Master of Schloss Lichtenstein
( fl c. 143050). Austrian painter. He is named after Schloss Lichtenstein in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, the location of two panels of a winged altarpiece of the Death and Coronation of the Virgin. Two further cycles of pictures can be grouped around this pair of panels: fourteen panels with scenes from the Lives of Christ and the Virgin (Vienna, Belvedere; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.; Philadelphia, PA, Mus. A.; ex-Kaiser-Friedrich Mus., Berlin; Moscow, Pushkin Mus. F.A.; Tallinn, A. Mus. Estonia; Munich, Alte Pin.; Warsaw, N. Mus.) and seven scenes from the Passion (Basle, Kstmus.; Esztergom, Mus. Christ.; Augsburg, Schaezlerpal.; Munich, Alte Pin., on dep. Augsburg, Schaezlerpal.). These panels were probably produced before the larger, more minutely executed panels at Schloss Lichtenstein; it is not known whether they belong to a single altarpiece or to several. The vertical format of the panels (some with surviving wooden framework) is pronounced, and the tall, thin figures are always placed in the very foreground of the picture. The backgrounds show selective indications of interiors or steep, simplified landscapes. The fact that the panels are in Russian, Swabian, Hungarian and Estonian collections increases the difficulty of locating this master. Pächt and Baldass were the first to assign him to the Viennese school of painting on the grounds of stylistic and iconographic similarities with the works of the Master of the Albrecht Altar and the Viennese Master of the Presentation of Christ ( fl c. 142040). Like these two painters, the Master of Schloss Lichtenstein worked within the Transitional style that characterized the 1430s and 1440s. He was also influenced by contemporary Netherlandish painting and by 14th-century Italian art.
Part of the Masters, anonymous, and monogrammists family
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