Bavarian sculptor. After a varied training culminating in some years at the Vienna Academy he settled in Munich in 1754. His short career was productive of a considerable quantity of wood-carving combining a very elegant Rococo style with a highly emotional religious content. In 1759-62 he produced his chief work, the almost entire furnishing of the church at Rott-am-Inn.
The adoring angel is from an unknown altar retable. The angel is kneeling on a volute, leaning forwards and clasping its hands in homage across the breast. Compared with similar sculptures of the Baroque, its physical presence is reduced to a minimum. A sharp outline pushes the three-dimensional, spatial qualities into the background, just as the grid-like surface lines of the fabric flatten the surface quality of the figure. The angel was originally silver-painted and thus once reflected its surroundings, the paint enhancing its corporeal character. For Rococo sculpture, an illusion of the supernatural was no longer on the agenda. With its tendency towards abstraction, it is no more concerned to invite consideration of its formal features, so observers can keep their distance from the sculpture.
The statuette showing Chronos with the hourglass is an allegorical representation of passing time and transitoriness in general. The figure may have adorned a clock case or memorial tablet.Though the movement of the soulful but tired old man and the sweeping outline remained essentially late Baroque characteristics, the classically developed body and uniform white of the paint indicate pictorial concepts of Neoclassicism.
In France and Italy small clay models were fashioned as guides for producing large-scale works in marble and bronze. Clay and wax were also served in northern Europe as modeling materials, but sculptors there often turned to wood to essay ideas for life-size sculpture. The German predilection for wood as a sculptural material promoted its use in a range of sizes.
The present wooden figure is a model for the so-called Female Saint of Starnberg, a key work from early in G�nther’s career, produced about 1755 (Heimatmuseum, Starnberg).
In the German Rococo period a similarity with the Middle Ages is the vast scale of the new undertakings, and the fact that however beautiful the individual figures or groups or pieces, they were considered originally as part of a vast theatrical whole, and should always be considered in that context. Again, as in Gothic, they were usually dependent upon the use of colour and gilding, which was applied in the same traditional way as in the times of Riemenschneider, though perhaps to an even more lavish extent.. Ignaz G�nther possibly pre-eminent among the Bavarians, but he is closely followed up by a host of others.
Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 19 minutes):
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme
This is the last significant work of the artist, who died one year later at the age of fifty.
Sculptor and architect, Ignaz G�nther was born at Altmannstein, was a pupil of Straub and Donner, then worked in Salzburg before becoming court sculptor at Munich in 1773. He left behind him a considerable production. His works of 1763 at Weyarn are especially interesting: they consist of the Annunciation, a Pietà, and figures of Saints, carved in wood and painted in soft, light colours. This Rococo imagery, animated by a gentle religious fervour, achieves a luminous mystical effect through its flowing grace and the lightly curving upward movements.
This is a study for an allegorical title page of a book, in which Clio, the Muse of History is accompanied by Chronos (Time) and Fame.
