The Hussite Sermon
|
| The Hussite Sermon |
|---|
| Carl Friedrich Lessing , 1836 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 223 × 293 cm |
| Old National Gallery |
The Hussite Sermon is the title of a history painting by the painter Carl Friedrich Lessing . It shows a field preacher in Bohemia in the early 15th century in front of his followers, the Hussites .
description
The large-format oil painting to the "Husbildern" Lessing counts originated from 1835 to 1836 as a commissioned work for the Prussian Crown Prince Frederick William, the future King Frederick William IV. , Who had met the subject in 1834, on an ink sketch Lessing. With regard to the ecclesiastical political situation of the predominantly Catholic Rhineland , which had been incorporated into the Protestant-dominated Kingdom of Prussia as a result of the Congress of Vienna as a Rhine province, the picture, which was completed in Düsseldorf in 1836 and exhibited there for the first time, was in the public perception as a manifesto of Protestantism and as a Taking sides for the Protestant minority on the Rhine is of current political importance. Many Catholics even considered it a propaganda creation of anti-Catholicism . Against the social and political background of its time of creation - the Restoration and the Vormärz - the picture was understood by some viewers as a political accusation of the repressive Metternich system beyond the denominational and church-political reference . Large circles of the bourgeoisie understood it as an expression of the opposition to the monarchy and church orthodoxy and for the self-determination of the Czech and German people . The “realistic image of history” ( Norbert Werner ) made a great impression on contemporary audiences and art critics at exhibitions in Germany and Paris that followed in quick succession . It helped the painter and the Düsseldorf School to become well known.
Description and meaning
In the center of a concentrically arranged group of figures, a circle of medieval warriors, two women and a child, a prominent, resolute-looking preacher, perhaps Jan Hus , perhaps another spiritual leader of the Hussite movement, who is dressed in a flowing white robe and holds is facing the viewer frontally, in a theatrical gesture up a golden chalice . A devotee stretches his arms at him in religious zeal. The head of the preacher is emphasized by flashing clouds of mist. Incident light highlights the figure of the preacher, including part of the group of figures, against the smoke-covered background. With the thoroughly sympathetic depiction of the central figure of the preacher in a crowd of followers who presented a “ heretic ” as a savior , Lessing tied in with well-known depictions of Jesus and disciples in the Christian pictorial tradition . The scene, which depicts a field service in a moment of intense religious experience, takes place in or on the edge of a wooded mountain slope against the background of a burning building complex, perhaps a monastery, a castle or an urban settlement with a church. The chalice symbolizes the Hussite-Protestant demand for chalice communion , the "Lord's Supper under both forms". The burning buildings can be interpreted as a symbol of the historical context of the Hussite Wars , the struggle of the Czechs against the German upper class and the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church . The medieval warriors - depicted in realistic detail as aristocrats in armor and as armed peasants - form a close social community together with women and children. The production shows her as an insurgent against an establishment that remains abstract in the moment of religious inspiration .
.jpg)
As a sign of their simplicity and nature-relatedness, Lessing depicted the Hussites in the scenic ambience of a natural forest . In Lessing's time, the forest was considered a natural place of original folk beliefs , folk myths and superstitions . As such, it was a common topos of German romanticism . In his painting The Thousand Year Oak , created in 1837 , this romantic-religious meaning is once again clearly revealed.
The picture, the scene of which is structured like the stage prospect of a living picture , portrays some of Lessing's painter friends. The rider on the left is identified as the landscape painter Johann Wilhelm Schirmer , the history painter Theodor Hildebrandt as the warrior with helmet and lance. The warrior with the white head bandage is likely to be the genre painter Emil Ebers , Lessing's brother-in-law. The richly dressed man at the bottom right of the picture could be August Becker .
.jpg)
The aspects of religious fanaticism as well as the phenomena of reform zeal, national passions and striving for independence tied him to the historical material that Lessing worked with the motif . In 1835 Lessing mentioned the work to his father as the “Sermon of the Taborites ”, by which he could only have meant the Hussite sermon . The reference to the Taborites, who, with reference to Mount Tabor as the place of the transfiguration of the Lord, held the services in the open air, suggests that the lighting up of the mist around the head of the preacher, its illumination and bright white robe of the crowd was perceived as the transfiguration of their spiritual guide and Taborlicht appearance. In the design of the picture, which opens up many possibilities for interpretation, Lessing ultimately left its exact meaning open.
Further pictures in which Lessing treated the history of the Hussite movement or Jan Hus as a historical figure are Johann Hus in the preliminary interrogation in Konstanz 1414/1415 (first version 1842, further version 1845) and Johann Hus before the stake (1850).
