Cologne painting school

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Stefan Lochner: Altar of the Cologne city patron (middle part), around 1450

Artists and workshops who were active in Cologne in the 14th and 15th centuries are included in the Cologne School of Painting . The more neutral generic term Altkölner painting was recently introduced for them , as the artists developed diverse and varied styles and created works as diverse as book illuminations, murals, altars, devotional pictures and designs for glass paintings. The Altkölner painting is highly valued in art historical science because of its quality. The Cologne masters were deeply anchored in the pictorial tradition of the Gothic and succeeded in merging this with the Flemish pictorial inventions of realism to form a genuinely Cologne painting style, whose works are counted among the highlights of late Gothic art.

scope

As one of the wealthiest trading cities in Northern Europe, Cologne offered a market and opportunities for a flourishing art scene. The representative merchants contributed to this, as did the many churches in the city, perceived as “holy Cologne”, with their rich treasure trove of relics, which demanded magnificent furnishings. "Within German medieval painting, Cologne art takes a top position in terms of quality, quantity and material tradition." Today 344 existing works are assigned to the Cologne School of Painting, the majority of which are made up of several panels and individual pictures. A total of more than 1000 individual images is created; that is significantly more than has been handed down from other German cities. The masters who created this comprehensive number were active in the guild of the shield makers. In 1417 it should have been around eight, at the end of the 15th century 12 to 14. We can assume that they all represent a larger workshop. One of the guild principles was not to sign works, which has not allowed the assignment of the images to individual artists or even to their workshops to this day. Most of the painters in Cologne worked on or near Schildergasse , which in the Middle Ages formed the Cologne painter's quarter.

The Cologne masters had a lively exchange with artistic impulses from other cultural centers in Europe, above all Paris, Milan and Bohemia, via the long trade routes of the trading city. Inspirations from France can be found at an early stage and most of the Cologne residents took an active part in the development of the pan-European, so-called soft style of Gothic art . From the middle of the 15th century, the influences of old Dutch painting became clearly visible in the Cologne School of Painting. The masters, however, merged Flemish Realism with the Cologne painting tradition to create their own, intensely colored, late Gothic Cologne style, to which the conservative Cologne clientele may also have contributed.

Stylistic epochs

The choir screen painting in Cologne Cathedral , which was created around 1320 and is one of the artistically highest works of monumental painting of that time, is considered a starting point for the Cologne School of Painting. In parallel, it is reflected in the book painting around 1300. The master first create smaller altarpieces such as those for Clear altar of 1350 in Cologne Cathedral. The period from 1400 to 1450 is then seen as a first high point; The altar of the city patron by Stefan Lochner , made during this period, is considered a masterpiece of the Cologne School of Painting . This is followed by the influence of Dutch art such as B. Rogier van der Weyden another third creative period in which the master of the Bartholomäus Altar stands out as one of the best European painters of the late Middle Ages.

The masters who created choir screen painting - and thus an essential initial work for the Cologne School of Painting - are unknown to us. Likewise, the master who created the clear altar around 1360 could not be identified. It is true that in the Limburg Chronicle of 1380 a master Wilhelm zu Cologne is presented as the “best painter in Germany”. Presumably this is the painter Wilhelm von Herle, who can be identified in Cologne sources. However, an oeuvre could not be clearly assigned to him.

Therefore, art history makes do with emergency names : the most important painter in the transition to the 15th century is the master of Saint Veronica , who can be traced back to Cologne between 1395 and 1415. He takes impulses from Franco-Burgundian and Flemish painting and condenses them into panels that impress with their balanced calligraphic composition and the beauty of the colors. The other artists of the early 15th century are known as Masters of the Little Passion (verifiable from 1400 to 1420), Masters of the Palanter Altarpiece (around 1429), Masters of St. Laurenz (verifiable between 1415 and 1430), Masters of the Heisterbach Altarpiece (around 1440 ), Master of the Holy Kinship d. Ä. (around 1410 to 1440) and Master of the Wasservass'schen Kalvarienberg (verifiably 1415 to 1435). The undisputed climax of this phase of old Cologne painting is the work of Stefan Lochner (around 1400 to 1451), who was identified as the master of the city patron's altar on the basis of a note by Albrecht Dürer . He succeeded in taking up the latest Flemish suggestions and arranging figures with a sculptural presence and objects in a perfect material illusion in a traditional Gothic overall composition. In 1451 the plague broke out in Cologne. Not only did Lochner succumb to her; the epidemic caused a turning point in city life and in the art world.

