The Master of Heiligenkreuz was an

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

n painter active at the beginning of the 15th century; a tentative lifespan of 1395 to 1430 has been put forthMaster of Heiligenkreuz on artnet
/ref> but this appears highly conjectural. His name is taken from a

diptych A diptych (; from the Greek δίπτυχον, ''di'' "two" + '' ptychē'' "fold") is any object with two flat plates which form a pair, often attached by hinge. For example, the standard notebook and school exercise book of the ancient world w ...

that once belonged to the Cistercian Abbey of Heiligenkreuz, located in southeastern Austria near the present-day border with

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.Master of Heiligenkreuz
The left panel depicts the Annunciation on the obverse; the reverse is a depiction of the Madonna and Child. The right panel depicts the Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine, with Saint Dorothy on its reverse. Details of costume and iconography combine with associations with the International Style to indicate a date of around the first decade of the 15th century. It was initially proposed, by Betty Kurth in 1922, that the artist was French and had some association with the court in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

. Other writers have disagreed, and various nationalities including French, Austrian, German, or Bohemian have been posited for the Master. Some have further suggested that he was an itinerant court artist, trained in France but active in Austria. Various clues have been used in an attempt to describe his nationality. These include his use of finely-worked gold decoration, in which some have seen a link to Franco- Burgundian

goldsmith A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Nowadays they mainly specialize in jewelry-making but historically, goldsmiths have also made silverware, platters, goblets, decorative and servicea ...

's work of the late 14th century. Others, instead, see it as a link to the school of panel painting then active at the court in

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. Consequently, it seems highly unlikely that the artist's nationality will be conclusively established. Stylistically, the Master's work is distinguished by use of some

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

decorative elements, as well as oddly-proportioned figures with long, thin limbs and fingers.

Notes

External links

* Kunsthistorisches Museum in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

The Master of Heiligenkreuz
*

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Meister von Heiligenkreuz
15th-century Austrian painters Gothic painters 14th-century births 15th-century deaths Anonymous artists {{Austria-painter-stub