The day after the epic trek up the mountain to commune with Riemenschneider, the weather was still wonderful. I decided to spend the day wandering around the rest of historical Wurzburg.
Before I get to that though, a footnote about the the rest of the Marienburg Fortress Museum. There were other wood sculptures from about the same period as Tilman.
Some of them very good.
There were fantastic examples of metal craftsmanship.
I particularly liked these safes, made to look like chests to fit in with the decor of your upscale medieval house.
I was amused by a painting of the god Vulcan giving craft hints to the court locksmith Johann Georg Oegg in his workshop.
Modestly seems not to have been much valued, but judging by the beauty of this lock, he was right to be proud.
Although the paintings were, as one would expect in a smallish German city of no particular renown, not exactly masterpieces. I was charmed by the portraits though. No effort to make these homely burghers and their wives look any more beautiful than they were in real life. Not for them the lavishly embroidered clothes and masses of precious jewels seen in royal portraits.
But I’m sure Frau Maria Schmitt was very proud of her pearls. Undoubtedly the handmade lace adorning her neckline and sleeves would have been worth a small fortune.
So the prosperous Herr Schmitt with his huge cuffs and sober black on black embroidery must have been doing quite well for himself to provide those things for his wife.
The portrait of the von Zobel zu Giebelstadt family actually made me take a step back while I huffed out a laugh.
No attempt whatsoever at flattery here. Long faces, long noses; round chins, double chins – all are on unabashed display. Even the little dog – or is it a cat?? – is unattractive.
My first though was that it must have been painted by some low talent regional artist. The sign told me the perpetrator was one Januarius Zick. My enjoyment was immense when I next came upon his own self-portrait, done in 1757, a year after he came back from studying in Paris, and a decade or more before the von Zobel work.
Isn’t he just the image of the Romantic Artist, where he gazes intently at the viewer? Quite different from his treatment of the von Zobel family. Of course I had to look him up. Zick trained as a muralist, and in fact painted the murals in the Garden Room of the Residenz, in 1750.
Was that the apogee of his career? A decade or two later, was the fiery young man in the self-portrait earning his bread by painting aggressively realistic paintings of ugly Wurzburg burghers and their families?
This is one of the few portraits I’ve come across in a museum up to the 20th century which are not of the Virgin Mary or some other goddess, or someone’s wife.
The Mother Superior Maria Rosa, Abbess of the St. Agnes Cloister in Lauingen in 1754, looks quite pleased with herself, and so she should be. By commissioning this painting, she’s managed to preserve her success down the generations, in her own right, and not just as the possession of some man.
It was rather chilling to come across business correspondence between the museum and the Nazi regime, noting property being expropriated from the Jews and sent to the museum.
It is very business like – inventories and receipts, epitomising the banality of evil. But as I’ve said before, bravo to the Germans for owning their past.
In general, the ‘historic’ buildings in Wurzburg are reconstructions or reproductions. A large part of the city was destroyed by Allied bombing in WWII. Although it had no major armaments industries, on March 16, 1945, 225 Lancaster bombers dropped 400 tonnes of high explosive bombs and 300,000 stick type incendiary bombs. Within seventeen minutes, Wurzburg was destroyed down to the ground by a firestorm. 90% of the historic city was obliterated and 5000 civilians were killed. Wurzburg suffered proportionately greater damage than even Dresden, which had been firebombed the previous month. To visit the city now, you would never know this. Over the two decades following the war, the city was painstakingly rebuilt. A great portion of the work in the immediate aftermath of the war, was done by ‘rubble women’, who picked through the remains of the historic buildings and carefully preserved the pieces for reconstruction. The men were either dead or prisoners of war.
The tower of the ‘old university’ (1402) is one of the few monuments to survive the war.
There are various murals scattered on buildings here and there.
The city has a great light rail system.
I came across some nice shops, fountains some interesting buildings and street art.
I started the day with a visit to the Residenz, the palace of the Prince-Bishops of Wurzburg. It seemed to be a kind of a miniature Versailles wannabe.
I am told it is one of the grandest Baroque palaces in Europe.
There are extensive gardens, but this early in April, they were barren.
The conical trees had satyrs to amuse visitors at least.
The first room one comes upon is the Garden Hall.
As noted above the painted ceiling was done by our friend Zick, after his return from Paris in 1760
The stunning great staircase is the highlight without a doubt.
It was conceived and created by Balthasar Neumann, whose name is as ubiquitous in the Baroque buildings of Wurzburg, as Haussmann’s was in 19th century Paris.
