Posted by Most recent edit on the 8th September 2024
Martin Schongauer was a Northern European painter and engraver whose work I got to know in the early 1990s. He was allegedly the teacher of Mathias Gruenewald, a painter and engraver of the early 16th century, whose “Isenheim Altarpiece” is one of the masterpieces of Northern Renaissance and anticipates expressionism.
Before I proceed, I would like to give the reader a sense of the geography involved.
The thin blue line running from top to bottom in the middle is the river Rhein. Colmar, Schongauer’s birthplace, is on the upper left. The city where he died, Breisach, is to the right of Colmar, and Basel at the bottom. Basel is in the three-state area of France to the northwest, Germany to the northeast, and Switzerland to the south. The distance between Colmar and Breisach is less than 20km, and between Colmar and Basel is less than 100 km.
Most of his work that survived is engravings. With his prints, Schongauer transmitted his name and his designs across Europe and the world.
Martin Schongauer (1450-1491) was born in Colmar, in Alsace. He had a goldsmith father who had bought the rights of bourgeoisie in 1445. After an itinerant training and a probable passage in Flanders, Martin Schongauer returned to Colmar .
“Martin Schongauer is first documented in the matriculation register of Leipzig University, winter term 1465, as a Bavarian (Erler, ‘Leipzig’, p. 254) when he was presumably in his early teens. He is described as a ‘young apprentice’ in an inscription by Dürer on a Schongauer drawing of 1470 (Rupprich, i, pp. 208f., no. 58).” (The British Museum)
Vasari claims that Schongauer studied under Rogier van der Weyden, a claim that has not been confirmed. However, Schongauer has been clearly influenced by the Dutch Master’s attention to detail. This influence – mostly attention to detail and the use of vivid colors – is manifested in his paintings.
“The portrait of Schongauer in Munich (Alte Pinakothek) is inscribed on the back by the artist Thoman Burgkmair (q.v) “Mayster Martin Schongauer Maler genent Hipsch / Martin von wegen seiner Kunst . . . 1488′ with a line added by his son Hans Burgkmair (q.v) describing himself as Schongauer’s apprentice.” (The British Museum)
Martin Schongauer, Saint Anthony Tormented by Demons (The Temptation of St. Anthony), Engraving, 30 x 21.8 cm, c.1475, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York.
“Saint Anthony gazes serenely out at the viewer as frenzied demons grab at his limbs, clothes, and hair and pound him with sticks. Schongauer depicted these imagined creatures in a remarkably convincing way. His realistic description of their scales and fur point to his direct observation of animals, yet he compiled these naturalistic details to produce some of the most fantastic and grotesque fabrications in the history of printmaking. Although this is one of Schongauer’s earliest prints, it was probably his most influential: Vasari recounted that even Michelangelo made a color drawing of the work at the age of thirteen.” (The Met)
Similar monsters and demons would later find their way to Grunewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece.
“Schongauer’s Temptation of Antony engraving demonstrates how well-conceived
his overall plan is in its organization. His symmetry of design immediately stands out in counterpoint to the asymmetry of chaos in the demonic beings. A circular
arrangement of devilish monsters, tattered wings, forked tails and clawed talons almost add kinetic motion to the moment, making it appear to almost spin around before the viewer while Antony remains suspended, resolutely static despite being clubbed, his clothes being pulled, hair wrenched and limbs grasped. This contrast might even suggest the illusory nature of Antony’s sufferings despite their sensory acuity. The theomorphic hybridity of the demons – mixing reptilian, amphibian, fishy, mammalian and avian body parts with scales, spines, horns, raptor beaks, fangs, barbed tongues and tentacle suckers and odd trunks – is not accidental except in twisted nature, certainly not coincidental in Schongauer’s vision.” (Martin Schongauer: Gothic Vanguard of the Renaissance, Patrick Hunt, Stanford, Kunstpedia – ArtWis, Netherlands, August 2014).
The engraving inspired young Michelangelo, who created a painting of the subject, adding a landscape in the background and “fish scales” to the monster on the left side. He also altered the expression of the Saint.
Michelangelo, The Torment of Saint Anthony, oil and tempera on panel, c. 1477-1478, 47 cm × 35 cm, Kimbell Art Museum, Texas
A story has it that in 1492 the 20 year old Dürer journeyed along the Rhine to Breisach, to meet Schongauer, who had moved there in 1489. Unfortunately Schongauer had died the year before, most likely a victim of the plague.
In the picture you can see Colmar on the left, the Rhein River running from North to South, and Breisach on the right. Today the Rhein is the natural border between France and Germany. Both nation states did not exist back in Schongauer’s time.
