Master Art

The art of stained-glass design in Northern Europe during the Renaissance may be said to have reached its apogee in Switzerland during the 15th and 16th centuries. Indeed, in Switzerland after the Reformation glass painting was arguably more important than painting on canvas or panel, and it was not until the advent of the Baroque, and the need for works on a much larger scale, that its significance declined somewhat. Long used only for ecclesiastical purposes, by the 16th century small-scale glass panels of secular subjects were also being produced in Switzerland and in the Upper Rhine areas of Southern Germany. Known as Kabinettscheiben, such stained-glass panels were generally intended for public and civic buildings like town halls, and were also often found in private homes. Among the finest designers of stained-glass windows in Switzerland and Austria during this period was Daniel Lindtmayer, the last and most talented member of four generations of artists that specialized in such designs.

This large drawing is a particularly fine example of Lindtmayer’s drawings for stained-glass (Scheibenriss) panels, which are characterized by refined and elaborate compositions with prominent architectural elements and a vigorous handling of the pen. As noted in the artist’s inscription in a cartouche at the bottom of the sheet, the donor of the stained-glass window for which this drawing is a study, who is depicted kneeling in prayer before his patron saint at the lower left of the composition, was one Hieronymus Bor. A native of Weinfelden, in the canton of Thurgau, Bor served as pastor of a church in the town of Wollmatingen, today part of the city of Konstanz in the German province of Badem-Württembergt. At the lower right of the composition is Bor’s coat of arms which, like that of Weinfelden, incorporated bunches of grapes. The present sheet was drawn in Konstanz in 1595, the same year that the artist attacked and attempted to kill a goldsmith working in the city.

This fine drawing has a long and illustrious provenance, and has figured in several significant collections of Swiss drawings. The first owner of the drawing was the Swiss pastor Johann Wilhelm Veith (1758-1833), arguably the most important collector of his day in Schaffhausen, who published religious treatises, poems and essays on art and science. As well as paintings and prints, Veith assembled a highly significant collection of around 2,500 drawings, of which stained-glass designs made up only a relatively small part. A large number of the drawings in his collection were purchased, at the posthumous Veith sale of 1835, by the Zurich politician Dietrich Schindler (1795-1882), who collected prints and drawings by Swiss artists. Part of Schindler’s collection was exhibited in Munich in 1876, and not long afterwards his collection was acquired by the Swiss councillor Friedrich Bürki (1819-1880). Bürki had hoped to establish a Swiss national museum in Bern but died shortly after acquiring the Schindler drawings. A sale of his collection was held in Basel in 1881, and included some 450 drawings for stained-glass designs, almost all from the Veith and Schindler collections, including a folio or album containing thirty drawings by Daniel Lindtmayer. Ninety-two of the drawings from Bürki’s collection, including the present sheet, reappeared at auction in Berlin in April 1895.

This fine drawing by Lindtmayer eventually entered the collection of the lawyer and art historian Hugo von Ziegler (1890-1966), who assembled a superb group of 16th century Swiss drawings, as well as coins and silverware, between the 1920s and the 1960s. A native of Schaffhausen, von Ziegler collected in particular drawings by artists active in the city. He also organized an exhibition of drawings by Daniel Lindtmayer in Schaffhausen in 1952, to which he lent the present sheet. Other drawings of stained-glass designs from the von Ziegler collection are today in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum zu Allerheiligen in Schaffhausen.