Origin and provenance
Lessing became aware of the historical material through readings by Friedrich von Uechtritz from Karl Adolph Menzel's The Stories of the Germans . As a Protestant and because of his own descent from Bohemia, the subject of the Hussite movement may have interested him particularly. Lessing probably understood the Hussite Wars not so much as a religious war, but as a war of freedom. He was particularly interested in the radical wing of the Hussites around Jan Žižka and Jan Želivský . As a forerunner of the picture, after studying the historical sources, a composition sketch was created, which was exhibited in Berlin in 1832 . Lessing had already completed the image conception, first drafts, figure and individual studies (today mostly in the Cincinnati Art Museum ). This was followed by the development of a color sketch and a cardboard box that was available in March 1835. The color sketch was shown at exhibitions in Düsseldorf and Paris in 1834 . In the spring of 1835, the painter Johann Baptist Sonderland made a drawing for the engraver August Hoffmann from the cardboard on behalf of Atanazy Raczyński . The copper engraving made by Hoffmann was exhibited in Berlin in 1838.
On the basis of the now lost cardboard, the Prussian Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm placed the order to produce the painting in 1835. This commissioned work , which began on May 8, 1835 and was completed July 22, 1836, was presented to the public for the first time in September 1836 in Düsseldorf. In the period that followed, the color sketch and the oil painting were exhibited in many other cities: Berlin, Dresden , Frankfurt am Main , Hanover , Munich , Münster , Hanover, Weimar , Leipzig , Lübeck , Posen and Paris ( Salon de Paris ). In 1876, Kaiser Wilhelm I transferred the oil painting to the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin. In 1902 it was briefly back in Düsseldorf. From 1934 to 2001 it was on permanent loan to the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf .
reception
The contemporary public often took in the picture with great interest and approval, sometimes with enthusiasm. It sparked enthusiasm especially among those who stood in opposition to the Prussian state and clerical orthodoxy.
Carl Gustav Carus said that in the painting “an important moment from the history of human development was brought to the most vivid perception through the representational portrayal of the most varied, most decisive personalities”, “with a truth that is reminiscent of Shakespeare.” Franz Kugler saw in the painting a representation of the "fight for freedom", in the demonstratively held up chalice the symbol of "liberation from the privileges of the priesthood". Hermann Püttmann found “the enthusiasm of religion in contrast to materialism to manifest itself” in the picture.
However, there was also rejection and caustic criticism. About suffered so had Lessing as a response to this that his teacher, Wilhelm Schadow , who had converted to Catholicism in 1814 in Rome and as director of the Dusseldorf Art Academy , a Nazarene inspired painting favored, turned away from him. Schadow called the work Protestant tendency painting . In Düsseldorf it was said that Schadow's confessor had forbidden him to deal with Lessing from then on. Not only did traffic between Schadow and Lessing break, the contrasts within the Düsseldorf School of Painting continued to open up. Parties formed around both people.
The Düsseldorf genre painter Johann Peter Hasenclever satirized the pathetic gesture of the Hussite preacher in his painting atelier scene in 1836 . Instead of a liturgical wine goblet, the short painter Anton Greven prosaically holds up a wine bottle. Adolph Tidemand , another Düsseldorf genre painter, adapted Lessing's pattern of frontal addressing the viewer in the paintings Address of the Haugians (Haugianerne) and Fanatiker (Fanatics) . Many other painters referred to the picture, for example the Düsseldorf history painter Alfred Rethel in 1835 in the picture Sermon of St. Boniface and in 1836 in the picture From the life of St. Boniface . Adolph Menzel criticized the picture for showing “how little the people of Düsseldorf developed the sense of the arrangement of the lighting and the various degrees of detail according to the greater and lesser importance of the objects”.
The Rhenish writer Wolfgang Müller von Königswinter rated the picture as one of the main works of “Lessing's romantic-historical compositions” and wrote in 1854: “The picture makes a wonderful impression. I would like to call him one who wields a gorgeous, intoxicating hymn. From it it sounds like the chorale: A solid castle is our God, or like the Marseillaise, when it sounds with the hottest enthusiasm and the fullest of instruments. ”When Lessing accepted the offer, director of the Großherzoglich Badische Gemäldegalerie in Karlsruhe to become, the artists' association Malkasten organized in his honor on July 30, 1858 a "Festival of Carl Friedrich Lessing's Farewell" in the Malkastenpark . The painting The Hussite Sermon was performed by living figures in a tableau vivant to the sounds of the chant A strong castle is our god .
Since the picture does not convey a clear message, it has been appropriated over time by different viewers for different interests. In many cases it was interpreted as a symbolic expression of the Cologne church dispute of 1837 , some even saw it as Lessing's position on contemporary Pan-Slavism . The Rheinische Zeitung , edited by Karl Marx , wrote in 1842: “And how much more significant is this material for the present, which, among other forms, fights the same struggle of intellectual freedom against the Church and brings it to an end, how does the noble figure of Hus, dem we too are obliged to be martyred. ”Lessing himself claimed that he had not taken sides with his pictures. In a letter to Unknown dated March 2, 1843, he asserted: "In relation to my pictures, I may not have done anything for either party." This was also confirmed by Friedrich von Uechtritz , who was a friend of Lessing and who was in the picture "Not a product of polemical party addiction, but of historical and human interests". Although Lessing is not a believer, he is definitely in awe of Christianity.
