In April 1501, about the time Michelangelo was returning from Rome to Florence to compete for the commission to carve a giant marble David, a very different sculptor named Tilman Riemenschneider agreed to make an altarpiece in the small German town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Since then, things have not changed much in Rothenburg. Though battered during the war, it has been restored to postcard perfection (or rather turned into a perfect place for tourists to take selfies of themselves against a Disneyesque medieval background). And the Altar of the Holy Blood is still there, in the place for which it was made, at the west end of the church of St James or Jakobskirche.
This is a sculpted version of the Easter story both great and strange. It is concerned with the moment when the Eucharist — central mystery of Christianity — began, and also seems to contain within it the tensions that were soon to tear Christendom apart. It manages to suggest both Protestant sobriety while celebrating those very elements of Medieval religion that Luther and Calvin reacted against: miraculous shrines, worship of images, indulgences.
The Jakobskirche possessed a precious relic. Many years before, three drops of consecrated wine had fallen on an altar cloth and taken on the appearance of Christ’s blood from the Passion. Numerous miracles had been associated with this blood, which drew pilgrims from the surrounding area. Riemenschneider’s sculpture was intended as an enormous reliquary, containing and simultaneously explaining the miraculous drops, hence its name the Altar of the Holy Blood. These are preserved in a crucifix held by two angels high in the airy structure.
In many ways, the altarpiece is a very northern work. It is made of limewood — the signature material of German sculpture — and positively flaunts its woodiness.
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