SCHÄUFELEIN, Hans Leonhard
(b. ca. 1480, Nürnberg?, d. 1538/40, Nördlingen?)

Christ Carrying the Cross (exterior)

c. 1510
Oil and gold on fir panel, 139 x 134 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

This large double-sided panel, one of four that once formed the wings of a folding triptych, represents the Dormition of the Virgin on the interior side and Christ Carrying the Cross on the exterior. The triptych depicted on the exterior scenes from the Passion of Christ and on the interior, episodes from the life of the Virgin. The other three panels are in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, and the Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead, England. The missing centrepiece most likely displayed sculptures of the Virgin and Child flanked by saints.

The altarpiece is attributed to Hans Schäufelein with the contribution of an assistant, probably the Master of Engerda, a master named after his participation in the painted portions of an altarpiece shrine in the Evangelische Pfarrkirche, Engerda (Thuringia). He worked alongside Hans Schäufelein in the Augsburg workshop of Hans Holbein the Elder in the 1510s.

Most of this scene is clearly by the Master of Engerda.




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