Today's art scholars judge the work, which in its time caused a sensation as a Protestant and liberal beacon, less as a deliberately anti-clerical affront, but “as a history painting in which Lessing's subject, style and personal disposition came together in a powerful expression.” In Lessing's work This reflects a future development: "the dissolution and merging of the genres, a courageously realistic view of nature, a reality of historical subjects and stylistic devices that can also be interpreted today, which were no longer so much in the service of the ideal as a representable and represented reality." Lessings The Hussite sermon expresses the striving for freedom of the German bourgeoisie in the 1830s and is in this respect a “composition of complicated but perceived spiritual states”. It expresses their “stance against feudal and national oppression, against dogmatic severity and church intolerance”. He even made a significant contribution to “democratization in Germany” ( Wolfgang Hütt ). But others interpret the picture rather as the opposite of taking sides in favor of liberal aspirations and national self-determination, namely as an expression of skepticism towards radical desire for freedom and revolutionary changes. There is a broad consensus, however, in the assessment of the fundamental importance of the picture for the development of Düsseldorf painting: Lessing just with his hus pictures “stood at a turning point in the Düsseldorf school of painting, which was to split up within the academy and outside in the favor of the public began to reorient ”( Ekkehard Mai ). Because the history painting of the Düsseldorf School was based on the painting, because it triggered a polarization and controversial debate like hardly any other work of this school and exerted a great suggestive power on other artists, it is considered an "epoch-making picture" ( Wend von Kalnein ) and as the "key work of the Düsseldorf School of Painting" ( Bettina Baumgärtel ).
Lessing was awarded a gold medal and an order of the Legion of Honor for the picture . In 1842 he received the order Pour le Mérite for science and art .
literature
- Bettina Baumgärtel : The Hussite Sermon, 1836 . In: Bettina Baumgärtel (Hrsg.): The Düsseldorf School of Painting and its international impact 1819–1918 . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86568-702-9 , Volume 2, p. 266 ff. (Catalog No. 225)
- Norbert Werner : The religious history picture and the realistic history picture of the Düsseldorf school of painting (P. Cornelius / FW Schadow and CF Lessing) . In: Gerhard Kurz (ed.): Düsseldorf in der deutschen Geistesgeschichte (1750-1850) . Schwann Verlag, Düsseldorf 1984, ISBN 3-590-30244-5 , p. 239 ff.
- Wend von Kalnein : The Düsseldorf School of Painting . Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1979, ISBN 3-8053-0409-9 , p. 393 f. (Catalog No. 159)
- Irene Markowitz : The Düsseldorf School of Painting . Catalogs of the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, Volume 2, Düsseldorf 1969, p. 203 ff.
Individual evidence
- ^ Hanna Gagel: The Düsseldorf School of Painting in the Political Situation of the Vormärz and 1848 . In: Wend von Kalnein , p. 69
- ↑ Hanna Gagel, p. 68 f.
- ↑ Bettina Baumgärtel, p. 266
- ↑ Vera Leuschner: The landscape and history painter Carl Friedrich Lessing (1808-1880) . In: Wend von Kalnein, p. 91
- ↑ Bettina Baumgärtel, p. 266 f.
- ^ Bettina Baumgärtel: Hussite Sermon, after March 1835 . In: Bettina Baumgärtel (Ed.), Pp. 265 ff. (Catalog No. 224–226)
- ^ Wolfgang Hütt : Die Düsseldorfer Malerschule 1819–1869 . VEB EA Seemann Buch- und Kunstverlag, Leipzig 1984, p. 89
- ↑ Vera Leuschner, p. 90
- ^ Hermann Püttmann : The Düsseldorf school of painting and its achievements since the establishment of the art association in 1829. A contribution to modern art history . Wigand, Leipzig 1839, p. 43
- ↑ Hanna Gagel, p. 69
- ↑ Ingrid Jenderko-Sichelschmidt: The profane history painting 1826-1860 . In: Wend von Kalnein, p. 102
- ↑ Bettina Baumgärtel, p. 268
- ^ Wolfgang Müller von Königswinter : Düsseldorf artists from the last twenty-five years. Art history letters . Rudolph Weigel, Leipzig 1854, p. 129 ( PDF )
- ↑ Volker Frech: Living pictures and music using the example of Düsseldorf culture . Master's thesis, Cologne 1999, ISBN 978-3-8324-3062-7 , p. 73 ( Google Books )
- ^ Rheinische Zeitung , 1842, No. 305
- ^ Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst , XVIII (1882), p. 225
- ^ Friedrich von Uechtritz : Glances into the Düsseldorf art and artist life . 2 volumes, Düsseldorf 1839/1840, p. 443
- ↑ Wolfgang Hütt, p. 89
- ↑ Barbara Wagner: "Spiritual Nomads" - Düsseldorf artists in the days of Vormärz . In: Bettina Baumgärtel, Wolfgang Peiffer, Matthias Winzen (eds.): Andreas Achenbach. Revolutionary and painter prince . Athena Verlag, Oberhausen 2016, ISBN 978-3-89896-632-0 , p. 85
- ^ Ekkehard Mai : The Düsseldorf School of Painting and 19th Century Painting . In: Wend von Kalnein, p. 27