On your right, look for the life-sized pink sandstone statue of a man in heavy, draped robes looking intently down at a book in his hands, resting on a simple square base. We have traded the ancient clashes of the Battle of Argentovaria for the quiet focus of medieval art, though this monument has seen its own kind of drama. This is Martin Schongauer, a brilliant fifteenth-century painter and engraver from Colmar. If the statue looks a bit lonely on that modern block, it is because you are only looking at the top piece of a much grander puzzle. In 1863, the famous French sculptor Auguste Bartholdi created a massive fountain to honor Schongauer. To build it, Bartholdi carved through eleven cubic meters of this beautiful pink sandstone.
Originally, this statue crowned a towering neo-gothic pedestal. Neo-gothic is an architectural style from the nineteenth century that revived the pointed arches and dramatic details of medieval churches. Clustered below Schongauer were four smaller statues known as allegorical figures, which are simply human forms used to symbolize abstract concepts. Here, they represented Schongauer's fields of expertise: Goldsmithing, Engraving, Study, and Painting. Bartholdi had a playful side, so he gave three of those statues the faces of the friends who helped promote the project, and he cheekily modeled the Goldsmithing figure after himself.
The grand monument did not stay together forever. In 1958, the fountain was completely dismantled and the pieces were scattered across Colmar. The water basins were moved to a local church, and those four figures with his friends' faces were sent to the Bartholdi Museum. Meanwhile, Schongauer was shuffled around the city, spending years near a chapel and locked in museum storage. Finally, in 2015, this sandstone figure was brought right back here to his original location. He may have lost his magnificent fountain, but the artist is finally back home. It has been quite the journey for a single block of stone. When you are ready to continue, we will take a short stroll to see the famous Issenheim altarpiece.
_(Colmar).jpg){kind=link}