Master of the Thorner Madonna

Thorner Madonna, limestone sculpture, around 1390

The master of the Thorner Madonna ( Polish ) Mistrz Pięknej Madonny Toruńskiej is a sculptor who created the Thorner Madonna , a Gothic statue of Mary for the St. John's Church in today's Polish town of Toruń ( German: Thorn) in the 14th century . The artist, not known by name, got his emergency name after this limestone figure of Mary, the mother of Jesus . It was part of an altar that was built around 1390 and no longer exists today. The original of the Madonna has also been missing since 1944, today in Toruń there is a true-to-original copy of the Madonna figure made in 1957 as a replacement.

The Thorner Madonna is depicted standing with a youthful, noble face and in courtly clothes with elegant folds, it is considered by experts as one of the prototypes of the so-called beautiful Madonnas of the Gothic. Based on this model, many subsequent Gothic figures of Mary are also typically shown as a mildly smiling Maria with a child and graceful body curvature and in clothes with lush, soft folds.

The Thorner Madonna is one of the first examples of how, with the beginning of the reign of Emperor Charles IV and his promotion of art from Prague , the influence of northern Italian and French as well as Middle Rhine sculpture was able to spread to Eastern Europe. At the very beginning of the emperor's reign, the first Gothic Madonna figures were created in Bohemia. From there, a so-called soft style of the region - as can be recognized by the Thorner Madonna - reached through Silesia to Toruń, which was part of the Teutonic Order in the Middle Ages. The Thorner Madonna shows a close relationship to a figure created in Bohemia around 1390 or 1400, the Krumlov Madonna , also made of limestone by the so-called Master of the Krumlov Madonna . The Krumlov Madonna was created in the vicinity of the Prague court and, like the Thorner Madonna, is characterized by delicacy and delicate representation as one of the most important examples of Gothic figures of Mary. But whether, as is sometimes assumed, the master of the Krumlov Madonna is the same artist who also created the Thorner Madonna , and whether he might have spread his style from Bohemia via Silesia to Toruń while hiking and as an apprentice is a matter of dispute. In any case, both Madonna figures are an example of the cross-border flow of artistic ideas of Central European Gothic also in Eastern Europe. A Madonna by the master of the Madonna of Michle is considered to be the third figure who first began to develop this style. The figure, created around 1340, marks the beginning of the development of Bohemian sculpture and the development of a local art then towards a typically Bohemian soft style. We find a remarkable comparison in the Stralsund Junge Madonna , which can be seen in walnut wood, painted in color, in a shrine of the Junge family's former stalls in the church of St. Nikolai (Stralsund ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Beautiful Madonnas . In: PW Hartmann: Das große Kunstlexikon, www.beyars.com (accessed November 2011)
2. ↑ Burkhard Kunkel: The Stralsund Young Madonna as an image of the beautiful Madonna of Thorn? - Considerations on the origin of an image of the Virgin from Stralsund's perspective, in: Terra sanctae Mariae, Art History Works of the Cultural Foundation of German Displaced Persons, Vol. 7, Bonn 2009, pp. 257-278.

literature

• Wilhelm Pinder: On the problem of the "beautiful Madonnas" around 1400 . In: Yearbook of the Prussian Art Collections 44, Berlin 1923.
• Karl Heinz Clasen: The "Beautiful Madonnas", their master and his successors . Koenigstein i. T. 1951;
• A. Kutal: Gothic art in Bohemia . Prague.
• Karl Heinz Clasen: The Master of the Beautiful Madonnas. Origin, development, area . Berlin, New York 1974
• J. Homolka: The Parler and the beautiful style 1350-1400 . Cologne 1978.
• J. Homolka: K jednomu motivu krásných Madon (On a motif of the Beautiful Madonnas) In: Acta historiae artis Slovenica 6 (2001) pp. 5–12 (Slovenian).
• T. Jurkowlaniec: Medieval stone sculpture in today's Polish Baltic Sea regions . Inventory of monuments and the state of research . In: L.-O. Larsson (Ed.): Art and Culture History in the Baltic States (Homburg Talks; 19), Kiel 2004, pp. 22–63.
• Burkhard Kunkel: The Stralsund Young Madonna as an image of the beautiful Madonna of Thorn? - Considerations on the origin of an image of Mary from a Stralsund perspective, in: Terra sanctae Mariae, Bonn 2009, pp. 257–278.
• M. Jakubek-Raczkowska: The influences of Bohemia on Gothic sculpture in the Order of Prussia. An overview in the light of the latest research . In: J. Fajt and A. Langer (eds.): Art as an instrument of rule: Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire among the Luxembourgers in a European context. Berlin 2009, pp. 550-563.