Schongauer, Dürer and Co.

The MAKK jewellery collection contains a group of works featuring figures executed fully in the round and figurative reliefs whose design reveals the influence of prints by important contemporaneous artists or used the prints as templates. There are obvious parallels to some of these figurative pendants, for example in prints by Master MS (c.1420–c.1468), the Master of the Housebook (active 1470–1505), Martin Schongauer (c.1445– 1491) and the young Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528). From the fifteenth century onwards, copperplate engravings not only were viewed as works of art in their own right, but they also served as original template material that could be cheaply and rapidly duplicated and disseminated.

The craft of copperplate engraving was a development from the techniques of engraving employed in goldsmithing. Both Martin Schongauer and Albrecht Dürer were the sons of goldsmiths. At an early age they learnt the engraving skills which they would need when they worked as copperplate engravers. The medieval jewellery in the MAKK collection is primarily devoted to religious subject matter.

Representations of popular saints or scenes from the Passion were great favourites. The prevailing taste matches the piety of the time and the desire felt by the devout to create tangible links with the legends of the saints and the redemptive-historical world view. Hence pieces of jewellery with such motifs had the status of intimate private devotional images. Jewellery with profane figurative motifs, on the other hand, especially imagery drawn from court culture, is not so heavily represented in the MAKK collection.