Madonna of the Rose Bower (Schongauer)

Last updated
Madonna of the Rose Bower
French: La Vierge au buisson de roses, German: Madonna im Rosenhag
Martin Schongauer Madonna in Rose Garden.jpg
Artist Martin Schongauer
Year1473
Medium oil paint on panel
Movement International Gothic
Northern Renaissance
Subject Mary and Christ Child in a hortus conclusus
Dimensions200 cm× 114.5 cm(79 in× 45.1 in) [1]
Location Dominican Church, Colmar

Madonna of the Rose Bower (French: La Vierge au buisson de roses) is a monumental [2] 1473 panel painting by the German artist, Martin Schongauer, depicting Mary and Christ Child in a hortus conclusus , surrounded by roses and finches. The painting is kept in the former Dominican Church of Colmar in Alsace, a large Gothic church formerly of the Dominican Order, built in the 13th and 14th century. [3] It is classified as a Monument historique, as an object, by the French Ministry of Culture since 1978. [4]

Madonna of the Rose Bower was painted in 1473 as a reredos for St Martin's Church, Colmar's largest Christian sanctuary, and stood there until it was stolen in January 1972. After the painting was recovered in June 1973, it was moved to its present location, in the choir of the former Dominican church. [1] In 1480, Schongauer and his assistants had also painted a monumental polyptych for that church; this work (Retable des Dominicains), which has only partially survived, is today kept in the Unterlinden Museum. [5]

The theme and the general composition present similarities with Stefan Lochner's earlier and much smaller Madonna of the Rose Bower , while the appearance of the Virgin is modelled on Rogier van der Weyden's Saint Columba Altarpiece ; apart from being life-sized and clad in red instead of blue, Schongauer's Virgin has however a markedly different facial expression than Van der Weyden's. [2] The current Gothic Revival frame of the painting is a work by the sculptor Jacques Alfred Klem (1872–1948). [6]

A small 16th-century copy of Schongauer's painting, which is today kept in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of Boston, Massachusetts, [7] shows the original state of the Madonna of the Rose Bower before it was cut down on all sides at an unknown date. [8] It initially measured about 250 cm (98 in) by 165 cm (65 in) – by comparison, Lochner's painting measures only 50.5 cm (19.9 in) by 40 cm (16 in). [9] [10]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colmar</span> City in Grand Est, France

Colmar is a city and commune in the Haut-Rhin department and Grand Est region of north-eastern France. The third-largest commune in Alsace, it is the seat of the prefecture of the Haut-Rhin department and of the subprefecture of the Colmar-Ribeauvillé arrondissement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martin Schongauer</span> German artist (c. 1452–1491)

Martin Schongauer, also known as Martin Schön or Hübsch Martin by his contemporaries, was an Alsatian engraver and painter. He was the most important printmaker north of the Alps before Albrecht Dürer, a younger artist who collected his work. Schongauer is the first German painter to be a significant engraver, although he seems to have had the family background and training in goldsmithing which was usual for early engravers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stefan Lochner</span> German late Gothic style painter (c. 1410–1451)

Stefan Lochner was a German painter working in the late International Gothic period. His paintings combine that era's tendency toward long flowing lines and brilliant colours with the realism, virtuoso surface textures and innovative iconography of the early Northern Renaissance. Based in Cologne, a commercial and artistic hub of northern Europe, Lochner was one of the most important German painters before Albrecht Dürer. Extant works include single-panel oil paintings, devotional polyptychs and illuminated manuscripts, which often feature fanciful and blue-winged angels. Today some thirty-seven individual panels are attributed to him with confidence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wallraf–Richartz Museum</span> Museum in Cologne, Germany

The Wallraf–Richartz Museum is an art museum in Cologne, Germany, with a collection of fine art from the medieval period to the early twentieth century. It is one of the three major museums in Cologne.

