Tátrai Vilmos szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 92-93.(Budapest, 2000)
VERŐ, MÁRIA: Gothic Sculptures
(Their majority is currently in the Grabar Institute in Moscow). The remnants of the collection are, curiously, mainly those pieces, which were not shown at the 1930 exhibition. They are now, largely due to the generosity of the children of the collector, in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts and can thus be shown to the public as a part of our collection of sculptures. * A characteristic type of sculpture, popular in Western Europe in the 14 th century, is represented in our collection by a small-scale marble Madonna. The Virgin sits on a finely articulated, elaborate throne and Her gown was originally decorated by a jeweled brooch. In its form and elegantly noble style it is related to the products of the contemporary court art (fig. 78). The severed head of Saint John the Baptist is depicted in an item in the collection that is significant from an iconographie point of view. The alabaster relief, referring to the biblical story, is probably the work of the so-called "Rimini Master", who was probably active in the Southern Netherlands. We are aware of several similar reliefs from the same Master. His masterwork is an alabaster altar which was originally in Rimini (hence his designation) and which is now preserved in the Liebieghaus in Frankfurt. The best known and also most controversial Gothic piece of the Budapest Gothic sculpture collection is the Beautiful Madonna formerly known as the "Amiens Madonna", which belongs to the international art of the tum of the 14 th-15 th centuries. The controversy was about the period and site of its creation. Today we believe that it belongs among the latest of the so-called Beautiful Madonnas, created around 1430. The life-size Madonna was probably created toward the middle of the 15 th century for a winged altar and stood in a small chapel near Vienna until the turn of the 20 th century. We may assume that the sculptor - a follower of Hans Multscher - was working for a church in Vienna. The history of art accounts for Master Leonhard, active about the same time in the South Tyrolean Brixen, as a painter and sculptor. The details of his sculptures, particularly the flattened contours of the clothing reflect the decorative surface reflections of the painter rather than the spatial configuration of the body and the sculptural suggestion of the shape and movement of the body and of the extremities. The figure of the beggar, draped in rags but with a gilded piece of cloth on his shoulder, was formerly probably part of a Saint Martin grouping. The creations of the Antwerp altar workshops were distributed widely, beginning with the second half of the 15 th century. In order to facilitate transport, the altars consisted of smaller component parts. The reliefs carved between 1520-1530, representing scenes from the Passion of Christ, probably once adorned one of the altars of the Lübeck Maria Church. Their Antwerpian origin is shown by the control stamp representing an open palm and affixed to the carvings. The only complete winged altar in the collection was created for the church of Hinterkirch in the South Tyrol around 1515, in the workshop of the sculptor Jörg Lederer, active in Kaufbeuren. Only the statues formerly adorning the pediment are missing. Lederer, born around 1470, is a distinguished and typical member of the last generation
