The Marienaltar by Conrad von Soest is a late Gothic altar retable located in the Marienkirche in Dortmund, Germany, dating from around 1420. Executed as a triptych, it is regarded as the painter's most important surviving work and the main altar of the church. The altarpiece, completed shortly before von Soest’s death, is a major example of the International Gothic or courtly style in northern German painting, notable for its refined use of color, gilding, and narrative scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary. Although originally a richly detailed winged altar, the work has been significantly altered over time—particularly in 1720, when it was cut down and incorporated into a Baroque altar structure, resulting in the loss of substantial portions of the original panels. Despite these changes, the surviving fragments are considered a masterpiece of medieval art and remain central to the artistic heritage of Dortmund.
History Over the centuries, the altar has been subjected to rough handling, and only fragments survive. Originally designed as a lockable altar retable, the panels on the exterior can now be viewed from the rear. In contrast to the interior, they are heavily weathered.
The paintings were originally part of a Gothic winged altar. 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 – they were trimmed and partially hammered in 1720. This process, unthinkable today given the quality of the artwork, involved the removal of portions of the paintings. The paintings were arranged differently in the carved Baroque altar. The two outer panels were positioned in the lower portion of the altar, with the central panel above them in a vaulted arch. The two lower panels were covered by a lunette. (See also the comments on the individual panels.) 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. In 1848, the back was covered with newspaper to protect it from final destruction.
In 1890, Carl Baumann documented the baroque altar photographically, while Wolfgang Rinke analyzed the foundation of Mayor Nies on the basis of existing documents. In 1926, the outer panels were to be sawn off during restoration work. The parish of St. Mary had made the Berswordt and Marian altars available for the large "Millennium Exhibition of the Rhineland" in Cologne. The curator of the Wallraf–Richartz Museum, Otto H. Förster, then proposed to the parish that the museum would undertake the complete restoration in exchange for the separation and retention of the outer panels. It was only after the panels had been delivered to the restorer, Robert Hieronymi, that the municipality decided to retain them.
The panels were not divided and sold, and it was only after the war that it became known that they had been saved from final destruction. This was due to X-ray photographs of the panel paintings of the left and right wings, which Ernst Fritz's son, museum director Rolf Fritz, had taken after the war. 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. "If the frame saw had struck such an iron dowel when sawing the panels, the panels would have shattered immediately." (Letter from Rolf Fritz to City Councillor Hansmeyer dated May 9, 1957)
The bombing raids of the Second World War posed a new threat. At the initiative of the Dortmund museum directors Rolf Fritz (Museum of Art and Cultural History) and Leonie Reygers (Museum am Ostwall), the panels were secured in the depot of the German museums at Langenau Castle in Rhineland-Palatinate. According to Rinke's research, the baroque high altar was destroyed in a bombing raid between November 29, 1944 and March 12, 1945. The additions from the 18th and 19th centuries, which had not been removed and were therefore not accepted as artistic achievements during the Second World War, were also lost.
In 1948, the altar was initially moved to Cappenberg Castle in the rooms of the Museum of Art and Cultural History. In 1957, the paintings were placed in modern metal frames and put back in their original order. Today, the panels are displayed in Marienkirche above a Gothic mensa.
The paintings Marienaltar by Conrad von Soest 1420 (front) The two outer panels are 1.40 meters high, the middle panel slightly lower due to the sawing out. In addition to the reduction in size, all the panels show minor damage from earlier overpainting and restoration work. 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.
The birth of Jesus
The colors gold, blue and red dominate the left front panel, which depicts the birth of Jesus. A woven fence behind Mary's bed suggests the stable where Jesus was born. This symbolic allusion is all that remains, as the floor tiles in the room show. 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.
