Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi

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The Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi (CVMA) (Latin for "(total) work of stained glass in the Middle Ages" ), or in short: Corpus Vitrearum (CV) , is an international art history research company that aims to find all preserved or to research traditional medieval stained glass , to publish it in book form and thus to make it accessible to broad science. Twenty European and North American countries are participating or participating in the research project. To date, well over a hundred volumes have appeared in the international series.

South transverse house rose of Chartres Cathedral

History and task

Logo of the International CVMA

The research company Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi was founded in 1952 under the impact of the Second World War . At that time, many stained glass were irrevocably lost, but many holdings were expanded to protect against the chaos of war. This made it possible for art historians for the first time on a large scale to examine stained glass, which is usually far away from the beholder's eye, up close and to be able to create photographic documentation. While in the 19th century glass painting was still primarily regarded as a handicraft , this genre has been seen as the leading painting genre of the Romanesque , Gothic and Northern Alpine Renaissance at the latest since the knowledge of the war and post-war generation .

The initiator of the edition project was the Bernese art historian Hans R. Hahnloser , who presented his vision of a complete publication of all medieval stained glass for the first time in 1949 and three years later was able to establish the Corpus Vitrearum at the 16th International Art Historians Congress in Amsterdam. Initially, the countries France , Germany , Switzerland , Belgium , Austria , the Scandinavian countries and Great Britain were involved, in the course of time other countries were added, including the USA , Canada and Russia , which have European glass painting in collections. Countries that have completely published their holdings of medieval stained glass have now expanded their investigations to include modern stained glass or withdrew from the research company.

The work of the Corpus Vitrearum goes far beyond mere inventory. The stained glass is always viewed in the historical context and in the context of the architecture for which it was created. They often provide information about donors , artistic programs, iconographic features and the representational needs of stately or clerical clients . Many of the glass windows come from well-known artists such as Albrecht Dürer , Hans Baldung and others.

The work of the Corpus Vitrearum has been gaining importance since the environmental changes of the 20th century. By exhaust gases and acid rain , the glass paintings are attacked in a short time than in the 500 years before. Pitting and browning are the result. Thanks to the initiatives of the Corpus Vitrearum, exterior protective glazing was installed on many churches to stop the process of decay. The Corpus Vitrearum is in contact with restorers and glass painting workshops and serves as an advisor to monument offices.

organization

Each country has its own national committees, which are responsible for the administration and the appointment of the authors. In order to organize the publications and the research according to uniform standards, guidelines have been adopted which define the procedure for research and the form of publication. The current version of the guidelines was adopted in Bristol 2000. The official languages ​​of the Corpus Vitrearum are English , French and German .

All glass painting specialists meet at the International Colloquia on a regular basis to discuss methods and current research. This is also where the international committee, consisting of the president, secretary and treasurer, is elected. Since 1965 there has been a dedicated committee for the conservation of glass painting, which is primarily devoted to technical and restoration issues.

West window of Altenberg Cathedral

International Colloquia of the Corpus Vitrearum

Participating countries

The following paragraphs describe the status of processing and the organization of the individual national committees. Further information on the history, the authors and lists of publications can be found on the website of the International CVMA or on the national websites .

Belgium

In 1961, Belgium published the country's medieval stained glass in one volume up to 1500. Four further volumes were devoted to stained glass from the first half of the 16th century, further volumes on modern collections will follow. There are also the “ Études ” and “ Checklist ” series.

Prophet Daniel in the Augsburg Cathedral

Germany

Due to the German-German division after the Second World War, two institutes were created in Germany , which continue to coexist even after reunification . The institute in Freiburg works primarily in the south and west of Germany, while the institute in Potsdam focuses on the northern and eastern federal states.

Freiburg in Breisgau

In West Germany, the first volume on the early glass paintings in Swabia was published in 1958 , which actually refers to the area of Württemberg . The title and geographical classification resulted from the fact that the author Hans Wentzel had already written a monograph on stained glass in Swabia in the 1940s, which could not be published because of the war. After the war, this publication became the first German corpus volume. As a result, the individual volumes were structured according to historical landscapes, whereby the current federal states or administrative districts are often decisive for the processing limits.

