Fedja Anzelewsky and Hans Mielke (Albrecht Dürer, Kritischer Katalog der Zeichnungen, Berlin, 1984, pp. 28-9, no. 25) have most recently discussed the series of twelve scenes from the life of Saint Benedict, after which the draughtsman has also been called the Benedikt Meister. From the series two designs are only known through (probably contemporary) copies, of which the present drawing is one, a third as painted glass, the medium for which they were all originally intended as designs. As Frenzel first suggested in 1971, they were commissioned by the Nuremberg patrician Friedrich Tetzel the Younger on the occasion of his marriage to Ursula Fürer in 1496 to replace the damaged glass in the family chapel in the Nuremberg Benedict cloister Sankt Egidien of circa 1360. This gives a terminus ante quem for the drawings, which are generally dated to circa 1500.
The series (Strauss, op.cit., nos. XW 198-209), has traditionally been closely associated with Albrecht Dürer's studio. The fact that the designs were intended to be executed as painted glass has obviously limited the artist's liberty in the composition, this however does not seem to have affected the quality of the painted glass itself. The series has sometimes been attributed to Hans Schäuffelein and to various other artists in the circle of Dürer. Anzelewsky and Mielke see no reason to doubt the attribution of the series to Dürer himself, supported by the fact that the drawing formerly in the Blasius Collection, now in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, bears his handwriting.
As Dr. Fritz Koreny has kindly pointed out, it will be difficult to give a final opinion on the series until all drawings have been studied in greater detail. We are grateful to Dr. Tilman Falk for his help in the research of the present lot