Antler Chandelier with Female Figure (‘Leuchterweibchen’)

Entry

Leuchterweibchen or Lüsterweibchen is the German appellation for an unusual type of chandelier combining a carved figure of a woman and antlers (typically of a stag), hung from the ceiling via chains or articulated rails.¹ Although antler chandeliers also exist with male figures, saints, historical, allegorical and mythological figures, and (mythical) animals, by far the majority feature female figures.² The chains accompanying most of the surviving medieval antler chandeliers of this type have been lost; the Amsterdam chandelier is unique in this respect, as its original chains remain intact.

The term Leuchter is not always applicable, as antler chandeliers by no means served solely as decorative sources of light. As with the Rijksmuseum piece, candleholders on many of these objects are entirely absent. When bearing escutcheons, the function of these objects was primarily heraldic in nature. This heraldic significance applies not only to the coats of arms themselves, but also to the chandelier as a whole: such objects can therefore be seen as a three-dimensional variant of shield and crest, with the combination of figure and antlers representing the latter. This is literally the case with crests consisting of a figure flanked by antlers.³ Invariably, the escutcheons on these chandeliers tilt downwards at an angle, thus ensuring the coats of arms’ legibility when seen from below.

The popularity of antlers as a heraldic motif is linked to symbolism and the display of status. As trophies of the hunt – a lordly right – these objects indirectly referred to their owner’s noble status. Even shed antlers were deemed as the landowner’s possession, to be relinquished by the finder.⁴ Additionally, antlers were associated with vitality, fertility, regeneration (the annual shedding and regrowing), and love. In the Christian tradition, they also symbolise spiritual authority, as deer antlers grow upwards in the direction of the spiritual realm.⁵ Antlers were collected as miracles of nature and incorporated as such in unique Kunstkammer pieces, e.g. the wooden Doe’s Head with Antlers and Crucifix held in the National Museum of Denmark (Copenhagen), made at the request of Archduchess Margaret of Austria by the sculptor Conrad Meit in 1518.⁶ Antler chandeliers reflect a similar combination of naturalia (antler) and artificialia (sculpture), based on the notion that the carved artefact enhances the value of the natural object. Lastly, antlers were thought to keep demonic forces and other misfortunes at bay. Veit Stoß’s Drachenleuchter (dragon chandelier), modelled after a design by Albrecht Dürer, and the Schreckkopf chandelier in Jever are fine examples of such apotropaic antler chandeliers.⁷ The symbolic aspect of antler chandeliers therefore played an important role, an element more precisely defined by the iconography of the integrated sculpture

Many medieval antler chandeliers probably also served a formal function, considering their documented frequency in city council halls, where in some cases they survive today in situ.⁸ Their presence was an implicit appropriation of the symbolism of lordship associated with antlers originally reserved for the nobility, and hence, of the spiritual and legislative authority granted to governing authorities by God.⁹ Antler chandeliers also hung in churches. Leeuwenberg cited the late fourteenth-century Leuchterweibchen from the Marienkirche in the old Hanseatic city Lemgo, with a portrait bust of Gehse Lambrachting, a wealthy citizen of Lembo who donated the chandelier to the church in 1392. To his knowledge, this was the only chandelier of its kind hanging in a church. It has since been learned that these objects in fact adorned the interiors of many more churches.¹⁰ Other quasi-public locations included princely courts, fortresses and castles, abbeys (refectories), guild houses, almshouses and schools. Moreover, antler chandeliers were increasingly to be found in the homes of affluent burghers, in accordance with their growing status.¹¹

