Maidbronn Abbey

In the church, a single-nave building with a straight choir, on the high altar, in the midst of a later added baroque structure and frame, there is a large relief made of grey sandstone. It depicts a Lamentation, the mother's lament for her dead son. Max H. von Freeden wrote in 1947: "This Lamentation in the quiet church in Maidbronn is in its essence a truly final work, not only of the master Tilman Riemenschneider, but also of the era. It is imbued with an inwardness and greatness of feeling not achieved before or since."

The altar was created around 1519 to 1522. No documents regarding this are known. It is probable that the altar was not originally intended for Maidbronn, but for the Knight's Chapel in Rimpar. A payment from Maidbronn Abbey in 1526 of eleven guilders "to Meyster Dyln for a beautiful stone figure" could refer to another commission.

In the 17th century, the Maidbronn altarpiece was incorporated into a baroque stone altarpiece, and the two side figures of Peter and Paul were added.

The predella relief below the "Lamentation" hardly belongs to the altarpiece, even if it is often presented as such. The inscription draws the conclusion of the politically turbulent years of the German Peasants' War: "In the year of the Lord 1525, the peasants of East Franconia, alienated from the true faith, devastated this place... worse than enemies with robbery, murder, and fire. After they were finally defeated by force of arms and the storm was quelled, this altar was erected in honor of the most glorious Mother of God and Saints Kilian and his companions in the following year." The predella thus belongs to a monument to the victory over the peasants, but from a different context. The inscription also does not refer to a Lamentation, but to a Madonna altar with Saint Kilian and his companions - these are not depicted here at all.

After the turmoil of this period, Maidbronn and the monastery fell into a Sleeping Beauty slumber. The visitor reported on this in 1613. Diocesan Archive Würzburg, Amt Rimpar, Inventarium 1613, fol. 22r. "On the high altar, lies a portable, carved into a large stone panel, a sepultura christi unpainted. De patronis templi et altarium nihil explorare potui. On the other two altars stand old, dilapidated, unusable panels." The described condition of the Maidbronn church excludes recently made changes. The visitor in 1613 could not/was unable to research/learn anything about the church and altar patrons. This uncertainty regarding the patronage suggests a longer period of neglect, which is not surprising after the devastations of the Peasants' War in 1525 and the dissolution of the monastery in 1581.

While churches elsewhere were extensively renovated during the Renaissance, Maidbronn and its citizens, in the words of former mayor Felix Brand, "in simple modesty... held on to their meager possessions, which offered them more than just a dwelling."

Later, following the liturgical reform after the Second Vatican Council, the altar area was redesigned by the sculptor Heinrich Gerhard Bücker together with Bishop Paul-Werner. The opening to the world thus became tangible in the church space, and yet the effect of the Riemenschneider altar remained.

The Maidbronn Lamentation group is highly regarded in research as a representative of a new way of thinking about images, which is otherwise usually sought in Italy. If one associates a modern understanding of images with the Renaissance, then, according to Holger Simon, the Maidbronn altarpiece is not Riemenschneider's last purely Gothic work, but rather stands at the beginning of modern art production north of the Alps.