(active ca. 1440 in Swabia, maybe Ulm)
St Blaise, discovered at his hermitage by huntsmen,
oil on panel, 92 x 78 cm, framed

Provenance:
private collection, Vienna

We are grateful to Bernd Konrad for his kind assistance in cataloguing this painting. With written expert report.

Konrad on the unusual iconography of this panel painting: “St Blaise of Sebastea is anointed bishop in Cappadocia, but has to seek refuge in a cave in the forest to escape the persecution of the Christians under Diocletian. After he heals a number of animals they begin to trust him and stay in his vicinity. As a result, the huntsmen no longer find any game, penetrate deeper into the forest, where they find him and take him captive. Brought back before governor Agricola he endures his martyrdom that ends in his decapitation”.

On the painting itself Konrad writes: „The drapery reveals the transition from the ‘gentle’ style of the International Gothic Period between 1400 and 1420 and the first signs of a hardening angularity. There is a fresh interest in the precision of the landscape, though this still mainly expresses itself in schematic rock-shapes and mushroom-shaped trees in a steeply ascending background. The city in the background with its many pointed towers is likewise a topos rather than drawing on the painter’s actual experience. Conversely, the rendering of the horses is quite effective; depictions of approaching horsemen must have existed in various earlier paintings”. Konrad goes on to draw a comparison with a triptych from the Cistercian Monastery at Maulbronn, dated to 1432, currently at the Stuttgart Staatsgalerie. Bruno Bushart published this altarpiece in 1957 (B. Bushart, Der Meister des Maulbronner Altars, in: Münchener Jahrbuch für Bildende Kunst 3, F. 8, 1957, p 81–100), localising the workshop somewhere in the Lake Constance Region. Konrad continues: “The relationship between the Blaise panel and this work from the workshop des Master of the Maulbronn Altarpiece becomes apparent in the figures of St Stephan and St Mark, traditionally dated to after 1442, and likewise at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. It is Mark the Evangelist, who most closely resembles Blaise in his features, figures, and garments. Though the drapery has an even gentler quality. Hence, it is possible that rather than a later work by this same Master, it was made at approximately the same time by another master of this region, i.e. Swabia, near Lake Constance. [..] The panel gains additional value owing to the dearth of paintings preserved from the first half of the 15th century”. The still visible lines of the preliminary drawings for the faces offer a evocative testimony of the hand of this unknown artist.