Sculpture in Wood

German, Netherlandish, and English wood-carvers were renowned for their expertise, particularly in altarpieces that consisted of numerous sacred figures within intricately filigreed structures. The flexibility and relatively light weight of wood permitted wood-carvers to produce enormous altarpieces with elaborate compositions. Viet Stoss (c. 1438-1533) was a German sculptor who moved to Poland in 1477 for the purpose of creating a wooden altar-piece for the Church of Our Lady (Cracow), commissioned by the community of German merchants in the city. With double-folding wings, it is one of the most ambitious carved wooden altarpieces of the 15th century. It was fully painted in polychrome, probably by another artist. Sculptors often worked in collaboration with a painter when a piece was to be polychromed. Stoss seemed to have bypassed Renaissance style completely, joining the vertical Gothic style to the turbulent expressionism of the baroque. His treatment of drapery exemplifies the exuberant movement of this huge altarpiece as a whole. It is important to realize that many artists of the 15th and 16th centuries, especially those in northern Europe, retained Gothic elements in their work through the end of what we call the Renaissance period.

Tilman Riemenschneider (c. 1460-1531), a master of both wood and stone, created two elaborate triptych altarpieces in limewood that remain in their original locations: the Altarpiece of the Holy Blood in the Jakobskirche (Rothenburg), and the Altarpiece of the Assumption of Mary in the Herrgottskirche (Creglingen). Limewood has a very fine grain, which allows minute details to be carved much more easily

3.1 Swabian (German) limewood sculpture of the Virgin and Child. Devotional statues of the Christ child and his mother were popular throughout Europe. Circle of Hans Multscher, third quarter of the 15 th century. (Photograph courtesy of Sotheby’s, Inc., © 2003)

Art and Visual Culture

Than in less receptive wood. These two altarpieces attest to Riemenschneider’s originality, especially his flowing treatment of drapery as it harmoniously follows the movement of the three-dimensional figures. Both altarpieces have Renaissance spatial characteristics, with figures in the central section situated inside a chapel having small “windows” in the back, allowing light to play against the backs of the carvings and flicker across the sides of their faces—an effect that can make them seem almost lifelike. These altar-pieces, as is much of Riemenschneider’s work, were uncolored so that the fine texture of the wood can be appreciated. The more sacred of the two altarpieces is that of the Holy Blood (1501-05) in the Jakob-skirche, with its relic of the blood of Christ and depiction of the Last Supper. The figures are rather large; the contract called for figures four feet in height. Most wood-carvers made smaller wooden sculptures for stock, and people purchased devotional statues such as crucifixes and Madonnas at fairs and sales stands. Although some of these carvings were made for mass consumption and thus are rather crude, they permitted even the lower classes to have a devotional object in their private home. The Protestant Reformation caused many of these pieces to be burned, along with more important art such as wooden altarpieces and shrines.