Riemenschneider Saint for Auction
Rare German Sculpture from Late Middle Ages to Be Sold by Sotheby's
"Saint Catherine" (ca. 1505), a limewood statue by German sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider (ca. 1460-1531), will be auctioned at Sotheby's New York on January 24, 2008.
Saint Catherine (ca. 1505), a rare limewood statue by German late-medieval sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider (ca. 1460-1531) still privately owned, will be auctioned at Sotheby's New York on January 24, 2008. Expected to sell for $4 to $6 million (US), proceeds from its purchase will go to the Scherman Foundation, a benefactor of non-profit organizations devoted to the arts and social welfare, human rights and liberties, the environment, peace and security, reproductive rights and corresponding services
Tilman Riemenschneider
A sculptor of the Late Middle Ages, Tilman Riemenschneider was born in Heilingenstadt in the German province of Thuringia (ca. 1460). By the time he was a mature artist, Riemenschneider was employed in a Franconian sculptor's workshop in Würzburg (1483). The master opened his own atelier in 1485, received numerous commissions and sold works under his own name. A respected member of Würzburg's municipal council, the artist was elected the town's mayor (1520-21). His artistic and political careers were cut short by the Peasants' Revolt of 1525 when the citizens, fueled by economic distress and anticlerical sentiment, rebelled against Konrad von Thüngen, the municipality's prince-bishop who wished to station his troops within the town to quell uprisings. The city council allied itself with the peasants, their army was slaughtered and Riemenschneider was incarcerated and possibly tortured, his hands broken legendarily. Released shortly after his imprisonment, the sculptor made several repairs to some statues in 1528 but ceased producing any new works.
The Sculptor's Art
Although little is known about Tilman Riemenschneider's early career with absolute certainty, it was then that he was most likely exposed to the copper engravings of printmaker and painter Martin Schongauer (ca. 1450-1491), an artist deeply rooted in the formal elegance of late Gothic art. Recognized largely for his altarpieces, cult statues, objects of personal devotion and secular sculpture in limewood, Riemenschneider also carved in alabaster and sandstone. Most of the artist's oeuvres are painted, but on occasion he opted for monochromy, subtly revealing the visual properties of the uncolored material in which he chose to work. Humanist concerns of the Renaissance also influenced Riemenschneider's art. And many of his sculptures demonstrate a strong emotional quality in their facial expressions, perhaps reflecting the intense piety of 16th-century German society immediately before and during the Protestant Reformation.
Saint Catherine: Provenance, Exhibition History and Description
George Schuster of Munich acquired Saint Catherine in 1927; its present owner is one of the German collector's descendants. Before the statue's appearance in Tilman Riemenschneider: Master Sculptor of the Late Middle Ages at Washington. D.C.'s National Gallery of Art (October 3, 1999-January 9, 2000) and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (February 10-May 14, 2000), the sculpture was displayed publicly in a 1931 exhibition of the artist's work in Hanover, Germany. Since the recent American retrospective, Saint Catherine has been on loan to The Met.
Riemenschneider's Saint Catherine was carved from a single piece of limewood (linden). It was slit from behind vertically for attachment to a retable intended for the back of a religious altar. The subject is identified by KATHERI, the inscription carved across her exposed undergarment. The s-curve of Catherine's spine is echoed gently in the repetitive cascading curls of the saint's hair whose long locks drape her torso. The saint's missing right hand possibly held a spiked wheel, the Christian iconographic (symbolic) attribute of the instrument of her martrydom by pagan imperial Romans. But this is sheerly a point of academic conjecture. The statue's nine distinct tool marks indicate the advanced state of Riemenschneider's sculptural technique. The crisp folds of the work's voluminous cloak, reminiscent of those in Martin Schongauer's prints, cleverly achieve a vivid visual interplay of light and shadow. Saint Catherine was painted and gilded at some point after its execution.
Update
American artist Jeff Koons paid $6.3 million for Tilman Riemenschneider's Saint Catherine.
Sources:
- Chapuis, Julian (ed.), et al. Tilman Riemenschneider: Master Sculptor of the Late Middle Ages (exh. cat.). Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1999.
- Zuffi, Stefano (ed.). Saints in Art. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2002, 76-79.
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