Golden Madonna of Essen
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The Golden Madonna of Essen is a gilded sculpture of the Virgin Mary and part of the treasury of the cathedral of Essen, a city in northwestern Germany.
Dated around the year 980, it is both the oldest known sculpture of the Madonna and the oldest free-standing sculpture north of the Alps, and one of the few major works of art to survive from Ottonian times. To this day it remains an object of veneration and symbol of identity for the population of the Ruhr Area.
The sculpture has been known by its current name Golden Madonna only since the times of 19th century romanticism. A liturgical manuscript dating from around 1370 simply describes it as "dat gulden bild onser vrouwen" (literally “the golden image of Our Lady”), the 1626 treasure inventory of the Essen convent lists Noch ein gross Marienbelt, sitzend uff einen sthuell mit lauteren golt uberzogen (“[A]nother image of Mary, sitting on a chair and coated with pure gold”).
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[edit] Date of origin
The statue is dated around the year 980. Thus, the Madonna was created during the tenure of Mathilda II (971–1011) as abbess of the Essen convent. Under the reign of Mathilda, a granddaughter of Emperor Otto I, and her successors Sophia of Gandersheim (1012–1039) and Theophanu (1039–1058), the convent acquired what is today considered the most precious works of art of the Essen treasury. The creator of the sculpture is unknown, but it is generally presumed to have been crafted in either Cologne or Hildesheim. Hildesheim is home to a Madonna slightly younger than the one in Essen, while Cologne seems more likely as the home of the artist since the folds in the Madonna’s gown resemble those of the Otto-Matilda-cross dated 982 which is also part of the Essen treasury but was doubtless created by a Cologne goldsmith as it shares many features with the Gero crucifix of Cologne Cathedral.
[edit] Description
Mary is depicted sitting on a stool, with a slightly oversized Christ child figure sitting on her lap. She wears a tight, long-sleeved tunic and a cloak (palla) drawn over her shoulders. On her head she wears a veil, the ends of which are covered by the cloak. In her right hand she holds aloft a globe with her thumb and two fingers, while her left hand supports the infant in her lap. The Christ figure himself wears a pontifical gown and presses a book against his breast with his left hand.
The statue measures 74 centimetres (29 inches) in height, the pedestal is 27 centimetres (10.6 inches) in width. The core of the sculpture was carved from a single piece of wood, most likely from a poplar tree, though earlier art historians have assumed it to be pear, plum or lime. The sculpture’s surface is entirely covered with gold leafs less than 0.25 millimetres (0.01 in) thick, which are held in place by minute golden bolts. The size of the individual gold leafs varies to suit the surface texture. The faces of both mother and child are pounded out of one single leaf each. The coloured eyes of the figures are made of cloisonnéd enamel. While the eyes of the mother are inset into carved fittings, those of the child are merely pasted on the wooden core. The child’s hand is made of cast silver and was added only in the 14th century; the original right hand is lost. There are traces of original tenth century adornments on the orb in the Virgin's right hand, on the right back leg of the stool, as well as on the child's book and nimbus. The agrafe showing an eagle and seemingly pinning Mary’s cloak is an early thirteenth century addition; the fibula beneath has gothic features and is dated to the fourteenth century.
[edit] Preservation efforts
The Madonna was first restored in 1905. By then the statue was riddled with woodworm tunnels and threatened to collapse. The restorers carefully wrapped the statue in plaster cast, insufflated the cavities to remove bore dust, impregnated them with insecticides and finally filled them with a mixture of glue, chalk and water, turning the figure around repeatedly in the process so as to reach every nook and angle. The surface holes were then sealed with bolts of oakwood. The restoration cost a total of 3,200 Goldmark part of which was paid by the Prussian state.
During and after World War II the statue suffered from hasty evacuation transports; many gold leafs came loose and the wood was again infested with wood boring insects. A second restoration was undertaken by the Essen goldsmith Classen, who gassed the sculpture with pesticides and filled the woodbores with “liquid wood”, a plastic then commonly used in wood restorations.
