Lot 3 Dα

The panel was possibly once a wing of a small altar and depicts a bishop in full pontifical regalia standing in front of a landscape. His given attribute of the lily does not enable the saint to be named, but an identification as Saint Ursinicus has been suggested. The late gothic interpretation of grand vestments is reminiscent of the representative display of splendour of the saints in the Cologne painting tradition such as the Altar der Heiligen Sippe, or Altarpiece of the Holy Kinship (Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, inv. No. 165). This altarpiece dated 1500/1503, shows a close relationship to our panel not only in the design of the robes and interpretation of the figures but also in the stylistic treatment of faces. With its dark tonality and rendition of the bizarre rock formations on the other hand, the composition of the landscape refers to the Lower Rhine-Netherlandish region as a further sphere of influence.
Combining thus Cologne and Netherlandish influences, Batholomäus Bruyn the Elder has been proposed as the master of our panel. From the Lower Rhine region, he trained in the workshop of Jan Joest van Kalkar before moving to Cologne in 1512 where he was initially active in the workshop of the Master of St. Severin. His first major work was the high altar of the collegiate church in Essen, created in 1522-1525, but from the mid-1530s he became known and famous far beyond Cologne in particular for his portrait paintings. Our panel is to be dated in its composition to circa 1520, falling therefore into the early Cologne period of Batholomäus Bruyn the Elder.