Master of the St. Barbara Altar

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Master of the St. Barbara Altar: St. Barbara Altar, central panel, 1447, Silesia

The medieval painter who painted the Gothic high altar of the Church of St. Barbara in Wroclaw is known as the master of the St. Barbara Altar ( Polish: Mistrz ołtarza św. Barbary ) . The winged altar was created around 1447 as part of the renovation of the church during a period of great economic prosperity in the city of Wroclaw. At that time the city was a member of the Hanse trade association and a disputed property between the kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary. The work of the master of the St. Barbara Altar is one of the examples of the extraordinary quality and variety of styles of artistic work of the Middle Ages in Wroclaw, which at that time, like Krakow and Gdansk, was one of the artistic centers of the later Kingdom of Poland. The high quality of the work of the master of the St. Barbara Altar shows that Breslau had artistic importance within Europe and especially as a meeting place for Western and Eastern European influences and that important works of art accumulated there.

Today only the central panel of the St. Barbara altar is preserved, the wings of the altar have been lost since the end of the Second World War in 1945. The former Catholic Church of St. Barbara is now the cathedral of the Orthodox Wroclaw-Szczecin Diocese, the remains of the St. Barbara altar are in the National Museum in Warsaw . The central panel is considered a major work of late Gothic painting in Silesia, but also of Gothic painting in general. It consists of a central panel, which is surrounded on the right and left by two adjoining smaller panels. The pictures show Saint Barbara in the middle part with Saints Felix and Adauctus and scenes from the legend of Barbara on the sides. The lost wings also showed scenes like this.

The master of the St. Barbara Altar is stylistically at the end of the International Gothic . His style of painting shows contemporary influence from southern Germany, furthermore the influence of Dutch painting of his time can be seen in his detailed depiction of the background and the well-observed nature. Since the master has selected episodes in his pictures from the legend of Saint Barbara, which were especially known in the Flemish region, it is further assumed that his close relationship to this region in particular.

The picture The Handkerchief of Veronica , which is also in the National Museum in Warsaw, is attributed to the master of the St. Barbara Altar and his workshop . This picture also shows that the master, in his naturalistic, detailed depiction of the head of the suffering Christ, was influenced by new styles of contemporary painting.

Possibly the master of the St. Barbara altar is the painter Wilhelm Kalteysen von Aachen, who can be traced from around 1420 to around 1496.

literature

  • Adam Labuda: Wrocławski ołtarz św. Barbary i jego twórcy. Study o malarstwie śląskim połowy XV wieku . (Polish [The Wroclaw Altar of Barbara and its Creators. A Study of Silesian Painting from the Middle of the 15th Century]). Poznań 1984.
  • Adam Labuda: Words and Images in the Late Middle Ages using the example of the Wroclaw Barbara Altar (1447) . In: Artibus et Historiae. Rivista internazionale di arte visive e cinema ”, 9 (V), 1984, pp. 23-57
  • Milena Bartlova: Poctivé obrazy. Deskové maliřstvi v Čechach a na Moravé 1400–1460 (Polish (Venerable Pictures. Panel painting in Bohemia and Moravia 1400–1460)). Prague 2001, pp. 207-209
  • Ewa Wolkiewicz: Twórcy retabulum w kościele św. Jakuba w Nysie. W kwestii organizacji i kosztów wyposażenia wnętrz w połowie XV w . (Polish: The creator of the reredos in the St. Jakobi church in Neisse. On the organization and costs of the interior decoration in the middle of the 15th century). In: Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej 52, 2004, No. 4, pp. 453-460
  • Masterpieces of Medieval Art from the National Museum Warsaw: Catalog book for the exhibition in Pfäffikon, Lisbon and Vienna . Munich 2006, p.?.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Muzeum Narodowe we Warszawie (National Museum Warsaw), Inv. No. Sr. 35
  2. ^ Klaus Klöppel: Breslau: Lower Silesia and its thousand-year-old capital . Berlin 2010
  3. ↑ cf. Barbara Altar, 1447, Barbarakirche in Breslau, condition before 1945, with Mateusz Kapustka: The touched picture? An unknown Vera Ikon panel from the 15th century and the questions about the function of cloth representations . In: Katja Bernhardt and Piotr Piotrowski (eds.): Overcoming boundaries. Festschrift for Adam S. Labuda on his 60th birthday. Berlin 2006 (CD-Rom contributions from the student festival)
  4. ^ Adam Labuda: Word and image in the late Middle Ages using the example of the Wroclaw Barbara Altar (1447) In: Artibus et Historiae. Rivista internazionale di arte visive e cinema, 9 (V), 1984, pp. 23-57
  5. ^ Muzeum Narodowe we Warszawie (National Museum Warsaw), Inv. No. XI 228
personal data
SURNAME Master of the St. Barbara Altar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Gothic painter
DATE OF BIRTH 15th century
DATE OF DEATH 15th century