SINCE THE REUNIFICATION of Germany, the study of art in amber has flourished. 1 To date, however, little new has been said about objects produced before 1525, the year in which Prussia – then essentially the only region in which amber was found – became a Duchy following the conversion to Protestantism of Albrecht of Brandenburg, Grand Master of the Teutonic Order. 2 Early examples of worked amber such as the statue of John the Baptist in Charles V’s collection, Jean de Berry’s Virgin and Child and Anne of Brittany’s amber icon in a silver-gilt frame, 3 are still the stock examples cited by scholars. 4 One might assume that few other objects from this period survive, yet, while such objects from the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are rare, they are not entirely lacking. This article evaluates the evidence for an almost forgotten period of amber sculpture and considers the conditions under which amber art was created and by whom. Alfred Rohde’s work on amber of 1937 still remains an invaluable source, not least because between 1939 and 1945 a considerable number of objects in German collections were lost or displaced. Rohde discussed five pieces (two of which survive) that he dated between 1430 and 1520. 5 He had noted the scarc- ity of works from this period in an earlier publication and had argued that ‘throughout the medieval period the amber being found was only just enough to cover the need for rosaries’, thus suggesting that only very few pieces had ever been produced. 6 For Rohde, the oldest piece in this group was the Enthroned Virgin in the Kestner Museum, Hannover (inv. no.WMXXIa, 43; Fig.11). In 2005 Sabine Haag reiterated this argument, writ- ing that this figure is ‘probably the oldest surviving amber in the West’. 7 The Virgin was one of eighty-seven cult objects in the twenty-two compartments of a reliquary shrine known as the Goldene Tafel in the Benedictine abbey of St Michaelis in Lüne- burg. Assembled from around the tenth century onwards, the treasure was placed in the shrine around 1410–20. An engraving of about 1700 gives us an impression of this enormous retable (Fig.12). We see the Virgin (the figure in the second compart- ment from left on the lower register of the central panel. Immediately right of it is a crucifix and a reliquary) seated beneath a baldachin, which Ferdinand Stuttman was confident was made of ivory. 8 By 1700 the Virgin had been in the shrine since at least the 1530s and had survived its plundering in 1644 and 1698. It remained in the church until 1792, when it was moved to the Ritterakademie’s natural history collections. In 1851 it was moved to the Chapel of the Leineschloss in I would like to thank Raphael Beuing, Erik Wegerhoff and Matthias Weniger for having read and discussed the manuscript of this article with me. 1 One exhibition that pre-dated the unification waa Bernstein – Das Gold der Ostsee held in 1979 at the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Cologne. The accompanying book appeared later; see G. Reineking von Bock: Bernstein. Das Gold der Ostsee, Munich 1981. 2 Works published since 1989 referring to the period before 1525 include C. Zepp et al., eds.: exh. cat. Kunstschätze aus Bernstein. Die Sammlung des Schlossmuseums Marienburg bei Danzig, Augsburg (Maximilianmuseum) 1996; M. Mierzwinska: exh. cat. Bernsteinschätze aus der Marienburg, Lüneburg (Ostpreussisches Landesmu- seum) 2000; W. Seipel, ed.: exh. cat. Bernstein für Thron und Altar. Das Gold des Meeres in fürstlichen Kunst- und Schatzkammern, Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum) 2005; J. Kappel: Bernsteinkunst aus dem Grünen Gewölbe, Munich 2005; G. Laue, ed.: Bernstein. Kostbarkeiten europäischer Kunstkammern, Munich 2006; and C. Coppinger et al.: Ambre, mémoire du temps, Paris 2009. 3 For example, O. Pelka: Bernstein, Berlin 1920, p.38; G.C. Williamson: The Book of Amber, London 1932, pp.151–52; and A. Rohde: Bernstein. Ein deutscher Werk- stoff. Seine künstlerische Verarbeitung vom Mittelalter bis zum 18. Jahrhundert, Berlin 1937, p.16. Largely lacking footnotes or bibliographical references, these rehearse the same examples as appear in popular publications such as V. Gay: Glossaire archéologique du Moyen âge et de la Renaissance, Paris 1887, I, p.28; E. von Czihak: ‘Der Bernstein als Stoff des Kunstgewerbes’, Die Grenzboten: Zeitschrift für Politik, Literatur und Kunst (1899), pp.181–82 and p.290; and K. Andrée: Der Bernstein und seine Bedeutung in Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften, Kunst und Kunstgewerbe, Technik, Industrie und Handel, Königsberg 1937, p.126. 4 M. Trusted: Catalogue of European Ambers in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London 1985, pp.10–11; H. Fraquet: Amber, London 1987, p.34; J. Fajt, ed.: exh. cat. Karl IV. Kaiser von Gottes Gnaden. Kunst und Repräsentation des Hauses Luxemburg 1310–1437, Prague (National Gallery) 2006, no.48; B.D. Boehm et al., eds.: exh. cat. Prague. The 756 november 2013 • clv • the burlington magazine Rethinking ‘the oldest surviving amber in the West’ by RACHEL KING 11. Enthroned Virgin. Prussia, c.1400. Amber, some traces of paint, 11 cm. high. (Kestner Museum, Hannover).