<i>Isenheim Altarpiece</i> Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald Nikolaus of Haguenau

The Isenheim Altarpiece is an altarpiece sculpted and painted by, respectively, the Germans Nikolaus of Haguenau and Matthias Grünewald in 1512–1516. It is on display at the Unterlinden Museum at Colmar, Alsace, in France. It is Grünewald's largest work and is regarded as his masterpiece. It was painted for the Monastery of St. Anthony in Issenheim near Colmar, which specialized in hospital work. The Antonine monks of the monastery were noted for their care of plague sufferers as well as for their treatment of skin diseases, such as ergotism. The image of the crucified Christ is pitted with plague-type sores, showing patients that Jesus understood and shared their afflictions. The veracity of the work's depictions of medical conditions was unusual in the history of European art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Unterlinden Museum</span> Art museum, History museum, Design museum in Colmar, France

The Unterlinden Museum is located in Colmar, in the Alsace region of France. The museum, housed in a 13th-century Dominican religious sisters' convent and a 1906 former public baths building, is home to the Isenheim Altarpiece by the German Renaissance painter Matthias Grünewald and features a large collection of local and international artworks and manufactured artifacts from prehistorical to contemporary times. It is a Musée de France. With roughly 200,000 visitors per year, the museum is the most visited in Alsace.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Master of Frankfurt</span>

The Master of Frankfurt was a Flemish Renaissance painter active in Antwerp between about 1480 and 1520. Although he probably never visited Frankfurt am Main, his name derives from two paintings commissioned from patrons in that city, the Holy Kinship in the Frankfurt Historical Museum and a Crucifixion in the Städel museum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">St Martin's Church, Colmar</span> Church in Colmar, France

The Église Saint-Martin is a Roman Catholic church located in Colmar, Haut-Rhin, France. It is in the principal Gothic architectural style. Because of its past as a collegiate church, is also known als Collégiale Saint-Martin, and because of its large dimensions, as Cathédrale Saint-Martin, although Colmar had never been the seat of a bishopric.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Master of the Legend of Saint Catherine</span>

The Master of the Legend of Saint Catherine is the notname for an unknown late 15th century Early Netherlandish painter. He was named after a painting with Scenes from the Legend of Saint Catherine, now kept in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. He was active between c. 1470 and c. 1500, probably around Brussels.

<i>Madonna of the Rose Bower</i> (Lochner) Painting by Stefan Lochner

Madonna of the Rose Bower is a panel painting by the German artist Stefan Lochner, usually dated c. 1440–1442, although some art historians believe it contemporaneous with his later Dombild Altarpiece. It is usually seen as one of his finest and most closely detailed works.

CasparIsenmann was a Gothic painter from Alsace. As the municipal painter of his hometown Colmar and the creator of a major altarpiece for the prestigious St Martin's Church, he was an important representative of the Upper Rhenish school of painting of the mid-15th century and a probable master of Martin Schongauer.

<i>Buhl Altarpiece</i> Church artwork in Buhl, France

The Buhl Altarpiece is a late 15th-century, Gothic altarpiece of colossal dimensions now kept in the parish church Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste of Buhl in the Haut-Rhin département of France. It was painted by followers of Martin Schongauer, most probably for the convent of the Dominican sisters of Saint Catherine of Colmar, and moved to its present location in the early 19th century. It is classified as a Monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Master of the Holy Kinship</span>

The Master of the Holy Kinship the Younger is a German painter of the Middle Ages who was active between 1475 and 1515 in Cologne and its environs. He is designated "The Younger" to distinguish him from another Master, given the same name, who worked in that area from 1410 to 1440.

<i>Normand Landscape</i> Painting by Pierre Bonnard

Normand Landscape is an oil painting by the French artist Pierre Bonnard, from 1920. It is held in the collection of the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, Alsace. It depicts a landscape in Normandy, in a vertical format. The motif was painted from memory in the artist's studio, not en plein air. The painting was bought as soon as it was finished, in 1920, by the gallery Bernheim-Jeune, from which it was bought six decades later by the Société Schongauer which administers the Colmar museum.

