Gothic Spirit

(Above) Virgin, 1150 France.

 

Gothic Spirit: Medieval Art from Europe

Luhring Augustine Gallery/Sam Fogg

531West 24th Street, New York, NY

www.luhringaugustine.com

(Exhibition lasts until March 7, 2020)

 

The Luhring Augustine gallery is offering until March 7 a special exhibition of medieval art. What a pleasure to view treasures of medieval art up close, away from the crowds and surrounded  by quiet!  The works cover the entire period of medieval art – with a few outliers before and after that age – and are splendidly illuminated. Yes,  on the whole the exhibits are not colossal masterpieces, but the quality is very high and leading artists are represented: Michel Erhart, Hans Leinberger, Luca della Robbia.

As we might expect, this art is overwhelmingly religious in character. Most of Europe is represented in the exhibition, with perhaps a focus on Germany/the Holy Roman Empire. We encounter art from locations that were in former ages artistic leaders in Europe, like Cologne or Ulm. The uniform quality of the workmanship in artwork created over many centuries and in many different countries is amazing.

(Above) From the Shrine of St Ursula.

We get a sense of the enormity of  losses from the remnants of great artworks that have come down to us. An enameled orb is one of the few  surviving fragments of the magnificent shrine of St Ursula, melted down and destroyed after the occupation of Cologne by French revolutionary armies in the 1790’s. A roundel with a depiction of the Presentation comes from an image of the Virgin surrounded by the mysteries of the Rosary, created by Hans Leinberger of Bavaria.

 

(Above)  One of series of reliefs carved by Hans Leinberger depicting the mysteries of the rosary.

 

(Above and below) Stained glass windows from Cologne, 16th century. We get a sense of this city’s former artistic grandeur, which lasted some six centuries.

 

 

Perhaps most impressive are two wooden sculptures: a highly stylized figure of the Virgin from the earliest beginnings of Gothic art and dramatic crucifixion scene from 16th century Germany, made shortly before this art disappeared in the chaos of the Reformation. You can get from these works an “ideogram” (Ezra Pound)of what medieval Christian art could achieve both at its origin and in its final flowering. This small exhibition gives the visitor a chance to study at close hand examples of the great art that flourished in between these bookends.

(Above) An early Gothic Virgin, France; (Below) 3 figures from a Crucifixion, Ulm 1510-20.