(active in Munich 1503/04–1524)
The Crowning of Thorns,
oil and gold on panel, 90.5 x 72.8 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Helbing, Munich, 28 April 1925, lot 400 (as ‘Donauschule’);
sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 16 March 1982, lot 418 (as ‘attributed to the Master of Mühldorf’);
sale, Neumeister, Munich, 1 December 1982, lot 1087;
sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 19 May 1988, lot 672a (as ‘Master of Mühldorf, Bavarian, 16th Century’);
sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 7 November 1991, lot 82 (as ‘Master of Mühl­dorf’);
Private collection, Austria

Literature:
E. Buchner, Albrecht Altdorfer und sein Kreis, Munich 1938, p. 144, no. 664;
M. Hoernes, Martyrium vor antiker Kulisse, Der Agathenaltar Jörg Greimolds aus der Agathakapelle in Weilheim, in: Ars pro toto, 2/2013, pp. 30–33;
I. Lübbeke, Der verlorene Altar eines Münchner Hofmalers, Hans Ostendorfer I. und ‘die schöne Tafel des Choraltars’ von 1518 in der Stiftskirche in Altötting, in: Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch, vol. LXXX, 2019, p. 112, cat. no. 122

Isolde Lübbeke wrote: ‘According to the surviving report on the treatment of the back of this panel, it was not an isolated altarpiece but part of a hinged wing in the context of a larger retable offering various festive aspects through the opening or closing of the different pairs of wings. The verso of this Crowning with Thorns, formerly the side viewed in the open state of the altarpiece, shows thickly white primed canvas glued to the panel in the upper third, with traces of an engraved brocade pattern still visible and with the gilding scratched off. The relief originally attached below, on the moderately primed surface, is missing, with minute traces of nail holes pointing to its former presence. The subject of the missing depiction can be concluded from the titles noted down in red chalk. One is indicated as “Maria Leichgang” [Death of the Virgin], but has been crossed out several times. The second note, “Liechmess”, seems to refer to the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple as the correct and final subject. If exchanging the Death or Funeral of the Virgin for the Presentation at the Temple only meant a change in the arrangement of the panels/reliefs within the structure of the retable or of the iconographic programme us such remains unclear.’

Lübbeke continues: ‘Given the fragmented inscriptions and the seal on the verso, the Crowning with Thorns must have passed through several collections. It can be traced for the first time in the auction catalogue of Helbing in Munich for the sale on 28 April 1925, when it was offered as lot no. 400 as a work by the Danube School. Alfred Stange’s standard work on the Danube painting school from 1964 assigns a relevant group of works (yet without the Crowning with Thorns) to the Master of the Oberaltaich Man of Sorrows. In the previous three Dorotheum sales, efforts were made to arrive at a more precise attribution of the Crowning with Thorns by giving it to the “Master of Mühldorf”. The monograph on this painter, published by Isolde Hausberger in 1973, does not list the present painting but observes certain resemblances with works eliminated from the oeuvre of the Mühldorf master and associated with altar wings to be located in his surroundings – one pair each (divided into four panels) conserved at the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich, and the Niederösterreichisches Landesmuseum, St. Pölten. Even without postulating a connection to the Altötting altarpiece, which was very probably executed by the court painter Hans Ostendorfer in Munich with the support of Duke William IV of Bavaria, the Crowning of Thorns can be assigned to the Munich circle of artists who powerfully and idiosyncratically resorted to impulses from the Augsburg Renaissance in the succession of Jan Polack.’