Marienaltar (Conrad von Soest)

In order to fit the panels into a Baroque altar structure – approximately 16 meters high, donated to the parish by Dortmund mayor Dethmar Wessel Nies[3] – they were trimmed and partially hammered in 1720.

At the lower edge, the panels were painted over with banners approximately 20 cm high that placed Jesus at the center of the action and were likely intended to relativize the veneration of Mary.

These photographs revealed that the individual boards from which the panels are composed are held together inside the wood, invisible to the eye, by iron dowels.

(Letter from Rolf Fritz to City Councillor Hansmeyer dated May 9, 1957)[5]The bombing raids of the Second World War posed a new threat.

On the panels on the back, the former outer side of the closed altar, the paint is badly damaged and is missing completely in some places, especially in the Annunciation.

The panels only depict motifs from the life of Mary, an exclusivity of subject matter unprecedented in northern German painting.

However, according to Rolf Fritz's reconstruction based on a copy of the Marienaltar for St. Walpurgis in Soest (today in the Westphalian State Museum in Münster), there was a depiction of a stable with a crib, an ox, and a donkey on the right-hand side of the lost panel.

Mary holds the infant Jesus tenderly in her arms with her slender hands, while the child leans gently on his mother's neck.

The rosary on his belt, a medieval accessory of Marian devotion, refers to his role in the service of Mary and her divine child.

Comparing the painting technique of the Berswordt Master, Andrea Zupancic points to Conrad von Soest's differentiated handling of color.

Occasionally – as in the robe of Joseph in the Nativity in his Marian Retable in Dortmund – his color palette is also broadly nuanced and varies between light and dark.

As a less structured pictorial element, the red binds the figures of the mother and child into the surface, thus liberating them to some extent from the laws of spatial perception.

The concentration of the action on a few figures against a flat gold background and the landscape, which is only hinted at, show characteristics familiar from the Italian masters of the early Renaissance.

The middle panel has suffered the greatest loss of substance due to trimming, and is also damaged by earlier overpainting in the lower area.

After various earlier attempts to decipher the characters[a] developed an initial impression of the text, the 13 legible lines of the scroll became clearly visible through more recent infrared examinations: diffusa est/gratia in la/biis tuis prop/tera benedi/xit te deus (in aeternum; Ps.

45, 3b)/ illegible, perhaps final formula: et in saeculum saeculi/laus copia/ Gaudent / chori ange/loru(m) consor/tiu(m) et era/cuiuis deu(s)./alleluja ("Grace is spread out in your lips, therefore God has blessed you.

The motif of Jesus as ruler of the world, which is only vaguely recognizable, is executed in detail on the earlier outer side of the retable in the depiction of Mary's coronation (see below).

And Conrad demonstrated his consummate craftsmanship with the drawn and embossed angels on the gold background of the Dortmund Marian Death.

Their dainty little heads are copied, as are the wings and the baroque-like nervous flutter of the sinuous robes, which contrast with the calm, flowing, Gothic large forms of Conrad's painting.

[13]Rinke assumes that the two pairs of angels in the lunette were additions made by the restorer Friedrich Welsch and the gilder J. H. Stockmann between 1848 and 1850.

For in none of the surviving works is there evidence of such a boldly placed figuration in the space, moreover, with the exception of the Incarnate, painted in a brown outline, thus adding a graphic element.

The problem of this pair of angels has not been taken up by either older or more recent Conrad von Soest research – it is hereby put up for discussion.

[14]However, Rinke admits that there is an angel figure in the upper right-hand corner of the Wildungen retable, "whose wings are hastily painted with brown solder".

With the white lily and the bowl of daisies in front of the bed, Conrad von Soest quotes other medieval symbols for Mary.

The noble pallor, the high forehead, the full reddish-blonde hair and the slender hands correspond to the aristocratic ideal of beauty.

The costly, high-waisted brocade gown, in keeping with courtly fashion around 1400, which Mary wears during the Adoration of the Magi under an elaborately draped blue and green mantle, is also evidence of aristocratic nobility.

Nevertheless, Conrad von Soest's precise knowledge of the works and techniques of the Berswordt Master is particularly evident in such details.

The painting shows medieval stylistic elements, such as the two-dimensional gold backgrounds, the size of the figures according to their religious significance, or the telling of biblical stories.

It is equally important to note that the patrons apparently wanted such a style and such a level of refinement to be shared at this location in Dortmund.

Barbara Welzel sees the adoration scene of the Magi touching Jesus as a deliberate violation of courtly rituals, an expression of a particular mentality of the urban burghers.