Chandelier

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Female chandelier, 19th century ( Museum Humpis-Quartier , Ravensburg )

A chandelier females or chandelier females is a chandelier , for the horizontally arranged antlers are used at their bases a female half figure sits. In a narrower sense, the term simply refers to the figure which, as pars pro toto, gave the entire antler furniture its name.

Wall sconces corresponding to the female chandelier type can be traced back to the end of the 14th century; In addition to the antlers of the deer , those of the elk and the horns of the ibex were also used. In the 16th century ( late Gothic and Renaissance ), ceiling chandeliers spread mainly in Germany and were particularly popular in southern Germany. Female chandeliers became very fashionable again during historicism in the second half of the 19th century, but then increasingly functioned as gas or electric lights. In this form, ie with electric lighting, they are still produced today in the old style. Antique female chandeliers are in great demand in the art trade and, depending on their age and quality, achieve high prices.

Antlers have been very popular collector's items since ancient times, and in addition to their decorative and representative suitability, they are also often attributed apotropaic powers. The profane , but charged with mythological and allegorical meaning, female chandeliers, who often show fabulous figures such as sirens , were preceded by candlesticks that were decorated with a figure of a saint or a Madonna , the chandelier of the Mother of God . Other female chandeliers carved from wood are rich or dressed in traditional costume, sometimes portraying a Lucretia . Male variants, the so-called luster men , or mythical animal creatures, the dragon chandeliers , are less common .

The candles either carry the figure or they sit on the rungs and shovels of the antlers, in female chandeliers, which have been manufactured since the end of the 19th century and intended for electrical lighting, the sockets for lightbulbs sometimes also hang down, occasionally there are also holders for candles attached so that the type of lighting can be selected. The luminosity does not have to be very strong overall, the function is then more the original representation through optical impression, often supported by the attachment of the owner's shields .

Well-known female chandeliers

The oldest known female luster was made before 1400. It is a bust of a woman made from oak by an unknown master who is wearing a Kruseler and is thus identified as a married woman. The bust is made in the style of the Parler family . She floats freely in space. The twelve-ended antlers come from a red deer; five wrought iron candle holders are attached to it. The chandelier was donated by Ghese Lambrachting from Lemgo in 1392 to the Marienkirche there, together with the Marien Altar . With the Reformation , the candlestick was removed from the church and came to the local history museum in the witch mayor's house via the town hall in 1926 . What is special about this piece is that it was not intended for secular spaces like the later female candlesticks, but is documented in connection with a foundation on an altar in a sacred space (see Herpers / Pfeiffer, 2006).

Albrecht Dürer: The female luster , India ink drawing, 1513
Female chandelier after Albrecht Dürer approx. 1900

Albrecht Dürer designed a female chandelier for his friend Willibald Pirckheimer , whose bare-breasted mermaid-like bust seems to have grown together with the antlers. The novel The Candlestick Woman. A Dürer novella by Friedrich Alfred Schmid Noerr from 1928 related its title to it. The existence of the painted chandelier is not certain. In fact, Dürer had several female chandeliers made according to his own drawings.

Exhibitions

  • 2011: Artifact and natural wonder - the female candlestick from the Ludwig Collection, exhibition in the Ludwig Gallery Schloss Oberhausen.

Literature / sources

  • Juliane von Fircks: "Dear servants v [nd] dinerinne, care with constant trewen minne". The Wiesbaden candlestick woman as Minneallegorie, in: Not the library, but the eye. Western European sculpture and painting at the turn of the modern era, ed. from the sculpture collection of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Petersberg 2008, pp. 98–110.
  • Iris Herpers, Götz J. Pfeiffer: "vyf waslecht up dat hartestwych". The figural chandelier from the parish church of St. Marien, in: Prieur-Pohl, Jutta / Scheffler, Jürgen (ed.): 700 years of St. Marien Lemgo, Bielefeld 2006, pp. 144–155.
  • Heubach, Dietmar: The female candlestick from Kiedrich in the Wiesbaden Museum, in: Nassauische Heimatblätter, 17, 1913, pp. 14–15.
  • Dagmar Preising , Michael Rief, Christine Vogt (ed.): Artifact and natural wonders - The female candlestick of the Ludwig Collection, catalog for the exhibition in the Ludwig Gallery , Oberhausen 2011, ISBN 978-3-86678-512-0
  • Dagmar Preising: antlers and carvings. A type of candlestick and its change in meaning from the Middle Ages to historicism, in: Aachener Kunstblätter, 65 (2011-2013), 2014. ISBN 978-3-930594-41-2 . Pp. 98-115.
  • Dagmar Preising, Michael Rief: New finds and additions to antler chandeliers, in: Aachener Kunstblätter, 65 (2011-2013), 2014. ISBN 978-3-930594-41-2 . Pp. 116-137. Extensive bibliography.
  • Christiane Schillig in: Monuments. Magazine for Monument Culture in Germany , Issue 9/10 2007, pp. 16–18, ISSN  0941-7125
  • Axel Treptau: Three antler candlesticks from the Bavarian National Museum - an art-technological description, in: Aachener Kunstblätter, 65 (2011-2013), 2014. ISBN 978-3-930594-41-2 . Pp. 138-161
  • Dagmar Preising: Antler Chandelier , in: RDK Labor (2015).

Web links

Commons : Lüsterweibchen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files