The most recent restoration was undertaken in 2004 on the spot. A workshop was installed in the cathedral’s treasure chamber to examine the condition of the sculpture. X-rays and endoscopy were used to detect remaining cavities, and both wood from the core and the sooty film that had accreted on the gold leafs over the centuries were chemically analyzed. The experts recommended that the statue be kept in a steady climate and not exposed to agitation. Cologne wood restorers Ria Röthinger and Michaela von Welck consolidated the wood of the stool, silversmith Peter Bolg polished the metal leafs of the coating and the child’s right silver arm which had tarnished black over the years. The restoration was overseen by a commission of art historians and restorers led by Dr. Brigitta Falk, curator of the Essen treasury. The Madonna was returned to its habitual place in the cathedral in December of 2004. A detailed restoration report is due to appear in an anthology in 2007 along with further research papers on the statue and the Essen convent.
[edit] History
[edit] Medieval mentions
Whether and exactly when the statue was commissioned, acquired or donated is unknown, and documents referring to the Madonna are surprisingly scarce for the first couple of centuries of its existence. It seems certain that it was part of the cathedral treasure by 993, when Emperor Otto III paid the convent a visit and donated a crown, the so-called “child’s crown”, which is also part of the treasure to this day. Since this first mention the Madonna has always been in the cathedral save in wartime. Apparently the bitter conflict between the diocese of Cologn and the Lords of Isenberg over domination of the Essen convent that resulted in the murder of Archbishop Engelbert by the hands of Friedrich von Isenberg in 1225 did not touch upon the possession of the sculpture, nor did the centuries-long quarrel whether the city of Essen be legally a free imperial city or rather a tributary to the convent ever affect that matter.
The seal of the city of Essen of 1244 shows the Madonna between the Saints Cosmas and Damian. The first documented mention of the Madonna is from the 1370 Liber Ordinarius, which details a fully developed liturgy and processions centred around the statue. The fact that the Canon received the Madonna from the hands of the treasureress for processions on Purification leads historians to assume that the sculpture was shown exclusively during processions and was stored out of public sight for the rest of the year. Suggested repositories include the fortresslike westwork of the cathedral and the armarium dictum sychter, an annex to the right nave.
[edit] Evacuations in early modern times
The Thirty Years' War necessitated the first evacuation of the sculpture. In 1634 the then abbess of the Essen convent, Maria Clara von Spaur, Pflaum und Valör, sought shelter in Cologne and took the cathedral treasure with her. It would remain there until the end of the war in 1648. In these years the Madonna and the now lost Marsus shrine of the Essen treasure were paraded in processions, outshining the treasures of Cologne’s cathedral, as the annals of the Essen convent proudly claim.
The second evacuation was effected in 1794 before the advance of the French revolutionary army. It was hidden in the orphanage of the nearby town Steele. The convent of Essen ceased to exist in 1803 following the secularization of ecclesiastical principalities in the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss. The Ownership of the Madonna passed on to the Roman Catholic parish St. Johannes, which used Essen cathedral as its parish church. Throughout the 19th century the sculpture mostly remained locked away in the treasury and was hardly ever examined by art historians.
[edit] 20th century
The Madonna remained in Essen throughout Word War I but was again evacuated in its aftermath. After the communist revolt in the Ruhr area in spring 1920 the St. Johannes parish, fearing another uprising, decided to hide the statue in a safe place that would be unknown even to its own parson so as to prevent discovery by treason or extortion. A goldsmith from Aachen was assigned to find a hiding place, and he finally negotiated with another German diocese that the Madonna and the rest of the Essen treasure be concealed in a place that only the goldsmith and a designated guardian would know about—even the bishop was only informed about the general plan, but not about the exact location of the sanctuary. A document detailing the whereabouts was deposited in a Dutch diocese in case the middleman got killed. The plan worked so well that to this day it is unknown where exactly the treasure was hidden in that time—it is only certain that it was packed in cardboard and shabby suitcases and taken to some place in the diocese of Hildesheim. The voucher deposited in the Netherlands was destroyed after the treasure was finally brought back to Essen in 1925 when the political situation seemed stable. In the summer of 1925 the goldsmith from Aachen and his son retrieved the treasure from its sanctuary and brought it back to Essen, travelling in a fourth-class Reichsbahn carriage and carrying the treasure inconspicuously as hand luggage.
