Lot 399: A PAIR OF GERMAN BRONZE RELIEFS OF THE MOURNING VIRGIN AND SAINT JOHN, FROM THE WORKSHOP OF HERMANN VISCHER THE YOUNGER (1486-1517), CIRCA 1510, NUREMBERG

A PAIR OF GERMAN BRONZE RELIEFS OF THE MOURNING VIRGIN AND SAINT JOHN, FROM THE WORKSHOP OF HERMANN VISCHER THE YOUNGER (1486-1517), CIRCA 1510, NUREMBERG from a Crucifixion group, copper-brown patina with traces of gilding, Saint John with several raised cross-shaped symbols on the reverse. heights 13 1/2 in. and 13 3/8 in.; 34.3 and 34 cm

San Francisco, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Abbott Guggenheim Collection, 3 March-11 September 1988, no. 49

L. Camins, Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Abbott Guggenheim Collection, San Francisco, 1988, no. 49, pp. 140-141
M. H. Schwartz (ed.), European Sculpture from the Abbott Guggenheim Collection, New York, 2008, no. 67, pp. 132-133

Dr. Hubert Wilm, Munich, sold Lempertz, Cologne, December 3, 1952, nos. 227-228
Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, November 22-23, 1985, lot 100

The present pair of reliefs originally flanked a crucifix and were probably made for attachment to a stone slab. The broad swathes of heavy drapery punctuated with small gatherings of crumpled folds is consistent with the work of the Vischer family of sculptors from Nuremberg, and particularly close to the reliefs made for St. Mary's Basilica in Kraków by Hermann Vischer the Younger. The designs depend ultimately upon drawings by Albrecht Dürer, and the peculiar position of the hands of both figures are seen also in a painted Crucifixion, the Epitaph for Georg Rayl, of about 1494-95 in Nuremberg.

RELATED LITERATURE

Gothic and Renaissance Art in Nuremberg, 1300-1550 (exh. cat.), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1986, no. 42, pp. 172-173