1. Hungarian Late Gothic Painting and Sculpture (15-16th c.)

The unknown master received his conventional name after the original location of his masterpiece, the altarpiece of St. Nicholas, which is now conserved in the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest. The Master of Jánosrét was the leader of the so-called school of the mining towns in Upper Hungary in the 1470s-‘80s. He may have personally visited the Netherlands, since the influence of the painting of that region is directly felt in his works. The central field of this altarpiece from the Benedictine Abbey of Garamszentbenedek (now Hronský Beňadik, Slovakia) shows Christ on the cross between the Virgin and St. John the Evangelist; in the predella, the same figures appear. These two fields are perhaps the work of the master himself or of his talented student, while the inner and outer scenes on the wings, which recount the Passion and the resurrection, were painted by a less experienced painter in the same large workshop. The altarpiece may be dated to around 1480. The gold pattern in the back of the Crucifixion scene provides an addition to our understanding of the extensive and varied activity of this workshop: it is identical to the one that appears on the Lord’s Coffin. This can only happen in this period with works produced by the same workshop.