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The panel originates from the High Altar of Okolicsnó, its painter is referred to as the Master of Okolicsnó.
From his arrangement of figures and painterly approach we might describe the work of the Master of Okolicsnó as reticent and even conservative. However, the art of Memline shows that by deviating from the general trend and artist does not necessarily create works of inferior value. Although ways of representing space was one of the major problems faced by artists in Central and Eastern Europe at that time, the Master of Okolicsnó remained fairly indifferent to it and bestowed little care even upon the landscape in his Lamentation.
In the panel illustrated here the figures are carefully placed side by side as on a relief, hardly covering each other. The suggestion of recession is enhanced by the golden background and brocade altar-cloth, both with a pomegranate design. The Master was aware that this style of painting could to some extent produce an illusion of depth. It is in the placing of the Infant he most successfully suggests the roundedness of the human form and the arrangement of the figures one behind the other. At the same time he emphasizes the importance of the Child in this composition. At that time it would have been unimaginable to depict an altar without a central shrine or niche, but since in the Temple of Jerusalem a winged altar would have been quite out of place, the master has placed the stone tablets of Moses on the altar as a retable. One of the tablets serves to frame the small central figure. The powerfully painted male heads are particularly effective. Although they are by no means portraitlike, the features are so marked that even in the absence of a definitely demonstrable Italian or Netherlandish influence, they can well be compared to contemporary painting in those countries.
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