Bartold Kastrop

Bartold Kastrop (* about 1460 in Norten , † about 1531 in Göttingen ) was a carver of the late Gothic period in the area south of Lower Saxony .

Bartold Kastrop: Crescent Madonna, St. Marien-Kirche Göttingen, 1524

Life

The exact year of birth of Bartold Kastrop is not known. The place of birth Nörten can be taken from the signature inscriptions on the altars of the churches of Geismar and Hetjershausen he made . In 1488 Kastrop founded a household in Northeim and acquired citizenship and brewing rights there after Nörten had been destroyed in a feud in 1486. Eleven years later, in 1499, Kastrop moved his residence and business to Göttingen, where from 1503 at the latest he owned a house in Barfüßerstraße on the corner of Jüdenstraße, which is now known as Junkernschänke - most of the rich carvings on the house, however, were made during a renovation created after his death. Tax lists for the years 1503 to 1517 indicate a good economic development of his carving workshop in Göttingen. Although in the course of the Reformation there were no iconoclasts in Göttingen as large as in other places, religious carvings, especially figures of saints, were no longer in demand since the years 1529/30, some works were completely or partially destroyed from their locations. Bartold Kastrop died soon after the Reformation in Göttingen, because his widow is named in a combing invoice from 1532.

Services

From the time before 1499 there are no known works by Bartold Kastrop that can be reliably assigned and dated to him. From 1500, however, the art of carving in the Göttingen area was almost entirely determined by him. His works are characterized, among other things, by calm figures, characteristic, sometimes hard folds of the robes, strong necks, sloping shoulders also in the male figures and especially in the depictions of Mary a high, round forehead, a narrow mouth and a small nose. In contrast to the works of his contemporary Tilman Riemenschneider , the Kastrops carvings were designed to be colored and show an "ideal world" in terms of facial expression and calm demeanor. A notable exception is the fragmentarily preserved Passion relief in the village church in Bühle , the dating of which is not certain. One focus of Kastrop's carving art is representations and altars in honor of Mary . Almost all of his surviving reliefs and sculptures originally belonged to altar shrines. Bartold Kastrop worked closely with the Göttingen painter Hans Raphon , and later with his brother-in-law Heinrich Heisen, who colored his carved altars and sometimes also painted the backs of the altar panels. With his high-quality works, many of which have survived, he significantly shaped the art of carving in southern Lower Saxony at the beginning of the 16th century. Numerous works of this time show his influence, even if they cannot be assigned to him or his workshop with certainty. The high point of Bartold Kastrop's work is the St. Mary's altar in the church in Hetjershausen, built in 1509.
The Bartold-Kastrop-Straße in Nörten-Hardenberg and the Bartolt-Kastrop-Weg in Hetjershausen are named after him.

Works (selection)

Authorship documented in writing

• Winged altar from Geismar (Göttingen) , 1499, today in the City Museum in Göttingen
• Marien Altar of the church in Hetjershausen , 1509
• Main altar and Madonna on the crescent moon of St. Marien Church (Göttingen) , 1524

Authorship revealed

• Winged altar of the former Marienkapelle in Förste , 1503 (?)
• small folding altar (Marienaltar) of the collegiate church St. Alexander in Einbeck , 1509
• Winged altar of the Marienkirche in Osterode am Harz , 1517
• Figures from the altar of the Augustinian Canons Church of St. Blasii in Fredelsloh , around 1520
• Reliquary bust of a saint, Göttingen, around 1520
• Four holy figures in the center shrine of the main altar of the former monastery church of St. Christophorus in Reinhausen

literature

• Rudolf Wenig: Bartold Kastrop - a late Gothic picture carver in southern Lower Saxony. Göttingen 1975.
• Hans Georg Gmelin: Medieval art in Göttingen and works of Göttingen artists. In: Dietrich Denecke ; Helga-Maria Kühn (Ed.): Göttingen. History of a university town. Volume 1: From the beginning to the end of the Thirty Years War. Göttingen 1987, ISBN 3-525-36196-3 , pp. 609-611.
• Wolfgang Eckhardt: A Magdalene figure and other works by the Göttingen carver Bartold Kastrop . In: Yearbook of the Hamburg Art Collections 25. Hamburg 1980, pp. 27–50.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Winged altar from Geismar , photo at Kulturerbe Niedersachsen , Lower Saxony State and University Library Göttingen. Retrieved December 20, 2012
2. ↑ picture of the altar