Gothic Era

 

Durer's Workshop in Nuremberg, 1495-1505



 

Portrait of a Man
c. 1504
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

The Jabach Altarpiece


Two wings (inner side)

 

The Jabach Altarpiece
The Saints Joseph and Joachim
The Saint Simeon and LLazarus
1504

 

The Jabach Altarpiece



Two wings (inner side)

The Saints Joseph and Joachim

The Saint Simeon and LLazarus
 

No documents exist that show what the original composition of the socalled Jabach Altar was.
Neither do we know who the patron was nor where he was originally placed. Naturally, hypotheses about this are not in short supply.
The name "Jabach Altar" goes back to an indication made by De Noel, a local scholar of the history of Cologne, that the altar was located in the family chapel in the house of the Jabach family of Cologne. Maybe the famous Parisian banker and collector Everhard IV Jabach (1618-95) had it sent to his father's house, especially since he collected Durer's drawings. Even at that time, the side wings existed without the central panel.
While the hypothesis that the patron was Frederick the Wise hangs in the air, many clues indicate that the first seat of the altar was in a locality in Saxony, perhaps in the church of the Wittenberg castle. A drawing exists by Cranach's school, which was active in Saxony. This drawing shows a copied and recomposed version of the story of Job and his wife, which is the subject of the exposed wings at the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum. These, in turn, would become, from technical operations executed on the wood of all four of the panels, the posterior face of those on which the four saints are represented. Once the wings are closed, the story of Job is recomposed, as mentioned for the drawing above.
The panels have undergone, over time, modifications to the upper edges. As far as the central panel is concerned, of which no trace remains, Flechsig (1928) has hypothesized that it was a representation of a "Anna Selbdritt" e.g. Saint Anne, The Madonna and the Christ Child.
The proposal seems acceptable, since it is almost unthinkable that Saint Joseph and Saint Joachim were portrayed together without the Virgin Mary and Saint Anne.
For this, Anzelewsky (1991) proposed the drawing W 222. The inscriptions on the saints' halos would support Flechsig's proposal: "Joseph Maria Gemahel" (Joseph, Mary's husband) and "Joachim Marie Vat[er]" (Joachim, Mary's father). In addition, Joachim is represented in the midst of a vision, and Simeon, who, upon his introduction to Christ in the temple, took him in his arms and prophesied great sufferings to Maria, holds his hands in an adoring gesture.
The four panels, unfortunately, are not very well preserved. Despite the Durer's monogram present in all four, and despite the preparatory drawing of Saint Lazarus, it is held that at least the doors with the four saints were painted with the assistance of the workshop. The gold background is probably an unusual return to the medieval manner.

The Jabach Altarpiece


Two wings (external part)

Job and His Wife

Two Musicians


The episode of the mocking of Job does not exist in the Book of Job in the Old Testament. It probably came from the influence of the Biblia pauperum, which speaks of the mocking as a prefiguration to the torments of Christ. It is a rare subject in painting. Durer interprets it with a scene in which Job is mocked by his wife: she pours a bucket of water on the poor man's naked body, which is covered with sores, and he, seated on a pile of dung, resignedly endures it; meanwhile, two minstrels join the scene by playing their instruments. In the background, at the top left, a rain of fire destroys the house of Job's eldest son.
A servant, however, manages to escape. We see him, a tiny figure running away from the burning house. To match this miniature scene, there is an illustration of another disgrace suffered by Job, in the background on the bottom right, behind the musicians: the assault of "three groups of Babylonian plunderers having mounted your camels and having killed all your men."
One link between the story of Job and the four saints represented in the other panels is that both Job and Lazarus are invoked as protectors from the plague. The Pre-Alpine landscape of the background and the wife's train pass from one panel to the next without breaking the continuity, thus demonstrating what has been said regarding the probable original composition of the altarpiece. The study of the bodies is impressive: the old nude and motionless Job, and his wife clad in typical Nuremberg dress pouring the water; and the minstrels, the one with the flute and the one with the little drum, the latter bearing a certain resemblance to Durer. In the depiction of the two musicians that Durer seems to have tried to represent the balance between motion and stasis of the Polycletus canon, the contrapposto, yet again. This occurs in both figures individually and in their reciprocal interaction: between the frontal position of the drummer, and the flutist, viewed from behind, moving toward him.
 

Adoration of the Magi

The elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony ordered this painting for the Schlosskirche (the church in the castle) in Wittenberg. It was once believed to be the central part of a polyptych, with, on the side wings, the story of Job, in Frankfurt and Cologne. However, this hypothesis has already been called into question by Panofsky (1948) (Anzelewsky 1991). The elector of Saxony then donated the painting to Emperor Rudolph II in 1603. An exchange with the Presentation at the Temple by Fra Bartolomeo brought it in 1 793 from the gallery in Vienna to the Uffizi. This altarpiece was probably conceived without the lateral panels, in contrast with the actual practice in Nordic countries, and at variance with the situation of the Paumgartner altarpiece. Durer framed and delimited a large space by an architecture composed of arches of a very refined perspective. The three kings arrived at this slightly elevated space from the back and after having climbed two steps. A single figure, sharplv foreshortened, followed in their footsteps from the distant background. Only the upper half of his body is shown where he now stands at the bottom of the two steps. He is Oriental and wearing a turban. The heavy traveling bag he holds probably contains precious gifts for the infant Jesus.
The Madonna is clad in azure clothes and cape, a white veil covering her head. She is holding out the infant, who is wrapped in her white veil, to the eldest king. He is offering the infant a gold casket with the image of Saint George, which the infant has already taken with his right hand. This is the only action that unfolds in the principal scene, except for the Oriental servant's gesture of putting his hand in his bag. All the other characters are motionless; immersed in thought, they look straight ahead or sideways, creating the effect of a staged spectacle set with immobile characters.
The architecture of the fictive ruins behind the Madonna is beautiful and imaginative. Durer had previously experimented with this design in drawings and engravings. The background is stupendous: the limpid sky, in which the cumulus clouds chase one another; the light Nordic city, climbing up the conelike mountain; the road bending into the archway where people stop, following behind the three kings. These are represented with much imagination and variety, as far as the fashion and color of their clothes and the differences in their expressions. In the far right are a lake and a boat.
This imagination and variety continue in the extraordinary depiction of the kings, in lavish clothing, with their precious jewels, and with the beautiful goblets and caskets that they bear as gifts. It is telling here that Durer was also an expert goldsmith. According to the Nordic tradition, also adopted previously by Mantegna in Italy, one of the kings is a Moor. The physiognomy of the young king with long blond curly hair, standing in the middle of the painting, bears, according to recent interpretation, a resemblance to a self-portrait of Durer. Panofsky attributes a Leonardesque character to him.
Durer was passionately devoted to the study of animals and plants, which he reproduced faithfully from life. See the numerous colored drawings and water-colors: the Leveret and the Bouquet of Violets, from 1502, or the Great Piece of Turf from 1503, just to mention a few.
He often distributed these images in his landscape passages, and particularly in his drawings and engravings of the Madonna. We find some here as well: in the foreground, to the right, a flying deer, already known from various watercolors (Koreny, 1985), which here symbolizes Christ; the plantain (plantago major) seen directly behind, whose healing properties were once much appreciated, recalls the spilled blood of Christ; in the foreground, now to the left, on the millstone beside the carnation, a small coleopterum surrounded by a few butterflies, the ancient symbol of the soul, which here may be a symbol of the resurrection.
The panel of the Uffizi represents the richest and most mature actualization of all Diurer's altarpieces, before his second trip to Italy, and therefore before the Feast of the Rose Garlands, painted in Venice.