WOLFGANG KATZHEIMER THE ELDER (attributedto)
ACTIVE 1478-1508
126 View of a Walled City in a
River Landscape
Pen and brown ink, colored washes, gouache, and black
chalk; H: 7.3 cm (2% in.); W: 13.5 cm (5^5 /i6 in.)
89.00.12
MARKS AND INSCRIPTIONS: None.
PROVENANCE: Art market, Munich; art market,
Boston.
EXHIBITIONS: Gemdlde und Zeichnungen 1490-1918,
Galerie Arnoldi-Livie, Munich, Summer 1987, no. i.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: None.
THIS DRAWING OF AN AS YET UNIDENTIFIED CITY WAS
unknown before its appearance on the German art mar-
ket in 1987, when it was suggested that it should be lo-
calized to the region of the upper Rhine and dated to circa
1490 by H. Geissler and D. Kuhrmann (Galerie Arnoldi-
Livie 1987). It is closely comparable to, and perhaps even
by the same hand as, Mountain Landscape with Castle
(Leipzig, Museum der Bildenden Künste inv. NI. 5l),^1
which like the present drawing shows a complex of
buildings situated in a hilly river landscape, with the
scene conceived as a succession of layers rather flatly su-
perimposed on one another. In both, the architecture has
been handled miniaturistically in gouache, while the
background is more loosely painted in washes. The Mu-
seum's drawing has obviously been cut down and might
once have included a more extensive setting such as that
found in the Leipzig example. Also similar to the Mu-
seum's drawing is the group of watercolor views of
Bamberg in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (inv. Kdz 15
343, Kdz 15 344, Kdz 15 346). These views likewise treat
the architecture as a horizontal expanse parallel to the pic-
ture plane and are made up of alternately highly finished
and unfinished patches. The Berlin drawings are attrib-
utable to the Bamberg painter Wolfgang Katzheimer the
Elder and date from shortly before 1485-circa I5OO.^2
Mountain Landscape with Castle has been attributed var-
iously to Katzheimer the Elder and a Nuremberg master
of circa I50O.^3- This similarity was pointed out by F. Koreny, 1990.
- F. Anzelewsky, "Ein spàtmittelalterliche Malerwerkstatt:
Studien über die Malerfamilie Katzheimer in Bamberg, " Zeit-
schrift des Deutschen Vereins jur Kunstwissenschaft 19, no. 314
(1965), pp. 139-41; idem, Durer und seine Zeit: Meisterzeichnun-
genausdem Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, exh. cat. (Staatliche Mu-
seen, Berlin, 1967), nos. 12-14. - K.-H. Mehnert and S. Ihle, Kataloge der Graphischen Samm-
lung, Museen der Bildenden Künste Leipzig, vol. i, Altdeutsche
Zeichnungen (Leipzig, 1972), no. 34.
286 CENTRAL EUROPEAN SCHOOL • KATZHEIMER THE ELDER (ATTRIB.)