Tilman Meet World

One of the big objectives of my trip in Germany last spring was to visit the works of Tilman Riemenschneider, the late medieval sculptor. This was research for a new site project I was working on through 2019 - something to catalog his work in better detail, and provide a resource for anyone that wants to learn more about his work.

I’ve loved Tilman Riemenschneider since I first saw a piece of his in Lawrence, KS at the Spencer Museum of Art. They have a really striking Madonna and Child figure - sensitively carved but with a bit of the medieval stylization used for religious figures. I love this historic moment in art history, when artists can create true-to-live realism in their portraiture, but choose not to because of who and what they are depicting. I think this lends a weird sense of modernity to the enterprise, actually; there’s just a bit of anime exaggeration in the figures.

So anyway, I’ve made it a goal to see as many extant Riemenschneider pieces in person, and of course as I did this, I wanted to create a better resource for others. Thus: the new TilmanRiemenschneider.com.

I’ve also learned how to spell Riemenschneider correctly, about 85% of the time.