FRITZ KORENY .sx A coloured flower study by Martin Schongauer and the development of the depiction of nature from van der Weyden to D u rer .sx WHEN surviving works are scarce , it may be difficult to evaluate the full stature of artists whose biographies indicate that they were greatly admired in the past .sx This is particularly true of Martin Schongauer .sx He was known as ' pictorum gloria ' within his lifetime , and after his death his name was always mentioned with the greatest admiration .sx We learn from Jakob Wimpheling , Beatus Rhenanus , Bernhart Jobin , Lambert Lombard , Giorgio Vasari and other commentators - however defective their knowledge of the facts may occasionally be - that Schongauer's reputation and influence spread far beyond the borders of Germany :sx not only was he honoured as a pupil of Rogier van der Weyden , but he was seen as the figure who brought Netherlandish art to Germany and taught the next generation of German artists , especially Albrecht D u rer .sx There are , of course , some mythical elements in this picture , and a corrective was provided as early as 1515 by Christoph Scheurl , who reported D u rer's statement that , although he had been a welcome guest in Schongauer's brother's house in Colmar in 1492 , " he had never been a pupil of Martin's , indeed he had never even seen him " .sx Schongauer had , in fact , died a few months before D u rer's arrival .sx This statement does , however , indicate that the goal of D u rer's journeyman travels was indeed Schongauer's workshop in Colmar .sx Moreover , it is demonstrably the case that D u rer , who was then twenty-one years old , acquired - whether by gift or purchase - drawings by Schongauer from the artist's brothers , for there are a few sheets by Schongauer which bear D u rer's handwriting .sx Schongauer's posthumous fame was as a painter rather than as an engraver .sx Today , by contrast , although we know some 115-16 engravings by him only a handful of paintings survives :sx the badly damaged frescoes in Breisach Minster ; three small panel paintings in the museums of Berlin , Munich and Vienna ; three other , not universally accepted , small panels ( one in Basel , one on loan to the museum in Darmstadt , and one formerly in the von Gutmann Collection ) ; two altar-piece wings with almost life-size figures from the so-called Orlier Altar , in the Unterlinden Museum , Colmar ; and finally the over-life-size Madonna of the rose garden from the church of St Martin in Colmar ( ) .sx To these can be added a few drawings :sx art historians differ as widely about whether there are thirteen or fifty-one of these , as they do about the attribution of the engraving of the Battle of St Jacob near Clavijo ( ) .sx On the other hand , the Madonna of the rose garden has universally been recognised as Schongauer's masterpiece and as the most important painting in German art before D u rer - the 'German Sistine Madonna' .sx Although the panel still appears impressively large ( 200 by 115.3 cm .sx ) , a small copy in Boston , dating from the sixteenth century ( Fig.3 ) , shows that it must have been cut down on all four sides :sx it lacks about 25 cm .sx on the left- and right-hand sides , approximately 30 cm .sx at the top , and 20 cm .sx at the bottom .sx The date 1473 is inscribed in large figures on the back ( ) .sx The authenticity of the inscription has often been doubted - the '4' in particular seems anachronistic - but the date is considered to be perfectly plausible .sx It is also of decisive importance for our knowledge of Schongauer's career , since a reliable sequence of documents survives only for the years after this .sx Schongauer is mentioned first in 1477 , in the rent book of the St Martin's office of works ( Bauverwaltung ) , and in 1488 he is described as " Martinus Schongouwer pictorum gloria " in a document concerning anniversary masses at the Stiftungskirche church of St Martin .sx The following year he visited Basel and , in a document which describes him as a citizen of Breisach , he granted his brother Paulus power of attorney .sx Two independent sources state that he died on 2nd February 1491 , whether in Breisach or in Colmar is uncertain .sx Other information for his chronology can be derived from the inscriptions on the surviving portrait of him and on his extant or recorded drawings .sx The portrait , attributed to Hans Burgkmair or to his father , Thomas Burgkmair , the painter from Augsburg , bears the date 1483 ( or , as some believe , 1453) .sx It is inscribed 'HIPSCH MARTIN SCHONGAVER .sx MALER' and shows a young man aged between thirty and thirty-five .sx The drawings are the two on which D u rer added Schongauer's symbol and the date 1469 and a third on which he wrote the note " Das hat hubsch Martin gemacht jm 1469 jor " ; without these inscriptions it would have been hard to link them to his oe-ligature uvre .sx Another drawing , now lost , but described by its owner , the eighteenth-century writer on art , Karl Heinrich von Heinecken , is recorded as bearing an inscription in D u rer's handwriting which stated :sx " This was drawn by H u bsch Martin in 1470 when he was a young journeyman .sx I , Albrecht D u rer , learnt this and wrote thus to honour him in 1517 " .sx In the light of this evidence , there is no reason to mistrust the entry of 1465 in the registration book at the university in Leipzig :sx " Martinus Sch o ngawer de Colmar X " .sx Schongauer must have been born around 1450 , could be described as a young journeyman in 1470 , and was scarcely twenty-five years old in 1473 , when he painted the Madonna of the rose garden - an early developer indeed .sx In the Colmar Madonna Schongauer adhered to the traditional , Upper-Rhenish type of the Madonna of the rose garden , as exemplified by the Strawberry Madonna of c.1425 at Solothurn , but he combined the quiet and detailed intimacy of the garden bench surrounded by flowers with a dignified spiritual humanity modelled on the Netherlandish example of Rogier van der Weyden .sx Schongauer's Colmar Madonna shows several specific similarities to the Solothurn Madonna , which was painted almost fifty years earlier :sx for example the turf seat is similarly supported by planks in front , the spacing of the stems of the rose hedge , joining together to create an airy framework , forms a comparably transparent pictorial pattern , in which birds sing on the branches of this peaceful place of retreat .sx Nevertheless , Schongauer's interpretation of the subject was entirely new and , as has been noted , there is an " unprecedented precision in the drawing " .sx The birds , flowers , leaves and grasses are all so carefully differentiated , and are depicted so vividly and individually , that one must assume the artist used a number of individual preparatory studies .sx Given the precision with which the founders of Netherlandish painting , the van Eyck brothers , the Master of Fl e malle and Rogier van der Weyden , depicted individual plants , there is no doubt that they , too , must have made careful drawings - perhaps in colour .sx The iris and lily in the jug at the feet of Rogier's Medici Madonna in Frankfurt ( Fig.4 ) are drawn from nature with no less care than the physiognomy of Jan van Eyck's drawing of Cardinal Albergati in Dresden .sx Indeed , there is a clear evidence in his surviving work that Rogier made studies from nature ; the plants in his paintings have never received detailed scholarly attention and so his characteristically economic use of nature studies , repeated from one work to another , has been overlooked .sx One example is the lily in the Medici Madonna ( Fig.4 ) , which corresponds exactly to that in the Louvre Annunciation ( Fig.5 ) and recurs , with only the smallest changes , in the small Antwerp Annunciation ( ) .sx He undoubtedly used the same model for all these examples , and although no such studies by Rogier are now known to us , we can safely assume that they did exist .sx In Schongauer's Annunciation wings for Jean Orlier , the preceptor of the Antonite monastery in Isenheim from 1466 to 1490 , the two white lilies , the symbol of Mary's virginity , are arranged like a still-life in a faience jug ( ) .sx Re-examining the rest of Schongauer's oe-ligature uvre in the light of what we have observed in Rogier's works , our attention is drawn to similar flowers in two of his engravings of the Annunciation ( B.2 and B.3 ) , which appear to be based more or less freely on the same model .sx When the lily in B.3 is seen in reverse ( Fig.8 ) , the identity of that model becomes clear .sx Similarly , the lilies next to the standing figure of the Madonna in engraving B.2 ( Fig.9 ) , which at first glance appear to have a different growth pattern , reveal , when seen in reverse , even closer similarities to the flowers in the Orlier picture .sx Even such anomalies as the heart-shaped petal on the left , with its rather indented outer edge , or the way the upper middle petal curls in , are repeated .sx Finally , the small but faithful copy of the Madonna of the rose garden in Boston clearly shows that on the right-hand side of the Colmar altar-piece Schongauer painted exactly the same lily stem ( Fig.10 ) as that in the Orlier altar-piece and the two engravings .sx These examples prove that Martin Schongauer , like Rogier van der Weyden before him , used such plant studies as a working aid right from the beginning of his career , keeping them by him to use again and again .sx A few years ago , in an exhibition of German renaissance animal and plant studies , I tried to demonstrate that D u rer , too , used this method , drawing attention on that occasion to the peonies in Schongauer's Madonna of the rose garden ( Fig. 12 ) and to D u rer's dependence on that motif in his drawing of the Virgin and Child with a multitude of animals ( ) .sx Using the Boston copy ( Fig.13 ) it was possible to see that the second flower in D u rer's drawing , shown in profile , was an accurate reflexion of Schongauer's model .sx A coloured study from nature ( Fig.11 ) , which has only recently come to light , has now made it possible to re-investigate this relationship .sx The study is of two fully opened peony blooms and one bud , each individually delineated and arranged economically on the sheet , as in a pattern book .sx The flower on the right , seen frontally , is minutely modelled , with delicately drawn stamens and pistils , its coloured petals subtly graded in tone .sx It has no stem but some foliage is indicated extending out below the bloom .sx The flower at upper left is seen from below and slightly in profile .sx It illustrates very beautifully the transition from the foliage to the calyx , the sepals and finally the petals .sx The foliage is strong and thick , and is attached to a short stem which bends under the weight of the bloom .sx Between these two flowers is a budding stem , with even more leaves .sx The stemless , fully-open flower on the right is strikingly close in form - and even in size - to the single large flower which was not damaged when the Madonna of the rose garden was cut down :sx every individual petal , every detail on the drawing is identical to that in the painting ; the stamens are captured in exactly the same way ( Figs .sx 11 , 12) .sx The linear hatching applied with the brush over a broad painterly wash gives a graphic accent to the study .sx Fine brush strokes , in deeper shades of red , create the modelling on the individual petals ; the highlights are either created by leaving the paper exposed or applied with broad brush strokes in white ; the outer edges are drawn in red or white .sx Through the virtuoso sic !sx use of the brush to paint and draw , this study captures on paper the flower which is still partly visible on Schongauer's panel , despite its poor state of preservation .sx Exactly what remains on the panel becomes clear only by examination of the water-colour study .sx Details such as the dark red parallel strokes on the petals , the broadly applied highlight on the top right of the main flower , the light outline on the lower petal on the left , or the stripes on the trough-shaped rounded petal at bottom centre , are appreciable in the picture only with the help of the study .sx The two other flowers in the study are lost from the Colmar picture , which was cut by approximately 25 cm .sx on this side .sx