19 May 2010
The Nuremberg Holy-Spirit Retable
First Presentation
Following several years of negotiations, Kolumba has been able to integrate into its collection a significant winged altar from the middle of the 15th century thanks to the considerable support by the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation and the Art Foundation of the Länder. The retable had been commissioned as an altar ledge for the Twelve-Apostles Altar in the Church at the Hospital of the Holy Spirit in Nuremberg. This altar once stood in a chapel donated by the Nuremberg Master of the Mint, Herdegen Valzner, which his widow Margarethe (died 1448/49) most likely commissioned shortly before her own death from the leading workshop in Nuremberg at the time, referred to as the “Master of the Wolfgang Altar”, after another altar retable of the time. Kolumba’s newly acquired altar impresses us with its concentration on what is essential to the iconography, how it conveys the promise of salvation inherent to it, as well as with the simplicity of its painting style, its clarity being in no way schematized but rich in variation. This painterly clarity, which seems fresh and authentic even today, attests to the high artistic prowess of the Nuremberg master and his workshop. This important addition to the Kolumba Collection will be shown apart from the annual change in the collection’s hanging, and introduced for the first time, very fittingly, at the Feast of Pentecost.
(Book publication) (view film)