Reviewed by David King, Corpus Vitrearum (Great Britain)
These two books, together forming volume six of the Austrian Corpus Vitrearum, are devoted to the medieval stained glass of Styria in Austria, prepared with the collaboration of Elisabeth Oberhaidacher-Herzig and using the preparatory work of Ernst Bacher, Eva Frodl-Kraft and Elisabeth Oberhaidacher-Herzig. Two further volumes are in preparation. They complete the coverage of Styria, begun by Ernst Bacher, with his 1979 volume on Graz and Straßengel. Some of his conclusions are confirmed and others updated, and the two later volumes also discuss those by Eva Frodl Kraft on the medieval glass of Vienna (1962) and of that on Lower Austria in 1972.
Part 1 of volume 6 (Fig. 1) has the usual preliminary material including bibliography, help for the reader, with many excellent drawings of background patterns and map, followed by a substantial art-historical introduction. The catalogue entries are alphabetically ordered, from Admont to Murau, covering twelve locations. Part 2 (Fig. 2) completes the catalogue, with seventeen further locations, Pichl to Vorau, completed by an appendix of dispersed and lost glass and the indices.
The art-historical introduction, written by Buchinger, is a detailed and lengthy section, which concentrates on establishing the workshop origins of the Styrian glass, the information for this coming overwhelmingly from a careful stylistic analysis of the glass, with documentary sources playing a subsidiary role. As well as differentiating the various local workshops, this approach takes account of the glass in the neighbouring Länder of Upper and Lower Austria, Salzburg and Carinthia, the main outside influences on the glass being the large workshops in Vienna and Salzburg. Comparisons with other media produced in Styria provide convincing evidence for the glass in several instances. Dating the glass derives partly from the style, but the building and donor history of the various churches is documented where possible to support the conclusions of stylistic analysis. Wider aspects of European medieval art are also discussed, including French stained glass and developments in Italian art. Historical developments are discussed, mainly consisting of changes in the governance of Styria by a variety of nobles from count to emperor, also by the archbishop of Salzburg, these changes explaining the introduction of influences, artists and donors from outside the Land.
Glass-painting came to Styria relatively late. It is doubtful whether glass-painters were active in the twelfth-century in Styrian monasteries, but at Pürgg, which has the only extant Romanesque wall paintings, dated to c.1160, and painted by artists from Salzburg, there may also have been painted glass. Two painted fragments of Romanesque stained glass were found at St Jakob on the Frauenburg, coming from the earlier church there and possibly made by a German workshop, which introduced Zackenstil into Austria.
Stained glass became established in Styria following the assumption of power by the Habsburgs in 1282. Abbot Heinrich of Admont built a new church, whose glazing was completed by c. 1400, but the oldest windows may have dated from c. 1286, made by a workshop established there. High-quality glass was made in neighbouring Carinthia in the period 1260-1280, also in Styria, but none has survived. The former Minoritenkirche in Bruck and der Mur still has remains of its glazing from the 1280s, including a circular panel with Christ Pantocrator in Zackenstil.
The standing figures of c. 1285 at Pichl-Tragöß show the move from Zackenstil to early Gothic forms, as does the glass at Spital am Semmering, although on a much more diminutive scale. The glass of this period in Styria may have been influenced by glass from Thüringen, such as the Dominican church at Erfurt.
At St Walpurgis bei St Michael are two groups of glass: a series of the Wise and Foolish Virgins of the end of the thirteenth century still has some elements of Zackenstil, but other standing figures of saints of the same date have high-Gothic drapery. The glass at Bruck and der Mur and St Walpurgis had a successor in the Dominican church at Krakow.
Much more of the Styrian glass dates from the fourteenth century. Around 1300, Romanesque and High Gothic elements are still seen in several places, the former style predominating and the latter seen from 1280 onwards. This continues into the early fourteenth century, at, for example, St Cäcilia ob Murau, where scenes from the Life of Christ of c. 1310 still have rather coarse thirteenth-century facial types and the drapery still has echoes of Zackenstil, but the pedestals on which the figures stand betray their arrival in the fourteenth century.