Upon closer inspection, the fiery red ring behind the bed turns out to be a cloud of angels. The singing of the blue angels high above the bed is indicated by a scroll. The similarity of the angels' faces is striking. The writing in the halos of the Mother and Child is difficult to decipher (Mary: "Sancta Maria, mater Cristi vir(go)" (Holy Mary, Mother of Christ, Virgin); Jesus: "Jesus Christ" (partly in Greek letters)). Against the golden background of the halo, the intimate eye contact between mother and child is clearly visible, emphasized by the uniformity of their brown eyes. Their mouths seem to be approaching for a kiss. Mary holds the infant Jesus tenderly in her arms with her slender hands, while the child leans gently on his mother's neck. Joseph is depicted as an old man with white hair and a beard. The rosary on his belt, a medieval accessory of Marian devotion, refers to his role in the service of Mary and her divine child. The fine hallmarks of the gold background are only partially preserved.
Comparing the painting technique of the Berswordt Master, Andrea Zupancic points to Conrad von Soest's differentiated handling of color.
Conrad reduces the spectrum of his colors in favor of greater brilliance. And he uses color in many different ways. He also models bodies with light. 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. In other places, however, he deliberately refrains from characterizing the material properties of things through their colorful appearance.
The contrast between the nuanced colors of Joseph's clothing and the almost pure colors of other parts of the picture is striking. The bright, almost pure red of the cloud of angels above Mary's bed is repeated in the bedspread. The red areas form a frame around Mary and the child, clearly distinguishing them from other elements of the picture. Because of the slight color differentiation, the representation of the angels almost disappears, as if it were an abstract color element. The three-dimensionality of the ceiling is only faintly suggested.
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. [...] Color is used here in very different ways. On the one hand, it appears as a property of things and is subject to the conditions of light and shade based on reality; on the other hand, it becomes a carrier of meaning through its symbolic value: it is given an ennobling function, and in this context it is freed from the rules of real color perception. The luminosity of the colors illustrates the meaning of the figures and their relationship to the earthly world of the viewer.
In several respects, the panel transcends the late Gothic period. 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.
Mary's death
The middle panel has suffered the greatest loss of substance due to trimming, and is also damaged by earlier overpainting in the lower area. According to Rolf Fritz's reconstruction, well over half of the panel has been lost to trimming. It probably originally showed all the apostles at Mary's deathbed.
Fritz has already pointed out that the motif of the panel follows the dormition type of image. According to legend, Mary died in the company of the apostles in the church of the same name south of the Old City of Jerusalem on Mount Zion. Pictorial representations of this event follow a certain typology, which can also be found in the work of Conrad von Soest.
Mary's death is at the center of the painting. Her youthful features, unchanged since the Nativity scene, are striking. Her figure glows against a blue background of angels. Two angels close her eyes and mouth and support her chin, while a third admires her hair, the symbol of her virginity. In her hand, the reclining Mary holds a dying candle as a symbol of death.
Three figures dressed in red surround the dying woman. John, also depicted as a youth, hands Mary the dying candle. The coin attached to the candle and the palm frond handed over with the candle are striking. On the left, Thomas lights the censer. An unnamed apostle kneels in front of the bed and reads from a scroll. He has shielded himself from the actual events with a hood and is concentrating fully on the text. In the present state of the painting, he appears to be looking at an almost white scroll, with only faint indications of signs and lines. After various earlier attempts to decipher the characters 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. (Ps. 45, 3b) The choirs of angels rejoice and their fellowship, which God ... Alleluia")
Hans-Walter Storck explains that the beginning of the text comes from the Ordo commendationis animae, the ecclesiastical prayer for the dying, known to have been spoken by relatives to the dying since the eighth century.
In the upper right corner of the golden background, a view of heaven opens up, while the motif of the open hand shows that the way to paradise is open to Mary. 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). Two angels descending from heaven are faintly visible in the golden background. Stylistically, they are out of place in the context of the painting, the elaborate robes seem rather baroque, and their heads could be modeled on other angelic figures in the painting. Some sources therefore regard these angels as Baroque additions, others as remnants of the hallmarking of the gold background that had previously structured the gold areas of the painting. Conrad von Soest was also considered a master of gold work.