This is a list of all the known works of an anonymous Renaissance artist from southern Germany, known provisionally as the Master of Meßkirch. It is based on the catalogue raisonné compiled in 1933 by art historian Heinrich Feurstein and the catalogue for the major state exhibition Der Meister von Meßkirch. Katholische Pracht in der Reformationszeit, which ran from 8 December 2017 to 2 April 2018 in Stuttgart.

History of the Œuvre

The Master of Meßkirch was an artist who was mainly active in the Upper Danube region in the first half of the 16th century. His main work was commissioned by the Counts of Zimmern, who resided in Meßkirch. Through inheritance and Joseph von Laßberg's special relationship with the House of Fürstenberg, significant parts of the work reached the Princely Fürstenberg Collections. The first systematic catalogue of works was therefore compiled by one of its later directors, Heinrich Feurstein.

In addition to the house altars that initially remained in family ownership – such as the Sigmaringen Marian panels, the Falkenstein Altar, the Sigmaringen House Altar and the Wildenstein Altar, as well as several portraits and epitaphs attributed to him and the secco paintings in the Heiligkreuztal Monastery – the master's preserved magnum opus is the altar furnishings for St. Martin's Church in Meßkirch. This altarpiece was created between 1535 and 1540 by him and, as evidenced by the varying quality of the workmanship, by his workshop assistants. Based on the surviving central panels, the assignment of individual saints to specific altar foundations and the architectural conditions, there were up to twelve altars, each with a central panel, two wings painted on both sides and two standing wings, i.e. 12 central pieces and 72 wing paintings. Last Supper Retable(St. Martin Church in Meßkirch)Temptation Retable(St. Martin Church in Meßkirch)Wildensteiner Altar(House Altar, likely Meßkirch Castle)

Sigmaringen Small House Altar(Anna of Zimmern) carvedfigurine group

The path of the œuvre in collections and museums With a few exceptions – the frescoes in Heiligkreuztal, which are no longer in very good condition, the portrait of Eitel Friedrich III of Zollern (1561), the Sigmaringen house altarpiece and the central panel of the Three Kings altar – the works are no longer in their original contexts but scattered across museums and collections on two continents.

Early Romantic authors such as Friedrich Schlegel, Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder and Ludwig Tieck had called for a rediscovery of medieval panel painting. As a result of secularisation, but also of mediatisation and the resulting reorganisation of church administration (in the area under consideration here: dissolution of the diocese of Constance, re-establishment of the dioceses of Freiburg and Rottenburg), church property had come under new and uncertain ownership, not only in monasteries and foundations, but also in town and village churches. Private collectors were given the opportunity to acquire such cultural assets. Although today the loss of cultural assets during that period is often lamented, this meant that works of art from the late Middle Ages and early modern period, which were frowned upon in the age of Baroque and early Classicism, could be both materially saved and aesthetically rehabilitated, as they were no longer in their original locations due to this change in style, but were often stored or used for purposes other than their original ones.

For the works by the Master of Meßkirch, there were two main collectors: Joseph von Laßberg and Johann Baptist von Hirscher.

Laßberg's scholarly interest stemmed from the nascent fields of not only German studies, but also art history as a science, which was influenced by the Romantic aesthetics mentioned above. He conducted many years of research in which he sought to prove that the Holbein family originated in Upper Swabia, including Holbein's alleged stay with the Counts of Zimmern. Throughout his life, he attributed the works of the Master of Meßkirch that he found to Hans Holbein.

In addition to this Holbein research, the panel paintings were objects of exchange for Laßberg, who used them to acquire manuscripts, such as the St. Gallen Temptation and Last Supper altarpieces, which he exchanged with Bishop Carl Johann Greith from his library in the 1850s. Or they were gifts and exchanges between friends and relatives, such as Saint Werner for Werner von Haxthausen.

Johann Baptist von Hirscher was a theologian; his writings contain no thoughts on art history topics. And yet the 250 paintings and carvings that can be reconstructed from the records of sales from his collection are one of the most complete ensembles of late medieval art ever assembled by a private collector in southern Germany.

Hirscher Collection Source: From the Hirscher Collection Hirscher first became involved in collecting artworks when he visited the gallery of Prince Ludwig zu Oettingen-Wallerstein in 1816. He immediately began collecting medieval art and made Wallerstein an offer in 1821, which Wallerstein declined. However, the offer allows us to reconstruct which works by the Master of Meßkirch were already in Hirscher's possession at that time.

Von Hans Holbein - eine Grablegung 2 × 2 1/2 Schuhe"; Von demselben - eine Auferstehung Christi 2 1/4 × 2 Schuhe"; Von demselben - 15 Stücke, z.T. doppelt bemalt, und einzelne Heilige vorstellend. Es befindet sich auf je einer Seite ein Heiliger. Einige haben Goldgrund 2 × 3/8-4/8 Schuhe"; Außer der inneren Glaubwürdigkeit haben diese Bilder sämtlich das Zeugnis des Freiherrn von Laßberg (Herausgeber der Sammlung altdeutscher Gedichte) für sich, welcher von einer anderen Seite her einen Teil dieser ehemals zusammengehörigen Bilder erworben und versichert hat, daß er es urkundlich habe, daß dieselben von dem Basler Holbein seien [...]";

The panels do not appear to have been split at this point. Four reverse sides also appear to have been lost. As his later sales show, he owned other works by the Master of Meßkirch in addition to this offering, which he only put up for sale later. Hirscher never disclosed where his artworks came from or from whom he had acquired them. The fact that he was not purely interested in making money is clear from the fact that he usually sold his collection en bloc to established art collectors or institutions.