The glass of the Leechkirche in Graz, the former Deutschordenskirche, was catalogued in Bacher’s earlier volume, but the style is discussed again in the present volume. About one hundred panels of medieval glass survive, about a fifth of the original. Two figures of Mary are the oldest, of c.1310. A second group, a Childhood of Christ cycle and a Crucifixion, was painted shortly after. Both groups have the same background patterns as at St Cäcilia, but very different faces, pointing their origin in a local workshop. A new workshop took up the glazing in c.1320-c.1330, making several now fragmentary cycles, including fully developed High-Gothic standing figures. A fourth group, consisting of a Passion cycle, standing saints and other figures, was made in the 1330s in a more developed style. Bacher’s comparisons between this glass and that made for the new Dominican church in Wiener Neustadt in Lower Austria are here modified, in that the glass there made in the 1330s has an older style, to which the Graz glass can be compared, and a newer style, which is more advanced. The conclusion is that the Graz workshop, after the completion of the glass there, moved to Wiener Neustadt to take on the glazing there. The Graz Leekirche workshop was nevertheless active in other parts of Styria, for example at Maria Buch bei Judenberg.
A large workshop, similar in its designs to the above, but with its own unmistakable local style, provided glass for the area either side of the Styrian/Carinthian border. In the 1330s it glazed the windows of the small parish church of St Ruprecht ob Murau. Ernst Bacher proposed an origin for this workshop in Friesach in Carinthia, where a window in the parish church of St Bartlmä from the 1320s provides the first evidence of its work, and its style is seen in several churches in eastern Carinthia. The workshop also used the same designs in these places and its latest glass dated from the 1340s at Lieding. A detailed stylistic analysis of all this glass is given.
A Jesse window, dated to after 1344, in the parish church of Pürgg in north-western Styria, has no parallels with any of the Austrian stained glass workshops of the first half of the fourteenth century. Both historical connections and style, however, link this glass to the art of Upper Austria, specifically to its manuscript illuminations of the early fourteenth century, including a Biblia Pauperum manuscript from St Florian, and the conclusion is that the Pürgg glass was painted by a manuscript painter.
The most important new church built in Styria during the reigns of the Habsburg Albrecht II and Rudolf IV was the pilgrimage church of Maria Straßengel north of Graz. This has twelve extant windows of fourteenth-century glass and was included in Ernst Bacher’s volume on Styria, but again, the style is discussed here. Two donors were from Vienna and the building was inspired by the Stephansdom in the capital; the glazing itself was begun by a Viennese court workshop, which had worked on the cathedral choir glazing and that of Maria am Gestade in Vienna, painted in 1340-1350 by an artist from a Viennese court workshop. His most important work at Straßengel was a Passion cycle, in a High Gothic figure style which does not match the new special elements in the canopies above. Two local craftsmen continued the work at Straßengel, influenced by the Viennese Master. The glass was not made in the capital, but locally, by a new workshop which included a Viennese painter.
The local artist who made the Genesis cycle and a Last Judgement at Straßengel produced figures which are stocky and more summarily drawn than the court painter, but which are more successfully integrated with the canopies. Another Styrian colleague painted the Marian scenes and standing figures of angels, prophets, evangelists, apostles and saints, worked there from c. 1370. His canopies are simpler and the figures betray spatial inconsistencies.
In 1379, Wiener Neustadt became for a time part of Styria and a new glazing campaign was carried out in the monastic church, which Bacher dated to c. 1370-1380. The group included a Crucifixion, some apostles and a prophet and can be compared in style to the c. 1380 glazing of the St Bartholomew Chapel in the Stephansdom, although the Wiener Neustadt glass is not as successful as the Vienna glass in its spatial coherence.
Many fourteenth-century churches in Styria have no extant glass, but the pilgrimage church in Pöllauberg has at least a documented donation of glass in a will of 1384 which asks for windows to be made with the Annunciation of the Virgin and the Death of the Virgin. Glaziers at Pöllauberg are mentioned in 1381. Towards the end of the century court workshop responsible for the princely figures in the St Bartholomew Chapel in the Stephansdom responded to a ducal commission for glass in the parish and pilgrimage church of St Erhard in der Breitenau in Styria, and other places in Vienna and Lower Austria. The workshop used cartoons which derive from the Parement de Narbonne Master. The St Erhard glass reveals this influence, where a combination of several panels into a unified whole is achieved for the first time in Styria.
Most of the windows of the Spitalskirche in Judenburg (the Magdalenenkirche) are from the 1380s. They have a complex iconographic programme of donors, Marian and Christological cycles, saints and a typological window. The closest style connection is with the Master B at Straßengel of c. 1370.
