(active in the region of the Neckar and Swabia circa 1490/95)

The Birth of Christ,
oil on panel, 100 x 92 cm, framed

Provenance:
Acquired in 1971 from Anna Maria Neri, Prato, at the Mostra Internazionale del Antiquariato at the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence;
European private collection

The attribution has been confirmed by Bernd Konrad (written communication).

The present panel, which partly makes reference to copper engravings by Martin Schongauer, was acquired in 1971 as a work by a certain ‘Master of Freiburg’. This name, which is unknown in art historical literature, was probably chosen to refer to an artist active in the Swiss town of Fribourg. However, the present painting cannot be compared to the ‘Master of the Carnation’ and his workshop or artists from the region along the Upper Rhine, between Freiburg and Strasbourg.

Bernd Konrad has suggested that reference made to the copper engravings does not allow any conclusions to the geographic origins of the panel as Schongauer’s engravings were used as models throughout Europe. The painter in question would have adapted details to his own style of anatomy. For instance, Martin Schongauer’s head shapes are rounder and softer and thus less elongated. The anatomy of Joseph’s face even differs completely from that used by Schongauer. Although this cannot be said with absolute certainty, the painting rather betrays the style of a Swabian master: that of the “Master of the Altars of Schnait and Stetten”, an artist active in the region along the Neckar in Swabia (north of Stuttgart). The Division of the Coat of Saint Martin in the Braith-Mali Museum at Biberach might be referred to for comparison. The saint shows the same elongated face as Joseph in the present Nativity panel. And that a Birth of Christ by that same painter likewise depicts the Child surrounded by small angels and placed at the corner of a garment also suggests the proximity of this artist’s workshop. The name “Master of the Altars of Schnait and Stetten” certainly designates a workshop active in the region between Stuttgart in the north and Ulm in the east that supplied works of very high quality.

Alfred Stange, the expert of German Late Gothic painting, wrote about this master: ‘The painter was a pupil of the Master of the Ehning Altarpiece and seems to have been active in Stuttgart. Secure works by him date from 1488 and 1497. His subtle sense of form connects him to Netherlandish art. And he was profoundly familiar with the production of Schongauer, to whose engravings he refered. His inventiveness went far beyond that of the Master of the Ehning Altarpiece’ (quoted from A. Stange, Die deutschen Tafelbilder vor Dürer, Kritisches Verzeichnis, vol. II, Munich, 1970, p. 235, n. 2).

Comparable panels by the Master of the Altars of Schnait and Stetten are in the Württembergisches Landesmuseum in Stuttgart (Annunciation, dated 1488), in the Walters Art Gallery in Boston (Christ before the High Priest), in St. Vitus’s Chapel in Mühlhausen near Stuttgart (Christ and the Twelve Apostles), and in the church of Stetten in Remtal (The Birth of Christ).