Chapel-Crown from the Goslar Workshop around 1480

A rare and intri­cate­ly craft­ed Chapel Crown based on a design inspired by the ​“Goslar Chapel Crown”, which is cur­rent­ly housed in the Goslar Town Hall. The orig­i­nal chan­de­lier dates back to around 1480 and was cre­at­ed in a work­shop in Goslar.

The chapel crown was like­ly orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed for the Goslar Cathe­dral. More details about this can be found below.

Elab­o­rate­ly hand-forged from iron, the chan­de­lier fea­tures a chapel-like cen­tral struc­ture metic­u­lous­ly adorned with Goth­ic orna­men­ta­tion and archi­tec­tur­al style in every detail.
With­in the open chapel, enclosed by four main pil­lars embell­ished with sym­bol­ic ser­pent heads at their ends, and sur­round­ed by cross­beams, stands the ful­ly sculpt­ed fig­ure of Mary with her child.
The wood­en-carved and bronzed fig­ure of Mary is adorned with a grand crown, her robe cas­cad­ing in triple-tiered folds, extend­ing down to the ground with bowl and tubu­lar folds. In her right arm, she car­ries the clothed infant Jesus, who holds the globe in his right hand.

Sur­round­ing the chapel-like cen­ter are a total of eight chan­de­lier arms across two lev­els, rich­ly adorned with exquis­ite­ly wrought cross-shaped foliage. The crown arms, sit­u­at­ed both below and above the chapel, are curved in shape and embell­ished with a ful­ly sculpt­ed acorn, sym­bol­iz­ing the promise of God, as a fin­ish­ing touch. The intri­cate­ly designed drip pans are craft­ed in a crown shape and con­sti­tute a dom­i­nant ele­ment of the chan­de­lier. The low­er ter­mi­na­tion fea­tures a ful­ly sculpt­ed lion’s head with styl­ized mane and a pro­filed forged, mov­able han­dle in its mouth.

The chan­de­lier is crowned by an epis­co­pal fig­ure, ful­ly sculpt­ed in wood and bronzed, fea­tur­ing a mitre, an epis­co­pal staff in the left hand, and the Book of Rules in the right hand. As the upper­most ele­ment, a large forged and ornate­ly adorned ceil­ing bowl serves as the crown­ing piece.

An absolute­ly rare chapel crown, metic­u­lous­ly hand-forged with mas­ter­ful qual­i­ty in the 19^th cen­tu­ry. Chan­de­liers of this type are gen­er­al­ly scarce.

Sig­nif­i­cant exam­ples, besides the Goslar chan­de­lier, are found in places such as the Augs­burg Cathe­dral, the St. Andrew’s Church in Hal­ber­stadt, and the Parish Church in Stans, Switzer­land. It’s also worth men­tion­ing the splen­did­ly craft­ed pati­nat­ed bronze chan­de­lier from the Nurem­berg St. Lorenz Church, designed and exe­cut­ed in 1489 by bronze cast­er and sculp­tor Vis­ch­er, Peter the Elder, Nurem­berg (1460−1529).

Lit­er­a­ture: In his 1967 book ​“Lichter Leucht­en im Abend­land: Zweitausend Jahre Beleuch­tungskör­p­er (Lights Shin­ing in the Occi­dent: Two Thou­sand Years of Light­ing Objects),” Kurt Jar­muth won­der­ful­ly describes the his­to­ry of light bear­ers, includ­ing the ori­gins of the chapel crown. Below is an excerpt from Jar­muth’s book about chapel crowns and their cre­ation, where he also writes about the Goslar crown: 

