Madonna under the fir trees

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Madonna under the Firs (Lucas Cranach the Elder)
Madonna under the fir trees
Lucas Cranach the Elder , ca.1510
on wood
71 × 51 cm
Wroclaw Cathedral

The Madonna under the Firs is a painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder from around 1510. The painting, which was kept for a long time in the Wroclaw Cathedral and therefore also known as the Wroclaw Madonna, disappeared after the Second World War and did not return to Wroclaw until 2012 . It has been in the city's Archdiocesan Museum ever since.

description

The portrait-format painting shows a Madonna in a crimson dress and a blue cloak behind a stone parapet with the baby Jesus holding a bunch of grapes between his hands. The child sits on a cushion on the railing and is held in her arms by the mother. In the background a landscape staffage can be seen; a mountainous spring landscape with a castle. A birch can be seen on the left, a fir and a deciduous tree on the right. Cranach signed the picture by showing his signet ring. He is on the left on the parapet; Cranach's coat of arms, the snake with bat wings, and his mirror-inverted initials are carved into the stone.

The common picture title Madonna under the fir trees was criticized by Eduard Flechsig as early as 1900 : The designation could “only be based on a very cursory observation, because only a large fir tree can be seen in the picture and Mary is not depicted under trees at all, rather this one form the background. "

The altarpiece is closely related in posture and type to Albrecht Dürer's Dresden Madonna , which was in the Wittenberg Castle Chapel at the time of its creation. Max J. Friedländer and Jakob Rosenberg date the panel to around 1510 for reasons of style criticism. Dieter Koepplin also dates the panel to around 1509/10 and counts it among those Madonnas that are among the rich inventory of around 150 known Cranach Madonnas Outstanding quality and uniqueness. The Breslau Madonna is seen as a counterpart to the Italian Madonnas created by Raphael and Titian : “She has a different, but no less beauty than her southern sisters. Above all, it is closely related to the landscape that surrounds it. Birch and fir are, as it were, the saints who flank them. "

Jan Wittmann also counts the Breslau Madonna to be one of Cranach's most successful Madonnas and states as a characteristic of these pictures: “The child - mostly depicted without contact with the viewer - is more the desirable [sic!] Object for which Maria is envied than the determining one Subject."

The way from Wroclaw to Wroclaw

Cranach is said to have created the painting as a commission for the Wroclaw Cathedral . The notary Johann Hesse , who was in Wittenberg during this period, could have brought the picture to his bishop Johann Thurzo. He placed it in the cathedral next to the portrait of John the Baptist. Until the 19th century the picture was in the St. John's Chapel of the Wroclaw Cathedral and before 1939 it belonged to the collections of the treasury of the Archbishop's Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Wroclaw.

In 1943 the picture was first brought to the Heinrichau Cistercian Abbey and later to Glatz or Hirschberg , where it survived the war. After the war, the picture was taken to the Archbishop's Museum in Breslau, where the priest Siegfried Zimmer repaired the cracked board.

He suggested to his friend Georg Kupke to make a copy of the picture in order to save it "from the communists". Kupke had to leave Breslau in 1946 and Zimmer completed the copy he had begun: Kupke had painted the figures, Zimmer took over the background. There were clear deviations from the original; For example, Zimmer meticulously designed a castle that Cranach had only hinted at on a rock in the background left and provided a ring on the picture with the initials TC. The parts that Kupke had in the picture also showed deviations from Cranach's painting; In particular, the depiction of the eyes and the perspective foreshortening of one of the bare feet of the baby Jesus failed.

When Zimmer was also expelled to the Soviet occupation zone in Germany in 1947 , he could have taken the original picture disguised as a tray. He moved to Bernau near Berlin . The picture may have stayed there in his apartment. In 1954 Siegfried Zimmer came to Munich with the picture . In the sixties he sold the picture to the antique dealer Franz Waldner.

Since 1948, the copy made by Kupke was considered to be the picture of Cranach, although the stylistic deficiencies were clearly evident. It was not until 1961 that the Archdiocese of Wroclaw commissioned the restorer Daniela Stankiewicz to preserve the picture that she realized that it was a copy. The original has since been considered lost in Breslau.

In 1971 the real picture was presented to the Swiss art historian Dieter Koepplin for appraisal, about which he informed the embassy of the People's Republic of Poland in Cologne . However, this did not respond to the announcement. After the picture was rumored to have come into the possession of the Swiss Catholic Church in the 1980s, it was handed over to a Catholic clergyman in Switzerland in 2011 to be returned to the "Church". In 2012, a church institution diplomatically mediated the return to the cathedral parish of St. John the Baptist in Wroclaw. On July 18, 2012, the picture was handed over to the Polish embassy in Bern , which sent it to the Archdiocese of Wroclaw. In November 2012, an exhibition concept was designed at the Muzeum Archidiecjezalne in Breslau under the direction of Jozef Pater in collaboration with Michael Hofbauer (cranach.net) and a detailed study of the work was carried out. On December 24th, 2012 the "Madonna under the Firs" was opened to the public.

literature

  • Max J. Friedländer and Jakob Rosenberg: The paintings by Lucas Cranach , Basel and Stuttgart 1979, p. 74/75, no. 29.
  • Dieter Koepplin and Tilman Falk: Lukas Cranach. Paintings, drawings, prints. Stuttgart / Basel 1974/76, vol. 2, p. 522ff.
  • Włodzimierz Kalicki: Sensacja! Madonna pod jodłami Cranacha wróciła do Polski ( German : Sensation! The Madonna under the firs from Cranach has returned to Poland). Gazeta Wyborcza , Warsaw, July 27, 2012
  • Adrienne Braun: The chaplain as an art thief . Süddeutsche Zeitung , September 15, 2012, p. 16

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Madonna under the fir trees by Cranach the Elder reappeared In: arthistoricum.net , accessed on September 16, 2012.
  2. ↑ Unknown Wrocław - Archdiocesan Museum on www.wroclaw.pl/de
  3. ^ Eduard Flechsig (ed.): Panel paintings by Lucas Cranachs the Elder. Ä. and his workshop , Leipzig 1900, p. 12.
  4. ↑ Friedländer / Rosenberg 1979, pp. 74/75.
  5. ↑ Koepplin / Falk 1976, p. 523.
  6. ↑ Cranach's Madonna is back  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: portalpoint.info .@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.portalpoint.info  
  7. ↑ Jan Wittmann: The meaning of the image of Mary in Cranach's work , p. 172
  8. ↑ Schlesische Lebensbilder, 1931, p. 1ff., Quoted from Koepplin / Falk 1974/76, vol. 2, p. 523.
  9. ^ Hans-Peter Schmidt: Silesia and Prussia . Schweitzerhaus Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-939475-23-1 , p. 174 f . ( Preview in Google Book Search).
  10. ↑ FAZ NO. 127 of June 4, 1982, p. 9
  11. ↑ Elke Schmitter : Drunk with enthusiasm , in: Der Spiegel 36/2012, page 133.
  12. ↑ Susanna Partsch: Tatort Kunst: about forgeries, fraudsters and deceived . CH Beck, 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-60621-2 , pp. 74 ( Preview in Google Book Search).
  13. ↑ Susanna Partsch: Tatort Kunst: about forgeries, fraudsters and deceived . CH Beck, 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-60621-2 , pp. 71 ( preview in Google Book search).
  14. ↑ Braun in Süddeutsche Zeitung of September 16, 2012