Altar table

During the early seventeenth century countless grand houses and churches were built in Germany, and even in the Protestant areas, where the princes took over ecclesiastical possessions almost entirely, new palaces provided sculptors with numerous opportunities. The court in B�ckeburg, for example, developed into a centre of independent artistic activity as a result of the cultural renaissance along the Weser. Three members of the Wolf family, Ebert the Elder, and his sons Ebert the Younger an Jonas all worked on the furnishing of the palace at B�ckeburg. In the palace chapel life-size kneeling angels support the altar table, each carrying a burning torch. With this design Ebert the Younger seems to have translated German Mannerism into the forms of an early native Baroque style.