Master of the Lübeck Burgkirchen Cycles

Master of the Lübeck Burgkirchen Cycles is the emergency name for a Westphalian, Low German sculptor who is not known by name and who was active in the then economically closely intertwined Hanseatic cities of Lübeck and Soest at the end of the 14th century and in the first third of the 15th century .

South portal of the Wiesenkirche in Soest

The master got his emergency name after the Maria-Magdalenenkirche (castle church) of the castle monastery in Lübeck. He worked in Westphalian sandstone, which could only be brought to Lübeck with high transport costs. The castle church was one of the most richly donated side churches in the city and had to be demolished in 1818 after excessive use in the Lübeck French era due to dilapidation. When the choir of this church was built in 1401, the church was already richly endowed with art treasures. Among them are the foolish and wise virgins who were recovered from the demolition of the castle church, along with the figures of Ecclesia and the synagogue , who are now in the St. Anne's monastery in Lübeck with many other recovered art treasures and altars from this church .

At the beginning of the 20th century, art historians ascribed this cycle of figures to the master of the Darsow Madonna , a Madonna sculpture in Lübeck's Marienkirche . The foolish virgins in particular not only give us a fairly precise idea of ​​the fashion at the time of their creation, the liveliness of the facial expressions also highlights these late arrangements of this motif in the Trecento style .

The art historian Walter Paatz compares these sculptures with the cycle of apostles at the St. Pauli Church in Soest and with two statuettes on the south portal of the Wiesenkirche there and a knight figure inside.

literature

• Walter Paatz: The Lübeck stone sculpture of the 1st half of the 15th century. Lübeck 1929, p. 7ff.