The first of these sales was to the Stuttgart art collector Carl Gustav Abel in 1834. On 26 July, he purchased 61 paintings for 2,100 guilders.

In a list compiled by Franz Kugler for the Abel Collection in 1837, the following works, which can be attributed to the Master of Meßkirch, are noted:Hans Holbein the Elder

From a church in MesskirchThese panels are more likely to correspond to the rotating wings of the high altarpiece of St. Martin WD, that is, to the Laßberg collection. It seems plausible that the separation of panel paintings was carried out by only a few workshops, and that in this case Laßberg had relied on Abel as an intermediary, giving Abel temporary access to the works in the meantime.

Mary Magdalene John the Baptist St. Martin St. Wernher Beham (?)

From a church in Messkirch

Four paintings depicting martyrs

Additionally

from Constance

Votive tablet of the von Bubenhofen family (Sic dilexit Deus mundum)In 1850, a sale of further parts of the Hirscher Collection to the Painting Gallery of the Royal Prussian Museum in Berlin, initiated by Gustav Friedrich Waagen, was completed. These included five front panels by the Master of Meßkirch, which were now presented in a new mounting.

The Master of Meßkirch created the festive pages Saint Vitus and Archangel Michael weighing souls (inside pages 8 and 9) as well as Saint Lucia (outside page 5) and the central panel M3 (Flagellation of Christ and Christ before Pilate).

A year before his death, Hirscher approached the Württemberg government, offering 47 paintings and 12 sculptures, which he wanted to see become part of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. The purchase agreement was concluded on 29 August 1865, just five days before his death. Of the works by the Master of Meßkirch, Saint Benedict in Prayer (S1) found its way into the collection. Another painting, which belongs to a larger ensemble of related panels that was part of Hirscher's collection, is now part of the Diocesan Museum in Rottenburg. The Holy Trinity (D1) came to the museum with the Dursch Collection of Georg Martin Dursch when this collection was purchased. Dursch was a student of Hirscher and was inspired by him to collect late Gothic wooden sculptures and panel paintings. Feurstein suspects that it also originally came from Hirscher's collection.

Joseph von Laßberg as a collector

Today, Laßberg is primarily remembered as a collector of manuscripts and books. But he also unreservedly expressed his love for the Middle Ages in his own life, for example in his Blue Room at Eppishausen Castle.

The painted glass panes with old coats of arms and pictures; the round table in the middle of the room covered with an antique inkwell and old books and tools; German wood paintings hanging on the walls; old rifles and weapons placed in the corners; cabinets decorated with beautiful inlaid work; a large bowl filled with Turkish tobacco and a number of differently shaped tobacco pipes; even the jugs, bottles, glasses and plates on the table – everything made a surprising impression on the observer.

He responded to the trauma of the French Revolution, the ensuing territorial upheavals and the destruction of the old imperial order with a call to collect. He endeavoured to preserve cultural assets that were at risk of loss and dispersion due to the changes of his time and the destruction of the old order. In 1820, he wrote to a fellow collector, Friedrich Carl von und zu Brenken: "Let us, each in our own place, collect and preserve what we can salvage from the flood of time." And he wrote to his friend Johann Adam Pupikofer: "I have collected as much as I could. Now you, my young friend, must also set to work with vigour for the same purpose! Focus your attention most keenly on that which is close to destruction and, abandoned to an uncertain fate, needs to be saved so that it does not disappear without a trace!"

According to a letter from 1850 to his friend Carl Johann Greith, later the Bishop of St. Gallen, Laßberg acquired the altarpiece wings from the church wardens of Meßkirch in 1817 or 1818.

However, there is only evidence of a purchase for the years 1821/22. Christian Altgraf zu Salm therefore attributed Laßberg's 1950 dissertation on the Master of Meßkirch to an age-related memory lapse. Since Hirscher, like Laßberg, already owned works by the Master of Meßkirch before 1821, it can be assumed that Laßberg purchased works from Meßkirch on several occasions. As it is not known which works he purchased and when, publications usually give both dates, "1817/18" and "1821/22".

Laßberg had supported Elisabeth zu Fürstenberg during the mediatisation of the principality and during the guardianship of her son Karl Egon, and she in turn supported him in his collecting activities. Laßberg also appears to have had considerable freedom in dealing with the paintings belonging to the Fürstenberg family. It is unclear how, during the restoration of the Falkenstein Altar under the direction of the Boisserée brothers in Munich in 1838, the paintings on the left wing (St. George and St. John the Baptist) came into the possession of Werner von Haxthausen, his friend, chain brother and uncle of his second wife Jenny von Droste zu Hülshoff.

From 1842 onwards, he negotiated with the House of Fürstenberg regarding the sale of his collections (books and paintings), but the sale did not take place until 1852, at 27,000 guilders. Some of his paintings also entered the art market via his daughters' family estates.

Whereabouts of the works