The panel belongs to a cycle donated in 1609 by the thirteen old Swiss “cantons” to an unknown location, possibly the cloister in the abbey of Frauenthal (see BE_1538). Five of these panels, including that of Schaffhausen, entered the renowned collection of Lord Sudeley, Toddington Castle, Gloucestershire until the estate sale of 1911 by Galerie Helbing, Munich.
The host is a reference to Barbara’s power, shared with several other saints of the time, to help avoid an untimely death, that is, a death without the sacraments. Barbara’s special function, however, was as the patron of those who worked with explosives. Her father, who had imprisoned her in the tower, and ultimately beheaded her, was punished by being struck by lightning (Réau, 1955–59, III/1, pp. 169–77). In the fifteenth century, those who worked with firearms selected Barbara as their patron. At first, the artillery invoked her protection, then others working with explosive materials; she thus became the patroness of many guilds and corporations, and a fitting complement to a military saint.
Alexander of Bergamo was revered as a soldier and martyr, and was associated with the great Theban legion under the command of St. Maurice (Herder Lexikon, vol. 5, col. 84; Réau, 1955–59, III/1 p. 51). St. Maurice was believed to have led a Roman legion of Christians from Thebes in Egypt to Switzerland. When the soldiers refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods, they were executed at the order of the Emperor Maximian.
St. Alexander, together with St. Constans, was the patron saint of the Benedictine abbey of Allerheiligen in Schaffhausen. The dedication stems from the transfer at the end of the eleventh century of relics of St. Constans and St. Alexander from Trier to Schaffhausen. The two saints are also shown together flanking the inscription on the panel donated in 1517 by Michael Eggenstorfer, the last abbot of Allerheiligen, probably to the abbey of St. George in Stein am Rhein (Stein am Rhein, Rathaussammlung, Grosse Ratsstube, Inv. no. BMSt 19; Hasler, 2010, pp. 341–42, no. 136). With the Protestant reform of 1529, the abbey was secularized and was administered by the Klosterschaffner of the city (Hasler, 2010, pp. 18–19, 23). A new panel for the abbey donated by the city, probably about 1529, shows these two patron saints transformed from their legendary representations as soldier/martyrs to well-dressed noblemen (Schaffhausen, Museum zu Allerheiligen Mus. Inv. 21073; Hasler, 2010, pp. 188–89, no. 9). In the possession of the secularized abbey, the city of Schaffhausen was able to reconfigure Alexander from a Catholic saint into a kind of local patron (Landespatron).
Two panels given in 1579 by the city of Schaffhausen to the cloister of Wettingen show similar compositional elements. Signed by Christoph Murer, the Wettingen panels are complements; one shows a single, similarly dressed figure of St. Alexander and the other bears the Arms of Schaffhausen flanked by two angels (East XI I a and b; Hoegger, 2002, pp. 192–93, 394–96). The latter panel carries an upper inscription almost identical to that in the LACMA panel, describing the raid on the city of Tiengen during the Swabian War, the last major Battle of the Swiss Confederacy against the House of Hapsburg. The inscription in the LACMA panel, created thirty years later, thus appears to be copied from the Wettingen panel or a common model. Other panels in the 1609 series, for example the Arms of the City of Bern, show similar inscriptions referencing important events in the history of the Swiss Confederation. The events at Tiengen, however, did not unfold as described in the inscription. Lasting from January to July 1499, the Swabian War was characterized by many small raids by both sides but few larger battles. The attack on the Tiengen, called Dengen in both inscriptions, was by the Swiss, principally carried out by troops of Zürich and Schaffhausen. Tiengen was then located about five kilometers north of the Canton of Schaffhausen and was part of the border areas between Switzerland and Germany. Schaffhausen gained considerable territory after the war, including Tiengen which is now adjacent to the Swiss border. History is often reinterpreted in order to create a more coherent and uncomplicated series of events.
The Murer workshop achieved an unusual balance between a painterly and a graphic mode in the rendering of forms. The figures achieve a graceful solidity. For the image of St. Barbara, for example, the head and torso are rendered with a loose chiaroscuro, the three-dimensionality set in relief by the precision of the letters and decoration of the halo. The figures show considerable elegance, qualities that made the Murer workshop production so successful. The saints seem full of life, Barbara bending in graceful femininity and Alexander sweeping aside his cloak to reveal his two-handed sword (Zweihänder), renowned in contemporary Swiss military accomplishments. A comparison with an eloquent drawing by Christoph Murer for a stained-glass window depicting Hercules Choosing between Virtue and Vice exhibits the same eloquent delineation of the body (late sixteenth-early seventeenth century, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995.298; Alsteens, & Spira, 2012, p. xi, no. 47). The figure of Virtue could very well be St. Barbara. Hercules’ body inhabits the space actively, one shoulder back, one leg forward, and the other bent behind him, similar to the individuals in the LACMA panel. The painterly chiaroscuro that so engages us in the drawing can be seen in the delineation of the soldiers and animals in the Swiss raid on Thengen as well as the two patron saints.
Hans Lehmann suggested that the cycle was made for the cloister in the abbey of Frauenthal (Lehmann, 1911, p. 31; Hasler, 2010, p. 417). The convent was founded in 1231, near the city of Cham in the Canton of Zug, and about 14 kilometers south of Zurich. In 1351, it was converted into a foundation of the Cistercian Order. The institution was suppressed with the triumph of Protestant reform in the sixteenth century; the Counter-Reformation, however, saw the foundation renewed. The building of Frauenthal’s Beichtigerhaus (Confessor’s House) in 1609 coincides with the date of the panel. A panel dated 1620 commissioned by the abbess Maria Margareta Honegger of Frauenthal (reign 1602 to 1625) for the cloister of Wettingen honors the support received from the monks in the renewal of the abbey (North XId; Hoegger, 2002, pp. 104, 289–90). Although the Frauenthal association is simply a hypothesis for the provenance of the Los Angeles panel, the saints accompanying the arms are a clear indication that the cycle was designed for a religious edifice somewhere in the Catholic part of Switzerland. Many of Frauenthal’s buildings are still extant.
Cited in:
Loewenthal sale, 1931, p. 37, no. 174, pl. 38.
LACMA Quarterly, 1945, pp. 5–10.
Normile, 1946, pp. 43–44.
Hayward, 1989, p. 74.
Raguin, 2024, vol. 1, pp. 39, 180–85.
