Master of the Last Judgment of Lüneburg

The late Gothic painter who painted a mural depicting the Last Judgment in the town hall of Lüneburg around 1495 is known as the master of the Last Judgment . The painter, who is not known by name , created a picture of Christ as the judge of the world surrounded by Mary , John , James and Moses . It was intended to exhort the councilors to just judgment but also to mercy. Like the pictures of the master of the Goslar Sibyls in the former council chamber in Goslar, the work of the master of the Last Judgment of Lüneburg is an example of profane late-Gothic spatial art in Germany.

The Lüneburg Last Judgment

The large-format lunette picture of the Last Judgment in Lüneburg, painted on oak wood, is clamped in the part known today as the court arbor, the former council chamber on the first floor of the town hall, above two segmental arches resting on round brick supports. It represents the Last Judgment by only a few people. In the middle section, Christ sits on a rainbow, with a lily and a sword as a sign of his judicature. He is surrounded by four figures, Mary and John as advocates, James and Moses carry banners in Latin that urge the viewer to act justly and lawfully. It can be assumed that a medieval judge in Lüneburg always had the picture above the entrance to the hall in front of his eyes during meetings there as a warning.

The Last Judgment as a civil image of justice

In the church sector, depictions of the Last Judgment are one of the widespread motifs of medieval Christian art. In the late Gothic and further on in the Renaissance , paintings with similar images of justice and legal allegories were also found in town halls such as B. can still be found today in Augsburg or Amsterdam. As in Lüneburg, they should be a reminder, instruction and warning of the authorities about justice, but also show the increasing self-confidence of the bourgeois representatives of the judiciary in the field of tension between divine and ecclesiastical or secular aristocratic and urban authority. The bourgeois representatives now also allow themselves a rich decoration of their rooms in an allegorical language of their choice. In Lüneburg, for example, they chose a motif that shows that strict, incorruptible and fair jurisdiction alone can preserve the well-being of the general public and ultimately also that of the individual.

literature

• HG Gmelin: The world court picture in the court arbor of the Lüneburg town hall. In: Lüneburger Blätter 19/20 (1969), pp. 95-99.

Individual evidence

1. ^ H. Boockmann: The city in the late Middle Ages. Munich 1994, p. 504.
2. ↑ “For a merciless judgment will come upon him who has not shown mercy”, Jacobus 2:13.
3. ↑ “You shall not favor the lowly in his cause”, Exodus 23: 3.
4. ↑ See Melanie Damm: Iuste iudicate filii hominum. The representation of justice in art using the example of a group of pictures in the Cologne town hall - an investigation into iconography, the type and style of the paintings . Berlin, Münster 2001, p. 61.
5. ↑ J. Brand: It is settled at the end or: The Last Judgment as a collective memory. In: J. Wolff (ed.): Cultural and legal historical roots of Europe: work book. Godesberg 2006, p. 173.
6. ^ Judgment, youngest . In: PW Hartmann: Das große Kunstlexikon , www.beyars.com (accessed July 2010)
7. ↑ Image of justice . In: PW Hartmann: Das große Kunstlexikon , www.beyars.com (accessed July 2010)
8. ↑ T. Fröschl: Self-Representation and State Symbolism in the European Republics of the Early Modern Era using examples of architecture and the fine arts. In: HG Koenigsberger: Republiken and Republicanism in Europe in the early modern period. Munich 1988, p. 239ff.
9. ↑ S. on this G. Teuscher: Weltgerichtsbilder in town halls and courts of law. In: Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 11 (1993), pp. 139f.