Török Gyöngyi: Gothic Panel Paintings and Wood Carvings in Hungary, Permanent exhibition of the Hungarian National Gallery (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2005/3)

First Floor - Entrance passage to the throne-room

FIRS T FLO OR Entrance passage to the throne-room In the small room visitors can see paintings and sculptures from around 1500. Of importance among them is the Visitation In' Master MS from 1506. The picture used to adorn the former high altar of the church of the Virgin Mary in an important mining town. Selmecbánya, together with four panels of the Passion now in the Christian Museum in Esztergom. The Resurrection scene also in the Christian Museum, features the painter's so-far undeciphered signature with the master's mark and the date 1506, The work of Master MS marks the pinnacle of late Gothic painting in Hungary. The Visitation shows similarities with the painterly style of the socalled Danubian School that ascribed great importance to the landscape, but it also suggests familiarity with Dürers youthful work. The Visitation depicts the meeting of the two holy women with intimate lyricism. Elisabeth greets Mary by kissing her hand, realizing thai she is the Mother of God. The idyllic landscape which forms a perfect unity with the figures further enhances the lyrical atmosphere. The rendering of the scene is in line with an iconographie type ol Flemish origin that sets the meeting of the two women in a rich landscape instead of Elisabeth's house and uses the motif of kissing the hand. The figures of Man and Elisabeth of equal size constitute a symmetrical composition reinforced by the symbolic flowers harmonizing with the figures in colour, the iris and the peony, in the foreground. The restoration of the painting was completed in 109".