Eglomisé painting with the Crucifixion
Painted gold foil behind glass on black ground. Softwood with gilding over red bole and chalk ground. Twelve small panels surrounding a large central panel with rounded top in a moulded wooden frame. With the four Evangelists above, and two male and two female saints, two coats-of-arms, round medallions with faces and two busts of angels below. The frame trimmed/shortened, presumably an older repurposed frame with earlier insect damage. H 69, W 49.5, D 4.5 cm.
In the style of the Italian Renaissance, 19th C.
The glazier responsible for this piece used several models, which he combined. The composition copies in reverse the Crucifixion by Pietro Perugino (c. 1446/1452 - 1523) and Luca Signorelli (c. 1441/1445 - 1523), which is now in the collection of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. We know similar angels in Albrecht Dürer's (1471 - 1528) Crucifixion in the Great Passion, which was published in book form from 1511. The somewhat uneven glass and the presumably older frame give the impression that this is a considerably older glass painting.
The Romantic artists of the early 19th century rediscovered Italian and German Renaissance art; they travelled through Italy, studied the objects in situ and used them as a source of inspiration. In the case of this eglomisé painting, the artist drew on Dürer's woodcut and possibly used an early printed photograph of the Crucifixion from the Uffizi. He placed the known pictorial creations in a new context by using the different material. This confirms our knowledge of the production of decorative art objects since the 18th century. Workshops and manufactories changed the appearance of things through a new surface design, for which, for reasons of cost, an existing repertoire was usually used. For the high-quality objects, elements could always be combined differently so that the finished product had an individual look.
This eglomisé is impressive for its size, its aged effect, the richness of detail, but above all for the masterly use of this technique. The fine gold foils were etched onto the washed areas that had been pre-treated with lacquer painting. The black painted ground offers a contrast to the depiction and emphasises its plasticity. The figures appear alive, but not earthly - the medium transports what is shown into a fictitious, heavenly sphere.