Martin Schongauer, Christ Carrying the Cross, c.1475, 28.9 × 42.9 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York.
“The largest and most painterly of his prints, Christ Carrying the Cross is Schongauer’s masterpiece. This engraving depicting Christ’s procession to Golgotha is the artist’s most visually complex. He created a spectrum of tones from white to gray to black by altering the density of the hatching. Throughout the print, he masterfully offset light and dark areas: for example, he placed the fully shaded figures on the right against a landscape delineated only by outlines and did almost the reverse with the boy in the lower left, situated in front of an area of shadowed ground. Schongauer was inspired by a painting of the subject by Jan van Eyck, now lost and known only through copies, and similarly created an image packed with lively characterizations of exotic figures and incidental detail. Yet he pushed the entire procession to the foreground and, as in devotional icons, he turned Christ’s head to confront the viewer, emphasizing man’s identification with Christ’s suffering.” (The Met)
“Perhaps Schongauer wants the viewer to ponder the weight of Christ’s suffering as far more spiritual than physical as he faces his viewers, unlike the spectators and perpetrators of his impending Passion. His neck looks ready to break under the angular cross as he is dragged forward. Fascinating visual subplots include the thin crossed spears at a diagonal angle to the heavy cross; another kinetic event is the procession itself curving in front of the viewer: on the right the horses lead into the frame while on the left the horse derrieres exit with interesting subtleties like a braided tail. Accordingly, most of the spectator faces are on the right. Some human faces at such a spectacle display the “uglifying” curiosity of an appetite for violence, others are merely apathetic bystanders as if this crucial historic event evoked mere common passivity for those spiritually dead. For Schongauer, the overt intellectual contrast between human participants and the Son of Man is enhanced by his treatment of light and shadow with both drama and dynamic subtlety. This artistic interplay is a glimmering of the Humanism to come when the old scholiastic theological arguments about Christ’s kenosis, his dual nature, held less sway than the immediate gospel of his identification with that profound paradox of both the weaknesses and the aspirations of his human brethren. The areas of darkness in this engraving may also allude to the event itself; even the gospel account in Matthew 27:45 records how during the climax of Christ’s Passion the sky went dark at midday as if all nature itself was affected.” (Martin Schongauer: Gothic Vanguard of the Renaissance, Patrick Hunt, Stanford, Kunstpedia – ArtWis, Netherlands, August 2014).
Martin Schongauer, Studies of Peonies, Guache and Watercolor, c. 1472, 25.7 × 33 cm, The J. Paul Getty Museum
“One of the earliest surviving northern European botanical studies drawn from life, this drawing shows a fully opened peony bloom, viewed first from the front and then from the back, and one bud. Martin Schongauer achieved subtly gradated coloration by laying in the basic forms in a broad painterly wash and then describing the details in bodycolor, opaque water-based color, with the point of the brush. Though an outstanding example of a highly finished drawing, it was made as a study for the painting, The Madonna of the Rose Garden of 1473, in the Dominican church in Colmar. ” (The J. Paul Getty Museum)
Schongauer’s masterpiece is the “Madonna in the Rosegarden”, painted in 1473. It is housed in the Dominican Church in his native city, Colmar.
“Despite the desire of horticulturalists to peg the exact Old World red rose varietal climbing on the lattice behind the Madonna of the Rose Garden – a kudo to Schongauer’s attentive realism – it is the faces of both Mary and the Child that are mesmerizing. Despite angelic corroboration hovering overhead, Mary and the infant Jesus are anything but glibly happy, even looking in opposite directions rather than at each other in the typical serenity of Madonna and Child where the external world hardly exists. In fact, both visages are plangent with troubled thoughts while Schongauer offers a canonic concession to Mary’s Byzantinish bent neck angle. Her pained emotional mien is a sure departure from more typical otherwordliness. Could Schongauer be alluding to the Lucan Gospel’s narrative (Luke 2:35) where the old prophet Simeon hints that a “sword will pierce your heart also” most likely because this Child was born to die and Mary must also “ponder these things” even in the grace of the Nativity?” (Martin Schongauer: Gothic Vanguard of the Renaissance, Patrick Hunt, Stanford, Kunstpedia – ArtWis, Netherlands, August 2014).
