View of the Holy Land with prayer portrait of Duke Friedrich II of Liegnitz-Brieg

General information
Original location Liegnitz (now Legnica, Poland), Johanniskirche, in the choir
Current location Unknown (possibly lost during reconstruction of the church in 1714)
Artist Unknown
Date 1510 (mentioned on painting)
Material Panel
Visual elements
Short description The panel consisted of two wings, which showed the holy places the duke had visited on his pilgrimage. Allegedly, the duke himself was portrayed three times on the painting: once kneeling before a Crucifix near the Holy Sepulchre, once in the company of a gypsy woman at one of Jerusalem's city gates, and once with the same woman and her husband near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (see remarks)
Depicted pilgrim
Personal information
Name Friedrich II of Liegnitz-Brieg
Social status / profession Duke of Liegnitz, after 1521 of Liegnitz-Brieg
Text Wir Friedrich von G. G. in Schlesien, Hz. und H. zur Liegnitz und Brieg, haben die heiligen Stellen, die wir zur Zeit zu und um Jerusalem Gott zum ewigen Lobe gesuchet und besuchet, abmahlen lassen im Jahr MDX (see remarks)
Pilgrimages
Year of pilgrimage to Jerusalem 1507 (known from travel report)
Travel report A report was written by Friedrich's travel companion and priest Martin Wanner.
Death
Year of death 1547
Location of grave Liegnitz, Johanneskirche
Additional information
General remarks As the painting is lost, the only information of it we have comes from a 1724 description of Wahrendorff. The description, however, is of questionable quality and unclear. For example, Friedrich would only become duke of Liegnitz and Brieg in 1521, yet according to Wahrendorff is mentioned as such on a painting dated 1510. However, the short description Wahrendorff provides suggests that the two-wing panel would have looked like other views of the Holy Land created in Germany in the same period, such as those of Frederick the Wise of Saxony, the Ketzel family, and Ottheinrich of Neuburg-Palatinate.
According to Wahrendorff, the inclusion of the Duke in the company of a gypsy twice on the painting, refers to a lived experience of the duke on his pilgrimage. Friedrich allegedly met a gypsy woman in Jerusalem, who recognised him as a German prince. This discovery might have brought him into trouble with the Turkish authorities of Palestine, so in order to secure that the woman would not reveal his true identity, he promised to grant gypsies the right to stay freely in his lands for three consecutive nights.
Literature
  • Fey, Carola, 'Wallfahrtserinnerungen an spätmittelalterlichen Fürstenhöfen in Bild und Kult', in Carola Fey, Steffen Krieb, and Werner Rösener (eds.), Mittelalterliche Fürstenhöfe und ihre Erinnerungskulturen (Göttingen 2007), pp. 141-166
  • Holterman, Bart, Pilgrimages in images: Early Sixteenth-century Views of the Holy Land with Pilgrims' Portraits as Part of the Commemoration of the Jerusalem Pilgrimage in Germany, unpublished master thesis (Utrecht 2013)
  • Wahrendorff, Johann Peter, Lignitzische Merckwürdigkeiten oder historische Beschreibung der Stadt und Fürstenthums Lignitz im Hertzogthum Schlesien: Darinnen in zwoen Haupt-Abtheilungen, sowohl von denen Catholischen Kirchen, Clöstern und Stifftern, als auch von denen Evangel. Stadt- und Pfarr-Kirchen, besonders gehandelt ... Nebst vielen angenehmen Curiositäten, Antiquitäten, Inscriptionen, vorgestellet worden (Bautzen 1724), pp. 86-87
  • Wanner, Martin, 'Die Pilgerfahrt des Herzogs Friedrich II. Von Liegnitz und Brieg nach dem Heiligen Lande', ed. by Reinhold Röhricht, Zeitschrift des deutschen Palästina-vereins 1 (1878), pp. 101-131, 177-215
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