Description
This initial from a large Choir Book depicts Saint Michael the Archangel, whose feast is celebrated on September 29. Executed in burnished gold on a blue, star-filled ground, the initial encloses an image of a rosy-cheeked, blond Saint Michael holding a cross-topped staff and a pair of scales, with a soul in one pan and the devil trying to pull down the other one. It is unclear what chant the ‘L’ introduces, but the reverse includes text for the offertory for this feast, so the Choir Book was likely a Gradual.
A tentative attribution can be made to Magdalena Kremer, who practiced an imported Alsatian style in a German convent south of Stuttgart. Jeffrey Hamburger has published the manuscripts linked with her: a Chapter Book, a Collectar, and a series of Choir Book initials from at least two dismantled Choir Books. Although the somewhat naïve style is generic, Hamburger laid out a detailed list of stylistic peculiarities he associated with Magdalena herself. They include the presence of gold stars on a celestial blue background, long flaxen hair of the females articulated with a network of red lines, certain features of the face such as contour of the nose rising unbroken to one eyebrow and the heavy-lidded eyes, rosy-red cheeks, and somewhat stiff drawing. All these characteristics are present in the fragment of Saint Michael, as well as a similar delineation of the landscape with red tipped flowers and lily-of-the valleys. Compare the Munich fragments of the Adoration of the Magi for the initial (Graphische Sammlung, k. 512, inv. no. 39850) and Jacob’s Ladder for the background, faces, and landscape (Graphische Sammlung, k. 510, inv. no. 39848). The miniature is also particularly close in style to a cutting of Saint John the Baptist (Sotheby's, London, July 2, 2013, lot 30). Without further research, we cannot be sure the initial of Saint Michael is by Magdalena, for as Hamburger also noted her style survives in contemporary manuscripts in Alsace, such as a wonderful Dominican Breviary from Alsace (Unterlinden in Colmar?) now in Cambridge Massachusetts (Harvard University Library, Richardson MS 39). Other clusters of related manuscripts include a group of Dominican cuttings more monochrome than ours, once thought to be Austrian but now considered Alsatian (Peter Kidd), as well manuscripts by Sybilla von Bondorf, a Dominican nun of Freiburg and Strasbourg. The separation and localization of these clusters of “nonnenarbeiten” (nun's work) awaits further research to be sure of proposed attributions.
We are grateful to Jeffrey Hamburger for his expertise.
provenance
literature
Unpublished;
Related literature:
Frings, Jutta, and Jan Gerschow, eds. Krone und Schleier: Kunst aus mittelalterlichen Frauenklöstern, Ruhrlandmuseum, die frühen Klöster und Stifte, 500–1200. Munich, 2005, cat. 2005, no. 467;
Hamburger in Linenthal, Richard A., James H. Marrow, and William Noel, eds. The Medieval Book: Glosses from Friends and Colleagues of Christopher de Hamel. London, 2010, 124–49.
learn
Magdalena Kremer, Germany, Kirchheim unter Teck (near Stuttgart), c. 1460s?–1501/1502?
It is rare to have much documentary information about a fifteenth-century woman artist, much less a first-hand account. The life and career of Magdalena Kremer (or Kremerin), a nun who participated in the Observant Reform of the Dominican Order in Germany in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, comes to light in two sources. The first is by Johannes Meyer (1422–1485) of Basel who oversaw the reform movement at Kirchheim, and who wrote in 1469 an account of his project. The second is by Magdalena Kremer herself, who in 1490 wrote a chronicle of Kirchheim unter Teck, a Dominican convent founded in 1247 with ties to Dominican convents in Alsace. From the first source, we learn that Magdalena was one of seventeen nuns from Alsace—ten from Strasbourg and another seven from the abbey of Silo Selestat—brought to Bavaria to help institute the reform. The seven from the abbey of Silo, including Magdalena, stayed in Kirchheim. Meyer’s document describes, among them, “a sister who could write textura well, and also paint” (“ein swester … die konde wol textur schriben, und och malen”). In the same document the sister is named “Magdalena Kremerin who came to Silo from Strasbourg” (“… die kam von stroßburg gan syl”). From 1495 to 1501/02, she served as Prioress of the convent, where one of her duties was to see that the convent “be furnished with all the books required for celebration of the liturgy, that they be properly corrected and well written, that their bindings be maintained ….” Two illuminated manuscripts for which she was responsible have survived: a Chapter Book and a Collectar (Sankt Paul im Laventthal, Stiftsbibliothek, MSS 75/1 and 62/1). The documents also specify two Choir Books the nuns took with them from Alsace, and Jeffrey Hamburger has suggested that, while supplying the abbey with the necessary manuscripts, Magdalena would surely have made illuminated Choir Books. Fragments from a Choir Book mostly in Munich conform with the style of the Chapter Book and Collectar and are therefore thought to be further works for which she was responsible.