Christus und Heilige. Um 1440.
Tempera on wood, with partly embossed gowns and halos.
69,5 : 57 cm (27,3 : 22,4 in). A green curtain, pushed to the right, opens the view onto a canopy bed with a red plaid in a tiled room. Six people line up in the foreground, Christ with an angel to the left, resting his hand on the shoulder of a wealthily dressed saint, the right hand raised in a gesture of a blessing. Mary on the right, accentuated by the crown, with two further female saints. Chandler Rathfon Post identifies the theme of this panel as a combination of two epidodes from the life of St. Martin: the epiphany of Christ, after he had given his coat to a beggar, and his vision of the virgin Mary togethger with the saints Agnes and Thekla.

According to Chandler Post, this picture is a work by the Master of All (working in Catalonia in the 15th century, cf. Chandler Post, A History of Spanish Painting, vol. VIII, The Aragonese School in the late Middle Ages, Cambridge, Mass., 1941, pp. 608ff.). Certain doubts occur, however, when comparing this painter's finely executed faces and the almost noble elegance of his figures with the Master of All's rather stiff figures and his retables, mostly drawn using a semantic perspective. Chandler Post puts this anonymous Master of All into the nearer surroundings of the Catalan Lluis Borrassà (before 1360 Girona – 1424/25 Barcelona), the most important representative of international Gothic in Catalan painting. Borrassà, who studied Flemish and French art at the court of Juan I., replaced the traditional gold grounds with strong colours, such as shades of red and green as early as 1400. His influence on many artists, such as Juan Mates and the Maestro de Rusiñol, but also the painter of this picture, is clearly visible. [HW]
EXPERTISE: With a photo expertise from Chandler R. Post, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., from 23 April 1958
PROVENIENZ: Private collection South Germany.

With an old label on verso, there with inscription. Wiith orig. tracery, presumably in orig frame
Colours in good and fresh condition. With slight craquelé in places. With a small colour flaking to lower left edge. Isolated tiny chippings of the gilded tracery. Tracery also minimally brittle on the crossing to the plate. Small round retouching to upper margin.