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The high altar of the church in Jánosrét was created, as was customary, to venerate the patron saint of the church. The carving in the shrine represents the titular saint while on the hinged shutters there are paintings depicting scenes from his life.
The most successful of the paintings adorning the St. Nicholas high altar of Jánosrét, are those on the exterior of the panels. These represent the Agony in the Garden and the Crucifixion.. Here the style is more mature than that of the legendary scenes represented on the interior. The impact of Netherlandish painting is clearly evident in the detailed landscape background - feature unusual in earlier Hungarian panel painting - and also in some of the motifs adopted in Hungary from German art. The motif of the Mary Magdalen embracing the Cross, used by Eyck and Rogier, was transmitted to the Master of Jánosrét through one of the engravings of Master ES, while the figures of the Virgin and St. John on the left of the Cross and of the Captain on the right, bear witness to the influence and accurate imitation of Schongauer's engraving.
In the late Middle Ages it was a general custom to copy the works of famous masters, taking over the whole composition or extracting details from it - a practice greatly facilitated by the development of wood-cuts and engravings in the fifteenth century. These borrowings facilitate the dating of any given altarpiece. The more conservative episodes from the life of St Nicholas were probably painted shortly before 1476; the Agony in the Garden and the Crucifixion are believed to be of a somewhat later date. The two latter panels may be the work of a gifted painter employed in the workshop of the Master of Jánosrét. He uses a great variety of shades rich in tone, and his style is softer and more painterly than that of the Master. In representing the landscape -which in his pictures does not form a detached background but, together with the figures, is an integral part of the composition - he applies the laws of aerial perspective, painting the distant mountains in paler shades.
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