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Lot 213
  • 213

School of Ulm, circa 1470

Estimate
50,000 - 70,000 GBP
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Description

  • Saint George
  • oil and gold on panel

Provenance

Sir George Lindsay Holford, KCVO, CIE, CBE (1860-1926), Westonbirt, Gloucestershire;
His sale, London, Christie's, 17-18 May 1928, lot 158, 378 gns. to Andrade;
Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 3 July 1931, lot 134, £52. 10s. to Lewis;
Art market Switzerland, 1936;
When probably acquired for the present collection.

Exhibited

London, Royal Academy, 1893, no. 155 (as Spanish School);
London, New Gallery, Exhibition of Spanish Art, 1895-6, no. 155;
London, Royal Academy, 1912, no. 36 (as early German School);
London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1921-22, no. 1;
Ulm, Ulmer Museum, on loan.

Literature

The Holford Collection, private catalogue, London 1924, pp. 46-47, no. 20, reproduced plate XXVIII (as by Bartolomeus Zeitblom);
E. Buchner, Das deutsche Bildnis der Spätgotik under der frühen Dürerzeit, Berlin 1953, pp. 170-173, reproduced fig. 44 (as School of Ulm circa 1460-70).
E. Treu, Ulmer Museum: Bildhauerei und Malerei vom 13. Jahrhundert bis 1600, Ulm 1981, p. 154, no. 103 (as circle of the Master of the Sterzinger Altar Wings).

Catalogue Note

When in the celebrated collection of Sir George Holford, this panel was thought to be the work of  Bartolomeus Zeitblom (c.1450-1519) the leading painter in Ulm in southern Germany in the second half of the fifteenth century, and a Swabian origin for this work has generally been agreed upon by subsequent scholars. Dr. Ernst Treu of the Museum in Ulm first connected this Saint George with the workshop of the Master of the Sterzing Altarpiece (active circa 1450-70)1. The artist, who was probably Austrian in origin, but who was trained and active in Ulm, is so named after the wings he painted for the altarpiece in Sterzing in the Italian Tyrol, whose centrepiece of the Virgin and Child with Saints is formed of wood sculptures by Hans Multscher, and was probably carved around 1456-58. Treu also connected the present panel with another panel by a Swabian master depicting A Bridal couple today in the Cleveland Museum of Art which may also have come from his shop2. The handling of the physiognomies of Saint George and the young man in the Cleveland panel is very similar, as is the treatment of the hands. Another work, an Erbärmdebild of 1457 today in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, has also been linked with this group3.  Mr. 𒉰Ludwig Meyer has most recently kindly suggested a possible attrib🧔ution to the young Hans Schüchlin, who was active in Ulm between 1469 and 1505.

The collection formed by Sir Robert Stayner Holford (1808-1892) and his son Sir George Lindsay Holford was divided between Dorchester House in London and their country residence at Westonbirt in Gloucestershire, and was one of the most famous formed in England during the 19th century4. The collection boasted no fewer than five Rembrandts, and included such famous works as Aelbert Cuyp's Dordrecht on the river Maas (Ascott, Bucks), Pesellino's Madonna and Child with six saints (Metropo𝓰litan Muse💝um, New York), as well as a famous group of Old Master Drawings, Rembrandt etchings and important medieval manuscripts.


1.Private correspondence with the father of the present owner, August 1981.
2. Inv. no. 32.179. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland 1978, p. 77, reproduced, As South German School, circa 1470. The reverse of the panel, depicting the two lovers as skeletons, is today in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg.
3. Alte Pinakothek, Altdeutsche Malerei, Munich 1963, p. 233, reproduced.
4. The collection was lavishly praised by Gustav Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, vol. II, London 1854, pp. 193-222.