Lot 1508 Nα

This panel depicts the Apostle Simon the Zealot, recognisable by his attributes the saw and walking stick, and James the Lesser conversing with one another on a tiled floor against a brocade ground with a pomegranate pattern. Crown glass windows are visible in the background behind the curtain. This panel is thought to originate from the predella of a large altarpiece by the “Master of the Holy Kinship”, an artist active in Cologne. The predella encompassed seven panels in total depicting the Virgin and Christ (now in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn, inv. no. 141/D 73, acquired in 1908 on the Munich art market) and six pairs of Apostles. This master, whose notname derives from the altarpiece with the holy kinship in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne (inv. no. 165), was among the most important Rhenish artists of the latter 15th century, and this finely painted panel can be counted among his principal works.
The original location of this altarpiece remains uncertain, what is known is that Werner von Haxthausen presented all seven predella panels to the Städtisches Museum in Cologne in 1826 and then later to his brother Moritz von Haxthausen in 1838. By the onset of the 20th century, the panels were already strewn across various collections. The present work found its way into the collection of Richard von Schnitzler in Cologne some time before 1917, and other panels from the series are housed in collections in Philadelphia (The Johnson Collection) and Boston (Museum of Fine Arts).