-Atelier Vischer (Hermann Vischer Le Jeune ?) Homme sauvage, laiton, vers. 1510-15, Berlin, Bode Museum, Inv. 8403

-Paulus Vischer, Homme Sauvage, Bronze, début du XVIe siècle, Canterbury, Canterbury Museums and Galleries

-Atelier de Peter Vischer, Hercules et le lion, bronze, Nuremberg, Vers 1500, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts

Sismann, G. ; Lequio, M., TEFAF Maastricht 2024, Galerie Sismann, Mars 2024, pp. 38-41

A charming and fascinating invention of the medieval imagination, the Wild Man populates the stories and visual culture of the Middle Ages. This woodland creature living on the fringes of civilisation was distinguished from man by his large, hairy head, which revealed only his face, hands and feet. In the 12th and 13th centuries, this hair was a mark of the figure's degraded humanity and deviant character, but above all it was a mark of its otherness. Sometimes bellicose and savage, sometimes peaceful and fierce, this phantasmagorical being became a living metaphor exploring the duality of the human being, questioning his relationship with nature and with others. In the early Middle Ages, the wild man was the antithesis of the courtly knight. In the famous Chevalier au Lion by Chrétien de Troyes (1170), the hero Yvain is transformed into a wild man, mad with grief after being spurned by his lady. It is only thanks to his new-found love that he is able to return to civilisation. But from the 15th century onwards, the figure of the Wild Man took on a completely different connotation, crystallising the fantasy of a life lived in harmony with nature, on the fringes of urbanisation, society and its vices.
Celebrated extensively in heraldry, tapestry and goldsmiths' and silversmiths' art, it was in bronze art that the figure of the Wild Man underwent its greatest development in the Middle Ages, particularly from the 1450s onwards in the heart of one of the most renowned production centres of the time: Nuremberg. This is most likely where our bronze was made [...].  

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