CIRCLE OF MICHEL ERHART (D. AFTER 1522), ULM, CIRCA 1500

In terms of style and composition the relief offered here seems to have been influenced by the dominant style of Michel and Gregor Erhart, the father and son team working in Ulm in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. This relief shares stylistic similarities with Michel's work - who was active between 1470-1522 - due to the same high foreheads, the long undulating hair of the women, the daintily pursed mouths and the soft yet deeply undercut folds of the draperies. These stylistic traits are visible on various figures of the Blaubeuren Altarpiece in the Klosterkirche, Schrein, executed by Michel between 1493 and 1494 and on the group of the Virgin and Child from the Kaufbeurer altarpiece now in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich (Ulm, op. cit., nos. 86 and 68 respectively). Further comparisons can also be made with the refined treatment of the embroidered material on Mary Magdalen's dress - which is gessoed, embossed, red-painted and then gilded - and on Michel's bust of Mary Magdalen carved in 1475 and conserved in the Ulmer museum, Ulm (ibid, pp. 267-9, no. 21). One can, similarly, also detect a number of common features between the present relief and Gregor's works. His idiosyncratic Schutzmantelmadonna in the Bode Museum, Berlin, in particular, represents the infant Christ in the same highly unusual position stretched horizontally across the Virgin's front and twisting in an exaggerated manner.