In the center of the panel two coats of arm rest on a volet gridded floor; behind them is a red damascene cloth. To the left a barred helm to sinister is surmounted by the upper body of a wolf with a piglet in his jaws. On the right the arms are surmounted by a miter and crosier. At the sides, taking up the entire height of the panel stand two wildmen. Wreaths of leaves encircle their heads and waists and they hold long staffs in their arms. Balancing the primary colors of red, yellow and blue, the panel achieves a unified brilliance. A deep red damascened ground contrasts with the luminous blue and the yellow silver stain in the shields and mantling. The grisaille paint is an even, neutral tone, which harmonizes with the light violet of the framing capitals and the pavement.

When acquired, the panel had been set into a wide modern border of a Renaissance design with masks, strapwork, and stylized flowers (LACMA photograph). The heraldic panel that forms the center is in excellent condition. The pot-metal borders above and below are a mixture of stopgap and modern glasses; they replace dedicatory inscriptions and decorative work that would have originally framed the central panel. Although blank in the drawing, the space at the upper portion of the design would probably have contained a figural element, such as the Annunciation, which appeared in later works commissioned by Müller (see History). The modern damascene segments above the capitals to the left and right are replacements for the Renaissance architecture that is depicted in the drawing. The design also attests to the original plan of a ribbon border with inscription.

Several panels that bear Hieronymous Lang the Elder’s monogram JLG show similarities. A marriage panel of Im Thurn and Schultheiss dated 1559 (Schaffhausen, Museum zu Allerheiligen, Inv. 51851; Hasler, 2010, pp. 197–99, no. 15) shows similar shields with mantling. The panel employs an unusually wide gamut of techniques, and in the shield, the use of blue enamel instead of flashed and abraded glass for the tinctures of or and azure. The delineation of the lions’ manes shows strong similarities to the rich brush and stick work, especially evident in the wildmen in the Los Angeles panel. A later panel, dated 1570, also bears the artist’s monogram (Schaffhausen, Museum zu Allerheiligen, Inv. 54655; Hasler, 2010, p. 205, no. 20). The shield with a black wheel on a gold ground and disposition of helm and mantling is close to that of the Los Angeles piece. A marriage panel of Von Fulach and Konstanzer ascribed to Lang was executed about 1560 and evidences some of the looser brushwork and intricate damascene on the shields that is so striking in the Müller coat of arms (Schaffhausen, private collection; Hasler, 2010, p. 327, no. 126).

The animals on the shield and crest relate to the abbey's patron, saint Blaise (Blasius), a bishop of the fourth century from Sebastea, Armenia. The cult of St. Blaise, however, was well established in Western Europe and was particularly intense in Germany (Jacobs, 1983, pp. 27–32; Herder Lexikon, 1968–76, vol. 5, pp. 416–419; Réau, 1955–59),vol. 3:1, pp. 227–33). In two of the saint’s most characteristic legends, he shelters animals and also enables their consumption. The stag on the shield recalls the story that he was discovered by hunters living peacefully in the deep forest surrounded by wild animals, some of whom he had healed. The wolf carrying the piglet in its maw refers to the miracle performed by St. Blaise from prison for an impoverished woman. Her only pig had been a carried away by a wolf and Blaise caused the animal to bring it back. This story entered the late thirteenth-century collection, the Golden Legend (Ryan, 1993, vol. 1, p. 152). Even earlier, this event appears in monumental form in the twelfth-century frescos of the apse of the monastic church of Berzé-la-Ville (Herder Lexikon, 1968–76, vol. 5, p. 419, fig. 3).

The panel commemorates Abbot Caspar I Müller who was also known as Müller von Schöneck, thus the use of the mill wheel in his coat of arms. The abbot’s seal of 1541 shows the figure of an abbot with a radiating nimbus, surely St. Benedict, under a Renaissance architectural niche. The inscription is in classical capitals, instead of the Gothic miniscule used by previous abbots. The two shields showing the stag and demi-mill and mullet appear below, but without the crests. Another seal of 1548, in a circular form, places the abbot’s miter and crosier between the two shields (Sutter, 1983, pp. 96–110, fig. 17:9, seal of 1541; fig. 18:10, seal of 1548).

Although the site apparently hosted some monastic settlement, the first abbot recorded is Werner I, who received foundation privileges in 1065 from the Emperor Henry IV. The abbey apparently grew substantially, was associated with Cluniac reforms, and in less than a century had founded five priories, including the Swiss abbey of Muri in 1082 (for Muri see Introduction to this volume; for the medieval history of the St. Blasien see Hugo Ott (Ott, 1963). Müller’s administration (1541–1571) was a period of growth, which historians attribute in a large part to his acumen. In 1549 the Abbot successfully resisted the efforts of the Bishop of Constance to bring the abbey into the Swabian Circle. Müller is credited with the education of at least eleven monks who became abbots of other Benedictine abbeys. In 1557, he finished the first complete history of St. Blasien, entitled liber originum, which is preserved in Karlsruhe and bears the same double arms as the Los Angeles panel. A printed version of the text of the manuscript entitled CASPAR, MOLITOR, Stiftungsbuch “Liber Originum 1555/57” was published in the mid-nineteenth century (Mone, 1854, pp. 56–80). The abbey was dissolved in 1806 during the secularization of Germany. Its massive church, dating from the late eighteenth century, now serves a parish and the monastic buildings house a Jesuit preparatory school.

