Painter of the Bible
Anonymous, German, 15th century
The Anonymous, German, 15th-century attribution covers approximately 54 artworks in the catalogue from the German-speaking lands of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance whose original makers cannot be identified.
The Death of the VirginLife & work
The Anonymous, German, 15th-century attribution covers approximately 54 artworks in the catalogue from the German-speaking lands of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance whose original makers cannot be identified. The fifteenth century in Germany was the founding period of European engraving and the supreme period of late-medieval German devotional pictorial production — the generation between Conrad Witz at mid-century and Martin Schongauer and the early Albrecht Dürer at the end of the century, with the Master E. S., the Housebook Master, the Master of the Playing Cards, and dozens of named-by-monogram-only engravers active across the Rhineland, Franconia, Bavaria, and Swabia.
The bulk of the Anonymous German 15th-century works in the catalogue are small engravings, woodcuts, and printed broadsides on Christian devotional subjects — Crucifixions, Madonnas, Passion-cycle plates, single-figure apostles and saints, scenes from the Old Testament — produced for the German-speaking devotional market that was rapidly expanding with the new printing technology. Many of these prints survive in only a handful of impressions and represent a workshop tradition in which the individual master was less the organizing category than the workshop, the printing house, or the regional school. A typical Anonymous German 15th-century print is a small late-Gothic Madonna or Crucifixion produced in a Rhineland or Franconian workshop in the second half of the century.
The catalogue's German 15th-century anonymous group is a useful catchall for the surviving products of this dense regional workshop ecosystem. Where the workshop tradition has been more confidently identified (Master E. S., the Housebook Master, the Master of the Playing Cards, and the various named-by-monogram-only engravers), the catalogue records the works under those specific Notnamen attributions; the remaining "Anonymous, German, 15th century" works are the residual cases where the regional school is clear but the specific workshop attribution is not.
Bible scenes Anonymous, German, 15th century painted
Luke
Revelation
Matthew
John
Acts
Mark
Romans
