All Saints: the Landauer Altarpiece

Albrecht Dürer’s All Saints makes heaven seem both immeasurably crowded and surprisingly open. Heads press against the curved upper edge, and great cloaks fill the foreground, yet a clear channel descends through the middle. Here God the Father holds the crucified Christ before him. Beneath Christ’s feet, clouds give way to a blue lake. At the bottom right, a solitary man stands on a green shore beside a tablet. Looking upwards from this tiny figure, we encounter a congregation on an altogether different scale.

The painting is Dürer’s Landauer Altarpiece , completed in 1511 for the chapel of Matthäus Landauer’s Twelve Brothers’ House in Nuremberg. Now in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, it is painted on limewood and measures 135 × 123.4 centimetres. ^[1]

Landauer’s benefaction supported twelve elderly Nuremberg craftsmen unable to work. Joachim Ahlborn dates its foundation stone to 1501, the house’s completion to 1509–10, and its chapel, built by Hans Beheim the Elder, to 1507. Wealth from commerce and copper refining made this undertaking possible. Landauer was buried in the chapel in 1515. The painting belongs within this sequence of building, provision and commemoration; its date marks the completion of one important component. ^[2]

A household and its remembrance

The earlier Mendel Twelve Brothers’ House supplied a local model. Christine Sauer describes its shared household, religious observances and prayers for the founder and fellow residents; the number recalled the twelve apostles. Landauer created a comparable foundation, moved into it in 1510 and commissioned its illustrated housebook in 1511. This was a small, organised community. Its altarpiece could be encountered repeatedly within the routines of a particular home. We cannot recover what any one brother felt before it, but charity and remembrance were joined in the institution that housed it. ^[18]

The donor kneels on the left, an elderly man with long white hair and a dark, fur-trimmed garment. ^[1]

Pale hair and brown fur distinguish his profile beside an immense red mantle. His clasped hands stay close to his body; immediately to the right, an extended white glove opens towards us. Their contrasting gestures give this small passage an inward and an outward movement.

Landauer’s name also appears on the original frame. Its inscription records his completion of the brothers’ religious house, foundation and altar in 1511. Moriz Thausing transcribed it in his 1876 study of Dürer, distinguishing this record of benefaction from the painter’s signed tablet. Read together, the two inscriptions preserve separate contributions to the work: the provision of the institution and the making of its image. Thausing also argued for calling the picture All Saints, taking its chapel dedication as the guide, and objected to the familiar Adoration of the Holy Trinity. The disagreement helps explain the range of names still attached to it. All Saints identifies the larger company, Adoration of the Holy Trinity names its action and central subject, and Landauer Altarpiece recalls the commission. Each directs attention towards a different feature of the same object. ^[3]

The exposed body at the centre

The central representation is the Gnadenstuhl , or Throne of Grace: the Father presents the crucified Son, with the dove of the Holy Spirit above. ^[19]

The arrangement is immediately intelligible through its outlines. The dove spreads its wings across a small patch of light. Below it, the Father’s head rises above a wide green mantle. The wooden cross lies across that mantle, and Christ’s outstretched arms follow its horizontal beam. Wings, cloth and timber repeat the same direction at different scales. Against these broad spans, the long torso introduces a narrow, vulnerable vertical.

The Father’s hands appear near the ends of the crossbeam. His immense robe surrounds Christ without closing around him. Green outer cloth turns to blue within, and the blue folds descend behind the bare legs. Christ’s skin remains exposed almost from shoulder to ankle. The thin white loincloth and crown of thorns have little of the weight carried by the garments and headgear elsewhere. In a painting so full of rich surfaces, this lack of covering becomes exceptionally noticeable.

Colour keeps the overlapping forms distinct. A dark green edge cuts across the paler sky; the brown cross lies against green and blue; flesh catches the light in front of both. Christ’s head inclines away from the central upright, and his knees bend slightly. These small departures from symmetry make the body appear subject to its own weight. The broad enclosure remains steady while the figure within it seems exhausted.

Angels hold the mantle open at its outer corners. Their bodies lean away from one another, their wings press into the surrounding company, and their white garments turn sharply through light and shadow. They create a pair of outward movements around the cross. Higher up, overlapping wings, curls and infant faces become smaller and more numerous. The gathering grows denser towards the edge while the area around Christ remains comparatively spacious.

The clouds help maintain that opening. Near the cross they are warm, pink and cream, with blue showing through. Below Christ they stretch into cooler horizontal bands. There is no painted platform beneath his feet and no architectural floor beneath the kneeling saints. Cloud edges provide enough support for the eye to accept the arrangement without making it an ordinary room. The figures belong together through colour, direction and repeated contours.

Finding a path through the company

Mary kneels to the viewer’s left, while John the Baptist occupies the answering position on the right. Behind him stand Moses with the tablets of the Law and David with his harp. These identifications already appear in Thausing’s account of the picture. They give the crowd several clear points of entry without requiring a name for every face. ^[3]

Mary’s mantle makes one of the picture’s largest blue shapes. Its outer edge drops in an almost continuous sweep, then spreads into folds above the lower company. Her head is seen in profile, and her hands cross near her chest. The Baptist is more angular. His joined hands project towards Christ, one bare foot extends beyond his green garment, and his rough brown tunic catches light in broken patches. The two figures address the same centre through different bodily rhythms.

