UNKNOWN MASTER, altarpiece painter
(16th century)

Altarpiece of the Annunciation from Kisszeben

1515-20
Painted, gilded wood, 172 x 190 cm
Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest

The altarpiece comes from Kisszeben, its painter is referred to as Master of the Altars of Saint Anne.

The group of carvings in the centre is the Master's finest and most effective creation. Here, with his unerring feeling for plasticity, he succeeded in uniting the reticent elegance characteristic of all his works with a refined type of stylization. These features are enhanced by his carving of the faces - full of feeling but never sentimental and the meticulously carved regular windings of the drapery - in the style of the age yet individual in the application. (The beauty of the facial expression in enhanced by the fact that the paint on the faces and hands is the original layer and that on the clothes, though of a later date, is in the original colours.) The movements are studied, but the Master knew where to draw the line between the elaborate and the affected. Perhaps the tress of hair falling on the shoulder and upper arm of the Virgin most clearly demonstrates his ability to exercise restraint: he stylized just enough to effect the balance between the naturalistic and the geometric. The tress of hair is splendidly set off by the plain background formed by the cloak, but this plain surface is important also from other points of view: it follows the new stylistic ideal which spread steadily in the second decade of the century, making the forms more closed and quiet.


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