Mikó Árpád szerk.: "Magnificat anima mea Dominum" M S Mester vizitáció-képe és egykori selmecbányai főoltára (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 1997/1)

TANULMÁNYOK / ESSAYS - URBACH ZSUZSA: Marginális megjegyzések M S mester művészetéhez

light palette and flowing brushwork clearly set them apart from the great German master's pupils who were active in the 1510s. In analyzing the works of Master M S, therefore, there is much justification for returning to the assumption of his Nuremberg connections, frequently suggested earlier. Perhaps the master did spend his apprentice years there after all, as most of the characteristic stylistic marks of his art link him to this circle. One of the greatest results of the recent restoration of the Visitation has been the recovery of the original colours in the landscape background. All the earlier critics of the painting appreciated the unique beauty achieved in the presentation of the landscape and the vegetation. From the viewpoint of art historical research this is an important point, as the master's stylistic placement can be defined precisely on the basis of the conservative character of his landscape presentation and spatial composition: he was one of the last of the great masters of late Gothic art, who although influenced by the Danube school, basically preserved his own traditional style. In connection with the landscape of the Visitation painting, I touched upon the question of the iconographie tradition already in my dessertation in 1964. The mountainous landscape, the rock, the buildings, the trees and flowers, are only attributes of the scene, and cannot be regarded as the element of topographic fidelity for the speculum naturae. According to the latest research, the Renaissance landscape born in Germany around 1500 cannot be derived merely from the discovery of nature. In the early 1500s, the various landscape elements were still associated with iconographie tradition and the new perception of nature had to live with this iconographical tradition for a long time to come. Although rather hesitantly and vaguely, the iconographically defined landscape motifs in the Visitation of Master M S point towards this modern representation of the landscape. With its large number of meticulously executed details, the landscape of the Visitation represents the iconographie tradition of the scene combining them with the elements of reality. The buildings and the mountains have nothing to do with Selmecbánya. The possibility of the identification of churches and townscapes in 15thcentury paintings is questionable, anyway. We know identified buildings depicting Brugge, Nuremberg or Vienna, but as to the two Garamszentbenedek paintings of Esztergom, it is the „heavenly image" of the abbey, rather than its earthly reality, that we find in the background of the pictures. Even in the case of the late-fifteenth-century paintings of Brugge, the incorporation of the elements of reality into the landscape have an emblematic, indicative and attributive character (in other words, it serves a propagandistic purpose), with the consequence that even these pictures cannot be regarded as authentic town portraits or topographically accurate representations of the towns. The same applies to the representation of landscapes in general in the given period. Admittedly, in the SouthGerman workshops - in Bamberg and Nuremberg, in the workshop of Michael Wolgemut - there existed, as early as that, some drawings and sketchbooks, and even water-colours, recording landscape motifs with the aim of authentically depicting reality. The first example presented here, which was made around 1490, is a composition combining various widely used landscape elements as commonphases, similarly to Master M S's paintings. Under a „sculptured" rock, on a winding road, we see a wanderer passing by. The walled settlement is undoubtedly the representation of an ideal Mediaeval town. The tree in the foreground divides the picture space in the middle. This compositional form was a favourite way of representing symbolically the alternatives of Good and Evil, the Old and the New Testament, used often in the edifying pictures of Law and Grace in the Age of Reformation. The water-colour, in which the unknown master painted a rock and a river, at least tried to represent the illusion of reality, was also made around 1490. In 1964 I already discussed the symbolic interpretation of the flowers in the foreground at length. Nevertheless, I would like to add a few thoughts to my earlier lines on the meaning of the live and the dry, infertile tree. In fifteenth-century paintings the dry and leafless trees, instead of featuring only in snowy, winter landscapes or autumn scenes, often appear among trees in flowers and leafs. This is not always symbolic, but in certain context it can be interpreted in this way. The connotation of a dried-out tree is often death, destruction and infertility. As the allegory of Life's transience, the representation of a dry tree acquired the status of an unambiguous emblem by the 16th century. The most important landscape prop in Master M S's Visitation is the towering rock. This is in fact the allegory of „a mountain", a familiar motif in the 15th century, generally used to frame the composition of biblical scenes. The mountain and the rock carry several iconographie meanings, such as that of the civitas terrena, the terrestrial world. In line with the paysage moralisé character of the representation, the rock was also the metaphor of a virtuous life, in contrast with the easily negotiated passages of the valleys. The manner in which the young Dürer captured the landscapes he saw for instance in the quarries around Nuremberg in the late 15th century verged on the naturalism of the 19th century. These water-colours can in a way be regarded as the first nature studies. On the other hand, the young Dürer painted a similar symbolic landscape as Master M S in the background of his Crucifixion panel, which forms part of the altar known as the Seven Sorroivs of the Virgin, dated from 1496. In front of the barren rock there is a tall tree with a knotty and leafless bough branching out to the side. Similarly to our Visitation, a castle appears in the water, with one of its