WORKSHOP OF BERNT NOTKE (Hanseatic Region) c. 1480
The mass of Saint Gregory
Panel
Height : 32 cm
Width : 32 cm
Mixed paint and gold background on a prepared wood panel thinned to 2mm thick and laminated
on a new modern wood support of 1,5cm thickness.
Old restorations
The scene takes place inside a chapel closed by a wall in the presence of a cardinal wearing the
tiara of Saint Gregory and two acolytes, an elderly monk, tonsured carrying a book and another younger one.
Saint Gregory (Rome 540-604, Benedictine monk, elected pope in 590), with his head crowned with the halo, wearing a black Benedictine frock
black Benedictine frock covered by a chasuble imitating brocade, is kneeling before the altar, hands
hands raised, thus discovering to the assistants the living Christ standing on the altar.
According to the legend, during this mass, one of the assistants having questioned the Transubstantiation or
real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the pope prayed for a tangible sign to erase this doubt.
doubt. His wish was granted when the Christ bearing the stigmata appeared standing on the altar surrounded by the
symbols of the Passion. The Church granted many indulgences to this representation, which was
widely distributed throughout Christian Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. If in most of the images
illustrating this legend, the blood of Christ flows from the rib wound into the chalice placed on the altar, the
the altar, the author of our painting continues the route towards the souls in limbo who emerge from the steps of the altar, thus
steps of the altar, thus relieved of the torments of purgatory by the prayer of the holy pontiff, a detail rarely
represented.
The still anonymous author of this hitherto unpublished scene probably belongs to the entourage of
sculptor and painter Bernt Notke (Lassan, Pomerania ca. 1440 - Lübeck 1509), one of the most important artistic
of the Hanseatic region at the end of the 15th century. Notke became a citizen of Lübeck in 1481
after having been received as a master in the same city in 1467. He then surrounded himself with an important workshop in order to
to carry out the numerous sculpted or painted commissions he received.
His sculpted work is distinguished by the exuberance of which testify the great triumphal cross of the
cathedral of Lübeck in 1477 and the Saint George fighting the dragon around 1489 in the church of Saint Nicolas
in Stockholm. As a painter he created in Lübeck a large Danse Macabre in the church of St. Mary
and around 1500 a monumental Mass of Saint Gregory (destroyed) for the church of Our Lady where abound
colorful characters, a true gallery of realistic portraits of rich and powerful
(cf. J. Rooseval, "Bernd Notke" in Gazette des Beaux Arts, January
1937, pp. 12-25, fig. 1).
In the altarpiece of St. Clement in the Danish cathedral of Äarhus, made by Notke in 1479, an imposing structure
structure composed of carved parts and painted shutters, the scene of the Mass of St. Gregory is found in the predella in
in the predella in correspondence with a scene from the Passion; it is to a similar arrangement that we must
(cf. K. Petermann, Bernt Notke, Arbeitsweise und
Werkstattorganisation im späten Mittelalter, Berlin 2000, pl. 12). The author takes up the composition and simplifies it
simplified with a somewhat jerky perspective and a somewhat rougher execution; the stretched canon of silhouetted figures is
the stretched out canon of the characters with a frailer silhouette, with hands with expressive fingers, eyes with big
eyes in faces strongly modelled by the action of the light, but with a more developed anecdotal and dynamic sense
anecdotal and dynamic sense. These characters reappear in other scenes of the Äarhus altarpiece
Äarhus altarpiece, such as the Prayer of Christ in the Garden, which is considered a work of the workshop (cf. A. Mänd, Art, cult and patronage,
2013. p.244-245, figs. 5,6)
We are probably dealing here with this fruitful workshop, which must have assisted Bernt Notke at the end of the 15th century in the many
the end of the fifteenth century in the many undertakings he had to carry out on behalf of the ecclesiastics of the
of the great cities of the Baltic Sea.
Expert : Cabinet Eric Turquin
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