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Notes on some English Alabaster Carvings in Germany
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2012
Extract
The following account of some unusual examples of English alabasters in German museums, together with short references to others in Germany, is intended to serve as a basis for a complete list of such carvings preserved in that country. The desirability of such a list is indicated by the importance, for the study of the history of the alabaster industry in England, of certain examples, seemingly of comparatively early dates, still (or until lately) in German churches, and by the number of products of that industry now in German museums. When Braun wrote, in 1910, he believed that Germany was poor in English alabasters, because her native art of wood-sculpture was in full flower during the period when they were made, so that she had no need to import relief-carvings. Furthermore, he thought that probably most of the examples at that time in Germany had been brought there by dealers in antiquities. The list given below, although only preliminary in character, suggests that his opinions in these respects were not well founded. It records various pieces, carved, presumably, at the period when English alabasters were being made for export, which are still in the districts or situations for which they might well have been ordered. There seems, therefore, no reason to think that any of the examples now in German museums are recent importations.
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References
page 55 note 1 Braun, J., ‘Die englischen Alabasteraltäre’, in Zeits. für chrlstliche Kunst, xxiii, 238Google Scholar.
page 55 note 2 Thus, the Adoration-tables in the churches at Bottenbroich, Paderborn, and Zuckau are all of early forms; and the altar-pieces at Danzig from a fairly early period of the alabaster industry.
page 56 note 1 This photograph, and the photographs of figs, 2 and 3, reproduced by courtesy of that institution. The originals of them, as well as a table of the Resurrection of our Lord, have been described in W. Josephi's Die Werke plastischer Kunst (part of Kataloge of the Germanic Museum), Nuremberg, 1910, pp. 5 seqq. The present table and that of the Purification are not reproduced there; the tables of the Notifying of the Shepherds and the Resurrection are.
page 56 note 2 Cf. Biver, , ‘Some Examples of English Alabaster Tables in France’, in Archaeol. Journ., lxvii, pl. xi, no. 1, and p. 75Google Scholar.
page 56 note 3 Ibid., pl. viii.
page 56 note 4 Cf. ‘Gospel of the Nativity of Mary’, chap, vi, as given in Cowper's, B. H.The Apocryphal Gospels, London, 1897Google Scholar.
page 56 note 5 Cf. Luke, ii, 36 seqq.
page 56 note 6 Ibid., 25 seqq.
page 56 note 7 Cf. The Digby Plays, Early English Text Soc., Extra Ser. lxx, London, 1896, ‘The Purification in the Temple (played on Candlemas Day, 1512)’, 19 seqq.; the text refers to ‘virgynes, as many as a man wyll’, although the list of the players (cf. ibid., p. xxxii) names only ‘A virgyn’.
page 57 note 1 Cf. Luke, ii, 22.
page 57 note 2 Leviticus, xii, 8. For some earlier examples (ninth to eleventh centuries) of this in art, see de Fleury, Rohault, La Sainte Vierge, i, Paris, 1878, pls. xxviii–xxxiii, and pp. 137seqq.Google Scholar On the adaptation of the ‘Presentation’ scene as a ‘Circumcision’, in English alabaster, cf. Proc. Soc. Ant., xxix, 83 seq.
page 57 note 3 Cf. Luke, ii, 22 seqq.
page 57 note 4 Encycl. Brit., s.v. ‘Churching of Women’. Cf. also W. C. Hazlitt, Brand's Popular Antiquities, 1870, i, 26.
page 57 note 5 Smith's Dict. Christian Antiquities, 1880, ii, 1141.
page 57 note 6 Op. cit., 76.
page 58 note 1 Cf. R. Papini, ‘Polittici d'Alabastro”, in L'Arte, xiii, 205; on 204 this table is wrongly termed a ‘Circumcision’.
page 58 note 2 Kendon, F., Mural Paintings in English Churches, London, 1923, 59Google Scholar.
page 58 note 3 Répertoire de Peintures.
page 58 note 4 Cf. ibid., vol. iv, p. 123.
page 58 note 5 In The Madonna (trans. from Italian), London, 1902, chap. on ‘The Purification.’
page 58 note 6 Ibid., 303 seq.
page 58 note 7 Ludus Coventriae, E. E. T. Soc., Extra Ser., no. cxx, 1921, 167; Coventry Mysteries, Shakespeare Soc., 1841, 177.
page 59 note 1 The Chester Plays, Shakespeare Soc., i (1843), 194.
page 59 note 2 The Digby Plays, 19 seq.
page 59 note 3 Hazlitt, op. cit., i, 27, foot-note, quoting from ‘The Burnynge of St. Paules Church in London, 1561’.
page 59 note 4 Cf. Ant. Journ., i, 231; Cat. Alab. Exhib., 42 seq.; Prior and Gardner, Med. Fig. Sculpture in England, 491.
