from NZZ am Sonntag, 6th March 2011
The world
Konrad Witz awakened one of the great realists of the early 15th Century, yet not particularly known
By Gerhard Mack
At the right edge of the Rhone-island rises to the Château de l'Ile in the picture. From left approaches a cavalcade of Geneva. On the meadows, men practice archery. Lakeside women wash clothes. In the background the Alps are visible to Mont Blanc. "The Miraculous Draught of Fishes" from the Sea of Galilee will be held on Lake Geneva. Jesus floats on the water. Peter is depressed, because he got scared, as the Evangelist Matthew says. His garment bags below the surface and are recognizing his bare legs. The painting is the most famous work of Konrad Witz, and the first landscape portrait of early modern art, not nature staffages a salvation-historical event does, but almost verismo, was the focus.
that we know their Creator at all and it exists for over a century of art history, we have to thank the frame on which he as "magister Conrad sapientis de Basilea," the picture in 1444 painted, has declared. It was one of a presumed three-winged altarpiece for the cathedral in Geneva and was living stations of the patron saint Peter. His client was François de Metz, Bishop of Geneva, who was a cardinal at the Council of Basel and to the powers of the council against the papacy and the election of the antipope Felix V. supported. During the sessions of the 18 years of college, he has probably seen the great altar that had Konrad Witz painted for the church of St. Leonard, which was held in a part of the Council meetings.
Fast career
from the prestigious painters, we do not know much. He was probably born around 1400 and came before 1434 from Rottweil Baden Basel. This year he is in the guild added to the sky in which to organize the painters and saddlers, and acquires the rights of citizenship. In 1441 he receives from the city's lucrative contract painting in the Granary at St Peter's Square. Two years later he is married and bought for 350 guilders a stately home. And 1447 his wife is already out by the authorities as a widow. He leaves behind a considerable legacy from which it is said that he had earned it with his craft. What he has painted everything is not known. Much was lost in the iconoclasm of the Reformation, wall paintings, such as the famous Basel Totentanz at the preacher church fell victim to time. Other works such as the Book of Hours of Louis of Savoy, after all, tell of his influence. The Kunstmuseum Basel is now, after years of research and restoration work, the first comprehensive retrospective. The work is in its context classified images that are no longer able to travel, we have carefully reproduced.
Who now in Basel, the few remaining frames and tables, can enjoy from large altars learns today, why picture knowledgeable contemporaries such as the Bishop of Geneva this artist orders thoughtful. Konrad Witz saw the reality with new eyes and brought them into the picture, like a painter on the Upper Rhine had done before him. When Mary's parents meet Anna and Joachim at the Golden Gate in Jerusalem, because they have experienced in a dream that they have a child, Witz painted spider webs into the stone gatehouse and reflected in a puddle. During take the St. Catherine and Magdalena in a nave to religious exchange, he shows by an altar candle in the background, only the reflection of the flame. And the knight Sibbecai his armor for the audience with King David so highly polished that every sword scar is visible and even the garb of his follower is reddish number there.
How to paint the sparkle of precious stones and the crackle of the materials may look different as water, such as shadow space depth Generate Konrad Witz learned from the Dutch colleagues. Presumably, he has traveled to Bruges and Brussels, works of Rogier van der Weyden and the Master of Flémalle has seen and worked even in the studio of Jan van Eyck. The Mystic Lamb, completed the set of 1432, he knew very well. On his own altar panels, the shadows return, throw in the van Eyck, the wooden frames, which hold the plates in the represented world. The reflections of windows, the colored glow of light on substances and which seems from the picture to us outstanding objects joke is from the colleague brought to the Upper Rhine and connected with his massive sculptural language.
existential drama
We see such artistry today, especially the picture strategic refinement of a painter, considered one of the first, the boundary between the real world and has painted the fiction plays around and developed a new image consciousness. How much of this realism is nevertheless involved in the mediation Christian salvation history, showing the Christopher, which is located in Basel. A body of water bordered by jagged cliffs. While Fischer and Charterhouse in the background signal Idyll, played the front from a drama. A giant with a child through the water. The shore in front of him, but he falls already up to their knees in the deep, his back is bent, soaked his cloak. The boy on his shoulders down so hard that splintered the tree trunk to which it is based.
joke does not show the giant, the boy Jesus with sovereign through the water. He paints the weight of the world, the Son of God sets him on the shoulder. He is a Christian atlas that breaks almost at that weight. The psychological distress, the risk that their legs buckle and a messenger with his precious commodity sinks in water, is everywhere apparent. The divine child has hit rock in this world and the people threatening to overwhelm. Redemption to the crunch, the existential border phenomenon. Salvation falls, and whom it applies, who is at risk. Since the artist can paint no matter how carefully each wave. The world is not to comprehend the most precise realism no more than a chimera.
Konrad Witz: Kunstmuseum Basel, 6 3. - 3 7. Catalog: Hatje Cantz, CHF 90 -.
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