An institute developed in Stuttgart in the 1970s, and then in Freiburg since 1982 . The "Research Center for Medieval Glass Painting" is supported by the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature .

So far, the federal states of Baden-Württemberg (with the Ulm and Freiburg Minster ), Hesse (with the Elisabeth Church in Marburg ) and Lower Saxony are complete, Rhineland-Palatinate (with the Katharinenkirche in Oppenheim ) and Bavaria (with extensive holdings in Nuremberg and Regensburg ) partially published. There is also a monographic volume on Cologne Cathedral . In addition to the Corpus series, there is also the series “Studies”, and the series “German Glass Painting of the Middle Ages” and “Masterpieces of Glass Painting” are also published in Freiburg.

Potsdam

From 1956 the East German work of the Corpus Vitrearum was located in the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin and after its reform in 1971 in the Institute for the Preservation of Monuments of the GDR . After a temporary bridge after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a separate job was set up in Potsdam , which has been under the care of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences since 1993 .

The first volumes of the GDR's Corpus Vitrearum appeared at the end of the 1970s. Since the reunification, the census of the German volumes has been merged, the volumes "DDR I-VIII" are now listed as "Germany XV-XXII". So far, volumes have been published on the glass paintings in Erfurt , Stendal , Mühlhausen , Halberstadt and on individual locations in Saxony-Anhalt . The volume on the glass paintings in Berlin and Brandenburg was published at the end of 2010, and in 2016 on the other glass paintings in Thuringia .

Sainte-Chapelle in Paris

France

France has the largest number of medieval stained glass. In order to make the research stock accessible as quickly as possible, the French Corpus Vitrearum publishes a second series in addition to the Corpus volumes, which lists the locations with stained glass in key words. In this series “ Recensement des vitraux anciens de la France ” nine volumes have appeared so far; this already covers about half of France (mainly the regions north of the Loire from Brittany to Alsace and from the English Channel to the Alps ). So far, the churches of Notre-Dame and Sainte-Chapelle in Paris , the Cathedral of Angers , the choir of the Cathedral of Troyes , Saint-Ouen in Rouen , Saint-Nicolas-de-Port , the Strasbourg Cathedral and the stained glass have been used as corpus volumes the former Dominican church there .

Another series (“ Études ”), which so far comprises nine volumes, is devoted to individual aspects. It is worth mentioning the studies on the stained glass paintings by Abbot Sugers in Saint-Denis , a volume on the stained glass windows of Chartres and the edition of the treatise by Anthony of Pisa .

The French Corpus Vitrearum is based in Paris . The first volume appeared in 1959.

York Minster

Great Britain

The British CVMA was founded in 1956 as a research project by the British Academy . Today it is anchored in the art history department of the University of York . The extensive image archive is located in the Public Archives of British Monuments and Sites ( English Heritage ) in Swindon .

The publications are published in three series: the actual corpus volumes, “ Summary Catalogs ” (short inventories) and “ Occasional Papers ” (contributions). Publications can be found on Canterbury Cathedral , York Minster , Wells Cathedral , King's College Chapel in Cambridge , Merton College and stained glass in the County of Oxford , County of Lincolnshire , Northamptonshire , South Yorkshire and Cheshire .

The British committee is also the publisher of the online magazine " vidimus " , which publishes current articles on stained glass topics on a monthly basis. In addition to articles and news, there are also current exhibition calendars and advertisements for book publications.

Milan Cathedral

Italy

The Italian Corpus Vitrearum has so far published three volumes of corpus on the stained glass in Umbria (with the windows of San Francesco in Assisi , 1973), on the Milan Cathedral (1986) and on the Cathedral of Pisa (2002). The company is affiliated with the United National Academies (UAN) in Rome , and its headquarters and library are in Milan .

With the approval of the Italian committee, the Austrian Corpus Vitrearum co-published the glass paintings of South Tyrol in 2007 in the volume "The medieval glass paintings in Salzburg, Tyrol and Vorarlberg".

Canada

Canada has been a member of the Corpus Vitrearum since 1984. The first Canadian volume was released in 2014.

