The Nativity (recto); The Adoration of the Magi (recto), partial (cut) figure studies on the versos

These two sheets, by considerably different
hands, were united in album; fragments of
other drawings (reproduced in this sale’s online
catalogue) still on the back of their secondary
support indicate that the collection included more
early Northern drawings.

Compositionally, the first drawing derives
from Martin Schongauer’s engravings of the
subject. In facial type, composition and drawing
manner, however, it bears a closer resemblance
with drawings such as those attributed to the
Augsburg goldsmith Jörg Schweiger (died 1533
or 1534) at the Basel Kupferstichkabinet (see, for
instance, T. Falk, Katalog der Zeichnungen des
15. und 16. Jahrhunderts im Kupferstichkabinett
Basel, I, Basel and Stuttgart, 1979, nos. 275, 276,
pls. 70, 71); another comparison can be made
with a drawing in the same collection for which
an attribution has been suggested to Martin
Schaffner, another artist active in the circle of
Hans Holbein the Elder (ibid., no. 229, pl. 60). A
third drawing, also representing the Nativity and
given to an Augsburg master active circa 1480-
1490 (Städel Museum, Frankfurt; see E. Schilling,
Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main.
Katalog der deutschen Zeichnungen, Munich, 1973,
I, no. 187, II, pl. 50), equally points to an origin in
that city at the end of the fifteenth century.

Wholly different is the lightly more painterly
technique of the Adoration of the Magi, which
must be an earlier hand.