Luhring Augustine is pleased to partner with London-based gallery Sam Fogg to present Gothic Spirit: Medieval Art from Europe, opening in Luhring Augustine’s Chelsea flagship on January 25, 2020. The world’s leading dealer in the art of the European Middle Ages, Sam Fogg has for the past thirty years mounted ground-breaking exhibitions that challenge and redefine perceptions of Medieval and Renaissance art. Following Of Earth and Heaven, the acclaimed 2018 collaborative exhibition between the two galleries, Gothic Spirit will present for the first time in a contemporary context roughly thirty masterpieces that are among the finest Medieval art to be found in private hands. The exhibition will be on view through March 7, 2020 and accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.
Highlights include a massive pair of stone lions carved by Romanesque sculptors for a grand portal in Northern Italy. Believed to have been from a group of four, the other pair now resides in the Cloisters Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, making this occasion the first time in nearly two hundred years that the set is reunited in the same city. A golden orb made in the 1170s to crown a monumental reliquary shrine in the chapel of Saint Ursula in Cologne will be among a group of exquisite treasury objects on view. It represents a completely new discovery, having been removed by the city’s Napoleonic occupiers in around 1800 and now recognized as a missing fragment from one of the earliest and most impressive shrines of its type. A monumental stained-glass window depicting a lavishly dressed donatrix kneeling before two female saints represents a significant and rare example of female patronage from the Middle Ages. It was made for one of the richest churches of Cologne in the late 1520s and has endured five hundred years of iconoclasm, bomb damage, and neglect in almost pristine condition.
The exhibition also features two limewood works: a nearly life-sized sculpture of a grieving Virgin, carved in a French workshop around 1150 and later acquired by William Waldorf Astor for Hever Castle, and a relief by the German Renaissance sculptor Hans Leinberger, carved as part of a famous performative and didactic sculpture called the Landshut Marianum in circa 1516-18. Another remarkable piece is a painting of the Nativity created circa 1430 by the single most important proponent of Viennese painting.
Gothic Spirit will be presented in conjunction with a one-day conference, Restoring the Past: Destruction, Restoration and Preservation of Medieval Art and Architecture, on Saturday, January 25, 10:30am – 6pm at the SVA Theatre, 333 West 23rd Street, New York. Inspired by the issues surrounding the efforts to restore the cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris and its treasures, this conference will focus on the past, present, and future of restoration in an attempt to examine the enduring life of Medieval art from its creation in the Middle Ages to today.
The conference is free and open to the public, but advance booking is essential to secure a place. Guests should RSVP to rsvp@luhringaugustine.com to reserve a seat. The event will include a morning coffee service and an evening drinks reception.