UNKNOWN MASTER, altarpiece painter
(15th century)

Two Altarwings (inner pictures)

c. 1450
Tempera on wood, 76 x 56 cm (each scene)
Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest

The scenes on the inside wings of the altarpiece are the work of one master, those on the triangular paintings above and on the outside wings are the work of another - an associate of the Master of Mateóc, the most prominent painter in the Polish-Hungarian border region in the fifteenth century.

The inside wings also reflect a northern influence and a knowledge of the style of the altar of St. Barbara in Wroclaw which dates from 1447. The master must have modelled his work on this significant Silesian altarpiece in respect of narrative, types of face and manner of representing the vegetation. By setting the scene of the Refusal of Joachim's Sacrifice within an architectural frame as was the custom at that time, the painter succeeded in suggesting the interior of a church. In the other pictures too he endeavoured to place the figures and architectural elements with some degree of realism in the landscape. From this point of view the most successful scene is that of the grieving Joachim where he is shown outside a multi-towered city at the foot of a hill with grazing sheep, a winding road and rich vegetation. The vivid light colours and naive atmosphere of a fable serve to minimize the weakness of the drawing. In his manner of suggesting landscape and space, he is representative of a new trend in legend painting, in a style different from that which characterized the work of his predecessors.


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