The chapel-crown:
The crown of Stans is one of the most mature spec­i­mens of this genus. The char­ac­ter­is­tic name is giv­en by the chapel-like con­struc­tion of the mid­dle gives it its name, in which all parts are tak­en from the build­ing ele­ments and the orna­men­ta­tion of the great archi­tec­ture. This is the basics of Goth­ic crafts­man­ship, that it did not devel­op its own motifs, but lived entire­ly from the rep­e­ti­tion of the archi­tec­tur­al style. This could be con­sid­ered a weak­ness, but from a dif­fer­ent point of view it is the sign of strength. The time press­ing for direc­tion and move­ment in all expres­sions of art had gained its daz­zling rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the high cathe­drals.
Grow­ing from the low flight of the hous­es, they were the focal point of a ris­ing street row or a sharp-angled square. The cityscape of the Goth­ic trad­ing venues received the appeal of great­ness through them. He still cap­tures us today, for exam­ple, when we looked at the Flem­ish cities of Ghent, Bruges or Antwerp (Fig. 64). In their time, oth­er art divi­sions could not counter any­thing equiv­a­lent to these sub­lime mon­u­ments of archi­tec­ture. And they did­n’t want it either.
It was their task to join the Queen Archi­tec­ture at her price.
As an exam­ple of such a cre­ative inter­ac­tion, we can con­sid­er the image of a sil­ver mon­strance (Fig. 65). Their con­struc­tion runs accord­ing to the rule book of great art and yet pre­serves an indi­vid­ual hand­writ­ing. The same was true of the chan­de­liers, which, accord­ing to the same view, cre­at­ed the airy con­struc­tion of an open chapel as an orna­men­tal cas­ing or taber­na­cle in which a Mary or a saint was enthroned. The sus­pen­sion of the crown was con­nect­ed to this chapel as the cen­tral axis. The crown arms, which start­ed below the chapel, received an arch shape made of flat met­al and looked with their orna­ments as if cut out with the fret­saw, hav­ing a tech­nique that will be dis­cussed in more detail in a lat­er para­graph.
The Goth­ic crowns were the most­ly cross-shaped foliage. Sig­urd Erixon assumes as an expla­na­tion that it is a styl­ized wine foliage, which togeth­er with the fig­ures of saints is based on the bib­li­cal para­ble of the Wein­berg should point out. An impor­tant style ele­ment on the lights is the drop bowl. It has an angu­lar bowl dish with a leaf edge attached to the low­er edge. Invert­ed, the struc­ture would resem­ble a crown. Erich Mey­er notes that the leaf wreath under the shell con­tracts the tighter the lat­er the crown was cre­at­ed. The attach­ment of the can­dles also needs to be men­tioned. With the chapel crowns, which were used in church­es and town halls, drop shells with thorns to put on the can­dles can usu­al­ly be observed.
Can­dle grom­mets, on the oth­er hand, are pre­dom­i­nant in the genus of shaft crowns that is still to be dis­cussed. An impor­tant exam­ple of such a chapel crown is locat­ed in the Regens­burg Town Hall (Fig. 83), a repli­ca hangs in the Nation­al Muse­um in Munich.
In the town hall of Goslar there is a dupli­cate spec­i­men with fig­ures, the upper fig­ure rep­re­sents a bish­op (Fig. 67). As Gün­ther Griep has not­ed, this piece comes from a Goslar work­shop.
A very rich cre­ation of this type hangs in the Augs­burg Cathe­dral (Fig. 68). It takes up as a motif the idea of let­ting the math­e­mat­i­cal­ly con­struct­ed tow­er of a cathe­dral grow out of a dense, nature-rein­form­ing bush of the arms. It seems as if it should be depict­ed how the clear divine thought ris­es from the frizzy world. It is believed that this crown was made in the area of Dinant.
The artis­tic per­for­mance and pro­nounced solem­ni­ty of the larg­er Goth­ic chan­de­lier types, as we get to know them in the chapel crown and in the bas­ket crown dis­cussed below, has so far been too lit­tle appre­ci­at­ed in art his­to­ry. The inte­gra­tion of these lumi­naires into the arts and crafts and into the field of util­i­ty equip­ment has very wrong­ly led to a sec­ondary eval­u­a­tion of their artis­tic work. With their best pieces, they deserved to be placed close to pure art. The exam­ples from Augs­burg and Goslar show how the design­ers of the lumi­naires, like the builders of the places of wor­ship, were anx­ious to point the view­er to a super­or­di­nate world. They made use of the del­i­cate archi­tec­ture of the pil­lars, orna­men­tal gable and fialen and sub­or­di­nat­ed them­selves exter­nal­ly to great art, as the crafts­men and artists of all dis­ci­plines did with this unique expres­sion of their time. But they cre­at­ed a pecu­liar, thought-filled and artis­tic image. The cen­tral axis of their chan­de­liers, shaped into a ​‘taber­na­cle, was not only the loca­tion of a Mary with the child or a patron saint. The rein­force­ment to a tran­scen­dent­ed appear­ance of the pious image float­ing above man led them through the fur­ther com­po­nent avail­able to them, the arti­fi­cial light. This radi­at­ed from the can­dles that stood around the hang­ing chapel. The cal­cu­lat­ed effect of light must not be dis­re­gard­ed in the eval­u­a­tion of a chan­de­lier, as it may be miss­ing, for exam­ple, in the eval­u­a­tion of stained glass. It is not enough to reg­is­ter only the mate­r­i­al forms of a can­dle­stick in art his­to­ry. First togeth­er with the flu­idum of the Light can be judged on the suc­cess or fail­ure of a work of art that was intend­ed for noth­ing less than to hov­er over a con­gre­ga­tion or a coun­cil meet­ing as a sym­bol of the pres­ence of God. 

The Goslar Cathe­dral is the for­mer col­le­giate church of St. Simon and St. Jude in Goslar. It was built between 1040 and 1050, was a com­po­nent of the Goslar Impe­r­i­al Palace dis­trict, and was dis­man­tled between 1819 and 1822.

Today, only the north­ern cathe­dral vestibule remains.

The term ​“Dom” here does­n’t car­ry the mod­ern mean­ing of ​“cathe­dral” but rather the old­er mean­ing of ​“min­ster.”