Master of Delft

The Master of Delft (fl c. 1490–1520) was a Dutch painter of the final period of Early Netherlandish painting, whose name is unknown.^[1] He may have been born around 1470. The notname was first used in 1913 by Max Jakob Friedländer, in describing the wings of a Triptych with the Virgin and Child with St Anne with the central panel by the Master of Frankfurt, which is now in Aachen. This has donor portraits of an identifiable family from Delft, that of the Burgomaster of Delft, Dirck Dircksz van Beest Heemskerck (1463–1545), with his wife and children.^[2]

He can also be connected to Delft by the inclusion of the Nieuwe Kerk tower, which was completed in 1496, in the background of his Scenes from the Passion of Christ triptych in the National Gallery, London, generally agreed to be his masterpiece,^[3] and the "most representative and best preserved triptych in the group" attributed to him.^[4] This can be dated fairly precisely to 1509 as none of the prints it borrows details from are dated later than that. The monastic donor kneeling at the left of the centre panel may be Herman van Rossum, provost of the Koningsveld convent just outside the city. There is a larger, related, triptych in a Cologne private collection.^[5]

As Walter Liedtke describes the triptychs, "homely, everyday, types, including a variety of low-life characters, cover most of the surface in jagged rhythms",^[6] and (it might be added) very fanciful and extravagant costume in many cases. He is a great borrower of details from prints, especially those by Lucas van Leyden, and possibly worked as a printmaker himself, probably in woodcut.^[7] Friedländer suggested he had illustrated a book published in 1498.^[8]

Delft was apparently more notable as a centre for miniatures for illuminated manuscripts in this period than for panel painting; there were many monasteries as well as churches in the city,^[9] which though small, was wealthy from textiles and brewing beer.^[10] The master's style can be compared to that of the Master of the Virgo inter Virgines, who was the other leading painter active in Delft in the same period.^[11] The careers of both are made harder to understand as an unusually high proportion of both local paintings and documents have been destroyed in a series of disasters: a large fire in 1536, the Beeldenstorm of 1566, or other Protestant destruction of images. The great Delft Explosion of 1654 no doubt destroyed more.^[12] There was also a tendency for the largest church commissions to be given to artists in the larger artistic centres to the south.^[13]