Details

LOT 0360

Large Medieval Virgin and Child with Saint Anne from the Workshop of Niklaus Weckmann

ULM, GERMANY, CIRCA 1520 A.D.

35 5/8 in. (26.75 kg, 90.5 cm wide).

A carved limewood scene of the Virgin Mary, infant Jesus and Saint Anne from the workshop of Niklaus Weckmann; to the left, Virgin Mary seated wearing a long crimson robe with a gold mantle around her shoulders and hips, and a white band disappearing beneath her copious auburn hair; Saint Anne seated to the right, wearing a white veil and wimple with yellow linear detailing, russet-tan robe over a cream-white undershift visible at the sleeves, sky-blue mantle wrapped around her lower body; infant Jesus naked standing between the two females in lively pose with arms spread wide. [No Reserve]

Provenance

with Christie's, France, 16 June 2016, lot 10.
Ex central London gallery.
Accompanied by an academic report by Dr Raffaele D’Amato.

Literature

See Sismann, G., Sculptures Européens & Objects d’Art, Paris, 2012, for similar; Preising, D., A Neo-Gothic Carver’s Collection of Gothic Sculptures, meaning and function, Aachen, 2018, no.13; on the work of Weckmann see Württembergischen Landesmuseum Stuttgart, Meisterwerke massenhaft. Die Bildhauerwerkstatt des Niklaus Weckmann und die Malerei in Ulm um 1500, Stuttgart, 1993.

Footnotes

Niklaus Weckmann was a sculptor and woodcarver who was active in Ulm between 1481 and 1526. He produced a number of remarkable carved altarpieces and other religious sculpture and his workshop was one of the largest in Ulm. Weckmann's output had been attributed to Jörg Syrlin the Younger (c.1455-1523) until restoration work on the statue of St Stephen of Gundelfingen revealed his signature and the date 1528.

Originally placed in the centre of an altarpiece, this important composition of three characters had to be surrounded by painted and sculpted scenes around the iconography of ‘Trinitarian Saint Anne’. This subject was very much in vogue at the end of the 15th century.

The timber shows some old insect flight holes and we are advised that this piece has been recently treated with Permethrin, as a precaution.