News Release: November 3, 1998

Courtly and Secular Life in the Late Middle Ages on View at National Gallery in First International Exhibition of Medieval Art

Washington, DC -- Love, war, and chivalry are represented along with advanced medieval technology and domestic arts in the National Gallery's first international exhibition of medieval art, Love and War: A Manual for Life in the Late Middle Ages, on view in the East Building, November 8, 1998-January 31, 1999. This exhibition presents more than 100 works, including magnificent drawings and miniatures from The Housebook, a renowned fifteenth-century German manuscript that depicts such widely diverse aspects of secular medieval life as astrology, jousting, household recipes and remedies, and state-of-the-art mining, metallurgy, and techniques for laying siege to castles. Rare drypoint engravings by the anonymous Housebook Master, as well as prints, drawings, and illustrated books by other late fifteenth-century artists, and a selection of three-dimensional objects that corresponds to imagery in The Housebook, including armor, decorative arts, and an extremely rare early clock, are also on view.

"The generous loan of The Housebook from the Princes of Waldburg-Wolfegg provides an unprecedented opportunity for a wide audience to study this previously inaccessible manuscript," said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. "The book's finest illustrations communicate a range of human emotions with obvious delight in the humorous aspects of life, a quality that is unique in the art of this period. This lively exhibition will help visitors recall fairytales from their childhoods."

The Housebook -- which has belonged to the Princes of Waldburg-Wolfegg since the seventeenth century -- was recently photographed for facsimile reproduction. Before the manuscript is reassembled and returned to Wolfegg castle in southern Germany, the owner has generously allowed its parchment leaves to be framed and exhibited by a few select museums in Europe and the United States.

The Housebook Master

Long one of the most beloved artists of the late Middle Ages because of his distinctive humanism, the Housebook Master still remains a mysterious figure. He was active in southern Germany between about 1465 and 1500, a time of transition from the medieval to the early modern era. While the master was also a painter, he is known primarily for his drypoint engravings and the illustrations in The Housebook. Because most of these belong to the print room (or cabinet) of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, he is alternately known as the Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet. A selection of nineteen rare drypoints from the Rijksmuseum, as well as all four now in American collections, will be on view in the exhibition.

Original Owner Of The Housebook

The topics covered in The Housebook suggest that the unidentified original owner who commissioned the manuscript held the prestigious position of a castellan, charged with the daily operation and military protection of a castle. The section on mining and smelting indicates that the owner had expert understanding of that industry, a lucrative business through which entrepreneurial members of the middle class acquired wealth and privileges formerly reserved for nobility. Among the new privileges enjoyed by the wealthy bourgeoisie were participation in some of the courtly activities pictured in the first half of The Housebook, and the right to display coats of arms, which are also prominently depicted in the manuscript.

The Exhibition

The exhibition is organized around the set of seven illustrations from The Housebook depicting "the planets and their children." These illustrations and their accompanying verses reflect the medieval belief that the seven planets were associated with different human activities and influenced the character, talents, and physical traits of those born under their ascendancy. Later, such ideas came to attribute certain powers to the zodiacal sign under which one is born. The seven planetary images in The Housebook, showing the wide-ranging occupations of the "children" of the planets, constitute a wonderful panorama of secular life in the late Middle Ages.

The illustration of Luna and Her Children depicts the unstable characters -- tricksters, jugglers, and charlatans -- influenced by the power of the moon, which was considered a planet in the Middle Ages. Sol and His Children shows the happily disposed and musically gifted children of the sun, which was also considered a planet. Mars and His Children represents the wrath, impetuousness, and ill-humor of those depicted in vignettes of warfare and rapine.

The children of Saturn are represented as farmers and peasants and Mercury's progeny as skilled craftsmen and artists, often closely connected with new technology. Many of the Housebook Master's peasant images are satirical, a reflection of social insecurity about changing class lines and the new bourgeoisie. This is apparent in the master's drypoints, most notably his fanciful Coat of Arms, mockingly adorned with peasants. The children of Jupiter are pictured as excellent archers and hunters and as renowned scholars and judges, while the children of Venus appear as musicians, dancers, and lovers.

Drypoint Prints

The first extensive use of drypoint, a technique that suited the Housebook Master's spontaneous, expressive style, occurred in the works attributed to this artist. As if making a free drawing on paper, he used a sharp stylus to draw shallow drypoint lines directly on a metal plate, creating a "burr" of metal slivers rising to each side of the furrow cut by the needle, making a soft, fuzzy line when the plate is inked and printed on paper. Few impressions of each print can be made before the burr and lines wear down, and most of the master's drypoints have survived in only one impression.

Related Exhibition Information

The exhibition is organized by Andrew Robison, Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, and Virginia Clayton, associate curator of Old Master Prints, the National Gallery of Art. A special slide lecture by Mr. Robison and Keith Moxey, Ann Whitney Olin professor of art history at Barnard College, will be held on Sunday, November 8, from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m., in the East Building auditorium. In conjunction with the exhibition, a softcover book, Venus and Mars: The World of the Medieval Housebook (Prestel-Verlag, Munich/New York, 1998) by Christoph Graf zu Waldburg-Wolfegg, is available for $40.

General Information

The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden are at all times free to the public. They are located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, and are open Monday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The Gallery is closed on December 25 and January 1. For information call (202) 737-4215 or the Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD) at (202) 842-6176, or visit the Gallery's Web site at www.nga.gov.

Visitors will be asked to present all carried items for inspection upon entering the East and West Buildings. Checkrooms are free of charge and located at each entrance. Luggage and other oversized bags must be presented at the 4th Street entrances to the East or West Building to permit x-ray screening and must be deposited in the checkrooms at those entrances. For the safety of visitors and the works of art, nothing may be carried into the Gallery on a visitor's back. Any bag or other items that cannot be carried reasonably and safely in some other manner must be left in the checkrooms. Items larger than 17 x 26 inches cannot be accepted by the Gallery or its checkrooms.

For additional press information please call or send inquiries to:

Press Office
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Landover, MD 20785
phone: (202) 842-6353 e-mail: pressinfo@nga.gov

Deborah Ziska
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(202) 842-6353
ds-ziska@nga.gov

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