Kolner Renaissancekultur in Spiegel der Aufzeichnungen des Hermann Weinsberg: 1518-1597.

Wolfgang Schmid. (1518-1597). Cologne: Kolnisches Stadtmuseum [Veroffentlichungen, 7], 1991. 243 pp. + Ioillus.

Patronage studies typically address either the donor of a major work of art or an individual renowned for supporting cultural endeavors. By these standards, Hermann Weinsberg (1518-1597) Of Cologne seems an unpromising subject since among extant works only a minor painted altarpiece and a few crude sketches in a family history can be linked to him. Furthermore, he has been characterized by an earlier critic as one of the least important Cologne city councillors of the sixteenth century. Weinsberg, however, has long attracted scholarly attention because of his writings. His chronicle or book of recollections, which runs almost 7,000 pages, offers a highly personal glimpse of life in early modern Cologne. This upper middle-class burgher's existence revolved around his church and his family. His entries are filled with the minutiae of the moment rather than the broad sweep of history found in most, more intellectually ambitious chronicles. Like a detective in search of clues, Wolfgang Schmid, an historian at the University of Trier, heroically dives into Weinsberg's writings. The result is an admirable critical assessment of Weinsberg's motivations as a patron and his interactions with artists. Without making exaggerated claims about his subject's importance or even his representativeness, the author shows how art touched the life of one educated Cologne citizen. This case study provides an instructive corollary to patronage accounts that normally focus upon members of an elite class.

From 1549 until his death, Weinsberg served as the supervisor or overseer of St. Jakob, his parish church, a post held previously by his father and grandfather. Thus his relationship to this small church was both spiritual and familial. By his own admission, this position provided a purpose to his life, a means for contributing to the welfare of his city. Since St. Jakob's was secularized in 1803 and demolished in 1825, Schmid must rely almost exclusively upon the chronicle to reconstruct Weinsberg's personal artistic projects and those that he ordered in his capacity of supervisor. At a time when religious commissions were becoming increasingly scarce in most German cities due to the Reformation, it is fascinating to observe the continued embellishment of St. Jakob's. Weinsberg mentioned altars, a new choir grille, stained glass windows, textiles, and various other enrichments to the church. He was most expansive when describing his own donations. For instance, a plague, which ravished Cologne in 1553, prompted Weinsberg to erect a small funerary chapel for his wife and himself under the tower. In 1556-57 he contracted Barthel Bruyn the Younger to paint an altarpiece as a memoria van uns belden." Only the central panel of this winged altarpiece survives today in the Stadtmuseum. It is a highly conventional picture, the sort that fill German museums. Yet to Weinsberg, this was a highly personal monument. He relates that Bruyn's biblical figures, except the crucified Christ, are all portraits of relatives and of colleagues who shared with him the responsibility of caring for St. Jakob's. For instance, his sister-in-law and stepson are represented as the Virgin Mary and John the Evangelist; Abraham, Moses, and the predella's St. John depict two other church supervisors and the current pastor. Scholars have long recognized that many Renaissance paintings include such disguised portraits but rarely are we told who they are or why they were inserted. Since Weinsberg's recollections span much of his adult life, relevant comments about a single work, such as this altarpiece, can be found decades later. Schmid next picks up the story in 1579 when Weinsberg mentioned that for six years the altarpiece had been stored in Bruyn's workshop. The pretext was to restore several scratches to the painting made by children; however, Weinsberg readily admits to being frightened by the iconoclasm in Antwerp and by Calvinist agitation outside of Cologne. The delicate political situation in the late 1570s likely prompted him subsequently to install the altarpiece in his home rather than returning it to St. Jakob's.

In chapters three through five Schmid discusses the decoration of Weinsberg's family home as well as more detailed information about his expenditures and his interaction with various artists. While Schmid's organization is usually clear, I was occasionally frustrated when material relevant to one chapter was introduced only later in the book. Recognizing that the reader often needs a context for understanding the worth of Weinsberg's particular comments, Schmid includes helpful background sections such as his summary about Cologne's art collectors of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Frequently too he will offer comparative costs for our edification. For instance, the price that Weinsberg paid for a separate portrait of himself by Bruyn was roughly the equivalent to a month's salary of a handworker. The altarpiece mentioned above cost 1,200 albus, but this was less than a quarter of the 5,000 that he spent in the same years on table silver. Modern scholars tend to be preoccupied with paintings. And indeed, Weinsberg adorned his walls with various family portraits and with a scene of ancestral history. Yet our protagonist spent far more of his steady, if moderate, income from property rents on painted windows and drinking glasses, silver, and jewelry. Weinsberg provides a wealth of information about the mechanics of the making of art in Cologne. Elsewhere he mentions that in I 5 81 he prepared a now lost list of the city's artisans, including painting merchants, as a guide for his successor at St. Jakob's. Unfortunately, as Schmid notes, Weinsberg was far less forthcoming about his personal feelings about art or about contemporary projects, such as the lavish new porch on the city hall. Rarely are his remarks more specific than that he takes great pleasure hearing music and looking at painting.

Schmid uses Weinsberg's own words to offer a detailed reconstruction of one patron's activities, his motives, and his interaction with artists. This was a rather conservative burgher who was concern foremost with the function of art rather than its aesthetic or intellectual merits. Why did Weinsberg write at such length about his immediate world? Although in the form of a diary or book of recollections, he must have been conscious of his future readership. Did he have any goal beyond creating a family record? Are there any biases? What sort of information was consciously omitted? I wish that Schmid had commented a bit more on the genre of recollection books. I kept wondering about the relative uniqueness, other than the length, of this account. Schmid does provide a good brief section contrasting Weinsberg's text with the sort of artist biographies penned by Johann Neudorfer of Nuremberg or the laudatory civic descriptions found in many town chronicles and visitors' accounts. Schmid is to be commended for his masterful weaving of Weinsberg's words into an instructive picture of art and life in sixteenth-century Cologne. Like Corine Schleif's recent Donatio et Memoria, which is reviewed in the Spring 1993 issue of RQ (179-82), Schmid's book provides an invaluable glimpse of German patrons and the purposes of their art.