Apengeters ›Erbe‹

Abstract

Besides four bells, two baptismal fonts have survived from Gerhard Kranemann’s workshop in Lübeck, which can be considered as outstanding works of the Lübian bronze casting of the late Middle Ages. While the bells are kept very simple, have no ornamentation and only two of them even bear an inscription, the two baptismal fonts are very elaborately conceived and decorated with numerous reliefs and figures, some of which reflect a reference to the place of use of the object. The two baptismal fonts also clearly show the different demands of the pictorial programs, which were apparently also connected with the available financial budget. After all, the bronze casting in Schönberg, which can certainly be dated to 1357, was in all likelihood the donation of two clerics serving at the church in Schönberg and, above all, of the bishop of Ratzeburg who was in office at the time, while the baptismal font in Siek, which was probably created somewhat later, was the donation of the Lübeck citizen Hinrich Flint. Both artefacts also reveal important details about the production technique of medieval bronze castings on the one hand, and about the reception of important regional models on the other hand, whose conception was further developed and partly serialized. The extremely carefully crafted and therefore qualitatively high-ranking works of the caster Gerhard Kranemann, so far rather neglected by art historical scholarship, can thus be regarded as links and mediators between the baptismal fonts of Hans Apengeter, who can be traced in Lübeck in the first half of the 14th century, and the workshops producing them from the middle of the 15th century onwards.