Tilman Riemenschneider: German Late Gothic Sculptor - Join The Lights

Riemenschneider was the son of the mint master of Würzburg and opened a highly successful workshop there in 1483. As a civic leader, he was councillor (1504–20) and burgomaster (1520–25). During the Peasants’ War (1524–25), he sympathized fire pits sam’s club with the revolutionaries and was imprisoned for a short time, during which he temporarily lost his civic responsibilities and patrons. His hobby became his profession and, since 1966, wood-craft has been Haseidl’s livelihood.

It has been imagined by romantic historians that this unpleasant experience explained why Riemenschneider did little more work after his release. Master H.L.’s fantasia in Breisach, dated 1526, was the last of the line. If you need a guidebook for visiting Germany we recommend the DK Eyewitness Germany Travel Guide or the Lonely Planet Germany Travel Guide.

They would harvest trees in the winter so they were in a dormant state when cut down, reducing the amount of excess moisture content in the branches and leaves. The wood carvers would also look for trees which are growing in the shade of other larger trees. These linden trees would be smaller and would have suffered stunted growth from lack of sunlight, this meant that the tree rings would be closer together and the wood be more denser and stable for carving. This was the moment of the Reformation — a profound shift in religious belief. Even in areas that remained Catholic, there was little demand for images that placed the sacred and the saints so compellingly before the eyes of the faithful.

Nonetheless, a surprising amount of limewood sculpture survives, most of it in the German-speaking world, and a good deal in the churches for which it was originally made. The wood for those large sculptures came from a mighty lime, felled in the forest of St Sebald on 12 March 1517, as we know from the patron’s account book. Limewood — softer, closer-grained and less liable to warp than oak or walnut — was highly prized.

The average piece can take anywhere from two days to multiple weeks to complete, he said. One of his favorite pieces that required the most work was a scene from a story passed down about a Green Beret Soldier on a sled with six rabbits running alongside through the woods. His interest in carving started when he was a boy watching his father carve on the family farm. When Demmel turned 15, he started an apprenticeship with a master carver. He still remembers his first project being a Trojan horse plaque made of walnut that he had to sand down. We invite you to send further details about existing articles or submit articles on other topics in Kansas history.

The limewood sculptures are spread over a wide area of southern central Europe. The farthest east are in modern-day Poland and the Czech Republic, the southernmost at Bolzano in Italy. Half a millennium ago, all these places — and also Alsace — were part of a wider German-speaking world. But the heartland of Renaissance limewood sculpture lay in the modern German states of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg.

In 1504, he was elected a councillor of the city, an office which he held for some 20 years and which brought him a number of lucrative commissions. In 1505 he was selected to appear in the official welcoming party for Emperor Maximilian I when he visited the city. My guess — and it is just a guess — is that it was a result of the distant influence of the Italian masters, who left their bronze and marble figures unadorned. The Germans did the same with their most prized material, the wood of the linden tree. Some carvings from the late 15th and early 16th century, particularly by Riemenschneider, were not painted in living colours but treated only with honey-hued varnish that left them looking beautifully, well, woody.