Lot 33 | Brass station of the Cross with Christ before Pilate

BRASS STATION OF THE CROSS WITH CHRIST BEFORE PILATE.

Cologne.
Date: Dated 1912.
Maker/Designer: Heinrich Birgel.
Technique: Brass plate, engraved and partially decorated with colours. Original frame elaborately decorated with stones.
Description: Multi-figured depiction, Christ stands shackled before Pilate who washes his hands in
innocence. Below the scene inscribed JESUS WIRD ZUM KREUZESTODE VERURTEILT (Jesus gets
sentenced to die on the cross).
Measurement: Including frame 103 x 89cm.
Mark: On the bottom left corner inscribed H. Birgel pinx Köln 1912.

Literature:
-Werner Schäfke: Goldschmiedearbeiten des
Historismus in Köln, Cologne 1980. Regarding Heinrich Birgel see p.188f.
-Paul Clemen: Der Dom zu Köln, Düsseldorf
1938. Compare the ledger for archbishop Anton Fischer p.276.

The workshop of the Cologne engraver and goldsmith Heinrich Birgel verifiably existed since 1890 and was active until 1914.
Birgel had an excellent reputation in the production of large-sized engraved objects such as tabernacle doors or ledgers, for which Wilhelm Mengelberg often provided the designs. Works by Heinrich Birgel can be found in many of Cologne's churches. For example a ledger made in 1914 for the grave of archbishop Anton Fischer at Cologne Cathedral.
The romanesque style brass plate here, was first presented to the public in 1913 together with a second station of the cross.
The second, smaller early Gothic style plate, showed Jesus taking the cross on his shoulders. Unfortunately, this work is now lost while the first scene was permanently in family possession.
The panels were not intended to be part of an entire Stations of the Cross but were meant to be perceived as an autonomous work of art.
"Although of smaller format, it seems plausible, not only from a technical point of view, to recognize in the present Stations of the Cross, which explicitly implement an own design, an advertisement for cathedral commissions." Thus, the recourse to Romanesque and Gothic elements is probably to be understood as a direct reaction to the so-called Gothic decree of Cardinal Fischer from 1912.