. Observations in Halle, Chemnitz and Heilbronn on the influence of the visual arts on Central European foremen around 1500 . In: Stefan Bürger and Bruno Klein (eds.): Werkmeister of the late Gothic. Position and role of architects in construction from the 14th to 16th centuries. Darmstadt 2009, pp. 69–91 online version .
  12. ↑ deutschefotothek.de

literature

  • Hans Koepf , Günther Binding : Picture Dictionary of Architecture (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 194). 3. Edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-520-19403-1 , p. 33.
  • Ethan Matt Kavaler: On Vegetal Imagery in Renaissance Gothic. In: Monique Chatenet, Krista De Jonge, Ethan Matt Kavaler, Norbert Nussbaum (eds.): Le Gothique de la Renaissance, actes des quatrième Rencontres d'architecture européenne, Paris, 12-16 June 2007. (= De Architectura. 13) . Paris 2011, pp. 298-312.
  • Stephan Hoppe: Northern Gothic, Italian Renaissance and beyond. Toward a 'thick' description of style . In: Monique Chatenet, Krista De Jonge, Ethan Matt Kavaler, Norbert Nussbaum (eds.): Le Gothique de la Renaissance. Actes des quatrième Rencontres d'architecture européenne, Paris, June 12-16, 2007. Paris 2011, pp. 47–64. Online version on ART-dok
  • Étienne Hamon: Le naturalisme dans l'architecture française around 1500. In: Monique Chatenet, Krista De Jonge, Ethan Matt Kavaler, Norbert Nussbaum (eds.): Le Gothique de la Renaissance, actes des quatrième Rencontres d'architecture européenne, Paris , 12-16 June 2007. (= De Architectura. 13). Paris 2011, pp. 329-343.
  • Hubertus Günther: The branches and the theory of the Renaissance of the origin of architecture. In: Michèle-Caroline Heck, Fréderique Lemerle, Yves Pauwels (eds.): Théorie des arts et création artistique dans l'Europe du Nord du XVIe au début du XVIII siècle, Villeneuve d'Ascq (Lille). 2002, pp. 13-32. Online version
  • Hanns Hubach: Between branches and festoons. Remarkable things about the epitaph of the court clerk of the Electoral Palatinate, Paul Baumann von Oedheim (1488). In: Hanns Hubach, Barbara von Orelli-Messerli, Tadej Tassini (eds.): Friction points. Order and upheaval in architecture and art. Festschrift for Hubertus Günther. (= Studies on the international history of architecture and art. Volume 64). Petersberg 2008, pp. 115-122. Online version on ART-dok
  • Hanns Hubach: Johann von Dalberg and the naturalistic branches in contemporary sculpture in Worms, Heidelberg and Ladenburg. In: Gerold Bönnen, Burkard Keilmann (ed.): The Worms Bishop Johann von Dalberg (1482–1503) and his time. (= Sources and treatises on the Middle Rhine church history. Volume 117). Mainz 2005, pp. 207-232. Online version on ART-dok
  • Hartmut Krohm: The "model character" of the copperplate engravings with the crosier and censer. In: Albert Châtelet (Ed.): Le beau Martin. Etudes et mises au point. Colmar 1994, pp. 185-207.
  • Paul Crossley: The Return to the Forest: Natural Architecture and the German Past in the Age of Dürer. In: Thomas W. Gaehtgens (ed.): Artistic exchange, files of the 28th International Congress for Art History. Volume 2, Berlin 1993, pp. 71-80.
  • Ernst-Heinz Lemper: The branches. Its forms, its essence and its development. Leipzig 1950.
  • Walter Paatz: The appearance of the branch canopy in German late Gothic sculpture and Erhard Reuwich's title woodcut in Breidenbach's “Peregrinationes in terram sanctam”. In: Siegfried Joost (Ed.): Bibliotheca docet. Ceremony for Carl Wehmer. Amsterdam 1963, pp. 355-368.
  • Hans Wenzel: branches . In: Real Lexicon on German Art History . Volume 1, Stuttgart 1937, Col. 1166-1170.