Cabinet window

Museum Tucherschloss und Hirsvogelsaal, MM 011
Cabinet window with Scheurl-Tucher coat of arms after Lucas Cranach the Elder

The furnishings of a bourgeois house also included small-format cabinet windows. They were common from the late 15th century and were inserted into bull’s eye window panes as part of the window decoration.

A lady in red appears here, tightly laced, with chains, bonnet and a beret adorned with blue feathers. She is dressed in the style of the 16th century and presents the coats of arms of the Scheurl and Tucher families.

Her figure was taken from the bookmark which Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) had designed for Christoph II Scheurl (1481-1542), councillor of the imperial city of Nuremberg and author of the genealogy of the Tucher family. The first line of the inscription was also picked up on and was completed based on the model that was created after 1511: "HIC SCHEVRL[INA] SIMVL TVCHERIN[AQUE] SIGNA REFVLGEN[T] / [QUE DOCTOR GEMINI SCHEVRLE PARENTIS HABES]" (Here shine the two coats of arms of Scheurl and Tucher / which you, Doctor Scheurl, have from your parents).

It seems unusual that a personality was represented by the coats of arms of both parents. This can only be explained by Scheurl’s attachment to his mother Helena Tucher (1462-1516), who had married his father, the merchant Christoph I Scheurl (1457-1519) in 1481. Christopher II dedicated a biography to Helena in the Großes Tucherbuch, which goes far beyond the brief mention of women there and testifies to intimate veneration (StadtAN E29/III, 258, fol. 63r).

Claudia Däubler-Hauschke