After 1450, Cologne painting was gripped by another wave of “modernization”. The Cologne artists took their bearings from Dutch influences, especially from Rogier van der Weyden, and were inspired to discover reality. This applied to the master of the glorification of Mary (verifiable from 1440 to 1493), the master of the Sinziger Calvarienberg (around 1480), the master of the legend of St. George (verifiable from 1465 to 1490), master of the Lyversberg Passion (around 1463) and the master of the twelve apostles , who is possibly identical to the master of the Lyversberg Passion. The master of the life of Mary (verifiable from 1473 to 1495) exemplarily showed the break with the older traditions; he found a new image composition that incorporated the real landscape into the depiction and gave the figures a new plasticity through lighting.

One of the great European artists around 1500 is the Bartholomew Master , who has been described as a “genius without a name”. The master, possibly from the Netherlands and working in Cologne between 1470 and 1510, was considered the most brilliant representative of the Cologne school of painting in the late Gothic period. He succeeded in bringing the then modern realism, introduced by Flemish art, to a previously unknown perfection in his own compositions. The plastic figures show a previously seldom seen presence, which the master was able to arrange in front of cosmopolitan landscapes, which on the Thomas Altar also show the three ships with which Columbus discovered America. The Bartholomew master had a good, larger workshop; in more recent studies, the higher quality works of the master could be distinguished from the simplistic copies of his journeymen. Further masters from the beginning of the 16th century are the master of the Ursula legend (verifiable between 1489 and 1515), the master of the Aachen altar (around 1480 to around 1520) and the master of St. Severin (around 1520).

In the early 16th century, stained glass had developed so far that painting on glass became possible. Outstanding masters from the Cologne School of Painting were commissioned to create the cardboard boxes for the high-quality glass windows on the north side of Cologne Cathedral . The design of the Typological Epiphany Window is attributed to the younger master of the Holy Tribe . The Coronation Window is considered the work of the master of Sankt Severin . The cycle of stained glass from St. Apern, which was created on the border with the Renaissance and is partially preserved today in the Christ window of the cathedral, shows the influence of Bartholomäus Bruyn the Elder . With him the Gothic Altkölner painting ends, since his painting style can be attributed to the Renaissance.