In 1395 there was a division of the Habsburg lands, Styria going to Duke William, eldest son of Leopold III. From 1411, Duke Ernst der Eisener ruled over the Duchies of Styria and Carinthia. The late fourteenth century also saw massive social unrest, starting with the plague in 1348-9, followed by a halt in the increase of the population and the expulsion of the Jews from Styria in 1379. Despite this upheaval, a large number of partly extant glazing schemes were produced around 1400, sufficient to allow a thorough analysis.
The earliest is a group made by a local workshop for several churches starting with the Seckauer Stiftskirche, c. 1393; much of the glass from these buildings has been dispersed to museums and a private collection. Also in this group are a few slightly later sites in the area of the Mur valley and Mürztal. The style is connected to the Judenburg glass, but varies, and one new element is the caricature of some of the faces, often those of Jewish figures. A named glazier, Johannes von Rein, can be associated with the panels from the Kreuzkapelle in the Stift Rein, made by him in 1406.
The late work of this workshop is probably first seen in the former parish church of St Ruprecht in Bruck and der Mur, in a Crucifixion dated 1416, with some slight refinement in the painting of heads. The latest of the glass by this workshop in Styria is in the nearby chapel of ease of St Ulrich at Utschal, dated by its marked tubular folds to c. 1420 and including a three-light Crucifixion. There are several close comparisons with the Bruck, St Ruprecht glass.
At St Jakob in der Breitenau is a collection of extant glass with numerous connections between the various windows, but also a great variety of styles, which mark a clear development in this workshop. One style is that seen on the Gnadenstuhl Trinity, the work of a virtuosic hand under Viennese influence.
Dobrosława Horzela has shown that Cimburgis, the Polish wife of Duke Ernst der Eisener, maintained close connections with the Polish king, Władysław II, Jagiełło, thus explaining why window I of the Corpus Christi church in Kazimierz in Krakow was made by the Styrian workshop, following a contract in 1414.
A different Styrian workshop developed c. 1430, whose work is seen in the now dispersed glass from the chapel of ease of Our Dear Lady at Bischofshofen in the province of Salzburg. This glass has a rather coarse and raw expression, allied to a figure of St James in St Jakob in der Breitenau in Styria.
In addition to the workshop of Johannes von Rein, a second large enterprise was established in Styria in the early fifteenth century, also closely connected to the Duke’s workshop in Vienna. The Marian, Apostles and Saints windows in the Waasenkirche in Leoben (remains of which are now together in nII) of c.1400-c.1410, are from this workshop, painted by different artists with varying degrees of style development, including the graphic so-called pen-drawing style. This is also seen in the glass in the parish church of Gratwein, now in the Graz Joanneum. As well as the influence on the Leoben glass, local features are also present, with links to the Gratwein glass, for example.
Dispersed glass by this workshop is now at Kirby Wharfe in Yorkshire, where there are six badly corroded panels. The panel with the Twelve-Year Old Jesus in the Temple is very close in style and design to that in Leoben. The Flight into Egypt, the enthroned Mother of God and the Anna Selbdritt are also comparable. The glass can be dated on style to 1400-1410. Other Styrian panels are in the parish church of West Tofts in Norfolk (not accessible to the public). Five panels with standing figures of saints Helen (Fig. 3), Andrew (Fig. 4), Jude (Fig. 5), Mary Magdalen (Fig. 6) and Agnes (Fig. 7) form a group, together with four additional panels of saints now in a private collection, the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Hamburg, or lost. No original location in Styria is known for these panels.
At St Anna in Murau the glass was painted by an independent glass painter, c. 1420, who was also active as a wall painter in the same church and others.
Apart from the Vienna Duke’s Workshop, already in the 1410s a new source of influence became available which lay outside the boundary of Styria. It is seen in the Leoben Passion window. This is in many ways comparable to the work of Vienna Duke’s Workshop in Styria, but there are also differences in the figures style and heads, which are unusually both refined and monumental. A major problem with assessing this influence is that no early fifteenth-century pictorial windows made in Salzburg and for the area are extant, while it is known that an important workshop did exist there at that time. The earliest extant example of fifteenth-century Salzburg work is the glazing of the pilgrimage church of St Leonhard ob Tamsweg of 1430; this was probably the result of developments going back to the late fourteenth century, which themselves include the pen-work style, first seen in Styria in the Leoben Passion window.
