Artist

Upper Rhenish Master

Upper Rhenish Master is an artist. 1 work is cataloged here, principally at Städel Museum.

The Upper Rhenish Master is a Notname given to an anonymous painter active around 1410–1420, probably in Strasbourg. Art historians formerly called him the Master of the (Frankfurter) Paradiesgärtlein after his best-known surviving work. This small panel, titled Paradiesgärtlein or Little Garden of Paradise, was painted around 1410 in mixed technique on oakwood and measures only 26.3 by 33.4 centimetres. It is held by the Städel Museum in Frankfurt on permanent loan from the Historical Museum of Frankfurt, which has owned it since before 1922. The picture belongs to the Maria im Rosenhag tradition, yet breaks with convention by placing the Virgin in the upper left corner, reading, rather than at the centre. She is accompanied by the Christ Child and an array of saints including Dorothy, Barbara, Cecilia, George, Oswald, and the Archangel Michael, all set within a walled hortus conclusus that symbolises Mary's virginity. Remarkably, the panel renders flora and fauna with near-botanical precision; twenty-four plant varieties and twelve bird species are clearly identifiable, making it one of the earliest European paintings to observe nature so naturalistically. Two further square panels, The Nativity of the Virgin and The Doubt of Saint Joseph, are attributed to the same master and have been displayed in the Musée de l'Œuvre Notre-Dame in Strasbourg since 1936. They probably belonged to a dismembered altarpiece from the vanished convent of Saint Mark attached to the Strasbourg City Hospital, and recent scholarship has shifted their date toward circa 1430. The artist's ability to merge sacred symbolism with secular garden motifs and sharp naturalistic observation places him among the most intriguing anonymous figures of the Late Gothic Soft Style in the Upper Rhineland.

Works by Upper Rhenish Master

Collections represented

Catalog records compiled from museum open-access collections; the artworks shown are in the public domain. Spotted an error in this record? Tell us.