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The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany
A detail examination of the craftsmanship and lives of German woodcarvers from 1475 to 1525 discusses their artistic styles, techniques of carving, and place in society
420 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
About the author
Michael Baxandall
30 books30 followersArt historian who developed the theory of period eye. He worked as a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London as well as teaching at the Warburg Institute and the University of California.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 21, 2020
extraordinary book would have been 5 stars but it gave me a two nasty papercuts 😡
May 8, 2018
Over a period of less than a hundred years, from the late fifteenth to the early sixteenth centuries, craftsmen of Germany (the term 'artist' was still being fought for) created some of the most enduring ecclesiastical sculpture in wood, in particular, limewood.
Notable for both its strength and ease of manipulation, with a tight grain and golden lustre, limewood became the choice wood over more common alternatives such as oak and walnut, specifically for sacred settings.
Despite its working properties, limewood was climatically temperamental, and rarely considered suitable as a medium in the north. The two native species of the linden/lime tree (the romantically named Winterlinde and Sommerlinde) spread across Germany, but only the Winterlinde grows indiscriminately. The Sommerlinde rarely grows further north of central Germany, and this line stops at the same geographic line that limewood sculpture stopped.
Although a preferred wood, it was also expensive, compared to the cheap but excellent East Baltic timber (including oak, but not limewood) that the north were able to obtain. These details, which may on the face seem relatively unimportant, are brought into focus when considering that value and obtainability had significant ramifications for a small region. In tightly administered towns, such as Nuremberg, it was one more control over the craftsmen, limiting the amount of wood any one sculptor could obtain. Acquired wood often resulted only after Council disputes.
But art is nothing if not a product of circumstance, and where the negative impact of regional powers could control a market and its guild members, a desirable byproduct was the development of a distinct and localised aesthetic character, one which during its time garnered great interest and acclaim from as far afield as Italy in the south to England in the north (it is telling that England's least known but best wood sculptor of the Renaissance, Grinling Gibbons, also worked in limewood). The surviving works of art from the likes of Erhart, Riemenschneider and Stoss would create a lasting legacy and evidence that the craftsmanship of the Northern Renaissance was every bit as skillful and dynamic as the art from the South, oftentimes arguably more so.
Michael Baxandall has written the most definitive book on the subject. Although a large and weighty tome, and despite the somewhat chaotic breakdown of chapters into their various segments, it's far from dry. Baxandall is an enlivened and inspired art historian, delivering an enormous amount of information yet always in interesting and compelling ways. When such thorough scholarly research is compiled into an utterly absorbing read like this, it's gold dust. There have been developments since the 1980 publication date of this title, and there are certainly more provocative art historians out there (my personal favourite in recent years was Andrew Graham-Dixon's incredibly deft observation of the placement of the middle left apostle in Riemenschneider's depiction of The Last Supper from the Altar of the Holy Blood, his posture looming out of the corpus to implicate you, the viewer, into the judgement of Judas, the finger pointing to ask you personally which path will you choose... this reading could quite possibly make it the most visceral artwork ever created...). Despite the temporal passage of years, Baxandall's arguments remain fresh, and ready for another generation to feel the elixir of life which undoubtedly comes from reading scholarly work as good as this. All we need now is for this book to be in print...
Notable for both its strength and ease of manipulation, with a tight grain and golden lustre, limewood became the choice wood over more common alternatives such as oak and walnut, specifically for sacred settings.
Despite its working properties, limewood was climatically temperamental, and rarely considered suitable as a medium in the north. The two native species of the linden/lime tree (the romantically named Winterlinde and Sommerlinde) spread across Germany, but only the Winterlinde grows indiscriminately. The Sommerlinde rarely grows further north of central Germany, and this line stops at the same geographic line that limewood sculpture stopped.
Although a preferred wood, it was also expensive, compared to the cheap but excellent East Baltic timber (including oak, but not limewood) that the north were able to obtain. These details, which may on the face seem relatively unimportant, are brought into focus when considering that value and obtainability had significant ramifications for a small region. In tightly administered towns, such as Nuremberg, it was one more control over the craftsmen, limiting the amount of wood any one sculptor could obtain. Acquired wood often resulted only after Council disputes.
But art is nothing if not a product of circumstance, and where the negative impact of regional powers could control a market and its guild members, a desirable byproduct was the development of a distinct and localised aesthetic character, one which during its time garnered great interest and acclaim from as far afield as Italy in the south to England in the north (it is telling that England's least known but best wood sculptor of the Renaissance, Grinling Gibbons, also worked in limewood). The surviving works of art from the likes of Erhart, Riemenschneider and Stoss would create a lasting legacy and evidence that the craftsmanship of the Northern Renaissance was every bit as skillful and dynamic as the art from the South, oftentimes arguably more so.
Michael Baxandall has written the most definitive book on the subject. Although a large and weighty tome, and despite the somewhat chaotic breakdown of chapters into their various segments, it's far from dry. Baxandall is an enlivened and inspired art historian, delivering an enormous amount of information yet always in interesting and compelling ways. When such thorough scholarly research is compiled into an utterly absorbing read like this, it's gold dust. There have been developments since the 1980 publication date of this title, and there are certainly more provocative art historians out there (my personal favourite in recent years was Andrew Graham-Dixon's incredibly deft observation of the placement of the middle left apostle in Riemenschneider's depiction of The Last Supper from the Altar of the Holy Blood, his posture looming out of the corpus to implicate you, the viewer, into the judgement of Judas, the finger pointing to ask you personally which path will you choose... this reading could quite possibly make it the most visceral artwork ever created...). Despite the temporal passage of years, Baxandall's arguments remain fresh, and ready for another generation to feel the elixir of life which undoubtedly comes from reading scholarly work as good as this. All we need now is for this book to be in print...
December 31, 2020
I was inspired to read this book after seeing the amazing relief carving called “Death of the Virgin” about ten years ago at the Bode Museum in Berlin. Because of its virtuosic detail and uniqueness of each of the bakers dozen figures in that piece, that image never left my mind (See it at the Bide Museum website). This book, though seemingly narrow in focus, is an in-depth window into German Renaissance wood artists and crafts guilds. For lovers of wood sculpture, author Baxandall provides a thorough and interesting explanation of the creative challenges involved, why some woods, such as Limewood, are well suited to the art, and some, like oak, are not. The volume includes many photos of German renaissance sculptures by some of the greatest artists of the time, though most are black and white. I’ll just have to go back to Germany and see them.
May 1, 2011
I find Northern Renaissance and Late Gothic art quite exciting. Somehow the artists of the North, especially the Germans, seen to be able to communicate the dignity and tragedy of being human better than the Italians. It could be the weather... that having to live with the winds and the cloud and the rain as well as the sun... and, of course, the hard winters.
Baxandall is a tremendous art historian and he excels himself in this superlative study of the sculptors of Northern Europe.
Baxandall is a tremendous art historian and he excels himself in this superlative study of the sculptors of Northern Europe.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews