Statue des Heiligen Bonifazius 

Editor: Here we have Johann Baptist Scholl the Younger’s pencil drawing, “Statue des Heiligen Bonifazius,” housed here at the Städel Museum. The precision is astounding; the shading, and those meticulously rendered garments...it almost feels like gazing upon a sculpture rather than a preparatory sketch. What strikes you when you look at it? Curator: It feels like glimpsing the ghost of a monument, doesn't it? I mean that both visually, with those ethereal pencil lines, and conceptually. Think about what a statue represents – permanence, established power. But here, Scholl captures it in this fleeting medium. Almost a visual paradox! He asks, in a sense, how solid these figures really are. And Saint Boniface himself, planting the seeds of Christianity in Germanic lands… were his roots as firm as the cathedrals that sprung up after him? Editor: That's fascinating! So you see that the fragility of the medium sort of undercuts the intended message of power? Curator: Precisely! Consider that kneeling figure seeking…something. Forgiveness? Blessing? Is the Bishop truly offering it or merely… allowing it? This pencil is, as I consider it, a tool for doubt, for seeing what grand gestures can obscure. What do you make of the setting itself, that somewhat vaguely defined architecture in the background? Editor: It gives me the impression of existing almost everywhere or nowhere, it gives an overall sensation of dreaminess to this piece. Curator: A brilliant observation! A place both everywhere and nowhere—very much like the notion of sainthood itself, eh? Almost unattainable yet ever-present. Thank you for sparking that for me. I'll look at this piece differently from now on. Editor: I am glad. And I’ll remember that sketches can hold just as much… maybe more… weight than the finished monument.