Master of the Heilsbronn high altar

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A medieval painter who worked in Nuremberg around 1500 is known as the master of the Heilsbronn high altar . The artist, who is not known by name, got his emergency name from the pictures he painted for the wings of an altar in the church of the Heilsbronn monastery in Franconia . The late Gothic master is a typical representative of the high level of craftsmanship that many of the Nuremberg painters had achieved by the late 15th century, before the style of the late Middle Ages merged into that of the modern era.

The winged altar for Heilsbronn was a donation from Friedrich, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach and his wife Sophia . His pictures were painted around 1502 or 1503 and also represent the donors. The altar originally stood in the church at the burial place of the margrave who died in 1536 and his wife, a princess of Poland, who died in 1512. The altar was one of the couple's numerous endowments. Since 1865, the altar of the former Cistercian abbey has been the altarpiece of the main altar in the center of the now Protestant church.

Possibly the master of the Heilsbronn high altar had painted other works for the monastery before 1500 and is perhaps identical to a Hanns Speyer of Nuremberg who can be found around 1490 in the economic books of the monastery archives; he may have painted the altar together with his son Wolf.

The Heilsbronn Altar is a shrine altar, a box in the middle of which there are carved figures of an Adoration of the Kings. Carved saints are also shown in the inner wings. The double pairs of wings on the outside, painted by the master, show painted scenes from the life of Mary , including the Assumption and Coronation of Mary and, when fully closed, the crucifixion of Christ and St. Gregory's Mass in the upper part, in the lower part the donor couple with their descendants. The master painted St. Gregory's mass in the usual formulaic imagery of his time, with this typical theme of the Middle Ages pointing to the use of the altar as a place for soul masses. The master also skilfully depicts the Annunciation and adapts it to the traditional Nuremberg painting of his time, striving for a more detailed definition of the location and less formulaic language in the representation of the space and its contents, such as the furniture. On the whole, the master's style is reminiscent of that of Michael Wolgemut , the master's Nuremberg contemporary and most important representative of a style known in art history as the older Franconian school.

The master of the Heilsbronn high altar is or has been assigned a few more altarpieces under this emergency name. Of these, some pictures such as the painting of St. Brigitta, writing down her revelationes, now assigned to Hans Traut , a painter who is identical to Hanns Speyer of Nuremberg. However, the catalog of works by Hans Traut is not certain and therefore also the exact identity of the master of the Heilsbronn high altar . Therefore, he will continue to be listed as an independent artist in art history.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Henry Thode : The painting school of Nuremberg in the XIV. And XV. Century in their development up to Dürer . Frankfurt am Main 1891, p. 293ff .; Franz Friedrich Leitschuh: Studies and sources on the German art history of the XV.-XVI. Century . Freiburg (Switzerland) 1912, p. 2; Werner Dettelbacher among others: Franconia (DuMont art travel guide). Ostfildern 2010, p. 279.
  2. ↑ Agnieszka Gąsior: A Jagiellonin as an imperial princess in Franconia. To the foundations of Margrave Friedrich the Elder von Brandenburg-Ansbach and Sophie von Polen . Thorbecke, Ostfildern 2012, pp. 89–198.
  3. ↑ Christian Rauch: The Trauts. Studies and contributions to the history of Nuremberg painting . Strasbourg 1907, p. 3.
  4. ↑ Christian Rauch: The Trauts. Studies and contributions to the history of Nuremberg painting . Strasbourg 1907, p. 26; see also Sabine Lata: Traut . In: Manfred H. Grieb (Ed.): Nürnberger Künstlerlexikon. Visual artists, artisans, scholars. Saur, Munich 2007, pp. 1537-1540.
  5. ^ Esther Meier: The Gregor mass. Functions of a late medieval image type . Cologne 2006, p. 151.
  6. ^ Sven Lüken: The Annunciation to Maria in the 15th and early 16th centuries . Göttingen 2000, p. 181.
  7. ^ Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, inventory number Gm160 ( database entry ).
  8. ↑ for example in the common authority file , entry 133457249.
personal data
SURNAME Master of the Heilsbronn high altar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Gothic painter
DATE OF BIRTH 15th century
DATE OF DEATH 16th Century