Earlier this week I spent a few days in Erfurt, Germany, for a conference. It is one of the most beautiful cities I have visited, and I left rich with impressions and a desire to return at the first opportunity. While I still need to read more about the city to be able to provide lengthy blogposts of all the things I encountered there, I will provide a few glimpses of particularly noteworthy details from the many important historical buildings or the cityscape.
The first glimpse is of this bench end in the choir of Erfurt cathedral, carved sometime in the late Middle Ages, these choir benches are covered in figures and scenes that both speak of high quality craftship and the florid medieval imagination. This bench end was of particular interest to me, in part because it depicts Saint Catherine of Alexandria - recognisable by her wheel by which she was threatened to be tortured - who is a saint I always appreciate encountering. Secondly, this bench-end intrigues me because of the squirrels running along the sides of Saint Catherine. Squirrels are not necessarily rare in medieval art, but this might be the first time I have seen them in the context of choir benches, and they make for a lovely contrast to the pairs of wyverns at the top and the bottom.
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