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拍品專文
This exceptional panel combines the traditions of the fifteenth century with the artistic advances that would go on to reach their apogee in the work of painters like Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach and the Holbein family. The picture has been associated by Christian Heck with a further three scenes from the Life of Christ, which together can be grouped as the lateral panels of a large retable, and would originally have flanked a sculpted interior (see fig. 1 for a reconstruction of the altarpiece; C. Heck, op. cit.). These panels, showing The Marriage at Cana (Musée d’Unterlinden, Colmar), Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery (formerly in the Geiger collection, Philadelphia) and The Baptism of Christ (whereabouts unknown), all share near identical dimensions and a consistency of style which convincingly supports their grouping. Heck made the further association of three panels: Saints Leonard, Guy, Pantaleon and Giles (Dompfarrhaus, Frankfurt); Saints Christopher, Eustace and George (Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart); Saints Margaret, Catherine and Barbara (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg). The missing outer panel would presumably have shown the remaining four saints, depicting either Saints Erasmus, Cyriacus, Denis, Blaise or Agathius.
Heck’s reconstruction was confirmed by careful technical examination of the component panels. Accordingly, the Marriage at Cana panel and the Stuttgart Saints Christopher, Eustace and George were found to have been painted on the same panel, subsequently divided during the nineteenth century. Further details of the dispersed altarpiece have been proposed by Kurt Löcher who associated the wings of the altarpiece with a predella panel which has subsequently been attached to a neo-Gothic altarpiece in the parochial church of St. George in the town of Dinkelsbühl, on the Franconian and Swabian borders (K. Löcher, ‘Drei heilige Jungfrauen – von einem Nothelferaltar aus Dinkelsbühl’, Monats Anzeiger: Museen und Ausstellungen in Nürnberg, 208, July 1998, pp. 2-3). This panel, depicting Saint Anna with the Virgin and Child flanked by Saints Lawrence, Leonard, Agatha and Florian and decorated with the emblems of the Berlin family, who were resident in the town, is of comparable dimensions with the wings. Furthermore, he associates two statues of Saint Agatha and Saint Florian, re-used in another altarpiece in the church, with the retable, arguing that these would have formed the centre of the altarpiece.
Heck’s reconstruction was confirmed by careful technical examination of the component panels. Accordingly, the Marriage at Cana panel and the Stuttgart Saints Christopher, Eustace and George were found to have been painted on the same panel, subsequently divided during the nineteenth century. Further details of the dispersed altarpiece have been proposed by Kurt Löcher who associated the wings of the altarpiece with a predella panel which has subsequently been attached to a neo-Gothic altarpiece in the parochial church of St. George in the town of Dinkelsbühl, on the Franconian and Swabian borders (K. Löcher, ‘Drei heilige Jungfrauen – von einem Nothelferaltar aus Dinkelsbühl’, Monats Anzeiger: Museen und Ausstellungen in Nürnberg, 208, July 1998, pp. 2-3). This panel, depicting Saint Anna with the Virgin and Child flanked by Saints Lawrence, Leonard, Agatha and Florian and decorated with the emblems of the Berlin family, who were resident in the town, is of comparable dimensions with the wings. Furthermore, he associates two statues of Saint Agatha and Saint Florian, re-used in another altarpiece in the church, with the retable, arguing that these would have formed the centre of the altarpiece.