Lot number 4001 - Auction 137
VIER SZENEN AUS DEM LEBEN DES HL. LEONHARD UND DES BENEDIKT: KLOSTERBAU UND BRUNNENBAUWUNDER DES HL. LEONGHRD / TOD UND GRABLEGUNG DES HEILIGEN BENEDIKT

UPPER AUSTRIA, AROUND 1490 FOUR SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF ST. LEONHARD AND BENEDICT: BUILDING A MONASTERY AND THE MIRACLE OF BUILDING A WELL BY ST. LEONHARD / DEATH AND BURIAL OF SAINT BENEDICT All four: Oil tempera on fine canvas lay down on later wooden panel, background and nimbs gilded and embossed, partly heightened with gold. Each: 45.5 x 32 cm (F. 53 x 39 cm). Part. slightly old rest. Frame. In his expert opinion Dr Konrad writes: IKONOGRAFIE: The panels a and b depict St Benedict as a greying monk. His cowl is black with a white collar and sleeves. The white collar is characteristic of the Benedictine habit. As is well known, Benedict passed away around 548 in the monastery church he built in Montecassino in 525. The tears of the weeping confreres are very beautiful and sensitive. As was customary at the time, the tomb was laid out in front of an altar. Panels c and d depict two scenes from the life of St Leonard (c. 500 to c. 570), shown here as a younger monk of the Benedictine order wearing a brown and purple habit. c) Monastery building near Limoges d) Miracle of the well This is presented here in detail: ... Leonhard preached, performed miracles and lived in a forest near the city of Limoges. A castle had also been built there for the king to hunt in. It happened one day that the king was hunting there and the queen had travelled with him from Kurzweil. She went into labour and was in great distress. The king and his servants complained about this and, as Leonhard happened to be walking through the forest, he heard the voices of those complaining and went there in great compassion. When the king summoned him, he came to him. The king asked him who he was. When he heard that he had been a disciple of St Remigius, he gained his trust. For he believed that the great master must have taught him much. So he took him to the queen and asked him to give him back his wife with his prayers and to help him give birth to his son, thus giving him double joy. The saint prayed and his request was granted. The king offered him a great treasure of gold and silver, but he would not take it and warned him that he should give it to the poor. He said: 'I don't need any of this; I want nothing more than to live alone in one of these forests, far from all the treasures of the world, and I only want to serve the Lord God. Then the king wanted to give him the whole forest. But he said: 'I will not take the whole forest, I only want as much as I can ride round with my donkey in one night. The king gladly granted him that. So he built himself a monastery on the site and lived there in great abstinence with two monks who had joined him. But since the water was a mile away from them, the saint had a dry well dug into the depths; and when he prayed, it became full of water. He called the place itself Nobiliacum because it had been given to him by a noble king (today Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat, Haute-Vienne). According to: https://www.erzbistum-muenchen.de/glaube/heilige-selige/heiliger-leonhard/69322 (last accessed 13.2.2024). RECONSTRUCTION: As is so often the case, these panels also represent detached views of wings of a triptych. As there is no panel attached to the most famous deeds and miracles of St Leonhard, such as the liberation of the prisoners, it can be assumed that the Leonhard part of this retable included further depictions. The Diocesan Museum in Graz owns such an extensive cycle from (Bad) Aussee. The same applies to the Benedict panels. ADDITION: No mention could be found either in auction files or in scholarly accounts such as treatises and catalogue entries for these exquisitely executed late Gothic panels by an unknown minor master. The only indication of a regional classification can be found on the reverse of four black and white photographs in the Ernst Buchner Archive, Fotothek des Zentral-instituts für Kunstgeschichte in München (ZI). They are labelled in Dutch as showing the artistic region of Upper Bavaria (see appendix). However, Buchner, who died in 1962, filed them in folder XXXII/b for 15th century Austria. Even if the attribution of the then owner to Upper Bavaria, where St Leonhard was and still is venerated just as much as in Austria, is not absolutely nonsensical, Buchner's deposition can be traced on the basis of numerous small oeuvres in Austrian late Gothic painting, where an only slightly different figure image appears. These are the retables by the masters of Eggenburg, Eggelsberg and Herzogenburg, on which there are no divergent points of view either in earlier research (Walter Suida, Otto Benesch, Alfred Stange, Ernst Buchner) or in more recent research (Bodo Brinkmann, Mary Ainsworth, Joshua Waterman) due to their characteristic figures. According to Stange, the above-mentioned St Leonhard panels from the Calvary Church in Aussee are also reminiscent of Upper Austrian painting. Just as these works, some of which are precisely dated, point to the period around 1490, this period should also apply to the four panels discussed here. We are gratefull to Dr Konrad (Reichenau) for his comprehensive editing and appraisal of this catalogue entry. Expertise: Enclosed expert report by Dr Bernd Konrad (Reichennau) dated 13.02.2024. Provenance: Before 1962 probably private collection Netherlands. Berlin private collection.