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The Virgin from Bártfa was not part of a winged altar but an independent picture which may have been hung to serve for private devotion. Originally the frame was decorated, as was the custom for devotional pictures at that time with reliquaries or precious stones, traces of which can still be seen.
Fifteenth century painters who represented the Virgin with the Infant Jesus in her lap were able to draw on an inexhaustible mine of iconographic prototypes. The Infant turning over the pages of a book is actually a motif originating in Netherlandish art and was firs employed by Rogier van der Weyden. Half-length Virgins represented against a gilded background on panels set in ornamental frames, similar to this picture from Bártfa, were equally popular among painters in Upper Hungary and Poland in the late fifteenth century. In addition to the Virgins from Liptónádasd and Kassa, which are also in the Gallery, similar painting from Tum, Cracow and Wroclaw are to be mentioned. In style the painting illustrated here is closely related to Polish painting, especially the representations of female saints which are decorating the altar of the Holy Trinity (1467) in the Cathedral of Cracow.
On the basis of the scenes represented on the reverse of the shutters, Polish art historians have named the artist as "the Master of Choirs"; however, some experts have identified him as Jacob, Master of Szandec, whose authenticated works can be seen in Cracow, Szandec and Bártfa. Although the identity of this artist may still be in doubt, it is certain that from the middle of the fifteenth century, there developed a fertile and lively interaction between the painting of the Szepes region and Sáros, and that of neighbouring Little Poland and Cracow - as seen also in the works of the Master of Mateóc. This artistic connection is splendidly exemplified in the Virgin from Bártfa.
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