Martin Schongauer, The Holy Family, 1475-80
Oil on wood, 26 x 17 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
“Likewise in his circa 1469 Holy Family, Schongauer contrasts Joseph in his dark alcove, seemingly alienated from full sanctity by not being the real father – his gaze is also slightly melancholic (Fig. 3, Martin Schongauer, The Holy Family, 1469, Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum). In his subsidiary role Joseph can only bring animal fodder for the ox and ass. On the other hand, in the foreground Mary is fed by the Child in a Flight into Egypt visual narrative rather than by her spouse. The clusters of grapes (a possible allusion to John 15:1-2 where Christ is the Vine) are shared by Mother and Child with another fruit basket on the floor. Joseph’s bent stick to prod clusters now leans in the basket. This may also reference the apocryphal legend in the 8th-9th century Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew chs. 20-21. In this text, while on the third weary third day of their journey to escape Herod’s murderous wrath, the Infant Christ miraculously brings fruit to his mother from higher branches Joseph could not reach. The trees obeyed the Child, bending down for access: “O tree, bend your branches, and refresh my mother with your fruit.” The original text states it was a date palm yielding its high fruit, but in Europe the fruit is often shown as cherries or some other more local fruit. Schongauer painted grapes, thus likely serving a double purpose of a more Mediterranean fruit as well as possibly referencing John 15 with the Vine as suggested. This apocryphal event is a familiar visual trope. For example, from the Abbey of Saint Denis outside Paris, a circa 1145 stained-glass vignette shows Mary holding a fruit that looks like a fig,25 another fruit unlikely to be found north of the Alps but more historically accurate to this text, like Schongauer’s grapes, which could also be cultivated in Northern Europe and certainly along the Rhine in the artist’s home territory.” (Martin Schongauer: Gothic Vanguard of the Renaissance, Patrick Hunt, Stanford, Kunstpedia – ArtWis, Netherlands, August 2014)
Martin Schongauer, Drawing of an old man with fur collar and hat,1475, Berlin State Museums.
This appears to be a true portrait, but it is not. True portraits where a rarity in the Middle Ages, but begun to appear here and there in the 1400s. By 1475 they were no longer uncommon. In this image what reveals this as a composition rather than an original, is the ear, whose angle is not the same as that of the other face.
“Figures wearing turbans were often used in biblical scenes to denote eastern origin, or one who had not converted to Christianity. Studies of the heads of figures wearing oriental headdresses, such as the present example, therefore, were in common use as models for drawings and paintings, and the group of studies probably once formed part of a set of artist’s models.” (Fragment of a catalogue entry adapted from ‘The Northern Renaissance. Dürer to Holbein’, London 2011).
The drawing is attributed to a follower of the artist, quite likely a member of his workshop.
Martin Schongauer, Christ of the Last Judgement, c. 1488, Louvre Museum, Paris
Martin Schongauer, The Nativity, Engraving, 25.4 × 16.8 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York.
Martin Schongauer, The Birth of Christ, c. 1480, Gemaldegalerie, Berlin
Martin Schongauer, Madonna and Child in a Window, about 1485–1490, Oil on panel, 16.5 × 11 cm, The J. Paul Getty Museum
“Although he was reportedly a prolific painter, this panel is one of only seven paintings by Martin Schongauer in existence today. It belongs to a group of four Andachtsbilder, or devotional paintings, created near the end of his life. In his engravings Schongauer already had explored the theme of the Madonna and Child reading a book in a niche, symbolizing the Virgin’s role as Christ’s tutor. Here he balanced the Madonna’s serenity with the lively Christ Child and the book’s fluttering pages. Her dignified face, with its polished modeling and delicate features, is typical of Schongauer, who was heavily influenced by Flemish painter Rogier van der Weyden’s art. Mary’s cascade of gently flowing hair shows Schongauer’s sensitivity to the expressive potential of line. His attention to detail is especially evident in the thin gold seams in Mary’s cloak, the jeweled crown, and the figures’ fine facial features. In the background, an angel holds the crown and scepter. Since the 1500s, Schongauer has been credited with bringing the advances of Netherlandish Renaissance art to Germany. He was the main inspiration for Germany’s next generation of artists, notably Albrecht Dürer. Schongauer’s engravings had far-reaching impact, influencing Italian artists such as Michelangelo.” (The J. Paul Getty Museum)
I would like to highlight one of the events in the picture’s provenance. In 1938, the owner of the picture, Rudolf von Gutmann, an important art and book collector, sold it “under pressure” and fled Austria. He survived the exodus and ended up in Canada. The provenance of this picture is worth an article by itself.
Before I conclude this short presentation of Martin Schongauer I would like to show a surprise item, an engraving from the National Gallery in Athens, Greece. I discovered it while searching material on the internet. There are no details about the provenance of the engraving, I hope to dig out more when the Gallery reopens sometime in 2021 (it is currently undergoing massive reconstruction).
Martin Schongauer, The Agony in the Garden, Engraving, 16.5cm x 11.5 cm, National Gallery, Athens
Schongauer’s statue is in Colmar’s Unterlinden Museum. It was commissioned to the Colmar sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, and was finished in 1863.