Saint Florian
Austrian School
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
c. 1500 - 1520
Materials
Cedar, paint, gilding
Measurements
870 x 346 x 180 mm
Place of origin
Austria
Order this imageCollection
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire
NT 514476
Summary
Wood, paint, gilding, St Florian, Austrian School or Southern German School, c. 1500-20, A carved, painted and gilded wooden statue of Saint Florian, the patron saint of firefighters. The saint is depicted standing upon a hillock atop which is a burning fortified church, onto which Florian pours water from a wooden bucket. The sculpture is made mostly from a single piece of wood and is flat at the back, the interior roughly hollowed out. The tower of the church possibly carved separately. A hole in top of the head, into which would have been inserted a spindle to hold the figure firm during carving (there would have been another in the base). The current base of the hillock is a modern addition. The figure was made in Austria or in Southern Germany in the early 16th century. The figure is painted and gilded; the inside of the cloak dark green or black, hat and bucket brown and black, the armour now dark red but possibly originally silvered, the flesh areas naturalistically coloured. Much old woodworm damage.
Full description
This sculpture is flat at the back, indicating that it was originally made as a figure in an altarpiece. It could well have flanked a central group of the Virgin and Child, as may be seen in a winged altarpiece in the Victoria & Albert Museum, made for a church in Klausen near Brixen (Bressanone) in the South Tyrol, in the workshops of Rupert Potsch and Philipp Diemer, c. 1500-1510 (Norbert Jopek, German Sculpture 1430-1540. A Catalogue of the Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London 2002, pp. 137-145, no. 65). In this altarpiece, the Virgin and Child are flanked within the central shrine by full-length figures of Saints Florian and John the Baptist. The Anglesey Abbey figure of Saint Florian was made in Austria or Southern Germany, around 1500 or perhaps a little later. Saint Florian (c. 250-304 A.D.) was born in Austria and joined the Roman army, rising to the become a commander. Having converted to Christianity, he was accused of not persecuting the Christian believers in his district with enough severity and ordered to sacrifice to the pagan gods, which he refused to do. Condemned to death by burning, Florian frightened the soldiers tying him to the pyre by challenging them to burn him and promising to welcome the flames. He was instead drowned in a river. As an officer in the Roman army, Florian assembled a squad of soldiers trained in firefighting, hence he became the patron saint of firefighters, and was also invoked for protection against floods, blizzards and droughts. He is widely venerated in Southern Germany, Austria and Central Europe. Saint Florian was often paired with Saint George to create a pair of guardian figures, usually set on pedestals either side of the main shrine of altarpieces. A pair of such figures is at Anglesey Abbey There is a similar figure of Saint Florian, also holding a fire bucket, in the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, paired with a figure of Saint Leopold and attributed to Upper or Lower Austria, c. 1485-1500 (Inv, 71.22.1. Joan A. Holladay and Susan L. Ward, Gothic Sculpture in America. III. The Museums of New York and Pennsylvania, New York 2016, pp. 233-35, no. 140). Jeremy Warren 2020
Provenance
Bequeathed to the National Trust by Huttleston Rogers Broughton, 1st Lord Fairhaven (1896-1966) with the house and the rest of the contents.
Credit line
Anglesey Abbey, The Fairhaven Collection (The National Trust)
Makers and roles
Austrian School, sculptor South German School, sculptor
References
Russell 2007: Joanna Russell, ‘Anglesey Abbey Sculpture Project’, Hamilton Kerr Institute, University of Cambridge, 2007, pp. 18-19, Pl. 5.