Summary

Sculpture, iron; Johannes Gutenberg (c 1400-68); Berlin, G.A. Schwan, after Bertel Thorvaldsen; c. 1837-50. A cast iron plaque reproducing the monument to the printing pioneer Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1394/1400-1468) erected in 1837 in his home city of Mainz, Germany. The rapid development in the later 18th century in the technology for smelting iron ore and for casting objects in iron led to a flourishing industry in the production of objects and works of art in Germany, especially in Berlin and in Silesia. The plaque is a very rare surviving product from one of the smaller foundries operating in Berlin.

Full description

A cast-iron relief depicting the memorial statue to the inventor of moveable type and printing pioneer Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1394/1400-1468), after the monumental bronze statue designed by Bertel Thorvaldsen and unveiled in Gutenberg’s home city of Mainz in 1837. Gutenberg is shown with a long beard and standing, wearing a hat and a long coat over his tunic, with in his right hand a set of type stamps and in his left a copy of his famous Bible, printed in 1455-56, with a prominent Cross on the cover. The relief is integrally cast with its frame, which has acanthus leaf decoration at each corner and at the mid points of the long sides, and an integral suspension loop at top centre. On the reverse is the cast-in signature of the foundry, G.A. Schwan. Johannes Gutenberg was an inventor whose innovations changed the face of printing in Europe, ushering in a revolution in publishing that had a comparable or even greater impact on society as the Internet information revolution of our own times. Born into a patrician family in Mainz, Gutenberg chose not to go into the Church as had been expected of him, but instead became a metalworker and gem-cutter, with an abiding additional interest in printing, who constantly sought outlets for his energy and innate inventiveness. After leaving Mainz to live in Basle and Strasbourg, Gutenberg eventually returned to his native city, where he refined his experiments in printing. These culminated in the invention of the movable metal type printing press, an innovation that led to the printing in 1454-55 of Gutenberg’s celebrated ’42 line Bible’. Movable metal type involves the use of metal components that have been cast with letters, numbers, spaces and punctuations in reverse. Type is selected to make up text and then arranged within frames, which are then inked and run through printing presses. It was the way in which books, newspapers and documents were printed for more than 500 years until the advent in recent decades of digital printing technology. Johannes Gutenberg is rightly seen as one of the great figures in European history, whose invention ushered in the printing revolution that would play a key role in the advent of the Reformation in Europe. The monument to Gutenberg was one of the last monumental works made by the Danish neo-classical sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (Nuremberg 1991, pp. 688-90, no. 8.32 (Katharina Bott); Grandesso 2015, pp. 260-61, figs. 325-26). The original idea for the monument, to be erected in Gutenberg’s home city of Mainz, was formulated by citizens as early as 1804, during the French occupation of the city (Imiela 1977; Bratner 2000). In 1824 the project was again taken up by a group of citizens who at first entrusted thtask to a local sculptor Joseph Scholl whose statue, cmpleted in 1827, is today in the Gutenberg-Museum in Mainz. It was then however decided that a more important sculptor of international reputation should instead be invited to make the monument. An approach was eventually made to Thorvaldsen, who agreed to make the model free-of-charge. The full-length plaster model, based on Thorvaldsen’s bozzetto, was prepared by the sculptor's Danish pupil Hermann Wilhelm Bissen and was ready by 1833. Thorvaldsen showed the printer in fifteenth-century dress, holding a copy of the celebrated Gutenberg Bible, printed in 1455. The bronze statue was cast in Paris by Charles Crozatier in 1835 and inaugurated in Mainz on 14 August 1837, to widespread if not universal praise (the French novelist Alexandre Dumas wrote in his 'Excursions sur les bords du Rhin' (1841) of how he had hurried to Mainz to see the newly erected monument, but ‘I am dismayed for the inventor of printing, but he deserved better than this, and there was little improvement in passing him from clay into bronze. But I too deserve to be reproached, for my own part in this disagreeable work.’ (‘J’en suis désolé pour l’inventeur de l’imprimerie, mais il méritatit mieux que cela, et il n’a pas gagné grande chose à passer du grè au bronze. Au reste, j’ai à me reprocher d’avoir contribué, pour ma part, à cette méchante oeuvre.’). Despite such criticism the monument, which stands in one of the city of Mainz’s main squares, the Gutenbergplatz, is much-loved by its citizens and remains\ one of the city’s best-known sights. The cast iron relief depicts the sculpture accurately, with the exception of the head, which in Thorvaldsen’s monument is lowered, whereas in the plaque Gutenberg looks forward, as it were into the distance. In addition, in the monument his beard is more deeply divided. Whilst the image in the relief follows Thorvaldsen in placing Gutenberg’s feet slightly beyond the edge of the base, the base is not left plain as in the monument, but is strewn with plants, and also appears to be octagonal rather than rectangular in shape. Most of these differences may be small changes done in order to make the figure work better as a small pictorial relief. The production of works of art in cast iron (‘Eisenkunstguss’) in the first half of the nineteenth century is particularly associated with foundries in Berlin and elsewhere in Prussia, and therefore is generally known in English as ‘Berlin iron work’. The industry developed in the later eighteenth century as a consequence of efforts by King Frederick the Great to expand mineral extraction in the Prussian province of Silesia. The development of iron works was strongly influenced by British examples, British success in developing the use of coke being especially studied for its potential use in Germany. The Prussian minister Count Reden was sent to England to study the most modern methods of smelting and casting and, as one result of his visit, Reden had a British-made steam engine brought to Silesia. In 1789 it was decided to proceed with the establishment of iron foundries in Berlin and in Gleiwitz (today's Gliwice). The Scottish mining engineer John Baildon (1772-1846) was in 1791 brought by Count Reden to Upper Silesia , where he helped to set up the iron foundries, including a modern coking plant that was in operation by 1796. Over the next century or so the Prussian Royal Ironworks, with its bases in Gleiwitz, Berlin and Sayn in the Rhineland, produced an extraordinary variety of objects in cast iron, of which Berlin iron jewellery is today the best-known. As a Polish traveller noted in 1821, the variety and range of objects produced were astonishing: ‘I have seen there whole bridges, fences, lions, candelabra, armbands, vases, crucifixes, large and small medallions, crosses, rings and chains.’ (Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Podróz do Wielkopolski i Śląska w 1821 roku…, Poznań 1872, cited in Friedhofen, Dębowska, Bartel 2006, p. 67). Another popular line was commemorative plaques, of which the Gutenberg plaque is an excellent and characteristic example. Very few works from the Schwan foundry are known today. G.A. Schwan was in fact a commercial bookbinder who branched out into iron casting and is recorded in business between 1839 and 1850. As well as using models that originated in the Royal Iron Works (Königliche Eisengießerei), Schwan also developed his own models, including the Gutenberg relief. Schwan also made, in collaboration with another founder, Alfred Richard Seebaß (1805-1884), a small bust and a small statuette of Gutenberg based on Thorvaldsen’s statue (Schmidt 1981, p. 210). Jeremy Warren June 2025