Conrat Meit
Conrat Meit: wooden bust of Jakob Fugger , around 1515 (pear wood)
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Bust of a young man, 1520 (Berlin commemorative stamp from 1967)
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Conrat Meit (* 1470/1485 in Worms ; † 1550/1551 in Antwerp ) was a sculptor of the Renaissance .
Life
Little is known about Meits' life and education. His artistic career took him from his hometown Worms on the Rhine to the Wittenberg court of Elector Frederick the Wise , where he worked before 1506, and also to Lucas Cranach the Elder's workshop there . He then moved to the Cranach workshop in Mechelen . There he worked from 1512 to 1530 as court sculptor for the regent of the Netherlands, Archduchess Margaret of Austria . The late work of Conrat Meits is documented in Antwerp until 1544.
plant
Although Meit's art, in contrast to the sacred imagery of the late Gothic period, has a completely new expressiveness thanks to its finely crafted plasticity and emphasized corporeality, including the naked body, it was soon forgotten after his death. The main reason for this may be that most of his works disappeared in princely collections and Meit probably did not have a workshop with students that was common at the time.
Both Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach the Elder appreciated the work of Conrat Meit. Dürer describes him as the good [...] picture-maker. I also took Conrad, and I never saw anyone who serves the emperor's daughter, Frau Margareth . His reputation as an important sculptor and carver of the early Renaissance spread across northern Europe.
In addition to small-format boxwood sculptures such as the bust of Philibert le Beau, Duke of Savoy , Meit's main works were commissioned by Margarete von Österreich between 1526 and 1531: the monumental tombs made of Carrara marble and St.Lothain alabaster in the church of Brou near Bourg -en-Bresse , once the Margarete, a canopy tomb, then that of her husband, Duke Philibert of Savoy , who died young , and that of his mother, Marguerite de Bourbon . The reclining figures and some putti are essentially from Meit's hand. What is unusual about the tombs of Margarete and Philibert is the two-storey structure of the tombs, below is a figure of the deceased in an ideal youthful form, above a figure of the same in appearance shortly before death in court clothing and with insignia of power.
Bourg-en-Bresse - Brou, monastery church, tomb of Margaret of Austria, general view
Monastère Royal de Brou - Tomb of Margaret of Austria
Monastère Royal de Brou - Tomb of Philibert of Savoy
literature
in alphabetical order by authors / editors
- Renate Eikelmann (Ed.): Conrat Meit. Renaissance sculptor - "neither have I seen ..." . Hirmer, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-7774-3385-1
- Ernst Emmerling: Conrat Meit on the Middle Rhine . In: Heimat-Jahrbuch Alzey – Worms 1973, pp. 419–423.
- Constance Lowenthal: Conrat Meit . Ann Arbor (Michigan) Univ. Microfilms International, 1981; originally: New York, NY, Univ., Diss. 1976.
- Klaus Pechstein: Meit, Conrat. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , p. 730 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Georg Tröscher: Conrat Meit von Worms. A Rhenish sculptor of the Renaissance . Urban, Freiburg im Breisgau 1927.
Web links
- Special exhibition Conrat Meit Sculptors of the Renaissance ( Memento from October 13, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) in the Bavarian National Museum
- Conrad Meit: Judith with the head of Holofernes - 3D model in the culture portal bavarikon
Individual evidence
- ^ Marie Francoise Poiret: Le Monastere de Brou. Paris 1994, pp. 10, 92-104; Dagmar Eichberger: Living with Art - Working through Art. Collecting and court art under Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands. Turnhout / Belgium 2002, pp. 39 - 41, 292f
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Meit, Conrat |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Meit, Conrad; Meit, Konrad |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German sculptor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1470 or 1485 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Worms |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1550 or 1551 |
| Place of death | Antwerp |