Wildmen were popular motifs in late-medieval and Renaissance art, depicted sporadically as a heraldic device but far more commonly as supporters. One of the first examples may possibly be the seal of Bergen op Zoom of 1374 with three supporters, but the tradition became common by the end of the fifteenth century (Bernheimer, 1979, pp. 179–180). The wildman symbol has multiple complex associations, stressing both the wildman's supernatural strength and his awareness of nature and its primeval truths (Husband, 1980); White, 1972, pp. 3–30). In the case of the Abbey of St. Blasien, a confluence of meanings can be posited. The monastery’s location in the Black Forest and the monastic model of rejecting society in favor of solitude in the wilderness resonates with the habitat and behavior of the wildman. These wildmen are well behaved, and wear leafy vines over their loins. Their dignity suggests a connection to the renewed interest in hirsute saints around 1500 in Germany. Depictions of the John Chrysostom, crawling naked on his knees as penance, and St. Onuphrius living off figs and clothed only in thick body hair appear in works of Hans Schäufelein, Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, and Hans Sebald Beham (Husband, 1980, pp. 95–99 and 107–109.) In addition, Onuphrius, who, during his early years, was nourished miraculously by a white deer and fed bread by a raven seems to reinforce the connection between the inherently virtuous forest creatures and the ability of human wildmen to serve a higher spiritual order (Herder Lexikon, 1968–76, vol. 8, pp. 83–88; Réau, 1955–59, vol. 3:2, pp. 1007–1010). Accordingly, their role lends itself to the patron saint Blaise, who demonstrated miraculous healing powers to the forest animals who recognized his virtues.

Abbot Kaspar Müller had his arms set in glass by many other glass painters. In 1544, Caspar Stillhart and Christoph Bocksdorfer of Constance painted the first glazed representation of the abbot’s arms with the formula of wildmen supporters and crests of wolf and piglet and miter and crosier (Nuremberg, Germanisches National Museum, MM905: Bremen, 1964, pp. 17–18, fig. 75). The heraldic supporters are again wild men but the abbot’s miter has the image of the Annunciation instead of an abbot. The Annunciation was apparently a recurring theme since in 1563, Müller commissioned a panel from the Basel master Hans Jorg Riecher, who later executed fifteen panels for Basel’s Schützenhaus (Giesicke, 1991). It shows Müller’s arms quartered with those of the abbey and the Annunciation, with Gabriel to the left and Mary to the right, in the spandrels of the architectural frame (private collection H. R. Geigy-Koechlin, Basel: Ganz, 1966, p. 37, fig. 27). Quartered arms are also used in 1569 in the panel designed by Hans Hug Kluber, a Basel glass painter. Over a three-dimensional Renaissance arch, we see the Adoration of the Magi. The inscription, like that of the arms of 1663, is in Latin (Ganz, 1966, p. 59, fig. 50). These quartered arms can be compared the format used by a later abbot, Martin Meister, who gave a panel in 1623 to Wettingen’s cloister showing his arms quartered with those of the St. Blasien. He used as supporters, saints James and Blaise, not wildmen (bay South IVa: Hoegger, 2002, pp. 152, 353. ill.)

Müller also commissioned a window for the monastery of Muri in 1558 (South IV: Hasler, 2002, pp. 92–95, 200–203, ill.). Three lights include in the center an image of St. Blaise seated with a stag at his feet. To the left, in a pyramid, are the arms of St. Blasien, Sellenbüren and Austria; to the right the arms of St. Blasien and Müller. A panel (whose upper portion is probably restored) is dated 1557 and shows the same disposition at the base (London, Victoria and Albert Museum, Inv. C.91-1934; Rackham, 1983, p. 92; Hasler, 2002, pp. 202–203, fig. 49). A panel dated 1569, in all likelihood made for the monastery of Wettingen, shows two wildmen supporting arms and holding clubs with a miniature of a stag hunt above (formerly Schloss Lenzburg, Historical Museum of Canton Aargau, inv.no. K 256: Anderes, & Hoegger, 1988, p. 39).

Cited in:
Loewenthal sale, 1931, p. 36, no. 169, pl. 37.
LACMA Quarterly, 1945, pp. 5, 10.
Normile, 1946, pp. 43–44.
Hayward, 1989, p. 68.
Parello, 2020, pp. 48–50.
Raguin, 2024, vol. 1, pp. 27, 135–39.