One of the most fascinating sculptors, active in late-gothic Germany, was Nicolaus (Niklaus or Niklas) Gerhaert, from Leyden. Despite the short period of his activity in Strasbourg, where he resided from 1463 to 1467, the works he created there proved influential, inspiring the sculptors of Southern Germany, up to the Reformation. Veit Stoß, Tilman Riemenschneider and Michael Pacher were all deeply influenced by the dramatic emphasis and extremely naturalistic style of Nicolaus Gerhaert´s compositions. Coming from the Netherlands, his artistic language had been forged by Flemish-Burgundian sculpture—above all by the works of Claus Sluter. Sluter´s prophets of the Well of Moses in the cloister of Champmol or his pleurants for the tomb of Philip the Bold of Burgundy, also in Champmol, whose heads seem to be portraits of his contemporaries, form a leitmotiv in Nicolaus Gerhaert’s œuvre.

Fig. 1 (left) Nicolaus Gerhaert, Mary Magdalene, Previous Primary Titles: Virgin Annunciate; Kneeling Saint (c. 1460), Lindenwood, polychromed, Strasbourg, France, H.35“ x W.13“ x D.11“ (MIA acc. # 14.8). The William Hood Dunwoody Fund. Collection Minneapolis Institute of Arts. fine arts magazine

The master must have been one of the most appreciated artists of his age. This is suggested by the extremely high-ranking patrons who commissioned works from him, such as his first surviving work, the funerary monument of Jacob von Sierck, Archbishop of Trier, signed and dated 1462. In the same year he finished the altarpiece in the parish church of Sankt Georg in Nördlingen (Swabia), commissioned by the very wealthy merchant Jakob Fuchshart and his stepsons. This retable, showing the Crucifixion at the centre, was created in collaboration with the painter Friedrich Herlin, who settled in Nördlingen and painted the wings of this altarpiece. The first document mentioning the artist dates to 1463; it testifies that Nicolaus Gerhaert had settled in Strasbourg. Already by then his reputation must have spread far and wide, for in the same year the Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich III of Habsburg petitioned the city council of Strasbourg for Nicolaus Gerhaert to be sent to Austria to enter his service.

Nicolaus Gerhaert, however, did not leave Strasbourg at this time. He received full citizenship there in 1464. He finished the famous high altarpiece for the Cathedral of Constance in 1466, but this fell a victim to iconoclasm during the wars of religion (1527). In the same year, he sculpted the figures of Jesus Christ blessing and the Virgin raising her hands in the gesture of intercession; both sculptures flank the window above the altar of the private chapel of the Hardenrath family in Sankt Maria im Kapitol in Cologne. The Hardenraths were one of the wealthiest families in town. In 1467 Nicolaus Gerhaert received a second call from the Emperor Friedrich III to “sculpt divers tomb monuments”. So he finally turned his back on Strasbourg, and henceforth worked in Vienna and in Wiener Neustadt. His most famous work there, which he left uncompleted on his death, was the funerary monument for Friedrich III in St Stephen´s Cathedral in Vienna. Nicolaus Gerhaert died in Wiener Neustadt in 1473.

The figure of the Madonna presented in this contribution, and to be identified as a work of Nicolaus Gerhaert, shows the kneeling Virgin, raising her hands in intercession (fig.1, above). It was purchased in the summer of 1914 from the art dealers Marx Frères in Paris from the income of the Dunwoody fund. When it entered the collection of the Minneapolis Art Institute it was believed to be the fragment of a scene of Entombment together with the figure of a kneeling St Mary Magdalen from the former Noll collection in Frankfurt, sold at Prestel (Frankfurt) in 1912 and acquired by the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin (fig.2). Georg Swarzenski, in the sale catalogue of the Noll collection noted a similarity in style between the figure formerly in the Noll collection and the figures of an altarpiece in Blaubeuren, finished by Michel Erhart from Ulm in 1494. Based on Swarzenski´s opinion and the similarities between the former Noll Magdalen and the Minneapolis Virgin, the latter was attributed to an unknown Swabian master and dated around 1500. But even if the former Noll figure is similar in height (90 cm) and in the kneeling pose, the treatment of the drapery folds and the modelling of the face show a clear stylistic disparity, suggesting that nearly 30 years must have separated the two sculptures. There is even a third figure, again of Mary Magdalen, which shows the same scheme as the former Noll figure; it can be dated to around 1520 and attributed to the master of the altarpiece of Reutti near Ulm; this sculpture entered the collection of the Württembergisches Landesmuseum in Stuttgart sometimes before 1921.

From the affinities between these sculptures it can be deduced that the Kneeling Madonna in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts must have served as a model for the two figures of the Magdalen: the one formerly in the Noll collection, and the other in the Württembergisches Landesmuseum in Stuttgart.

To recur to the works of Nicolaus Gerhaert, there is one which in gesture and type of female beauty seems to be a twin of the Minneapolis Virgin (fig.1): namely, the statue of the Virgin created for the above-mentioned chapel of the Hardenrath family in Cologne (fig.3). Both figures show the same facial features, full cheeks, high forehead, delicate elongated nose and slightly playful mouth. Also similar in both statues is the luxuriantly flowing hair that falls in magnificent tresses over shoulders and back. Virtually identical is the gesture of the raised hands. In this respect the gesture of the Hardenrath Virgin explains the gesture and former context of the Minneapolis figure, because the statue of Mary in Cologne is raising her hands in a gesture of intercession. The Hardenrath Chapel was consecrated in 1466. This provides us with an approximate date for the figure in Minneapolis.

