In a private room for Clemens VI (1342– 1352) in the palace of the popes at Avignon, frescoes show a peaceful vision of nature with flowering trees, numerous birds, and hunting scenes. There is a strong contrast between the castle-like architecture of the tower in which the room is located and the expansive view of plants and animals offered by the paintings. All of the people in the frescoes are more or less youthful, some collecting fruits, some bathing, and others trying to catch birds or rabbits. It is a very selective impression of nature, with much left out. The experience of nature articulated in the same period by Francesco Petrarca uses very similar elements. Apart from all differences, the frescoes and the writings of Petrarca share a newly emerged interest in nature in the middle of the fourteenth century.

November 29, 2019

A new attribution to Niccolò di Pietro Lamberti and a reconsideration of Guillem Sagrera: The sculptures on the Portal del Mirador of Majorca Cathedral

Rafael Cornudella

Page range: 476-530

Abstract

Art historians have long been interested in the Portal del Mirador of the cathedral of Majorca. While the account books provide a wealth of information on the identities of the artists who worked on the Portal, several issues still need to be reexamined. This article conducts an in-depth reassessment of the artistic culture of Guillem Sagrera. Against the most widely held opinions, which relate Sagrera’s style to that of Claus Sluter and trends in Burgundy, the author stresses the need to relocate the Majorcan’s formative itinerary and place it in the context of artistic strands and exchanges whose nerve center was in Paris. However, the attribution of the Mirador Madonna to Sagrera is definitively ruled out in favor of the Florentine school and specifically Niccolò di Pietro Lamberti.

November 29, 2019

The Brussels guild of painters, goldbeaters, and stained-glass makers, 1599 – 1706: A multi-faceted analysis

Koenraad Brosens, Rudy Jos Beerens, Bruno Cardoso, Fred Truyen

Page range: 531-553

Abstract

The essay presents a qualitative, quantitative, and online interactive analysis of the register of the Brussels guild of painters, goldbeaters, and stained-glass makers (1599 – 1706), in relation to the online database Cornelia . We develop a sketch of the legal framework; a discussion of the register’s methodological challenges; a bird’s-eye view of the source; a presentation of the method we used to transform the register into a dataset; and an analysis of the aggregate data. In doing so, we obtain a picture of the professional mobility of Brussels painters and their strategies. As one concrete result, the essay disproves the assertion that the Brussels guild pursued an overly rigid and exclusive membership policy; instead, it dealt pragmatically with the rules to ensure the continuity of the guild.

November 29, 2019

Beurteilen oder Verurteilen? Vom Richten über Kunst und Künstler im sowjetischen Kunstbetrieb

Sandra Frimmel

Page range: 554-575

Abstract

Using examples from the 1930s and the 1960s (the decades of show trials and the Khrushchev ‘thaw’), this article examines what ‘alternative jurisdictions’ – that is, courtroom-like debates outside the courtroom – existed in the Soviet Union, not only to debate, but also to make lasting determinations about what art is and who is empowered to judge it. Cultural and social restrictions – in the form of codes of conduct or an artistic “general line” (term after Sergei Eisenstein) – manifest themselves in these acts of judgement and condemnation. This raises the following questions, among others: What happens to the artist subject as a result of the various forms of ‘alternative jurisdictions’, and what is the task of the (artistic) collective? The investigation of typical Soviet quasi-judicial practices enables a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of contemporary Russian art trials, which attempt to silence artists who are critical of religion or society.

Buchbesprechungen

November 29, 2019

Meister Francke Revisited. Auf den Spuren eines Hamburger Malers

Iris Grötecke

Page range: 576-584

November 29, 2019

Die leibhaftige Münze. Quentin Massys’ Goldwäger und die altniederländische Malerei

Friederike Schütt

Page range: 585-587

About this journal

Founded by Wilhelm Waetzold and Ernst Gall in 1932, the Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte is published quarterly by Deutscher Kunstverlag. As the leading international German-language journal of art history it is one of the foremost periodicals of the academic discipline world-wide. Scholarly articles undergo a double-blind peer review by two independent experts; contributions are accepted in German, English, French, and Italian.

The Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte is a journal covering the whole range of art-historical matters. It offers a space for contributions dealing with all epochs and subjects, and using all methodical approaches. Open to art-historians from all points of the compass, it should at the same time serve to retain the polyglot nature of the discipline.

Organisation

The editorial office of the Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte is located at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich. Since January 2020, Gerrít Walczak is Managing Editor.

The publisher delegates editorship to five Editors covering different areas of the discipline. For the sake of openness and plurality, Editors will generally serve for five years. The annual withdrawal of a member of the editorial board, and the subsequent by-election of a new Editor, assures steady change while maintaining continuity.

The Editors are nominated by an advisory committee, whose members are recruited from the institutes of art history at German universities, or operating outside higher education, and from the three German art historical research establishments at Florence, Paris, and Rome. Each institute or research establishment is invited to send a representative. Additionally, the board of directors of the Verband Deutscher Kunsthistoriker, the directorate of the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte and Deutscher Kunstverlag are represented each by a consultative member. All members serve on the committe for six years unless their term is extended.

Submissions

The Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte accepts only contributions that have not been published elsewhere. Submissions are welcome in German, English, French, and Italian. Translations of essays either previously published or about to be published as well as outtakes from books in the making will not be processed. The editorial office assumes that articles and reviews are not parallely submitted to other journals. Articles will first be assessed by the editorial office and the editorial board, then passed on anonymously to two external referees