Maria Magdalena Mauritius
Dealing with saints
09.11.2007 - 24.03.2008
Valuable collection of Mediaeval wooden sculpture
The Swiss National Museum possesses some 400 individual figures and 15 retables, an outstanding collection of Mediaeval wooden sculpture. Now, fully 70 years after it was first published, the catalogue has been re-issued in a new, updated version, including the more recent additions to the collection and benefiting from the latest findings in the fields of art and cultural history, the natural sciences and technology.
New collection catalogue
Together with the publication of the new catalogue, “Wooden Sculpture of the Middle Ages”, the National Museum in Zurich has mounted a special exhibition, affording its visitors a vivid glimpse at the role of saints and Biblical figures in the Mediaeval world.
Special exhibition
The special exhibition poses a range of questions. What was the significance to the Mediaeval ecclesiastical calendar of altar groups, or of scenes featuring individual figures, such as the entry of Christ into Jerusalem? What did people hope to obtain from the saints or helpers in time of need they venerated as patrons of their city or country? How can we be certain today which saint a particular sculpture was meant to represent? Why do most of the sculptures and altarpieces in the National Museum come from the cantons of Graubünden and Valais, as well as from the Swiss interior?
The oldest sculpture of Saint Mary in the collection, a Romanesque Madonna, owes her preservation to the pious treatment she received at the hands of the faithful, who buried her, along with human remains in the ossuary of the town of Raron in the canton of Valais, when her particular style was no longer in fashion.
The citizens of Zurich and Bern, meanwhile, among other places, had a rather different way with their saints: during the so-called iconoclasm of the Reformation, holy figures were burnt or destroyed. The exhibition provides answers to questions such as these and brings contemporary circumstances to life with original objects from the Middle Ages, thus allowing the National Museum in Zurich to address a renewed interest on the part of the general public in the powerful effect of Mediaeval sacred sculpture, one that transcended confessional and perhaps even religious differences.
The exhibition is in German.
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