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

The three larger and four smaller panels, once part of a winged altarpiece, were purchased from the village church of Csegöld in Szatmár County in East Hungary. The statue once standing in the center of the altarpiece and surrounded by the four musician angels is lost; it was probably a life-size statue of the Virgin. The date 1494 and the initials BE of the master were legible on the reverse of one of the large panels which formed the closing wings of the altarpiece. On the inner side of the wings, originally visible on feast days when the altarpiece was open, the fourteen helper saints and seven apostles appear in crowded groups. A fourth panel that showed the rest of the apostles is lost. On the reverse of the wings there are three scenes of the Passion based on the prints of Martin Schongauer. These were visible on week days when the altarpiece was closed. The master’s style is close to the late phase of the school of the mining towns in Upper Hungary. The block-like, sharply drawn figures fill the entire height of the pictorial field. The way in which the individual details, the clothes, the attributes, the angels and their instruments are painted indicates a well-prepared painter working with a lot of inventiveness.