Master of the Sebastian Diptych

The master of the Sebastian diptych was a painter and glass painter from the Upper Rhine region who worked at the beginning of the 16th century, probably in Mainz and Strasbourg .

The painter, whose name is no longer known today, received his emergency name from a diptych painted around 1510 depicting the "Martyrdom of St. Sebastian" , which has been in the Berlin Gemäldegalerie since 1912 . According to the few theses gathered by research, he could have worked in Mainz between 1486 and 1500 and in Strasbourg after 1510.

In addition to the Berlin work, the master of the Sebastian diptych is assigned two altar wings with depictions of saints in the Heinz Kisters collection in Kreuzlingen , painted between 1505 and 1510 , which today are predominantly depictions of "Saint Ursula with her entourage" and "Saint Achatius with the 10,000 martyrs ” . It is possible that he also made two cracks in the pane now in Leipzig and Weimar .

Stylistically, his pictures are close to the workshop of Martin Schongauer . There have been numerous attempts to identify the painter with known artists. In addition to an early attribution to Albrecht Altdorfer , the young Albrecht Dürer and Hans Baldung or one of his teachers were suggested. Today you see him mainly as a painter from Baldung's circle.

Typical distinguishing features of his pictures are the strikingly oval painted faces with their strangely puffy eyes and strangely smiling mouths.

literature

• Heinz Kisters Collection. Old German and Old Dutch paintings , Nuremberg 1963, p. 9 f.
• Gemäldegalerie Berlin. Catalog of the paintings from the 13th to 18th centuries. Century , Berlin 1975, p. 275 f.