Picture carver

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Carver are craftsmen and artists, by carving and other sculptural produce three-dimensional techniques sculptures from wood, ivory and other natural materials. Since wood was and is by far the most widely used material by them, the term can almost always be used synonymously with wood sculptor . There is no fundamental difference between the two crafts, but picture carving tends to be used more on small formats and, according to the etymology of carving , more on cutting than on striking techniques. Nevertheless, the picture carver becomeshave to use both methods and the wood sculptor seldom forego the fine carving work.

As a fringe area of ​​the art of carving, the term wood carving covers the ornamental-decorative, mostly relief-like, flat decoration of devices, cult objects and furniture, but of course the boundaries between handicraft, folk art and high art remain fluid.

Material and technology

Usually the carvers use native tree species, such as walnut, poplar and pine in Italy and Spain, linden in eastern and southern Germany, and oak on the Lower Rhine and the north coast. For small sculptures, hard, fine-grained woods such as fruit and box trees were preferred . Various tools are used to work out the shape. The rough figure is trimmed with a saw , hatchet and adze , with flat and rounded chisels ( chisels ), which are driven with a mallet or, more carefully, pounded with the ball of the hand, then various narrow knives are used in a carving and cutting manner, and finally the surface is rasped and sanded .

For material and technology see also the article carving , for the sculptures made of ivory see the article ivory carving .
For the historical techniques of the color version, see the articles Frame (painting) and barrel painter .

history

Art history

So few wooden sculptures have survived from early history and antiquity that a development context is hardly clear to us. Only from ancient Egypt are more numerous sculptures (servant figures) received as grave goods due to favorable climatic conditions. Probably the most important epoch in the history of European carving was the Christian Middle Ages. After wooden doors decorated with reliefs already existed in early Christian art, these models were also taken up in the north in the high Middle Ages. The early cult images of the Virgin Mary are covered with sheet gold, but the oldest triumphal cross , the Gero Cross in Cologne, shows a colored version (painting) that will remain mandatory for wooden sculpture throughout the Middle Ages. Other monumental triumphal crosses determine our image of the Central European wooden sculpture of the 12th and 13th centuries, devotional images are characteristic of the ecclesiastical world of images of the 14th century. In the last medieval, 15th century, the grand piano retable became the main task for the sculptor, who now mainly worked in wood, especially in the German-speaking world. In view of the great losses, the innumerable large number of preserved altarpieces is only one of the signs of the growth in production from the carvers' workshops shortly before the Reformation. Only at the end of this era does the colored version occasionally ( Tilman Riemenschneider ) be abandoned.

In Italy and France, wood sculpture played a smaller role than in the Central European regions between Scandinavia and Tyrol. An exception is the series of important Renaissance crucifixes from Florence by Donatello , Brunelleschi and Michelangelo . The Spanish sculptors between Gothic and Renaissance should have found wood as a material to realize their expressive and bizarre style ideals.

With the Reformation and its different understanding of the role in the church interior, the church tasks for the carvers largely ceased to exist in the Protestant regions of Germany. They were left with decorating furniture and decoratively designed wall coverings. The outstanding achievements of German carving in the 16th and 17th centuries are more of a small format. In the course of the Counter-Reformation , the wood sculptor found tasks again in the church. One of the highlights of German sculpture in wood is the Bavarian Rococo with Ignaz Günther and others. The classicism with his preference of marble hardly came against the carving. It was not until the neo-Gothic style, with its return to the figures of the Middle Ages, that the craft of carving was revived, but the style and iconography remained stereotyped. It was not until the 20th century that remarkable artistic innovations came about. Paul Gauguin and the German Expressionists ( Ernst Ludwig Kirchner ) learned to appreciate the art of the indigenous peoples , Picasso also shows himself to be influenced by them. Ernst Barlach found his very own style with his moderately expressive style of massive individual forms with hard, sharp folds that deliberately reveal the traces of the carving knife. Wood has been used in sculpture in sculptures and objects since the middle of the 20th century, but its materiality hardly plays a major role.

Commercial history

We know very little about the social position and commercial forms of organization of the carvers, who in the Middle Ages were still separate from the stone sculptors (until about the 14th century organized in building huts ) . From the 15th century onwards (but often much later) the carvers had occasionally joined forces with painters and glaziers or other trades to form guilds in order to secure their economic power. But elsewhere and at other times, sculpture (even more than painting) was considered one of the liberal arts, the practice of which everyone was allowed. In some cities, individual outstanding sculptors were also allowed to work as free masters based on the model of court artists who were exempt from the guild obligation . This is how the type of free artist developed in modern times. The restriction to certain materials no longer applies.

The carving was widespread in the Alpine region. Once operated by farmers as a sideline, especially in winter, a specialized profession that corresponded to that of the sculptor later developed. Later carvers had an academic education.

See also

literature

  • Theodor Müller : Sculptor, picture carver In: Reallexikon zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte . Volume 2, Stuttgart 1939, Col. 582-614.
  • Hans Huth: Artist and workshop of the late Gothic. 2nd Edition. 1967.
  • M. Metzger: Handbook of wood sculpting. 3. Edition. 1925.
  • H. Wilm: The Gothic wooden figure. 3. Edition. Leipzig 1943.
  • Friedrich Frutschi: wood carving and wood carving. A thorough introduction to technology and material. 6th edition. Haupt, Bern et al. 1992, ISBN 3-258-02311-5 .
  • Nicholas Penny: History of Sculpture - Material, Tools, Technology , Leipzig 1995, ISBN 3-363-00646-2 . (on wood: pp. 123–151, on ivory and horn: pp. 153–163)
  • Josepmaria Teixidó i Camí, Jacinto Chicharro Santamera: Sculptures made of wood, an introduction to the art and technology of wood carving . Translated from Spanish by Tina Kehr-deDil. 2nd Edition. Haupt, Bern 2007, ISBN 978-3-258-07159-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ according to Duden etymology: to cut Middle High German intensive education
  2. ↑ Lexicon of Art. Volume 2, Leipzig 1968 ff., P. 327.
  3. ↑ from Sant'Ambrogio (Milan) in Milan (379–386) and Santa Sabina in Rome (around 430)
  4. ↑ Wooden door of St. Maria in the Capitol , around 1065.
  5. ↑ Golden Madonna , Essen, around 980, and Imad-Madonna , Paderborn, 11th century.
  6. ↑ see e.g. B. Schenkschieve , chest , Hans Gudewerth the Younger
  7. ^ Theodor Müller : Sculptor, picture carver In: Reallexikon zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte . Volume 2, Col. 582-588.
  8. ^ Hans Huth: Artist and workshop of the late Gothic. 2nd Edition. 1967, pp. 5-22.