A Canon Table with a Lamentation (formerly known as the "Traveling Altar")

c. 1490

Lienhart Ysenhut

Artist, Swiss, active 1464 - c. 1507

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    woodcut printed on parchment in black with hand coloring; set between two panels of printed text to form a triptych; housed in a slipcase with an embroidered crucifixion scene on the front and backed in leather; in turn housed in a velvet, silk, and linen box, strengthened with layers of paper from an account book, with ornamental tassels at each corner

  • Credit Line

    Rosenwald Collection

  • Dimensions

    image: 12.7 × 12.8 cm (5 × 5 1/16 in.)
    sheet: 15.9 × 39.8 cm (6 1/4 × 15 11/16 in.)
    overall (slipcase): 18 × 18 cm (7 1/16 × 7 1/16 in.)
    overall (box): 20.5 × 20.5 × 5 cm (8 1/16 × 8 1/16 × 1 15/16 in.)

  • Accession

    1959.16.15

  • Catalogue Raisonné

    Schreiber, Vol. IX, no. 506, State aa

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Poor Clare convent, Mulhouse, from c. 1495 at the earliest to 1523.[1] Edmund Schilling? [1888-1974], Frankfurt and London[2]; (August Laube, Zurich); (probably via Heinrich Eisemann [1890-1972], London); purchased by Lessing J. Rosenwald [1891-1979], 14 March 1956; gift to NGA, 1959.
[1] 1523 marked the adoption of the Reformation, when convent treasures were sold or returned to nuns who had gifted them.
[2.] Schilling published the first description of hidden documents in the box's lid and may have been the owner who sold it through August Laube (Schilling 1947).

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1965

  • Fifteenth-Century Woodcuts and Metalcuts from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, NGA, 1965-1966, no. 78, repro.

1982

  • Lessing J. Rosenwald: Tribute to a Collector, NGA, 1982, no. 4, repro.

1990

  • Eva/Ave: Woman in Renaissance and Baroque Prints, NGA, 1990, no. 54, repro.

2005

  • Origins of European Printmaking: Fifteenth-Century Woodcuts and Their Public, NGA and Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, 2005-2006, no. 39, repro.

Bibliography

1926

  • Schreiber, Wilhelm Ludwig. Handbuch de Holz- und Metailschnitte des XV Jahrhunderts. 8 vols. Leipzig: Verlag Karl W. Hierseman, 1926-1930.

1947

  • Schilling, Edmund. "Zur Geschichte einer Basler Kanontafel des 15. Jahrhunderts," Zeitschrift für Schweizerische Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte. vol. 9 (1947): pp. 147-150 and pl. 49-52.

1965

  • Field, Richard S. Fifteenth Century Woodcuts and Metalcuts from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.. Exh. cat. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1965: no. 78.

1982

  • Fine, Ruth E. Lessing J. Rosenwald: Tribute to a Collector. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1982, no. 4.

1990

  • Russell 1990, cat.no.54.

1995

  • Ousterhout, Robert and Leslie Brubaker, eds. Illinois Byzantine Studies IV: The Sacred Image East and West. Urbana, 1995: 298, fig. 99.

1998

  • Hamburger, Jeffrey F. The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany. New York, 1998: 309, fig. 6.24.

2000

  • Les dominicaines d'Unterlinden. Paris, 2000: 222, fig. 26.

2004

  • Weekes, Ursula. Early Engravers and Their Public: the Master of the Berlin Passion and Manuscripts from Convents in the Rhine-Maas Region, ca. 1450-1500. London: Harvey Miller, 2004, p. 12, fig. 3.

2018

  • Schmidt, Suzanne Karr. Interactive and Sculptural Printmaking in the Renaissance. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018, pp. 72-75, Fig. 2.8.

2021

  • Bourgeois, David, Caroline Danforth, and Henrike Lähnemann. "Letter for Apollonia," Franciscan Studies. vol. 79 (2021): pp. 165-196.

Inscriptions

at left, printed in letter press: [Latin texts of the main eucharistic elements of the Catholic Mass: the Gloria and the Credo]; at right, printed in letter press: [Latin texts spoken at the Offertory: the prayers for the offering of the Host, the mingling of wine and water, the offering of the wine, the appeal for God's acceptance of the offering of the Mass, the call to the Holy Spirit, and the words of consecration]; within the woodcut image at center, in coat of arms at lower right: [helmet monogram of the printer]; verso, at left, in pen and black ink: [prayer to Christ and the Trinity]; verso, at right, in pen and black ink: [text of John 1:1-14]
[see Parshall, Peter, and Rainer Schoch. Origins of European Printmaking: Fifteenth-Century Woodcuts and Their Public. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2005, pp. 164-167.]

Watermarks

none

Wikidata ID

Q65218921

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