( fl c. 1460–75). North Netherlandish painter. Named by Haverkamp Begemann after the painting of the Gathering of Manna (Douai, Mus. Mun.), the artist appears to have been a Haarlem painter and close follower of Albert van Ouwater. A second panel, the Fire Offering of the Jews with a grisaille figure of St Peter on the reverse (Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen), is closely related in style and size. The two probably formed the wings of an altarpiece celebrating the Eucharist, since both are familiar Old Testament antetypes (Exodus 16:14–15 and 13:10–12) for the Last Supper. This typology and the style of the squat figures, cramped into exaggerated spatial settings, suggest that the artist was familiar with woodcut illustrations in blockbooks often believed to have been produced in Haarlem, c. 1465–75, the Biblia pauperum and the Speculum humanae salvationis. The same style characterizes the miniatures in Utrecht manuscripts of the period (e.g. the Bible of Evert van Soudenbalch; c. 1465; Vienna, Österreich. Nbib., Cod. 2771–2). A Crucifixion (Saint-Germain-en-Laye, priv. col., see Friedländer, iii, pl. 55) has also been associated with the panels in Douai and Rotterdam as part of the same altarpiece. A fourth painting by the Master, the Healing of the Blind Man of Jericho (Blaricum, Kleiweg de Zwaan-Vellema priv. col.), is typical of narrative paintings in the northern Netherlands and has four episodes of the story (Mark 10:46–52) set in a deep landscape along a winding road. Borrowings from Ouwater’s Raising of Lazarus (Berlin, Gemäldegal.; for illustration see OUWATER, ALBERT VAN) are evident, but the treatment of the figures is less accomplished. The Master’s paintings, together with the woodcuts and the Utrecht miniatures, form an important body of works linking Ouwater’s generation to that of Geertgen tot Sint Jans in Haarlem painting.

Part of the Masters, anonymous, and monogrammists family

• Gathering of Manna, Master of the
  • Netherlands, the, §III, 2: Painting and graphic arts, c 1400–c 1525