German sculptor and wood-carver, active mainly in Munich. He worked in an animated and expressive late Gothic style and was the leading sculptor of his day in south Bavaria, with a flourishing workshop and numerous pupils. His best-known works are the ten figures (originally sixteen) of morris dancers for the ballroom of the old town hall in Munich (Stadtmuseum, Munich, 1480). Grasser was also an architect and hydraulic engineer.
Grasser was a German sculptor and architect who worked in Munich. His masterpiece is the St Peter altar in the Peterskirche in Munich, executed in 1492 and representing all characteristics of the German Renaissance. The Aresinger monument in the same church is also signed and dated.
In many German town halls in the 15 century, the great hall or a separate feast room was the site of the important social rituals. The ranks of civic leadership and its attendant privileges, such as the right to dance in the town hall, were often restricted to patricians and wealthy merchants. On completion of its new Rathaus in about 1477, the Munich council converted the largest chamber of their adjoining old building into a feast room. They commissioned Erasmus Grasser to carve sixteen statues of morris dancers, which were spaced around the room at the base of the wooden vault. Each figure exhibits a wildly contorted pose. One, dubbed Bridegroom, stands on one leg while twirling dexterously.
Morris dances, performed at carnivals or as interludes in more formal dances in the fifteenth century, were acrobatic as the men would leap around in comical and often erotic fashion to the sound of drum and flute music.
