With growing assurance, architects in northern France, and soon all over Europe, competed in a race to conquer height.

Elephant tusks—exotic, rare, and characterized by a pearly lustrous surface, were prized in medieval Europe for carving into luxurious objects.

Both this book and the exhibition, Gothic and Renaissance Art in Nuremberg, document the artistic vitality of one of the most influential urban centers in Europe to arise at the end of the Middle Ages. The selection of specific works of art, and the essays that illuminate them, give a clear focus to the period from the fourteenth through the first half of the sixteenth century. This was a transitional and pivotal time for Nuremberg in its evolution from an important but artistically self-contained Late Gothic town to a Renaissance city, whose artistic, humanistic, technological, and scientific endeavors were of far-reaching consequence. The production of works of art—including some of the highest moments of human achievement—paralleled the city's strengthening commercial position. The benevolent yet firm hand of a patrician government produced a stable environment, while members of the great families became the leading patrons. The present occasion is a special "first" in several respects. Never before has such a constellation of fine Medieval and Renaissance objects been permitted to leave Germany for exhibition in the United States. This event provides the American public with a unique opportunity to study and enjoy a historic sampling of Nuremberg's past. Included here are objects created by important anonymous masters, such as the so-called "Hansel" Fountain Figure and the Schlüsselfelder Ship, along with major groups of works by such celebrated Nuremberg artists as Veit Stoss, Albrecht Dürer, Hans Suess von Kulmbach, Hans Baldung Grien, Peter Vischer the Elder and his sons, and Peter Flötner. Much of this art, which belongs to the museums and churches of Nuremberg, and to the city itself, is the nucleus of both this catalogue and the exhibition that it accompanies. The exhibition, likewise, is an especially valuable event for the Nuremberg public, who will see assembled in its city many well-known masterpieces that, over the centuries, have been dispersed to such far-flung locations as Aachen, Baltimore, Berlin, Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Dublin, London, Oxford, Paris, and Vienna. To all lenders whose generosity has permitted this reunion, we are deeply grateful. While there have been other efforts, both by way of publications and exhibitions, to examine significant portions of the art and culture of Nuremberg's history—the most recent being Jeffrey Chipps Smith's excellent Nuremberg, A Renaissance City, 1500–1618, Austin, The University of Texas, 1983—the direction that the current project has taken, from its inception in 1982, has centered upon the inclusion of the widest possible range of works of art, diversified both in medium and in function, from the Late Gothic and the Renaissance periods (1300–1550), closing with examples by Peter Flötner and mid-sixteenth-century arms and armor. The result is unprecedented for its comprehensiveness. Another milestone of Gothic and Renaissance Art in Nuremberg is that it represents the remarkable international collaboration between the Germanisches Nationalmuseum and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The project, initiated by the Metropolitan Museum but quickly augmented and given impetus by the museum in Nuremberg, has been formed, carried forward, and refined by the two curators-in-charge, Rainer Kahsnitz and William D. Wixom. The selection of subjects and objects is theirs. This effort has resulted in a valuable overview of many aspects of the theme of the exhibition and, at the same time, has led to intelligent reappraisals of a number of unfamiliar—as well as familiar—works of art.

Before you can put a Gothic altarpiece together, you first have to know how to take it apart.

Pietà—"pity" in Italian from the Latin word for "piety"—has come to signify images of the Virgin Mary grieving over the dead body of Christ, an image that was accorded an exalted place in the piety of the Late Gothic period. During that troubled time, the Pietà was, as the author tells us, "like a talisman in a storm," a compelling and uplifting symbol. The impassioned devotion that grew up around the Pietà inspired the wealth of depictions surveyed in this book, which traces the rise, spread, and significance of the image in French sculpture of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The 167 Pietàs illustrated here reveal a diversity that will surprise those for whom Michelangelo's Pietà has become an overpowering icon. Most intriguing are the inventive portrayals of the Virgin's emotional state; often she is viewed as caught up in the horror of the moment, but she is also shown praying or even gazing into the distance, as if contemplating comforting memories or the reunion to come. Her demeanor ranges from youthful innocence—the Purity that Time cannot age—to careworn maturity—Our Lady of Sorrows. There are further variations caused by regional differences in style, facial features, and clothing. All of these characteristics are examined in depth in five chapters, each devoted to a particular French region. The author has arranged the sculptures within each chapter according to their relationship with each other and in sequences that suggest the evolution of the style. In addition to photographs, which include details and comparisons with other sculptures, each chapter has a map locating the Pietàs under discussion. The sixth chapter summarizes the influences that flowed hack and forth across France until a national style emerged, in response to the Italian Renaissance, and caused the regional variations to disappear. The catalogue provides summary information about more than 1,250 Pietàs, which are arranged alphabetically by location. "Some Written Sources of the Pietà" addresses the origins of the image and explores its references in mystical writings. References are supplied in most catalogue entries, and a substantial bibliography gives suggestions for further reading. William H. Forsyth, Curator Emeritus of Medieval Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, has researched the material for this book throughout the extent of his sixty-year career. He is the author of a similar volume, The Entombment of Christ: French Sculptures of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, co-published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Harvard University Press in 1970.