HEINRICH VOGHTEER THE ELDER (DILLINGEN, 1490 - VIENNA, 1556) - Lot 47

HEINRICH VOGHTEER THE ELDER (DILLINGEN, 1490 - VIENNA, 1556) The Adoration of the Magi Panel, one board not parqueted, painted on the reverse Height : 110 cm Width : 82 cm On the reverse : vegetal decoration of interlaced branches and fruits At the top a phylactery in Hebrew supported by seraphim Dated 1518 lower left and a signature: The initials can be read as "Henricus Satrapitanus", as liked to call himself (Emmendörfer 1998.). Old restorations, cracks Bibliography: Trudy Battaille de Stappens de Nieuwenhove, "Ein verschollenes Meisterwerk von 1518 ist aufgetaucht; Heinrich Vogtherr d. Ä. als Maler; A lost masterpiece of Heinrich Vogtherr der Ä. dated 1518 resurfaces", 28-page brochure from 2008 (one copy of this very detailed study is in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie in The Hague (library, no. 187416), another is available at the study. Heinrich Vogtherr was known and studied for a long time in the 19th and 20th century mainly through his numerous engravings and writings. Like most of the great artists of the German Renaissance, he was at the same time an altarpiece painter, occasionally a stained glass artist, a book illustrator and an engraver. His pictorial work has only recently been rediscovered, and our painting of 1518 is chronologically one of the earliest of these to have come down to us (along with the Martyrdom of St. Erasmus, Staatsgalerie Aschaffenburg, 1516). From about 1514 to 1517, Vogtherr stayed in Leipzig several times. It is assumed that he studied or even worked at times in the studio of Lucas Cranach the Elder in Wittenberg (Saxony). He returned to Augsburg in 1518, in southern Germany, at the time of the Diet. Two years later, in 1520, he signed, or rather put his monogram on the counter-altar of the church in Schwaigern, which is kept in the Baden-Württemberg Regional Museum in Stuttgart (Württembergisches Landesmuseum); This was followed by Christ and the Adulteress, ca. 1521, in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, and two monumental frescoes, the Last Judgment, ca. 8 m high, and the Annunciation in the church of Bad Wimpfen, ca. 1523, which were extensively restored around 1870. It seems that he then devoted himself to the diffusion of the Reformation through his printing activities, his woodcuts, his polemical writings and his hymns, rather than through his paintings. The presence of the chalice and the host held by the saint, shows a Roman Catholic iconography, usual in 1518, but one can suppose that the artist would not have represented them any more once he became Protestant. Because of its precise date, this masterpiece of German painting is situated at a pivotal moment in European political history and art history. At the end of 1517, Luther published his Ninety-Five Theses, which led to his final break with Rome in 1521. A year later, the Diet of Ausburg, which brings together the great of the Empire and representatives of imperial cities, sees the presence in the city of our painter of the Emperor Maximilian, Martin Luther who must explain himself before the legate of Rome, but also artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Bernard Strigel or Hans Burgkmair. During the decade of 1510, German artists were confronted with the recent advances of the Italian High Renaissance and had to react: here we discover a geometric perspective and in the background palaces, and the two domes, perhaps of a synagogue, which reflect the buildings in the style of the Antiquity in the Peninsula. It is in this context that our Adoration of the Magi was created, various influences intersect in an original formulation. As with most painters of the time, the influence of Dürer's engravings can be seen, the representation of specific animal species, the physical type of the Madonna is similar to that of Leonhard Beck of Augsburg, while the two Saints Catherine - holding the sword - and Barbara, elegant and the cherubs recall the world of Lucas Cranach. Finally, the opening on a landscape is reminiscent of the Danube School and Altdorfer. Expert : Cabinet Turquin