literature

  • H. Brockmann: The late period of the Cologne painting school. The Master of St. Severin and the Master of the Ursula Legend . (Research on the history of art in Western Europe, Vol VI) Bonn, Leipzig 1924
  • Rainer Budde : Cologne and its painters 1300-1500 . DuMont documents 1986
  • Brigitte Corley: Painter and founder of the late Middle Ages in Cologne 1300-1500 (original title Painting and Patronage in Cologne 1300-1500 , translated by Ulrike Nürnberger), Ludwig, Kiel 2009, ISBN 978-3-937719-78-8 .
  • Otto H. Förster : The masterpieces of the old Cologne painting school in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum . Kölner Verlagsanstalt, Cologne 1927
  • Stephan Kemperdick, Julien Chapuis: Kölner Tafelmalerei, in: Dagmar Täube, Miriam Verena Fleck (ed.): Splendor and Greatness of the Middle Ages: Catalog book for the exhibition in Cologne, Museum Schnütgen, November 4, 2011 - February 26, 2012, Hirmer Verlag 2011, p 176-192
  • Alexandra Koenig: The Beginnings of Cologne Panel Painting , Düsseldorf 2001 (Diss.), Uni-duesseldorf.de: Doc
  • Johann Jakob Merlo : News of the life and works of Cologne artists . JM Heberle, Cologne 1852
  • Johann Jakob Merlo: Cologne artists in old and new times. Revised and expanded news of the life and works of Cologne artists. Edited by Eduard Firmenich-Richartz with the assistance of Hermann Keussen . (= Publications of the Society for Rhenish History. Volume 9), Schwann, Düsseldorf 1895 archive.org .
  • Heribert Reiners : The Cologne School of Painting (= monographs on the history of Christian art , volume 5), B. Kühlen Kunst- und Verlagsanstalt, Mönchen-Glattbach 1925, DNB 362128146 (To commemorate the centenary of the art and publishing company B. Kühlen Mönchen -Gladbach April 1, 1925).
  • Jakob Schnorrenberg:  Wilhelm von Herle . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 43, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1898, pp. 224-226.
  • Ludwig Scheibler , Carl Aldenhoven : History of the Cologne School of Painting . Noehring 1902
  • Alfred Stange : On the chronology of the Cologne panel paintings in front of the clear altar , in: Wallraf-Richartz Jahrbuch (1924–1934), New Series, Vol. 1, 1930, pp. 40–65
  • Alfred Stange: Critical Directory of German Panel Paintings Before Dürer , Vol. 1. Bruckmann 1967
  • Before Stefan Lochner. The Cologne painters from 1300 to 1430 . Exhibition catalog Cologne 1974.
  • Frank Günter Zehnder : Gothic painting in Cologne. Altkölner pictures from 1300 to 1550 . Wallraf-Richartz Mus. Cologne, picture booklets for Coll. 3, 1989
  • Frank Günter Zehnder: Old Cologne painting (catalogs of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum XI), Cologne 1990.
  • Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud (ed.): Cologne in the Middle Ages: Secrets of the Painters , Berlin, Munich 2013. ISBN 978-3-422-07217-6
  • Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Doerner Institut, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen (Ed.): The language of the material: the technology of Cologne panel painting from the "Master of Saint Veronica" to Stefan Lochner. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-422-07216-9 .
  • Cologne School of Painting . In: Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon . 6th edition. Volume 11, Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Vienna 1907, p.  282 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Herborn, Carl Dietmar: Cologne in the late Middle Ages 1288–1512 / 13, Cologne 2019, p. 504
  2. ↑ wallraf.museum: Cologne School of Painting
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Herborn, Carl Dietmar: Cologne in the late Middle Ages 1288–1512 / 13, Cologne 2019, p. 504f
  4. ↑ Jakob Schnorrenberg:  Wilhelm von Herle . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 43, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1898, pp. 224-226.
  5. ↑ wallraf.museum: Cologne School of Painting
  6. ^ Koelner-dom.de: choir barriers
  7. ↑ beyars.com: PW Hartmann - the Great Art Lexicon: The Cologne School of Painting
  8. ^ Neil MacGregor : Victim of Anonymity. Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altarpiece (= The Walter Neurath Memorial Lecture Series. Vol. 25). Thames & Hudson, London 1993, ISBN 0-500-55026-3 .
  9. ↑ Wolfgang Herborn, Carl Dietmar: Cologne in the late Middle Ages 1288–1512 / 13, Cologne 2019, p. 506
  10. ↑ Wolfgang Herborn, Carl Dietmar: Cologne in the late Middle Ages 1288–1512 / 13, Cologne 2019, p. 506f
  11. ↑ Wolfgang Herborn, Carl Dietmar: Cologne in the late Middle Ages 1288–1512 / 13, Cologne 2019, p. 510f
  12. ↑ S. Kemperdick, J. Chapuis: Kölner Tafelmalerei, in: D. Täube, MV Fleck: Gloss and Greatness of the Middle Ages. Cologne masterpieces from the world's great collections, Munich 2011, p. 186
  13. ↑ Wolfgang Herborn, Carl Dietmar: Cologne in the late Middle Ages 1288–1512 / 13, Cologne 2019, p. 513
  14. ↑ museenkoeln.de: Genius without a name
  15. ↑ museenkoeln.de: Genius without a name
  16. ^ Herbert Rode: The Cologne Cathedral, stained glass in Germany's largest cathedral, Augsburg 1968, p. 115
  17. ^ Herbert Rode: The Cologne Cathedral, stained glass in Germany's largest cathedral, Augsburg 1968, p. 122