During World War II the Essen treasure was first evacuated to Warstein, then to castle Albrechtsburg in Saxony and finally moved to an air-raid shelter in Sieg, where it was discovered by American troops by the end of the war. Because the treasury in Essen had been destroyed by air raids, the Madonna could not return to its natural place until the 1950s. It was first brought to the Hessian state museum in Marburg, then to castle Dyck near Rheydt. From April to June 1949 it was shown in an exhibition in Brussels, then through October in Amsterdam, and finally returned to Essen. Until the reconstruction of Essen cathedral was completed the treasure was stored in the vault of Essens’ savings bank. The Madonna has not left the city since.
[edit] Iconography
[edit] Influences
The Golden Madonna is both the oldest known sculpture of the Madonna and the oldest free-standing sculpture north of the Alps. It is also one of only two extant medieval gilded cult images. Gilded sculptures are frequently mentioned in medieval documents, but apart from an image of St. Fides in the abbey of Conques en Rouergue in Southern France no such artifacts survive (the Madonna of Hildesheim was stripped of its original gold-leaf covering at some time). The fact that the stature is free-standing and the cloisonned eyes point to the influence of Byzantine art and its spreading to the Holy Roman Empire after the marriage of Emperor Otto II with the Byzantine princess Theophanu in 972. The overall form of the Madonna bespeaks that the sculptor was not experienced in carving free-standing sculptures, since profile, front and rear view do not match up to a harmonic whole.
[edit] Religious and political significance
As many medieval works of art, the Madonna displays a very complex iconography. The statue shows the virgin in a rather plain gown, while the oversized Christ child figure in her lap wears a precious pontifical gown. The size is meant to illustrate the importance of Christ as redeemer. In contrast Mary is depicted in a serving role, in concordance with Luke 1:38: And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. At the same time she embodies the Seat of Wisdom as the Throne of Salomon is described in 1 Kings 10:18: Moreover the king made a great throne of ivory, and overlaid it with the best gold. Sitting on her lap is the Christ child, whose ornate chasuble betokens his significance as ruler of the heavens, the book his role as herald of the faith. Bearing in mind other medieval portrayals of Christ as teacher, it may be supposed that the child’s lost right arm was originally raised in a gesture of blessing. However, Christ’s face is turned towards his mother, while from any position Mary’s look seems directed towards the beholder. Thus Mary may arguably not only be interpreted as a passive devotee but also assumes the role of mediator between the people and the Redeemer.
There are several possible interpretations for the orb Mary is holding in her right hand. It is tempting to construe it as the globus cruciger of the Holy Roman Empire. However, a globus cruciger is not attested as part of the Holy Roman regalia until the coronation of Conrad II in 1024, and besides in the habitual depiction of the globus cruciger the orb is always shown held by the full hand and all fingers, not just three.
It is therefore safer to interpret the orb as an “apple of salvation”—in much the same way Eve held the apple of damnation plucked from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, Mary now proffers the beholder an apple symbolizing the redemption she has brought to the world by incarnating Christ. She thus appears as a New Testament antitype to Eve.
Another interpretation of the orb is akin to the globus-cruciger-theory. While such an object may not have been part of the coronation ceremony of the Holy Roman Empire until the next century, the idea of an orb symbolizing power over the Mundus, i.e. the world, was well known by the time the sculpture was crafted. Depictions of this symbol of power can be found in Carolingian and Ottonian illuminated manuscripts. According to this theory then, Mary is holding the holding the whole world in her hands, and she is holding it in place of the one who is in fact for the one who is its sovereign, i.e. the infant in her lap.
The image of a mother holding the power over the world for her son may have had far-reaching political implications at the time of the sculpture’s creation. Emperor Otto II, uncle to Mathilda, the then abbess at the Essen convent, died in 983 in Rome, leaving as heir to the throne only his son Otto, a child of three years. Until her death in 991, Ottos Mother Theophanu served as regent for her underage son and defended his title against the claims of Henry the Quarrelsome, formerly Duke of Bavaria and male next of kin to Otto. The Madonna could thus be construed as an expression of Theophanu’s insistence on being, by the Grace of God, the rightful sovereign of the Empire until her son would be of age. Consequently, it may be inferred that Theophanu in fact donated the sculpture to the Essen convent. In the struggle for the throne, Mathilde most probably took the side of Otto and Theophanu. Mathilde's family line had a long history of rivalry to Henry's, she was the personal heiress to her brother Otto (†982), who in 976 had been granted the Dukedom of Bavaria after Henry’s revolt. It suggest itself also that the eventual Emperor Otto III donated the “Child’s crown” of the treasury on his visit to the convent out of gratefulness for its loyalty in the power struggle that took place when he was a mere child.