Jonah and the whale in the Sint Janskerk in Gouda

Netherlands

Although the Dutch had been in contact with the Corpus Vitrearum since 1953 , the national committee was not founded until 1981. Until 2002 the Dutch Corpus Vitrearum was under the patronage of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences . Between 1997 and 2002 the stained glass windows of the Sint Janskerk in Gouda were published in 3 volumes, another volume deals in two parts with all other stained glass in the Netherlands up to 1795.

Rudolf I (Bohemia) in St. Stephen's Cathedral

Austria

The Austrian publications of the Corpus Vitrearum are structured according to the federal states . So far Vienna , Lower Austria (in 3 volumes), Salzburg , Tyrol (with South Tyrol ) and Vorarlberg and partly Styria have been processed .

Austria has been a member of the Corpus Vitrearum from the very beginning, the first volume was published in 1962. The company is anchored at the Federal Monuments Office in Vienna .

Poland

Poland plans to publish its medieval stained glass in a single volume. Further research projects are devoted to modern glass paintings, the first volume of which has already been published. The headquarters of the Corpus Vitrearum, which has been a member of the international association since 1958, is attached to the Jagiellonian University in Krakow .

Portugal

Portugal published its medieval collections in one volume in 1983. The most important holdings in the country are the stained glass from Batalha . After membership in the International CVMA was suspended, it was reactivated in the 1990s.

Russia

Russia is the youngest member of the Corpus Vitrearum. The National Committee was founded in 1992 and has set itself the task of processing the stained glass of the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg and other collections. The Russian committee does a great job of taking care of the restoration and scientific processing of the stained glass windows in St. Mary's Church in Frankfurt / Oder , which were stored as spoils of war in St. Petersburg for over 50 years. In 2002 the windows could be returned to their destination.

Detail from the Klara window in Königsfelden

Switzerland

The Swiss Corpus Vitrearum has already published its medieval holdings in four volumes, including two monographs on the Bern Minster and Königsfelden . The first volume, published in 1956, is also the first international corpus volume. The extensive holdings of early modern stained glass that appear in the “Modern Times” series are now being researched. So far, the cantons of Aargau , Zug , Schaffhausen and Freiburg have been processed there. The Corpus Vitrearum has been linked to the VitroCentre in Romont since 1987 .

Scandinavia

Sweden , Finland , Denmark and Norway published their holdings together in a single volume in German ("The stained glass of the Middle Ages in Scandinavia ") and are no longer members of the international Corpus Vitrearum. The Swedish island of Gotland has the largest inventory of medieval stained glass .

Spain

Spain has two committees: the “Spanish” committee, a member since 1965, published the holdings of the Cathedral of Seville and the Cathedral of Granada in two volumes . The Committee of Catalonia has worked on the stained glass of Santa Maria del Mar in Barcelona, ​​of the cathedrals in Girona , Tarragona and Barcelona and of the monasteries of Santes Creus and Pedralbes since the 1980s .

Czech Republic / Slovakia

The Czech Republic and Slovakia published their holdings in a volume in German as early as 1975 under the title "Medieval Glass Painting in Czechoslovakia " and have not been a member of the international network since then.

United States

In the United States of America there are more than 3000 panes, mostly imported from Europe in the 20th century, which are in public or university collections, privately owned or installed again in church windows. After the first publications in the series “ Occasional Papers ” (1985) and “ Checklists ” (1985–91), which inventoried the glass paintings in four volumes, corpus volumes have been published regularly since 2001. The stained glass of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the collections of the Midwest and the northern part of New York State have already been published there.

CVMA designation system

Designation system

The system binding for the CVMA designates the windows from the east window in the longitudinal axis of the building with Roman numerals. The east window is given the number I, to the west is counted on the north and south side at the same time, the windows on the north side are given a prefixed n and on the south side a prefixed s. For example, nV is called the fifth window from the east on the north side. Capital letters indicate windows and tracery on the upper floors.

The fields are labeled horizontally with lowercase letters starting with a from the left and numbers from bottom to top. Example: Field 5c is the field in the third row from the left at the height of the fifth horizontal line from the bottom.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Erhard Drachenberg, Karl-Joachim Maercker, Christa Richer: Medieval glass painting in the GDR . Union Verlag Berlin 1979, p. 241.