Tuesday 8 October 2013

Beautiful Uta from Naumburg.

Beautiful Uta von Naumburg peers out at us from the 13th century.

The statue of Uta of Naumburg is one of the most important German Gothic sculptural works of art. The coloured stone figure from the mid-13th Century was created by a Naumburg stonemason, and is located in the rood screen  in the west choir of Naumburg Cathedral.  It is one of the twelve figures in a founding chapel,  around which the new cathedral was built in the 13th Century.

 Uta (1000 - 1046?) and her husband Ekkehard ll,  Margave of Meissen. 

The couple had died two hundred years before these statues were carved.  The artistic style  is the culmination of a trend that began in Germany in 1200, which sought to replace stereotyped, rigid portrayals of individuals, with more lifelike characters, and with a  particular accent on human movement.

Uta became famous in art history as one of the most ingenious creations of German sculpture. Part of her face is hidden by her collar, which she holds up with her right hand from under the cloak. During the era of National Socialism, she served as an example of the pure German female, and clay models of her were produced to be hung in German households. 

The face of the Evil Stepmother in Walt Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" produced in 1937, was based on a drawing of Uta.  I must visit her in 2014.



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