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

external bastions reaching far into the water, in a manner similar to that by Master M S. This small observation might suggest that Master M S must have visited Diirer's workshop at this early period. This light palette and the brown contouring of the faces and hands similar to the Dresden painting provide also the indications that Master M S must have seen this particular work, too. In the landscapes of the Danube school we see fiction and reality mixing together. In the archaizing landscapes of Master M S, too, we find real motifs, even though their relative sizes do not correspond to their real proportions. Such a „reália" is that carefully painted building standing on poles in the middle of the lake, with a stag-horn decorating its gable roof. I was unable to determine its function or meaning. However, a water castle decorated with a stag-horn can be seen in Hans Baldung Grien's drawing, made around 1530. Presumably, the building here is some kind of a Lustschloss. Also metaphoric is the gate on the right hand side of the painting, with the two figures. The gate separates the biblical scene from the terrestrial world. Not having been fitted with wings, it can neither be closed nor opened: it merely serves as a sign. Of the two figures going out, the one who is holding a stick in hand seems to be some kind of a wanderer or rather a pilgrim. In 15th-century paintings, wanderers are usually pilgrims heading for some holy location. Their journey is the symbol of man's passage through life. The interpretation of the landscape only as a religious metaphor is doubtful; nevertheless, the existence of the paysage moralisé, the moralized landscape, in late-fifteenth-century is proved beyond doubt. The homo viator is not a genre figure, as man's life is but a pilgrimage through terrestrial life, i.e. through terrestrial landscape. And the „terrestrial landscape" is more than a winding road; it also includes the rocky mountains, the valleys and the lowland. A woman carrying a huge bale on her head, similar to the one seen in Diirer's painting depicting Lot and his Daughters, appears in the Visitation. The point that the story of Lot's flight is in some sense related to Mary's visiting Elizabeth can be illustrated with Bernhard Strigel's Visitation from the altar of Schussenried: here we see the scene of Lot's flight in the background, the inscription explicitly comparing it to the journey of the Virgin through the mountain. Therefore, the background of the Visitation of Master M S is made up of commonplaces of landscape motifs, generally used in the period around 1500. Related works with regard to composition can be found in the circle of Dürer, Cranach, Altdorfer and Wolf Huber, most notably among their drawings. However, the direct prototype is unknown. I would like to call attention to a drawing, which has not received notice so far. Made already in the middle of the 16th century, it is featuring almost the entire arsenal of motifs of the period around 1500, this drawing is probably a - rather mediocre - copy of the landscape background of an earlier painting. Without actually being directly connected to Master M S or to his Visitation, this drawing shows a great deal of similarities with regard to his landscape motifs. It seems very likely that the drawing was made in the South German milieu, in that circle of the Danube school where these compositional formulae enjoyed a great popularity, and were certainly known to Master M S, too. Therefore, we conclude, that as thought earlier, Master M S must have been invited to Northern Hungary by a patron who had some business interests in the mining towns. One of his patrons could perhaps be identified once with that stern-looking person radiating secular power, who is seen in the Adoration of the Magi of Lille. Judging by his magnificent clothing, the golden Netzhaube, he might have been a wealthy merchant. We suppose he was one of the Fuggers, the Thurzós or the Hallers. We can find several similar figures with such portrait-like features in some Augsburg Adoration of the Magi, and occasionally in Nuremberg, too.