This type of female beauty and grace appears among the works of Nicolaus Gerhaert for the first time, however, in the figure of the mourning Virgin that forms part of the Nördlingen Altarpiece completed in 1462 (fig.4). Here we find again the same dainty chin, delicate, slightly elongated nose, high forehead and full cheeks. The draping of the veil over the head is also similar. But above all we find the diagonal fold that gives momentum to the whole figure and underlines its dramatic charge. The crumpling and looping of the drapery folds also correspond.

To sum up: The Virgin in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts is likely to date between 1462 and 1466. This dating can be inferred from its stylistic closeness to the Nördlinger Altarpiece of 1462 and to the figure in the Hardenrath Chapel of 1466. So the sculpture can be regarded as the third work of Nicolaus Gerhaert to be found in an American collection. A small-format group of the Madonna and Child is in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, while a reliquary bust of St. Margaret is in the Art Institute in Chicago (fig. 4, below).

By Johannes Tripps, Ph.D., Contributing Writer

Johannes Tripps is professor of the history of the applied arts at the University of Applied Sciences in Leipzig. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Heidelberg, and was selected as Heisenberg Fellow of the German Research Foundation DFG. Later he was appointed conservator and vice-director of the Historisches Museum in Bern in Switzerland. Before he assumed his current position in Leipzig, he was a professor of art history at the Universita degli Studi in Florence.

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Bibliographic Notes

For Nicolaus Gerhaert, in general , see Eva Zimmermann, Gerhaert, Nicolaus, in: The Dictionary of Art, vol. 12, Gairard to Goodhue, ed. by Jane Turner, London-New York 1996, pp. 341-345.

For the attribution of the Nördlingen Altarpiece to Nicolaus Gerhaert see Elmar Dionys Schmid, Der Nördlinger Hochaltar und sein Bildhauerwerk: Rekonstruktion, Stil, Frage des Meisters (Niklaus Gerhaert von Leiden), Datierung, Ausstrahlung im Nördlinger Raum, München 1971. Christof Metzger, Neues vom Nördlinger Hochaltar, in: Zeitschrift des Deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft, 54/55, 2000/2001 (2003), pp. 104-126. Rainer Kahsnitz, Die großen Schnitzaltäre. Spätgotik und Süddeutschland, Österreich, Südtirol, München 2005, pp. 40-46, esp. pp. 43-45, with further bibliography.

For a reconstruction of the altarpiece in Constance see Johannes Tripps, Hans Syfer und Niklaus Gerhaert van Leyden: Ein neuer Rekonstruktionsvorschlag zum Konstanzer Retabel, in: Zeitschrift für Württembergische Landesgeschichte, LI, 1992, pp. 117-129.

For the erection of the Hardenrath Chapel and the dating of the figures of Nicolaus Gerhaert there see Susanne Ruf, Stift und Welt – St. Maria im Kapitol zu Köln und die Stiftungen der Familie Hardenrath, in: Frauen – Kloster – Kunst, Neue Forschungen zur Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters. Beiträge zum Internationalen Kolloquium vom 13. bis 16. Mai 2005 anlässlich der Ausstellung “Krone und Schleier”, hrsg. Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Carola Jäggi, Susan Marti und Hedwig Röckelein in Kooperation mit dem Ruhrlandmuseum Essen, Turnhout 2007, pp. 237-246. Roland Recht, Nicolas de Leyde et la sculpture à Strasbourg – 1460-1525, Strasbourg 1987, pp. 148-149, figs. 37-38.

For information on the Virgin in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, I am indebted to the museum files. See also J. B., A masterpiece of German Sculpture, in: Bulletin of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Volume III, December 1914, Number 12, pp. 144-146.

For the kneeling Magdalen in the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum in Berlin see Georg Swarzenski, catalogue entry “kniende Magdalena”, in: Sammlung Johannes Noll. Gotische Bildwerke in Holz und Stein. Gemälde und Zeichnungen alter Meister. Versteigerung in Frankfurt am Main durch F.A.C. Prestel, Frankfurt 1912, p. 20, lot 28, plate 20. I am indebted to Ingeborg Bähr for this bibliographical information.

The figure of the Württembergisches Landesmuseum in Stuttgart has been published by Peter Goessler, Ausstellung von Neuerwerbungen im Residenzschloss Stuttgart 1921 : Museum vaterländischer Altertümer, Stuttgart 1921, p. 7, no. 15, height 75 cm, with an attribution to the master of the altarpiece of Reutti, near Ulm. I am indebted to Markus Walz, Leipzig, for providing me with this information on the statue.

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Fig. 1 Nicolaus Gerhaert, Mary Magdalene, Previous Primary Titles: Virgin Annunciate; Kneeling Saint (c. 1460), Lindenwood, polychromed, Strasbourg, France, H.35“ x W.13“ x D.11“ (MIA acc. # 14.8). The William Hood Dunwoody Fund. Collection Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Fig. 2 Kneeling Mary Magdalen  (c.1500). Formerly Frankfurt, Johannes Noll collection. Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, Berlin.

Fig. 3 Nicolaus Gerhaert, Virgin, hands raised in intercession (1466). Cologne, Sankt Maria im Kapitol, Hardenrath Chapel.

Fig. 4 Nicolaus Gerhaert von Leyden, Reliquary Bust of Saint Margaret of Antioch (1465/70), Walnut, with traces of polychromy, 20” x 18” x 11 5/8”. Kate S. Buckingham Endowment, 1943.1001. Collection Art Institute of Chicago