page 59 note 5 Cf. Josephi, op. cit., p. 6 (with picture). On the type, cf. Ant. Journ., iii, 34 seqq. and pl. vii.
page 59 note 6 This was (and perhaps still is) at Munich. I was told that it was in the National Museum there, but I have not been able to verify the statement. Never having seen the original, I do not know if it has been subject to ‘restorations’ which might have brought about its peculiarities; from an excellent photograph, I judge that it probably has not.
page 59 note 7 Cf. Nelson, , Archaeol. Journ., lxxiGoogle Scholar, 162 seqq. and pls. iii, iv; Hildburgh, , Proc. Soc. Ant., xxxiiGoogle Scholar, 126 seq. For panels of the subject, cf. Proc. Soc. Ant., xxviii, 63 seqq., and Ant. Journ., iii, 28 and pl. vii.
page 60 note 1 Vol. vi of the Kataloge des Bayerischen Nationalmuseums, Munich, 1896Google Scholar.
page 60 note 2 Cf. Vöge's, Kônigliche Museen zu Berlin: Die deutschen Bildwtrke und die der anderen cisalpinen Länder, Berlin, 1910, p. 43, nos. 94, 95 (with photos)Google Scholar.
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page 60 note 7 Cf. Witte, op. cit., pl. 30 and p. 67.
page 60 note 8 Pl. 74 of the Schnütgen catalogue above cited shows an alabaster image of St. Christopher, about 19¼ in. high, tentatively ascribed to England of the middle of the fifteenth century. To judge from the picture, I am inclined to think that the work is not English; and that judgement seems to be confirmed by the differences of the image, in a number of respects, from a type which appears to have been a standard one for the English alabastermen of the fifteenth century (cf. Ant. Journ., i, 228 seqq. and pl. ix).
page 61 note 1 Briefly noted by Nelson, , in ‘Earliest Type of English Alabaster Panel Carvings”, in Archaeol. Journ., lxxvi, 93seqq.Google Scholar; a detailed study is to appear in Archaeolcgia, lxxiv.
page 61 note 2 Figured by Schweitzer, H., Die Skulpturensammlung in Städtischen Suermondt-Museum zu Aachen, ii, Aix-la-Chapelle, 1910, pl. 57Google Scholar.
page 61 note 3 Cf. ibid., pl. 58.
page 61 note 4 Ibid., pl. 58.
page 61 note 5 Ibid., pl. 58.
page 61 note 6 Cf. Haupt, R. and Weysser, F., Die Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler … Lauenburg, Ratzeburg, 1890, 64seqq.Google Scholar; on p. 65 are given line-drawings of the four complete tables.
page 61 note 7 Cf. Cat. cit., p. 35; Maclagan, E., ‘An English Alabaster Altarpiece in the Victoria and Albert Museum’, in Burlington Mag., xxxvi (1920), 53Google Scholar.
page 61 note 8 Cf. Clemen, P., Die Kunstdenkmäler der Rheinprovinz (vol. iv), Kreis Bergheim, Düsseldorf, 1899, pl. facing p. 48, and pp. 49 seq.Google Scholar; Kehrer, op. cit., 217 seqq.; Ant. Journ., iii, 30 seq.; Nelson, , ‘Earliest Type…’, 89Google Scholar.
page 61 note 9 Cf. Clemen, op. cit. (vol. ii), Kreis Rees, 46.
page 62 note 1 Cf. Ludorff, A., Die Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler des Kreises Paderborn, Münster i. W., 1899, pl. xliv and p. 98Google Scholar; Ant. Journ., iii, 30 seqq.; Nelson, , ‘Earliest Type…’, 89seqGoogle Scholar.
page 62 note 2 Cf. Kehrer, op. cit., fig. 258; Ant. Journ., iii, 32; Nelson, ‘Earliest Type…’, 90. It is perhaps worth noting that Nelson figures (op. cit., pls. iv and v) two more examples in England—one at Reading, the other in Cornwall—of the elongated type of ‘Adoration’ of which I was able to cite (Ant. Journ., iii) only two examples in England as against three in Germany.
page 62 note 3 Cf. Braun, op. cit., cols. 238 seq.; Maclagan, , op. cit., 61Google Scholar; Nelson, , ‘English Alabasters of the Embattled Type’, in Archaeol. Journ., lxxv (1918), 314seq.Google Scholar, and ‘The Virgin Triptych at Danzig”, in ibid., lxxvi, 139 seqq. and pls. i–iii.
page 62 note 4 Cf. Nelson, , ‘… Embattled Type’, 328seqq.Google Scholar and pls. xviii–xxii; Maclagan, , op. cit., 61 and pl. iiGoogle Scholar.
page 61 note 5 Cf. Maclagan, , op. cit., 55Google Scholar.