Conrat Meit

Conrad Meit or (usual in German) Conrat Meit (1480s in Worms; 1550/1551 in Antwerp) was a German-born Late Gothic and Renaissance sculptor, who spent most of his career in the Low Countries.

The royal tombs that were his largest works still had elaborate Late Gothic architectural frameworks by others, but Meit's figures were Renaissance in conception and style. Meit's work, with its delicately worked plasticity and pronounced corporality, brought an entirely new form of expression to Late Gothic church sculpture. The anatomy of his nude figures draws more from Albrecht Dürer than from classical sculpture.

Later many of his works in Brussels, Antwerp, Tongerlo Abbey, and elsewhere were destroyed in the Reformation and French Revolution, leaving the three royal monuments at the then newly built Royal Monastery of Brou, Bourg-en-Bresse, as his outstanding surviving large works. A number of small works, including portrait busts in wood, and small statuettes in various materials have survived. The documented tombs and the signed alabaster statuette of Judith (illustrated below) are the main secure works for defining his style.

Meit's date of birth at Worms on the Rhine is unknown, and his early life and training are not recorded. He was employed at the court of Frederick III, Elector of Saxony before 1506 and came to work at the Wittenberg court at the request of Lucas Cranach the Elder, where he probably worked in Cranach's workshop between 1505 and 1511. He then went to Middelburg to work for Philip of Burgundy, the illegitimate son of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, who was later to be suddenly made Bishop of Utrecht. From 1514 until her death in 1530 Meit was court sculptor to the Archduchess Margaret of Austria, the Regent of the Netherlands, mainly based at Mechelen. In 1534 he moved to Antwerp, buying a house there and joining the Guild of St Luke there in 1536. Works produced by Meit there are documented until 1544, but were all lost to later iconoclasm.

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