Thomas Quellinus

High altar of the Marienkirche in Lübeck (picture from 1906)

Thomas Quellinus (* approx March 1661 in Antwerp , † September 1709 in Antwerp) was a principal in Copenhagen active Flemish sculptor of the Baroque from the family of artists Quellinus .

Life

He was born as the son of Artus Quellinus the Elder. J. was born where he also received his first professional instruction. He then worked first in London with his brother Artus Quellinus III. From mid-1689 he came to Copenhagen to supervise the execution of the tomb created by his father for Field Marshal Hans von Schack in the Trinitatis Kirke , and then worked there in his own workshop. The Flemish Baroque sculpting workshops were not small businesses, but were organized as large craft businesses by today's standards. In this respect, Thomas Quellinus certainly had the design and management skills. His handwriting can therefore be most surely recognized by the terracotta bozzetti that he himself modeled , some of which have been preserved in the collection of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels . In the execution, however, he resorted to journeymen and assistants supervised by him, some of whom later acquired a regional reputation as his students, such as Hieronymus Hassenberg in Lübeck or Just Wiedewelt in Copenhagen. In this way, Quellinus quickly made a name for himself in Northern Europe, and his workshop alone has produced a good 25 major tombs. In 1707 he returned to Antwerp. The Schack tomb, which brought Quellinus to Denmark, was severely damaged in the fire in Copenhagen in 1728, along with Thomas Quellinus's own works. Apart from its remains and the bust of the tomb of Aalborg Bishop Henrik Bornemann, nothing has been preserved at the main site of his work. The serial production method of the workshop was only recognized in art history since the mid-1980s and led to the confirmation of attributions. There are clear similarities between the allegories in the cathedral of Arhus and the park sculptures in Petersburg.

plant

Marselis Chapel

Epitaph Glück in Güstrow Cathedral

Funerary monuments and epitaphs

Quellinus became famous mainly for its tomb production. He created a new form, the “staffage” - epitaph , which much more than the traditional form dispensed with elements of the devotional image and served entirely the distinctive and outward-looking self-portrayal of the donors. Many of his magnificent tombs still adorn churches across Denmark today . In the Cathedral of Aarhus Quellinus created with the Marselis chapel, the tomb of Constantin Marselis, Sophie Charisius and Peder Rodsteen, the largest preserved baroque tomb in Denmark. Further works can be found in the church of Auning for the Danish nobleman Jørgen Skeel (1656–1695), who in 1691 married the 13-year-old Benedicte Margrethe Brockdorff from Holstein . His epitaph in Slangerup and his burial chapel in Fraugde Kirke near Odense remind of the bishop and Baroque poet Thomas Kingo .

Further epitaphs by Thomas Quellinus can be found in churches in Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg . For the Lübeck Cathedral he created the prince-bishop's tomb for August Friedrich von Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp and the burial chapel for the Danish chancellor Johann Hugo von Lente . As a result of the Fredenhagen Altar, Quellinus received four orders for epitaphs in the Marienkirche in Lübeck : for councilor Hartwich von Stiten , made in 1699, councilor Adolf Brüning , made in 1706, mayor Hieronymus von Dorne († 1704) and mayor Anton Winckler ( 1707), which is the only one that has remained undamaged. The others were initially deliberately neglected in the first phase of the reconstruction and were only restored as far as possible in several stages from 1973.

The funerary chapel and the tomb for the family of Cai Lorenz von Brockdorff on Kletkamp at the church of Kirchnüchel in Holstein (1709) as well as the sarcophagus of the Danish Grand Chancellor Conrad von Reventlow in the Schleswig Cathedral were built according to the design by Quellinus . His epitaph for the navigator Moritz Hartmann is in the town church in Heiligenhafen .

The epitaph of the ducal medical advisor Friedrich Gottfried Glück, who died in 1707, is located in the Güstrow Cathedral in Mecklenburg .

Fredenhagen Altar

His largest and most important work, however, is the Fredenhagen Altar , a baroque high altar that he created for the Marienkirche in Lübeck (erected in 1697, inaugurated on August 15, 1697). The altar made of white and black marble and porphyry, named after its founder, the merchant Thomas Fredenhagen , was badly damaged in the bombing raid on Lübeck and the subsequent fire in St. Mary's Church in March 1942; the ruins, which can be restored, were dismantled in 1958 by resolution of the church council at the request of the then bishop Heinrich Meyer . An implementation in the Greveradenkapelle in the north tower, which was initially provided for in the resolution and which was also a condition for the approval of the state monument committee on July 7, 1958, was not implemented; the individual parts were instead stored in the Petrikirche , from where they were returned in the late 1970s. Individual parts such as the predella representation of the Last Supper and the crucifixion group were partially restored in 1977 in connection with the Hamburg Baroque sculpture exhibition in Northern Germany and placed in the ambulatory of the Marienkirche in 1978. Discussions about rebuilding the altar continue. The bust of the founder Thomas Fredenhagen, which is part of the altar, is now in Lübeck's St. Anne's Museum , along with the plaster model and the coat of arms, which also belongs to the altar .

