(active in Strasbourg and the Oberrhein area, Alsace, circa 1475–1500)
The Nativity,
oil on panel, 59 x 54 cm, framed

Provenance:
with Galerie Pardo, Paris, 1968;
sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 3 December 1968, lot 27 (as Marx Doiger);
Private collection, Vienna;
thence by descent to the present owner

Literature:
A. Stange, Die deutschen Tafelbilder vor Dürer, vol. II, Munich 1970, p. 50, no. 166

Alfred Stange wrote in his 1968 certificate: ‘The work of the Birth of Christ, a photograph of which can be found overleaf and which I am familiar with in detail after thorough inspection in the original, is a solemn and intimate composition on panel measuring 59 by 54 centimetres – the work of a painter active in Strasbourg in the latter half of the fifteenth century who, based on several drawings in the round format conserved in Coburg, is mostly referred to as Master of the Coburg Roundels. The altar wing from Guebwiller in the Musée de la Ville in Strasbourg is proof that the painter trained in this older workshop. Paul has the same head as Joseph in the picture overleaf, and the heads of the Maries are also similar. Yet in the style of the drapery and his spatial approach, the painter of our Nativity clearly reveals himself as a younger master. Recent research permits us to identify him as Marx Doiger (or Deiger), who ran a workshop in Strasbourg between 1444 and 1475 that was obviously extremely productive and which supplied the large winged altar for Obernai in Alsace/Bas-Rhin.’