Judging from its modest size, the Rijksmuseum chandelier was likely intended for a private space. The coat of arms on the escutcheon clasped in the Leuchterweibchen’s hands cannot be traced to any one patron: a single jumping ibex in an otherwise empty field was used by numerous families both in the Netherlands and abroad, and even various territorial regions.¹² The Amsterdam piece belongs to the group of antler chandeliers whose iconography alludes to love and courtship, conveyed through the Weibchen’s charming appearance but also the rose on her back, a time-honoured symbol of love. Chandeliers of this kind are the product of an era in which courtly love and the noble veneration of women were vital to the culture of the elite class.¹³ In contemporaneous representations, Leuchterweibchen appear in combination with loving couples such as Matthäus Zasinger’s The Embrace and Willem Vrelant’s miniature entitled The Workshop of the Sculptor Pygmalion (fig. a). In Zasinger’s print, the half-figure Leuchterweibchen holds two as yet blank escutcheons in her hands, presumably destined for the coats of arms of the two lovers engaged in an embrace below.¹⁴ In Vrelant’s miniature, we see a somewhat earlier type of chandelier adorned only with a woman’s head (similar to the Lambrachting Leuchterweibchen) as opposed to a half-figure, with Pygmalion kneeling before Galatea. In German-language courtly literature of the fifteenth century, we encounter Frau Minne as the personification of love. She also occasionally appears with the wings of Amor, the god of love, to which the antlers on ‘courtly’ chandeliers, like the example in the Rijksmuseum, may intentionally allude.¹⁵

Leuchterweibchen were primarily popular during the first half of the sixteenth century, specifically in the southern parts of German-speaking regions (southern Germany, Tirol, Switzerland). Nevertheless, contemporaneous representations and archival sources show these objects were also quite common in the Northern and Southern Netherlands, perhaps even earlier than in Germany. The earliest known documentation of an antler chandelier occurs in an estate inventory from 1325, held in the archives of the former Flemish region of Pas-de-Calais. The entry’s wording - ‘4 chandeliers of horn that have heads of nuns…’¹⁶ - leaves little doubt that this concerns a Leuchterweibchen.¹⁷ The Amsterdam Leuchterweibchen – with its fashionable renaissance raiment, hair and flat beret – remains a rare example of a Netherlandish antler chandelier, as very few are known to have survived.¹⁸ Stylistically, she falls seamlessly in line with the so-called poupées de Malines (Mechelen dolls): carved, wooden statuettes of the Virgin, the Christ Child and other saints used for private devotion that were mass-produced in Mechelen workshops during the first half of the sixteenth century and dispersed across Europe. Typical of these carvings are the round heads with high domed foreheads, a refined nose and mouth, and eyes slightly askew, all characteristics also found on the Amsterdam Weibchen. Even if acknowledging that poupées de Malines were rarely profane in nature and that the quality marks invariably applied to Mechelen wood-carved sculptures during this period – e.g. the Mechelen municipal coat of arms (three pales, certifying the wood quality) and the letter ‘M’ (for the polychromy) – are nowhere to be discerned, there exists no doubt regarding the Amsterdam Leuchterweibchen’s Mechelen provenance. Confirmation is provided by a virtually identical antler chandelier in the Bode-Museum in Berlin, possibly made in the very same workshop, which does in fact bear the ‘M’ of the city Mechelen (fig. b - antlers, chains and escutcheon now missing).¹⁹

In Vrelant’s miniature (fig. a), the Leuchterweibchen appears to be an item placed on display for sale, supporting the notion that these objects were not only made per commission, but also sold in shops. ²⁰ While it is not known whether the two Mechelen Leuchterweibchen were made at the request of a specific patron, for the local market or for export, the latter scenario is perhaps confirmed by the fact that both came up for sale in the early twentieth century – one in Switzerland, the other in Austria. ²¹ Leeuwenberg assumed the Amsterdam chandelier was integrally assembled in Mechelen. Nevertheless, the possibility also exists that the figure, though initially carved in Mechelen, was transported to its final destination (Germany), with the rosette-like back piece, antlers and chains added only later.²² Unlike the back piece on the Amsterdam Weibchen, which indeed appears to have been carved from the same piece of wood as the torso, the (now missing) back piece on the Berlin figure was carved from a separate piece of wood. Here the upper half of the figure’s back is dark in colour, with its surface unplaned as is customary of Mechelen carvings from this period. In the area where the back piece was once attached, however, the wood’s surface has been finished smooth and bare (fig. c).²³ The figure itself could therefore very well have been exported without the back piece, with the lower portion of the back planed smooth only upon its arrival in Germany (at which time the municipal guild mark was removed?), thus allowing the back piece to be readily attached in its proper place. The same was perhaps true of the two separately carved escutcheons, added only later to the Leuchterweibchen, or if delivered together with the figure, adorned with coats of arms only when a buyer for the chandelier emerged.²⁴

Titia de Haseth Möller, 2024