(Nuremberg 1471–1528)
The Madonna,
oil on panel, 21 x 16 cm, in a tabernacle frame

We are grateful to Christof Metzger for his help in cataloguing the present painting.

We are also grateful to Rainer Stüwe, who, on the basis of high-resolution photographs, has suggested attributing the present painting to the workshop of Georg Gärtner the Younger and a date of execution around 1620/30.

The present painting of a Madonna, which can be assigned to the so-called “Dürer Renaissance”, repeats the Virgin Mary from Albrecht Dürer’s “Heller altarpiece”, painted between 1507 and 1511 on behalf of the patrician donor Jakob Heller for the Dominican Church in Frankfurt am Main. In the present version, however, the figure appears in the reverse direction. The central panel of the altarpiece, depicting the Ascension and Coronation of the Virgin, has only survived in the form of a copy by Jobst Harrich from 1614, whereas the original perished in a fire at the Munich Residence in 1729.

What according to Christof Metzger speaks in favour of a date of execution after Dürer’s lifetime is not least the type of underdrawing (see fig. 1), which appears to have been applied with a dry drawing medium. As far as can be judged from Harrach’s copy, the picture also deviates from Dürer’s (lost) original altarpiece in terms of the colours. Probably, the present panel does not actually copy the painting, but is based on a lost study by Albrecht Dürer, such as one of the chiaroscuro sketches that have come down to us for several heads, hands (such as the Praying Hands), or draperies. This would also account for the reversed direction, as Dürer’s drawings also contained variants the artist eventually discarded. It would thus be plausible that the present picture was painted in Prague, where all of the “Heller drawings” seem to have been kept in the collection of Emperor Rudolf II.

Rainer Stüwe proposes that the picture was executed in the workshop of Georg Gärtner the Younger in Nuremberg, similar to a Mother of Sorrows based on the Heller altarpiece in the Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt, inv. AE 379 (see R. Stüwe, Dürer in der Kopie, Heidelberg 1997/98, cat. no. C14). Around 1600 and in the first third of the seventeenth century, the studio of Georg Gärtner the Younger and the Elder, which is mentioned in contemporary sources as a workshop well known beyond the borders of the region for producing copies after Albrecht Dürer, regularly employed the maximum number of assistants permitted by the guild laws, sometimes even more, which suggests a brisk production.

The plaque inserted on the reverse of the frame can be traced back to the famous portrait medal by Hans Schwarz, which he designed as a boxwood model in 1520 – probably by Dürer’s order, but in any case according to Dürer’s instructions – and which has survived in the form of various casts, variants, and copies. The present medallion does not exactly comply with any of the known versions and may have been made in the nineteenth(?) century.

Technical analysis:

The present thin panel, shows an interesting under drawing, made with a sharp black chalk, as IR images (1-1.7 microns) show. It was used to set the outlines and to define shadows with hatching.

Among pigments, azurite was used in the cloak, in different shades and mixtures with lead white, while the flesh tone was made by lead white with some vermilion and ochre. In the red lips, vermilion and a madder lake were employed. Technique and pigments are coherent with the practice of a 16th century German painter.

We are grateful to Gianluca Poldi for the technical examination.