UNKNOWN MASTER, German
(active in 1440s in Bavaria)

Scenes from the Small Ursula Cycle

1440s
Oil on pinewood, 54,5 x 162 and 55 x 150 cm, respectively
Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne

This minor Cologne master painting in popular style may well have worked in the studio of the Master of 1456. This studio was responsible for another cycle with the legend of St Ursula in the St Ursula Church in Cologne, the so-called `large cycle', dated 1456. Both panels, which belong to a series of fifteen, may have been used as the lids or doors of a reliquary. It is one of the oldest known extensive Ursula cycles. Hans Memling clearly drew inspiration from these panels for similar scenes in his Ursula Shrine.