The latest corbel I to be carved for St. Eusebius' church was a representation of the evangelist Matthew: a winged man/angel. Meanwhile, the corbel stones are installed in the façade of the tower. You can see how the whitish gray Muschel limestone contrasts with the more yellowish surrounding tuff.

Nasty the first message about this restoration project

(mostly Ettringer tuff with repairs of Weiberner tuff). The joints obviously still have to be pointed later on, and while the mortar hardens Matthew has gotten a styrofoam chin support.

Matthew is depicted with a sword, because he had been killed with a sword and thus became a 'martyr of the faith'. A strange custom to elevate a violent death into something praiseworthy. Then why not choose the table at which he was sitting when Jesus called him, or the money bag of his former job as a tax collector? I am of course familiar with the tradition of veneration of martyrs, but nevertheless, I think that the promotion of the 'suffering quietly without complaining' especially came in handy to those in power .

I've given Matthew a bit more hair than the original had (see below). In the original corbels it was apparent that they were carved on site. The stonemason who carved the upper sections of the corbels, had carved the profile below the second straight band quite deep, and the sculptor just had to sqeeze his relief in between that. Hence, Matthew got a somewhat truncated skull. In my case that stone was still there, so I immediately took advantage of it. I also gave the hair a structure with a tooth iron and carved a little more detail on the feathers of the wings. On the old corbel those just consist of a few grooves, but now I carved feathers, so it's all just a little more defined that way.

Read here the explanation about the whys and the hows of this mode of copying

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