Giovanni Tiepolo, who revolutionized the art of fresco decoration, was summoned from Venice to Wurzburg in 1750 to create ceiling paintings for the Residenz. He was there, with his sons, for three years. Tiepolo and his son were accommodated in the ‘ordinary bedrooms’ of the Residenz.
If the other Tiepolo were anything like the Green Lacquer room, they were anything but ordinary.
The unusual effect there was created by applying green glaze on a sliver base. Damage from the war has darkened them, but the silver still shimmers through in places.
Tiepolo’s ultimate masterpiece was the ceiling fresco for the grand staircase.
It is the largest fresco in the world, depicting the continents of Asia, Europe. Africa and he Americas. The central portion shows Apollo, the patron of art, surrounded by deities representing the planets.
Personally, I liked the dog.
The survival of the staircase and Tiepolo’s masterpieces is something of an epic story. As a result of the bombing, most of the roofs, wooden ceilings and floors in the Residenz were destroyed and the surviving stone vaults by Balthasar Neumann were exposed to the elements. Enter Davis Skilton, Second Lieutenant in the Monuments and Fine Arts Section of the American Army.
He was stationed in Wurzburg from June to October 1945. Along with a number of colleagues, he did what was almost impossible in a bombed out city with innumerable demands for materials and workers. He somehow found lumber, tar paper and cement amidst the war shortages, sufficient to build makeshift roofs over the most important areas of the Residenz. Thanks to him and his unit, Tiepolo’s frescos, the Grand staircase and the Imperial Hall were saved from utter ruin by rain and mould.
I’m not generally wowed by tapestries, but I have to say that the ones in the Residenz, depicting various battle of Alexander the Great, were pretty stunning.
They were manufactured in Brussels, and considering they are over three hundred years old, the colours are amazing. The horses were particularly full of personality.
More stunning was the Mirror Room.
It was created using a ‘reverse glass painting’ technique.
This too was destroyed by the bombs. It took eight years to reconstruct it.
This carousel was moved among many different palaces during its life, which probably explains how it survived the bombing. It was constructed around 1806 for Grand Duke Ferdinand III’s kids. The carousel was pushed by servants, while the children shot arrows or spears through the hoops or at the targets. I suppose for the time, that was not in any way considered remarkable. Better than cleaning the chamber pots I guess.
Ferdinand III was the uncle of Marie-Louise of Austria. She was the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor/Emperor of Austria. Marie-Louise became Empress of France by virtue of becoming the second wife of Napoleon, after he divorced Josephine because she had not produced any children for him. Lucky Marie-Louise. How it must have rankled the Emperor of Austria to have to give one of his Imperial daughters to the Corsican upstart. And how satisfying it must have been for both Marie-Louise and her father the Emperor when Napoleon was defeated and exiled and she got to go home.
Napoleon and Marie-Louise stayed at the Residenz in this bedroom.
Fun fact – the end tables have doors in the back that conceal chamber pots.
Speaking of chamber pots, what’s up with the signs on the modern toilets?
I saw these signs in numerous bathrooms in Germany.
Large parts of the Residenz have not been restored. One empty gallery houses some unremarkable German paintings. The only one that caught my eye, was this one of the Court Chancellor.
His secretary only gets a literal look in, peering into the painting from the side, his demeanour suitably humble, focused on his patron.
The last thing on the tour was the Baroque chapel of the Prince Bishop.
It’s what Trump aspires to in his New York apartment and his sad little gilded additions to the White House. The Prince Bishop could follow the mass from the glassed in oratory or the west gallery. If he conducted mass himself, he could do so from the gallery altar and access it without using the stairs from his apartments on the main floor of the Residenz.
When I came out, looking to find my way to the cathedral, there was a little toy tourist train, stopped at what turned out to be its one and only station.
It was leaving in fifteen minutes, so on a whim, I paid my ten euros and got on. I didn’t see anything that I hadn’t seen walking around, but it was the most pure silly fun I have had, maybe since John died. It was worth it if only to listen to the German woman giving the commentary in mangled English on the headsets, all with a dour Germanic, joyless attitude – “und here ve see the fountain of Franconia, mit de statue of the famous author Franzunterdenelindenwinterhlatesemmerschmdit (not that but about thirty syllables of some name I had never heard of).
The fountain also had a statue of Riemenschneider, who I did recognise.
The cathedral was interesting too. It is the fourth largest Romanesque church building in Germany, dedicated to St. Kilian. Construction started in 1040, and it was consecrated in 1187. You would be hard pressed to find any of those medieval elements now.
The building was heavily damaged by the bombing and then the nave collapsed in 1946. Reconstruction was completed 1967.