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  Crucifixion group fragment, placed in the ambulatory of St. Marien (status 2008)

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  Predella

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  Bust of the founder in the St. Annen Museum (2009)

Garden sculpture

Ceres

In the summer garden (Saint Petersburg) laid out by Peter the Great there are still three statues by Thomas Quellinus. It is believed that these (identified as Minerva or Athene , Ceres and Nymph or Flora (?)) May be the remainder of a larger group.

There is a female bust of Thomas Quellinus in Wilanów Palace . The discussion about the attribution of further sculptures to this castle near Warsaw is still ongoing.

literature

• Sergej O. Androssow: Works by Thomas Quellinus in Russia and Poland. In: Konstanty Kalinowski (Ed.): Studies on baroque garden sculpture (= Seria historia sztuki, Volume 26). Poznańska Drukarnia Naukowa, Poznań 1999, ISBN 83-232-0886-7 , pp. 97-116
• Johannes Baltzer and Friedrich Bruns : The architectural and art monuments of the Free and Hanseatic City of Lübeck. Volume 3: Church in Old Lübeck. Dom. Jakobikirche. Aegidia Church. Publishing house by Bernhard Nöhring: Lübeck 1920, pp. 79–84. Unchanged reprint 2001: ISBN 3-89557-167-9
• Gustav Schaumann , Friedrich Bruns (editor): The architectural and art monuments of the Free and Hanseatic City of Lübeck. Volume 2, part 2: The Marienkirche. Nöhring, Lübeck 1906. ( digitized version )
• Heike Barth: The Fredenhagen Altar of Thomas Quellinus in the Marienkirche in Lübeck. Marburg 1996
• Theodor Gaedertz : Councilor Thomas Friedenhagen and the high altar donated by him in the St. Marienkirche in Lübeck . In: Theodor Gaedertz: Kunststreifzüge. Collected essays from the field of fine arts and art history. Max Schmidt, Lübeck 1889, pp. 213–223 ( digitized version )
• Susanne Hecht: The Fredenhagen Altar in Lübeck's Marienkirche . Master's thesis, Berlin 2004, also in: Zeitschrift des Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Altertumskunde 88 (2008) ( digitized version), pp. 149–199
• Anne-Dore Ketelsen-Volkhardt: Thomas Quellinus and the "staffage" epitaph . In: Anne-Dore Ketelsen-Volkhardt: Schleswig-Holstein epitaphs of the 16th and 17th centuries . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1989 (in: Studies on Schleswig-Holstein Art History 15) ISBN 3-529-02515-1
• Hans Nieuwdorp: Antwerp's beeldhouwwerk in Russia. Three masterpieces by Thomas Quellinus te Sint-Petersburg . In: Bulletin [van de] Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België / Bulletin [des] Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique KMSKB / MRBAB . Volume 1989/91, No. 1/3, pp. 317-329.
• Viggo Thorlacius-Ussing: Billedhuggeren Thomas Quellinus . Copenhagen 1926.
• Viggo Thorlacius-Ussing: The works of the artist family Quellinus in the duchies and in northern Germany . In: Nordelbingen . Volume 6, 1927, pp. 291-320

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The museum's database currently lists three of them: Abundantia  ( 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.   (Attribution uncertain), De Voorzichtigheid  ( 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.   and De Nederigheid?  ( 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.   .
2. ↑ For details see Androsov (1999).
3. ↑ Pictures
4. ↑ Michael Lissok: Marble message of transience and eternal fame. The memorial of Dr. FG Gluck in Güstrow Cathedral. In: The Güstrow Cathedral. Heidberg-Verlag, Güstrow 2001, ISBN 3-934776-06-X , pp. 121-134
5. ^ Meyer's reasoning can be found in the yearbook of the St. Marien Bauverein 1959/60: Decision on the Fredenhagen Altar , pp. 36–41.
6. ^ Rolf Saltzwedel: Ludwig Schirmeister . In: The car . 1995/96, p. 187.
7. ↑ See Manfred Finke: Pastor Paulsen and Marienvorstand on the wrong track: God doesn't like the baroque. In: citizen news . Volume 31, 2008, No. 100, p. 10f.
8. ↑ Androssow (Lit.), see also Italian summary ( Memento of the original from November 25, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
9. ↑ Androsov, 1999, p. 112.

Web links

Commons : Thomas Quellinus  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Search for Thomas Quellinus in the German Digital Library
• Search for Thomas Quellinus in the SPK digital portal of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation