AN INCOMPLETE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL ART XVI: THE FOUNDERS EFFIGIES AT NAUMBURG CATHEDRAL
The choir of the east-German cathedral of Naumburg is decorated with 12 sculpted images, not of saints or the apostles, but, as their costumes indicate, of laypeople of noble birth. Even more unusual is the style of the figures: whereas most cathedral sculpture, and much of Gothic art in general, tends to be highly conventional, even generic, in its representation the human form, two of the figures at Naumburg have long attracted special notice for their life-like poses, vivid gestures and highly-particularized facial features. The pair, identified by heraldry and inscription, represent Ekkehart II, Margrave of Meißen, and his wife, Uta von Ballenstadt.
The effigies of Ekkehart and Uta may seem more realistically rendered in part because a fair amount of the original polychromy survives. As was the case with classical sculpture, medieval statues were painted in full, living color (the interior of the architecture was also painted).
Even if all Gothic sculpture retained its original polychromy, Ekkehart and Uta would still stand out from the crowd. The unidealized particularity of Ekkehart’s face suggests an actual human model was used. Uta’s icy beauty seems a bit mannequin-like, but the anecdotal naturalism of the cloak turned up as if to keep warm in the chilly choir creates an uncanny sense of immediacy and individuality. In contrast, the effigies directly opposing Ekkehart and Uta, representing Ekkehart’s brother Hermann and his wife Reglindis, are carved in a much more impersonal, conventional style.
It is, however impossible for either the Ekkehart or the Uta statues to be portraits in the modern sense of the word. They are referred to in the surviving documentation as the primi fundatori, or first donors or founders of the cathedral, and historical records confirm that Ekkehart was instrumental in having the church at Naumburg raised to an episcopal see in the early eleventh century and that he and his wife were buried in the choir of the church sometime around 1049. The Naumburg choir was rebuilt in the Gothic style around the year 1250. The 12 effigies may have been carved somewhat earlier (they may have been tomb sculptures reused when the choir was reorganized and the tombs themselves relocated) but certainly not before the early 13th century, which means Ekkehart and Uta had been dead for approximately 250 years when their effigies were carved. The images are life-like, but not likenesses. Gothic artists were awake to the world around them and perhaps used the facial features and observed gestures of living persons to invest their work with presence, but true portraiture in sculpture only emerges in the 14th century.
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