Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Cashion, Debra Taylor

Titel

The Rowland Prayerbook of Nikolaus Glockendon: Manuscript painting in the Golden Age of Nuremburg

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

1994

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The focus of this study is an illuminated manuscript by Nikolaus Glockendon, who worked at Nuremberg during the early sixteenth century. The Rowland Prayerbook is a private, vernacular prayerbook of the pre-reformation period, which includes over seven hundred pages (377 leaves) of prayers and devotional exercises. It is a custom-made manuscript of very fine quality, written on vellum, and decorated with hand-painted borders, initials, and seventeen full-page miniatures. I date the manuscript between the years 1515-18, placing it relatively early in the artist's career, which extended from about 1510 until Glockendon's death in 1534. This study examines the Rowland Prayerbook in thorough detail, including the workshop's methods of production, the character and contents of the text, the program of decoration, the meaning and purpose of the illustrations, the chain of provenance, and original patronage of the manuscript. I also discuss the manuscript in terms of its historical, artistic, and cultural context, in order to contribute toward the greater understanding of the period in which it was produced. The Rowland Prayerbook dates more than sixty years after Gutenberg's invention of movable type, when printing had already assumed a dominant position in the market for illustrated books. The character of Glockendon's art was significantly determined by a flourishing, competitive, and entrepreneurial environment in which versatile, independent artists, working in secular, commercial shops, tried their hands at different forms of book illustration. This environment encouraged the exchange of ideas among artists working in various media, and produced various collaborations, experiments, and hybrids of illustrated books. In this context, Nikolaus Glockendon thrived as an imitator, replicating the works, especially prints, of other artists in his miniatures. This study examines the nature and significance of imitation in Glockendon's work. I investigate how copying was received and understood by Glockendon and his contemporaries, including Albrecht Durer, whose compositions often served as Glockendon's models. My findings discredit the anachronistic prejudice against the copy in modern scholarship, and suggest the need to describe more historically appropriate standards regarding artistic property in Glockendon's culture and period.