Styrian glass post 1430 which reveals Salzburg influence includes a panel of c.1345 of St Margaret from St Margarethe bei Knittenfeld, which does not quite reach the high quality of its progenitor. A figure of St Catherine in Altaussee of c.1440, which has developed more mobile drapery. Stronger Salzburg features, however, appear in figures of St Martin and St Stephen in the same place. Thus, Styrian glass painting at the latest by 1430 came under the strong influence of Salzburg glass painting. This phenomenon also occurred in sculpture and panel painting.
However, in the 1420s there is also a case of an artistic import into Styria from Vienna. The glass paintings of c.1425 at St Lambrecht are part of a corpus of works of art, mainly panel paintings, which, after many years of research, have now been attributed to Viennese production. But that the glass was painted by one of the panel painters remains controversial. It is more plausible to identify the glass painter, not with a specific panel painter, but as an independent artist, who was closely connected with his panel-painting colleagues, with access to design shared between both media. The St Lambrecht glass left behind traces in the local Styrian work at Altaussee of c.1425-1430.
Archduke Ernst was the first Habsburg, who, as heir to Inner Austria from 1410, lived for a large part of his reign no longer in Graz, but in Wiener Neustadt. The older castle chapel, the Corpus Christi chapel, was glazed shortly before his death in 1424. His donor panel with three sons is accompanied by two groups of saints: St Florian and St George in the first, and in the second, St Peter, St Anthony the Hermit, plus a Gnadenstuhl Trinity. They have two very different styles. The first have faces in the pen-drawing style and stand with clear silhouettes against of a diapered background, and the second have more spatially conceived settings with figures that convey movement. The style of the first group is also seen at Utsch in glass of c. 1420, and is a continuation of that of Master Johannes in Wiener Neustadt. The St Anthony figure, on the other hand, was influenced by both Salzburg and Vienna, with the emphasis on painterly technique.
Between 1430 and 1440 glass paintings were made by a large new Styrian workshop, which was independent of Salzburg and Vienna. Six Apostle panels are extant from Burg Gallenstein, a residence of the Abbot of Admont. They show the Styrian version of the Soft Style in their strong plasticity, and soft facial modelling. The only other survival from this local Styrian workshop is a panel with two saints in the chapel of ease of St Nikolaus in Pischk bei Brück and der Mur, of c.1430.
There are a few single works in Styria from the second half of the fifteenth century, but it is questionable whether there was any independent production of stained glass there in that period and the early sixteenth century. Glass making lodges existed and artists brought from Augsburg or Nuremburg may have painted glass there. Only heraldic and donor panels appear to have been made and the introduction of winged altarpieces covering much of the windows for which painted glass would have been made, combined with a wish for more light, rendered it obsolete and Butzenscheiben took its place. Thus, local glass painting in Styria was very late in becoming established and came to a halt in the mid fifteenth century, having been continually marked by outside influences.
Thus ends the art-historical introduction, impressive in its combination of historical and art-historical analysis, including the re-assessment of earlier conclusions by Ernst Bacher, Eva Frodl Kraft and others. There are many illustrations of both the Styrian glass and the comparative materials, but one has often to turn to those in the catalogue to fully understand the points being made, and as there are two volumes, this becomes rather cumbersome.
The catalogue entries are exemplary, with superb colour illustrations, including many of comparative material, supporting the conclusions in the introduction. The restoration diagrams are small, but perfectly legible and ground plans are provided. For many locations extensive documentation from historical sources is provided for the history of the glazing, including colour illustrations of lost and extant glass, notably by the Geyling firm, which conserved many of the windows in the nineteenth century. At the end of the catalogued sites is a substantial appendix of dispersed and lost glass.
Although the number of sites catalogued is small, much of the extant glass consists of complete or nearly complete main light panels, and the photographic reconstructions given in the art-historical introduction provide additional information for the original appearance of the windows, often tall with two- or three lights and many registers. At the end of the introduction, a caveat reminds the reader that what is left is but a tiny fraction of what must have been present, and that the analysis given inevitably gives an incomplete and possibly mis-leading picture of the whole. Nevertheless, these two volumes, despite the narrow chronological band width of the survivals and the losses, give a fascinating and scholarly account of some extremely attractive and interesting medieval stained glass.