Frankfurt’s Städel Museum has acquired the Virgin and Child Enthroned (around 1320/1330), one of the most important works of medieval sculpture in Germany, made in Cologne for the altarpiece of the abbey church in Altenberg in the state of Hesse.
The work, protected from export due to its national significance, was once enthroned in the altar shrine. The acquisition means the altarpiece can be displayed as a whole, the Madonna reunited with the original altar shrine, on permanent loan to the Städel from the Braunfels castle museum, and with the painted wings of the altarpiece, which the Frankfurt museum has owned for 100 years. The wings are the oldest examples of German painting in the museum’s collection.
“The famous Altenberg Madonna has returned to its rightful place on the altar—a momentous occasion in the history of the Städel Museum,” Philipp Demandt, the museum’s director, said in a press statement.
The Madonna had been in private ownership in southern Germany since the 1920s and on permanent loan to the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich since 1981. It was purchased for the Städel this year with funding from the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States, the Ernst von Siemens Art Kunststiftung, and the Städel Museum Association.
The Altenberg Altar—made by an unknown artist in Cologne—is one of the earliest examples of a “convertible” altarpiece, with a folding mechanism that could meet the changing liturgical requirements of church ceremonies on weekdays, Sundays and holidays. On weekdays, the altarpiece showed the Passion of Christ against a dark background. On Sundays, the partial opening of the altar retable revealed the Madonna figure flanked by images showing scenes from the Virgin Mary’s life. The sculpture dominated the centre of the altar; both Mary and her child are dressed in golden robes, of which the hems are studded with glass flux pieces made to resemble precious stones.
The sculpture, showing Mary and her child dressed in golden robes, dominated the centre of the altar
Photo: Städel Museum – Norbert Miguletz
The sculpture shows Mary as a young woman with a smile, sitting on a bench and holding a lily in her right hand. Her son stands upright with one foot on her left thigh and the other on the bench, while she supports him with her left hand.
Sculptures portraying Mary with the infant Jesus standing were widespread at the time; the Liebighaus in Frankfurt has a figure in a similar form, also from Cologne, dating from around 1350 and a stone Virgin and Child Enthroned from about 1300-1310, probably made in Paris.
