Corine Schleif

Nicodemus and Sculptors: Self-Reflexivity in Works by Adam Kraft and Tilman Riemenschneider

Self-portraits integrated within narrative scenes by Adam Kraft and Tilman Riemenschneider show a pious identification between the sculptor and the holy person Nicodemus, an association based on the notion that Nicodemus had carved a crucifix. This dual referencing was expanded in the Middle Ages, when artists developed strategies for self-fashioning that were in keeping with the provisions of their commissions and their own concept of self. By presenting themselves as commentator and interlocutor, Kraft and Riemenschneider negotiated their places within the various discourses in which their sculpture participated.

The Proper Attitude Toward Death: Windowpanes Designed for the House of Canon Sixtus Tucher

A pair of stained-glass trefoils dating from 1502 presents an iconography unique within the vast field of late medieval art and literature focusing on death. Recent discoveries confirm the provenance of the glass as the Tucher House in the Grassersgasse in Nuremberg and the identity of the patron as Canon Sixtus Tucher. The roots of this commission can be traced through several channels: Sixtus Tuchers reaction against the very popular theme of the Dance of Death, his immersion in certain late medieval mystical texts, and — perhaps most important — his opposition to the new humanist tenets dismissing death as a motivating force for life.

Medieval Memorials: Sights and Sounds Embodied; Feelings, Fragrances and Flavors Re-membered

ABSTRACT Medieval Christians wishing to furnish themselves with eternal memorials had many options at their disposal. They sought to be re-membered by individuals and institutions—already during life but especially after death—through occasioning embodied sensations that were perpetuated through donations and endowments. Ideologically they positioned themselves as gift-givers. Reminders, often but not always, channeled through visual representations were actuated in all the senses with the multisensory functioning through synesthetic conduits and in superadditive ways. Donors usurped the time and attention of the needy as well as of those who had claimed to follow lives of relative deprivation and austerity, especially (female) monastics, through complexly orchestrated social and economic interdependencies that included negotiations of accommodation and challenge to sensory hierarchies. Social controls regulating permanent visual display could be circumvented through the use of non-visual and performance media.

The Northern Renaissance (review)

as a philologist and publicist in the res publica litteraria. His real achievement, however, was his letters, which are dealt with in the second part, devoted to the circle of his correspondents. During his lifetime Lingelsheim exchanged almost 3,000 letters — the vast majority in Latin — of which 2,278 are extant, with eighty correspondents. This part of Walter’s study then consists of prosopographic sketches of varying length of these eighty correspondents, providing insights into the extensive humanist network of correspondents. In doing that, Walter does not proceed chronologically but geographically by region. Starting with Lingelsheim’s correspondents from the Palatinate — with 820 letters by far the largest group — Walter treats in ever-widening circles correspondents from the Holy Roman Empire (Silesia, Strassburg, Nürnberg, Augsburg, Anhalt), the Swiss Confederation (Basel and Geneva), France, the Netherlands, and England. Each section is preceded by a review of the history of that particular region. Among his correspondents are well known contemporaries such as Paul Schede Melissus, Janus Gruter, Julius Wilhelm Zincgref, Martin Opitz, Melchior Goldast, Théodore de Bèza, Joseph Justus Scaliger, Daniel Heinsius, Hugo Grotius, as well as numerous minor figures of that period. For the reviewer who is expected to read a book cover to cover, ploughing through these eighty mini-biographies certainly represents a challenge in patience; for the occasional user, however, they provide an invaluable reference work. The book has two useful appendices: the first is a list of Lingelsheim’s letters. In this Repertorium, Walter has arranged alphabetically by correspondent all the letters written by or addressed to Lingelsheim. Each listing provides information about the date and place, the language it was written in, who wrote it, whether it has been printed, and in which European libraries autographs, drafts, or copies are located. This appendix is a valuable tool for a possible later edition of Lingelsheim’s correspondence. The second appendix features Lingelsheim’s modest poetical oeuvre, printed here for the first time. An impressively extensive bibliography of around 2,000 items rounds out this work. Overall, Walter’s book is a thoroughly researched, clearly written piece of scholarship. From the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries Latin was the language of European humanists. They were at home everywhere. Today, with Latin an endangered species, they seem to have become strangers everywhere. All the more reason to appreciate studies such as Walter’s that keep alive the memory of that heritage. ECKHARD BERNSTEIN Freiburg im Breisgau