Conrad Meit

Born: 1485

Death: 1551

Biography:

Conrad Meit or Conrat Meit (1480s in Worms; 1550/1551 in Antwerp) was a German-born Late Gothic and Renaissance sculptor, who spent most of his career in the Low Countries.
The royal tombs that were his largest works still had elaborate Late Gothic architectural frameworks by others, but Meit's figures were Renaissance in conception and style. Meit's work, with its delicately worked plasticity and pronounced corporality, brought an entirely new form of expression to Late Gothic church sculpture. The anatomy of his nude figures draws more from Albrecht Dürer than from classical sculpture.
Later many of his works in Brussels, Antwerp, Tongerlo Abbey, and elsewhere were destroyed in the Reformation and French Revolution, leaving the three royal monuments at the then newly built Royal Monastery of Brou, Bourg-en-Bresse, as his outstanding surviving large works. A number of small works, including portrait busts in wood, and small statuettes in various materials have survived. The documented tombs and the signed alabaster statuette of Judith (illustrated below) are the main secure works for defining his style.
Meit's date of birth at Worms on the Rhine is unknown, and his early life and training are not recorded. He was employed at the court of Frederick III, Elector of Saxony before 1506 and came to work at the Wittenberg court at the request of Lucas Cranach the Elder, where he probably worked in Cranach's workshop between 1505 and 1511. He then went to Middelburg to work for Philip of Burgundy, the illegitimate son of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, who was later to be suddenly made Bishop of Utrecht. From 1514 until her death in 1530 Meit was court sculptor to the Archduchess Margaret of Austria, the Regent of the Netherlands, mainly based at Mechelen. In 1534 he moved to Antwerp, buying a house there and joining the Guild of St Luke there in 1536. Works produced by Meit there are documented until 1544, but were all lost to later iconoclasm.
For Margaret of Austria Meit made his most famous works, the figures on the group of three monumental royal tombs for Margaret, her husband Philibert II, Duke of Savoy and his mother Margaret of Bourbon, produced from 1526 to 1531. These are at the then newly built Royal Monastery of Brou, Bourg-en-Bresse, today in France, but then in the province of Bresse, part of the Duchy of Savoy. The Late Gothic architectural surrounds were already mostly completed, but not installed, by a Flemish team, and Meit's team added the five life-size effigy figures and the many smaller figures. Meit's team was himself and three assistants, one of whom was his brother. By no means all the carving of the figures seems to be by Meit himself, and for example he does not seem to have carved any of the putti himself, though he may well have designed them.
Philibert had died at the age of 24 in 1504, so Meit's images of him are based on other portraits, and rather idealized. His majestic grave monument is placed in the middle of the Abbey's choir, with the two female tombs set against the wall on either side of it. The three aligned figures are turned towards each other, as though in communication. Though to the side, Margaret's tomb is the largest.
Philibert's tomb consists of two levels and two effigies, one above the other. The upper part, in expensive imported white Carrara marble, represents the Duke in ceremonial costume, surrounded by Italian-style angels (putti). Below this ten small female figures, called the sibyls, point towards the lower effigy, which shows him naked except for a cloth over his genitals. The putti used to be turned to face the effigy, but in a modern restoration several were turned to face outwards.
Margaret of Austria's tomb also has an upper effigy in marble and a lower one in alabaster. In the upper one she is shown as an older woman (she died at 50) in full state dress, wearing the crown-like archducal hat. Below she is shown in her youth, wearing a loose robe with her long hair unbound, and somewhat idealized. The two lower figures of the married couple vary the normal "transi" or cadaver tomb iconography, where a lower figure is shown as decayed remains, and connects to a broader theme of Resurrection in the abbey's art. Below their formal effigies, the couple are shown in their most perfect state, as they would be at the resurrection of the dead.
To the north, the tomb of Margaret of Bourbon consists of a single effigy placed within an enfeu and lying upon a piece of black marble, with pleurants beneath, a traditional Burgundian feature. The princess is dressed in an ermine cloak and her feet rest on a greyhound, symbol of loyalty. Behind the effigy, putti bear escutcheons with the initials of Margaret and her husband.
Margaret of Austria's tomb
Margaret of Austria, upper effigy
Margaret of Austria, lower effigy
Top level of Philibert's tomb
Philibert's upper effigy

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