Palm branches rise through the company around Mary. They invite comparison with Revelation 7:9–17, where an innumerable multitude with palms worships before the throne and the Lamb, accompanied by angels. Dürer’s Trinitarian composition is more elaborate than this passage. The comparison illuminates its gathering and shared worship without supplying a complete explanation for every figure. ^[20]

The palms also solve a visual problem. Their thin stems can be followed through a crowd whose bodies are largely hidden. Cups, crowns and a small lamb provide other interruptions among the garments. Farther back, we often see only a forehead, a strip of veil or half a face. Dürer allows the company to continue beyond the people he makes individually legible. The partial views produce abundance without giving each person the same prominence.

The lower congregation has a different pace. Here the bodies are larger, the hands more conspicuous and the clothing more voluminous. A man in blue near the centre opens both palms. Beside him, a crowned figure turns his head and raises a hand. On the right, a young armoured kneeler joins his palms close to his breast. The sequence moves between broad, open gestures and small, concentrated ones. Attention passes through the group by following what each person does.

Several faces turn towards their neighbours. Others look upward from behind shoulders or crowns. A high hat and a pale cloth head covering stand out among the more splendid headgear. At the extreme sides, figures are compressed against the boundary and partly disappear beyond it. The painting offers no single line along which everyone can be counted. A close look continually reveals another face between two figures already noticed.

The largest backs are especially important. On the left, a gold vestment hangs in a deep, tapering mass, its pattern picked out against red and green. On the right, a red mantle falls from a grey fur collar. Between these projecting shapes, a gap opens towards the cross. We look past the worshippers’ shoulders, entering the arrangement through the space they leave. Their turned bodies give the congregation depth while also making its centre difficult to approach directly.

Costume preserves distinctions of position: mitres and crowns, armour and fur, patterned gold and comparatively plain cloth. The surfaces demand different kinds of looking. The gold vestment’s repeated pattern can be read as an intricate field, while highlights on the armour travel along rounded plates. Dark clothing beside bright red seems to absorb light. These differences keep a crowded band of bodies from merging into one continuous decorative surface.

Large colours then carry the eye beyond individual textures. Red returns on both sides of the lower company; blues appear above and below; green connects widely separated garments. The two halves balance without reproducing one another. The left has a long sweep of red beneath the donor and churchmen, while the right breaks into armour, fur, bare feet and overlapping mantles. A stable central axis holds together these unequal movements.

Thausing read the lower gathering chiefly through social ranks and occupations, rather than as a collection of securely identifiable contemporaries. His account nevertheless supplied particular names and imagined exchanges that exceed what the picture alone can establish. A crowned head communicates authority even where a personal identification remains uncertain. The donor’s documented presence does not turn every neighbour into a documented portrait. ^[3]

A painter on the shore

At the bottom, the picture changes both scale and tempo. The enormous mantles end above water, scattered buildings and distant hills. The lake draws the eye towards a pale horizon. Its banks are irregular, with trees and structures interrupting the low contours. After the concentration of faces above, the open water seems unusually quiet. Dürer gives this shallow strip enough variety to sustain looking without making it compete with the congregation.

The shift is not a continuous perspective recession from large figures to small ones. A cloak can hang immediately above a distant hillside without belonging to the same measurable space. The blue cloud band acts as a boundary, yet its colour passes naturally into the blue distance. The painting connects two orders of space through a smooth visual transition. We can enjoy the lake as a landscape while recognising that it provides no ordinary geographical address for the assembly above.

The small figure on the right is Dürer. The tablet beside him names Albrecht Dürer of Nuremberg as the maker and dates the work to 1511, using the Virgin’s giving birth as its Christian dating formula. Thausing printed the Latin inscription in his original edition. It records a year, rather than a particular day of completion. ^[3]

The man stands with his feet on sloping earth. His red footwear, long hair and dark outer garment remain distinct at this reduced scale. One arm reaches towards the tablet; the other bends near his body. The tablet presents a flat, pale surface against the landscape, large enough for writing to become a conspicuous part of the scene. Its straight edges interrupt the irregular shore just as the painter’s upright body interrupts the low contours around him.

He faces outwards, whereas so many of the larger figures turn inward. His isolation gives him a different relationship to the viewer: we can encounter a single standing person without first disentangling him from a crowd. The scale makes that encounter modest, but its placement gives it clarity. Returning from the lake to the cross, we retain the contrast between his firm footing and the suspended bodies above.

The original carved frame

The original frame survives in Nuremberg’s Germanisches Nationalmuseum, on loan from the city. It measures 284 × 213 × 33 centimetres and is made of polychromed, gilded limewood. The museum credits a Nuremberg master working after Dürer’s design. ^[21]

Seen without an inserted picture, the frame has an unexpectedly large presence. Two columns stand on square pedestals. Above them, a broad horizontal structure projects beyond their outer edges, carrying a semicircular upper field. The rectangular opening is surrounded by several successive borders. Upright shafts, curling ornament and deep mouldings give the empty centre a thickness that a flat reproduction of the painting cannot convey.