<i>Still Life with a Parrot</i> Painting by Robert Delaunay

Still Life with a Parrot is a 1907 oil painting by the French artist Robert Delaunay, today in the collection of the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, Alsace. A first version of the same motif, but in a more mosaic-like design, nowadays belongs to the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, Spain. The Colmar painting is a manifestation of the young artist's interest in Michel-Eugène Chevreul's theories on colours, and one of his first experimental works. The painting had belonged to the art dealer Louis Carré (1897–1977) and was bought after his death by the Société Schongauer which administrates the museum since its foundation.

<i>The Valley of the Creuse, Sunset</i> Painting by Claude Monet

The Valley of the Creuse, Sunset is a 1889 oil painting by the French artist Claude Monet, today in the collection of the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, Alsace. It depicts the river Creuse at sunset in a landscape near Fresselines, where the poet Maurice Rollinat had a house in which Monet was a guest from March to May 1889. During that time, Monet painted fourteen views of the site where the Petite Creuse flows into the Grande Creuse, including the Colmar painting. They were all shown together in an exhibition in Paris in June 1889. The Colmar painting was bought in 1975 from Wildenstein & Company by the Société Schongauer, which administrates the museum since its foundation.

<i>Tempelhof Altarpiece</i> Painting by Jost Haller

The Tempelhof Altarpiece is an oil on panel painting from circa 1445, by the German artist Jost Haller, today in the collection of the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, Alsace. It had originally belonged to the commandery of the Order of Saint John, also called the Tempelhof, of Bergheim near Colmar, where it was used as a church altarpiece. After it was confiscated in 1793, at the height of the French Revolution, it became "state owned", before eventually becoming an item of the museum's collection.

<i>Bust of a Seated Woman (Jacqueline Roque)</i> 1960 oil painting by Pablo Picasso

Bust of a Seated Woman (Jacqueline Roque) is an oil painting by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, painted between 2 April and 10 May 1960. It depicts Jacqueline Roque, a woman with whom he had started a relationship in 1954, after his divorce from Françoise Gilot, and who he would marry in 1961. The painting belongs to the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, Alsace, since 1967, when it was bought by the museum following a successful Picasso exhibition there. Its inventory number is 88.RP.400.

<i>Nude Woman with a Blue Shawl</i> 1930 painting by Suzanne Valadon

Nude Woman with a Blue Shawl is a 1930 oil painting by the French artist Suzanne Valadon, today in the collection of the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, Alsace. It depicts an anonymous model in an unglamorous setting, and belongs to the last and most mature period of Valadon's work. The painting is one of the more than 120 works of French modern art that were bequeathed to the museum by the collector, French journalist Jean-Paul Person (1927–2008), in 2008.

References

  1. 1 2 Kientzy, Joris (9 June 2023). "Il y a 50 ans, la Vierge volée revenait à Colmar". dna.fr. Les Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace . Retrieved 1 September 2023.
  2. 1 2 Leinz, Gottlieb (1984). Die deutsche Malerei. Freiburg im Breisgau: Verlag Herder. pp. 51–52. ISBN   9783451189388.
  3. "Eglise des Dominicains (Colmar)". archi-wiki.org. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
  4. "tableau : la Vierge au buisson de roses". .pop.culture.gouv.fr. Base Palissy . Retrieved 1 September 2023.
  5. "Retable des Dominicains : Enfance et Passion du Christ". webmuseo.com. Musée Unterlinden. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
  6. Belser-Klem, Joséphine; Rieger, Théodore (1993). "KLEM Jacques Alfred". alsace-histoire.org. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
  7. "The Virgin and Child of the Rose Bower, mid 16th century". gardnermuseum.org. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
  8. "La Vierge au buisson de roses". webmuseo.com. Musée Unterlinden. Retrieved 2 September 2023.
  9. Bethmont, Sylvie (27 May 2019). "Marie et Jésus au jardin d'amour - une lecture de La Vierge au buisson de roses de Martin Schongauer". narthex.fr. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
  10. "Stefan Lochner Die Muttergottes in der Rosenlaube,". wallraf.museum. Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud. Retrieved 1 September 2023.