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RETABLE OF THE ALTAR OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. BY RIEMENSCHNFIDIR.

JAKOBSKIRCHE, ROTHENEURG

FIFTEENTH CENTURY

LAGE 117

PLATE A

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carving of the late Gothic period, the Kensington group, by whomever executed, is unsurpassed, and must be ranked among the masterpieces of the art. The figures are human beings, portraits, it may be said perhaps, from life models. The drapery no longer conceals the admirably posed figure and arms of the seated woman, and though we may regret the still somewhat tormented folds falling in veil-like form from the headdress, yet even these are masterpieces in that particular style. And above all to be remarked are the clean sharp-cut handling and precision of the chisel, the understanding and right use of the material, absolutely to be distinguished in this case from the technique of stone sculpture, and the wonderful treatment of the hands of St. Anne, to which, in wood, for their art, I can only compare those of the Nürnberg Madonna.

Comparisons have been made between this figure and

the stone monument of the Countess Dorothea von Wertheim by Riemenschneider. There are analogies, it is true, in the form of headdress and in the drapery folds, but nothing could be less convincing by way of proof of the identity of the sculptor than the general feeling. The designer of the one, great as he might be according to older traditions, is still wedded to convention, with no sign that he has yet taken advantage of the new realism. The other has worked straight from nature. The question is, are they or can they be the same man?

A work more definitely characteristic of Riemenschneider's style, and in some ways a finer piece than the Creglingen retable, is the one known as the altar of the Precious Blood in the church of St. James at Rothenburg, in the Tauber válley (Plate x.). We need take the central group of figures alone they are those of Our Lord and the Apostles at the Last Supper-and compare them, for example, with the twelve apostles of the Munich Museum. They are a little less than

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