[edit] Liturgical significance, past and present
The Golden Madonna has always held a special place in the liturgy of the Essen convent. She was paraded in all major processions, and the altar dedicated to Mary in the cathedral was the place where deeds of donation to the monastery were received and depoisted, thus putting them under the symbolic custody of the Virgin. It is however uncertain whether it was in fact the Golden Madonna who presided over these deeds, since the inventories of the convent list two other Mary figures besides the Golden one.
The most important procession took place on the day of the Purification of the Virgin 40 days after Christmas. In a steady ritual, the treasuress handed over the sculpture to the youngest canon of the parish on the eve of the procession, who then concealed it under his cloak and brought it to St. Gertrude’s church in the City of Essen, today known as the “Market church” (Marktkirche). On the following morning the statue was veiled and carried in a solemn procession back to the cathedral, where it was laid down on the steyn, the “stone” where offerings to the convent were usually placed. There she was ceremonially unveiled and crowned with Otto’s child crown. The crowned Madonna was then carried back into the cathedral under the eyes of the congregation, such as Mary had been welcomed by the people of the Heavenly Jerusalem upon her arrival there according to the scripture. The Purification processions ceased in 1561 when the Protestant Reformation reached the city—though not the convent—of Essen and the parish of St. Gertrud was converted to the Lutheran faith. The medieval tradition of the coronation of Mary was revived in 1978 by Essen’s first bishop Cardinal Franz Hengsbach but had to be stopped in 2000 due to restorer's concerns.
Another procession in which the Madonna was shown took place every year on the Monday preceding Ascension. On this day the nuns, canons and scholars of the Essen convent and its “daughter” monastery in nearby Rellinghausen held a formal meeting with the monks of the abbey in Werden and took the Golden Madonna along. The two processions met about halfway between the two monasteries at a chapel dedicated to St. Mark in what is today the neighbourhood Essen-Bredeney. A memorial cross commemorates the place of these meetings today.
When the Diocese of Essen (the so-called Ruhrbistum) was established in 1959, Mary was elected as its patron saint, and thus came to be a symbol for the whole Ruhr area. The first bishop of Essen, Cardinal Franz Hengsbach, decided to make the statue accessible to the public. Since 1959 the Madonna has been on exbibit in a climatized high-security showcase in the northern side chapel of the cathedral.
[edit] Sources
This article is based on a translation of the corresponding German-language Wikipedia article retrieved on October 7, 2006.
- Falk, Brigitta. “„ein Mutter gottesbild mit gold plattirt“ – Zum Erhaltungszustand der Goldenen Madonna des Essener Doms.” Alfred Pothmann – Hüter und Bewahrer – Forscher und Erzähler - Gedenkschrift. Essen 2003, ISBN 3-00-012328-8
- Fehrenbach, Frank. Die goldene Madonna im Essener Münster. edition tertius, Ostfildern 1996, ISBN 3-930717-23-9
- Gerchow, Jan. “Der Schatz des Essener Frauenstifts bis zum 15. Jahrhundert. Zur Geschichte der Institution.” Alfred Pothmann – Hüter und Bewahrer – Forscher und Erzähler – Gedenkschrift. Essen 2003, ISBN 3-00-012328-8
- Hlawitschka, Eduard. “Kaiserinnen Adelheit und Theophanu.” Frauen des Mittelalters in Lebensbildern. Styria Verlag, Graz 1997.
- Humann, Georg. Die Kunstwerke der Münsterkirche zu Essen. Düsseldorf 1904.
- Konnegen, Lydia. “Verborgene Schätze. Der Essener Münsterschatz in Zeiten des Ruhrkampfes.” Münster am Hellweg. Mitteilungsblatt d. Vereins für die Erhaltung des Essener Münsters. Essen 2005, S. 67ff.
- Leonard Küppers, Paul Mikat: Der Essener Münsterschatz. Fredebeul & Koenen, Essen 1966.
- Pothmann, Alfred. “Der Essener Kirchenschatz aus der Frühzeit der Stiftsgeschichte.” Herrschaft, Bildung und Gebet – Gründung und Anfänge des Frauenstifts Essen. Klartext, Essen 2000, ISBN 3-88474-907-2
