The sculpture of Tilman Riemenschneider stands at the threshold of two eras. Solidly anchored in the late Gothic tradition, it is also astonishingly daring. Riemenschneider, who was active in Wurzburg from around 1483 until 1531, was one of the first sculptors to abandon polychromy on occasion, making a conscious aesthetic decision to leave visible his favored material, limewood. His sculpture strikes a rare balance between formal elegance and expressive strength, and it is among the most appealing work of the late Middle Ages. The approximately fifty works documented in this handsome volume offer a fresh look at this great master. The book presents a broad survey of Riemenschneider's oeuvre, including representative work from all periods of his career. Contributors explore the sources for his art, his social millieu and the organization of his workshop, the critical reception of his work, his polychrome and monochrome sculpture. Photographs commissioned especially for the book present the great altarpieces in Rothenburg on the Tauber, Creglingen, and Maidbronn as well as the large stone sculpture in Wurzburg. The book is the first publication in English with color reproductions of a significant portion of Riemenschneider's oeuvre.

The concept of the medieval city is fixed in the modern imagination, conjuring visions of fortified walls, towering churches, and winding streets. In Riemenschneider in Rothenburg, Katherine M. Boivin investigates how medieval urban planning and artistic programming worked together to form dynamic environments, demonstrating the agency of objects, styles, and spaces in mapping the late medieval city. Using altarpieces by the famed medieval artist Tilman Riemenschneider as touchstones for her argument, Boivin explores how artwork in Germany’s preeminent medieval city, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, deliberately propagated civic ideals. She argues that the numerous artistic pieces commissioned by the city’s elected council over the course of two centuries built upon one another, creating a cohesive structural network that attracted religious pilgrims and furthered the theological ideals of the parish church. By contextualizing some of Rothenburg’s most significant architectural and artistic works, such as St. James’s Church and Riemenschneider’s Altarpiece of the Holy Blood, Boivin shows how the city government employed these works to establish a local aesthetic that awed visitors, raising Rothenburg’s profile and putting it on the pilgrimage map of Europe. Carefully documented and convincingly argued, this book sheds important new light on the history of one of Germany’s major tourist destinations. It will be of considerable interest to medieval art historians and scholars working in the fields of cultural and urban history.

Riemenschneider in Situ presents the newest research on the work of one of the most famous late medieval and early Renaissance sculptors, Tilman Riemenschneider. Moving beyond questions of style, date, and workshop practice, this volume investigates the sculptor's programs across the south German region of Franconia that survive in situ, within the particular contexts for which they were designed and in which they were originally experienced. In shifting the focus from fragmentary pieces in museum collections to extant installations in their original church settings, the volume contributes to a wave of scholarship interested in reanimating medieval artistic ensembles by considering them as complex visual environments. Together, the authors-conservators, museum professionals, and art historians-provide an essential and overdue study of Riemenschneider's best-preserved pieces, while also making an important, collaborative addition to the broader discipline of pre-modern art history.

With a catalogue of works generally accepted as by Riemenschneider and his workshop.he Würzburg sculptor and woodcarver Tilman Riemenschneider (c.1460-1531) worked within established formal traditions, yet succeeded in creating works of a kind that had never been seen before. Against common practice, he left many of his sculptures unpainted. This turned them from life-like images of saints into works of art far removed from the everyday world of the beholder. To see the intricate, supremely carved details of Riemenschneider's sculptures, the play of light and shade on their glazed wooden surfaces, and the moving expressions of the figures' faces and gestures, is as fascinating today as it must have been when they were created. With the help of 225 black and white and 55 colour illustrations, both of complete works and of details, this book gives a representative survey of the sculptures made by Riemenschneider and his workshop. The author is one of the internationally known experts on Riemenschneider.

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.

The function of the painted wooden object ranges from the practical to the profound. These objects may perform utilitarian tasks, convey artistic whimsy, connote noble aspirations, and embody the highest spiritual expressions. This volume, illustrated in color throughout, presents the proceedings of a conference organized by the Wooden Artifacts Group of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC) and held in November 1994 at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in Williamsburg, Virginia. The book includes 40 articles that explore the history and conservation of a wide range of painted wooden objects, from polychrome sculpture and altarpieces to carousel horses, tobacconist figures, Native American totems, Victorian garden furniture, French cabinets, architectural elements, and horse-drawn carriages. Contributors include Ian C. Bristow, an architect and historic-building consultant in London; Myriam Serck-Dewaide, head of the Sculpture Workshop, Institut Royal du Patrimoine Artistique, Brussels; and Frances Gruber Safford, associate curator of American decorative arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. A broad range of professionals—including art historians, curators, scientists, and conservators—will be interested in this volume and in the multidisciplinary nature of its articles.

In the hauntingly beautiful sculptures of Tilmann Riemenschneider, the Late Gothic art of Germany achieved its highest expression. Now, for the first time in English, the eminent art historian Justus Bier accords Riemenschneider the extended attention he so richly deserves. Riemenschneider (ca. 1460–1531) holds a pivotal place in the development of German art. Rejecting the anonymous soulfulness of earlier Gothic sculpture, he created a style reflecting the deeply spiritual character of his time, yet one that also anticipated the humanism of the Italian Renaissance so soon to revolutionize European art. Bier crowns a lifelong study with this reconsideration of Reimenschneider's life and work, with emphasis on works in North American museums. More than 140 photographs illustrate 46 of the artist's major sculptures.

"The color photographs, specially commissioned for this project, are an essential feature of the book. Each altarpiece is illustrated in its entirety, with its wings both opened and closed, and in close-up views of its most important carvings and paintings - details that are not available to the average visitor to these sites."--BOOK JACKET.

Set in the first half of the twentieth century, but reaching back to Bavaria in the late nineteenth century, The Stone Carvers weaves together the story of ordinary lives marked by obsession and transformed by art. At the centre of a large cast of characters is Klara Becker, the granddaughter of a master carver, a seamstress haunted by a love affair cut short by the First World War, and by the frequent disappearances of her brother Tilman, afflicted since childhood with wanderlust. From Ontario, they are swept into a colossal venture in Europe years later, as Toronto sculptor Walter Allward’s ambitious plans begin to take shape for a war memorial at Vimy, France. Spanning three decades, and moving from a German-settled village in Ontario to Europe after the Great War, The Stone Carvers follows the paths of immigrants, labourers, and dreamers. Vivid, dark, redemptive, this is novel of great beauty and power.