Rather than go with the original style, it was largely plastered, stuccoed and painted white. At first I was rather dismissive of it, but as I walked around and the light poured in, I actually kind of fell in love with it.
Modern elements had been tastefully incorporated. I was struck by the modern Pieta in front of a golden screen with the cross in the corner.
The Christ on the cross over the altar, kind of looks like a zombie, but there is no denying the impact. His suffering is not made pretty; not romanticised.
There was even a black Jesus.
Beauty was everywhere, some modern, some old.
This fellow looks quite fey.
This chubby man looks like he enjoyed a good dinner. The skulls at the sides and bottom remind all viewers to eat, drink and be merry for death comes for us all.
Rather than an ornate gilded or painted ceiling, this modern art was chosen.
For the life of me, I can’t see what it is supposed to be. The one on the left looks vaguely like a penguin. That’s all I’ve got.
I had been eager to see the cathedral because it contains two of Riemenschneider’s most famous works, the ‘epitaphs’ of Bishops Rudolph von Scherenberg and Lorenz von Bibra. I asked a lady volunteer where they could be found and she pointed me back to the right.
I retraced my steps and found two marble sculptures which were generally where the guide indicated I should go. I wanted to admire them, and they were both quite well done, but I was kind of disappointed.
The entire style seemed wrong. I knew Reimenschneider worked in marble, but these, I thought, were not his best work and I didn’t really see what the fuss was about. But then I am not an art expert by any measure.
After that, I walked down the main aisle.
My eye was immediately drawn to two figures on the side. Wow. These, I thought were better than the Riemenschneiders on the wall. I wondered who did them.
Yep, these magnificent effigies were actually the Riemenschneiders, one in wood and one sculpted from stone.
They are incredible. I’d have to say the pinnacle of his works that I have seen.
I always thought of an ‘epitaph’ as a written commemoration of a dearly departed, but these are something like effigies but not placed on graves. They were done some years apart. The wooden one on the left, is Bishop von Scherenberg is and late Gothic (high medieval). The stone sculpture on the right is Bishop Von Bibra and Renaissance in period.
One can see the difference in styles.
Von Scherenberg’s face is jowly with age. His mouth turns down. He looks up and to the right.
He is overall much more human than Von Bibra.
This bishop stands upright, remote, smoother faced – more representative of the idea of the chosen of god, than a human being.
The detail on the stone sculpture is mostly uninteresting – heraldic shields and standard issue cherubs.
While the wood effigy also has heraldic elements they are much more interesting, with noble lions carved into the woods and angels with individualistic faces.
There were other Riemenschneiders displayed in modern ways.
Here is Mary in a radically different stone setting than anything Riemenschneider would have done.
Three Reimenschneiders were placed together in a similar way.
This fellow on his own, by contrast, looks quite unremarkable.
In addition to the Riemenschneider works, there were other gorgeous examples of medieval sculpture.
This bishop looks to be in the rudest of good health, despite being, ya know, dead.
And am I crazy, or does that look like the sinking Titanic at the top??
The cathedral had signs devoted to the bombing which was mostly, it seems, like Dresden and Cologne, in retaliation for the German bombing of Coventry. Humanity is capable of creating such beauty, and such horrors.
The light flooded in, the white walls shone, and I sat there admiring these great works of art and thinking how incredibly lucky I am to have been able to come there and see them.
Next stop was the Neumunster church.
This had even more modern design elements than the cathedral. We had another realistic Jesus on the cross.
And the stations of the cross were so modern, I couldn’t really tell what they were supposed to signify.
The original church was built where the so-called Franconian apostles Kilian, Colman and Totnan were supposedly martryed. The bombing in 1945 destroyed most of the interior of the church, including Riemenschneider’s busts of the three martyred saints.
Believe it or not, these are just very good reproductions.
I didn’t enter the Marienkapelle, whose white exterior trimmed with red makes it distinctive.
The Riemenschneider figures of Adam and Eve, now in the museum, once stood to either side of the church doord.
The Marienkapelle stands on the site of a Jewish synagogue which was destroyed in a pogrom in April 1349. Wikipedia tells us that it is not known whether building a chapel dedicated to Mary there was intended as atonement for the murder of the local Jews or as atonement for having earlier tolerated the presence of ‘christ killers’.
I can’t figure out what is going on in this Gothic Arched doorway It looks like Christ has two swords pointing at his head.
And if that is a cross at the middle right, where is the top piece?
My last stop was to grab an ice cream cone at the market adjacent to the Marienkapelle.
That white asparagus looked delicious but I passed on to the chocolate.
On to more cities on my Reimenschneider pilgrimage.