The museum interprets this architecture as the Temple of the Old Covenant, opening onto Paradise, and calls the work Germany’s first Italianate altarpiece. Both claims concern the ensemble’s larger architectural and religious ambition. ^[21]

The ornament offers a more intimate route through the object. Lower down the columns, leaves and tendrils twist over blue recesses. Above them, fluting establishes straight vertical channels. Beneath the upper beam, slender openwork crosses and recrosses a dark space. The eye moves between a broad structural outline and these smaller patterns. The columns seem firm at a distance and increasingly intricate as one approaches.

The carved imagery presents the Last Judgement: Christ sits above Mary and John the Baptist, while a narrow relief below divides the blessed from the damned. Thausing described these subjects in 1876, together with the flanking trumpet angels. In the surviving carving, Christ’s raised hand and extended arm produce an uneven, commanding gesture. Below him, small naked figures move sideways between a radiant opening and a monstrous mouth. The larger seated body and the smaller travelling bodies establish two scales within the sculpture. ^[3]

The carved scene has its own intervals. Mary bends towards Christ with joined hands. John kneels on the opposite side, leaving open space between his hands and Christ’s extended arm. The central garment falls in deep folds over the knees. The smaller figures below make a restless band beneath this comparatively spacious arrangement. Their bent limbs and overlapping bodies bring movement to an element that also serves as a straight architectural division.

At the base, the founder’s inscription lies between shields and curling foliage. Above, the carved judge presides over divided destinies; inside the frame belonged the painted gathering around the crucified Son. Thausing already considered frame and picture together when discussing the 1508 proposal. Their relationship connects several acts of looking: reading a human benefaction at the foot, contemplating worship within the enclosure, and following judgement across its upper boundary. ^[3]

The proposal on paper

The Musée Condé at Chantilly preserves Dürer’s 1508 design, DE 887, in brown ink with light coloured washes. The museum’s 2022 exhibition dossier relates its architecture to Venetian sculpted tombs. ^[22]

In this sheet, the tall columns and great rounded crown are more emphatic than the small people within the picture. Brown lines define successive architectural edges, while the congregation appears in lighter, freer marks. The sequence of base, columns, horizontal relief and curved upper scene is already established. The drawing makes room for both the framed image and the figures above it, rather than treating the surrounding structure as an incidental border.

The finished object changes that balance. Its column ornament is much richer, and the broad horizontal member has a stronger outward projection. The upper arc sits within that spread. Within the painting, the front rank of worshippers has an expansive bodily weight that the lightly indicated figures on paper do not possess. Comparison reveals the value of a proposal without making it an exact preview of every finished feature.

Christina Posselt’s annotation on Sandrart.net leaves the drawing’s chief purpose unresolved: it may have addressed the sculptor, or recorded the whole composition. Its varying degrees of finish allow both possibilities. The surviving sheet does not establish how many other drawings once intervened between this proposal and the completed work. ^[23]

Separation and the changing object

Rudolf II bought the painting from the foundation in 1585; it went to Prague, leaving the frame in Nuremberg. In 1780 the painting passed from Vienna’s ecclesiastical treasury into the picture gallery. ^{[1] [21]}

Vienna’s frame is Josef Ludwig Geiger’s copy, commissioned in 1880 and delivered in 1881; Nuremberg’s original frame received Maria Schöffmann’s painted copy in 1891. Irene Kirschner records restoration in 1971 and early blue, red and gilded surfaces. Bare wood gives an incomplete idea of that decoration. She also disputes the claim that cutting made the original frame too small. ^[19]

An earlier episode shows how difficult it had become to imagine the work together. In 1876 Thausing described a frame covered with grey paint and altered ornament. His footnote reported the recovery of the missing frieze in 1873, still bearing old colour. He regarded the grey surface and replacement tracery as injuries to the object, writing with open irritation about the restorers’ treatment of it. This is evidence of a nineteenth-century condition and response, rather than a description of everything visible now. ^[3]

Thausing’s own illustration also needs care. He explained that he had restored missing figures to the printed image with help from the 1508 drawing, and inserted a sketch after the Vienna painting to help readers imagine a reunion. The engraving was therefore an argument about the ensemble as well as a record of its surviving parts. A historical reproduction can preserve valuable information while quietly showing something that no visitor could then see. ^[3]

His wish for reunion was strong enough to prompt a practical suggestion: a good old painted copy might be exchanged for the frame, allowing the original painting and frame to come together. That proposal belongs to the history of the work’s reception. It shows how separation encouraged scholars to treat the frame as necessary to understanding the painting, even when institutional ownership made reunion uncertain. ^[3]

Close looking can hold these different experiences together. The painting concentrates attention through the pale body, blue opening and converging gestures; the frame leads it along columns, inscriptions, a horizontal procession and an elevated seated figure. Within each, small details resist being lost in the larger arrangement. A curl of foliage, an open palm, a white-haired profile and a tree beside the lake make the work approachable, even while its gathering exceeds any ordinary human company.