The Master of the Pottendorf Votive Panel (active Austria, circa 1465-1470), The Virgin and Child enthroned with angels, with Saints Dorothea and Barbara. Photo: Christie's Images Ltd., 2012

on gold ground panel, with Stuckgold decoration; 51 3/8 x 32¼ in. (130.5 x 81.8 cm.), the reverse painted with floral brocade ornament . Estimate £500,000 - £800,000 ($779,000 - $1,246,400)

Provenance: Heiligenkreuz Abbey, the Vienna Woods, near Baden, Austria, possibly from the date of creation as one of the pictures recorded 'In vnser frawen Kirchen' by 1585, 'dray gro altar tafeln, zway klaine tafeln, acht tafeln von gibs, darunter ains eingefast ist' (in Frey, op.cit. infra, p. 30) and circa 1728, 'Ferner Marienbilder am Leopold- und Benediktaltar und Stephanaltar' (op. cit.,
p. 82), until 8 July 1933, when acquired by the following,
with Heinrich Satori, Glückgasse, Vienna and subsequently Meineckestrasse 26, from whom possibly acquired by the present owner. 

Literature: (Probably) Sehenswürdigkeiten der Cistercienser-Abtei Heiligenkreuz im Wienerwald, 3rd expanded ed., Vienna, 1908, p. 4, as part of the 'Sammlung altdeutscher Gemälde (XV. u. Anfang XVI. Jahrhundert), welche zum Teile Überreste alter Flgelaltare sind' in the 'Gemälde-Gallerie' displayed in the Kaisersaal.
D. Frey with K. Grossman, 'Die Denkmale des Stiftes Heiligenkreuz', Österreichische Kunsttopographie, XIX, 1926, p. 203, no. 145, fig. 158, recorded in the Gemäldegalerie of the Abbey, as 'Oberdeutsch, letztes Viertel des XV. Jhs. Tempera auf Holz'.
O. Benesch, 'Der Meister des Krainburger Altars', Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, VII, 1930, pp. 159-63, fig. 26.
F. Winkler, Die Zeichnungen Albrecht Dürers, I, Berlin, 1936, p. 10, under no. 4, appendix pl. I.
B. Grimschitz, inventory of the pictures at Stift Heiligenkreuz, January 1939, typescript with manuscript annotations, Vienna, Bundesdenkmalamt, File 3496/1939, p. 2, under the heading 'Ausserdem fehlten bei der Revision im Jänner 1939 (Grimschitz)', no. 1, 'Tafelbild, Maria mit hl. Dorothea und Barbara, 129x 81, oberdeutsch ca 1480, K.Top., Abb. 158.', annotated 'An Leitner u. Sokol ungef. 1930 verkauft []'.
'Meister der Votivtafel des Jörg von Pottendorf', in U. Thieme, F. Becker and H. Vollmer, eds.,Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Leipzig, XXXVII, 1950, p. 348.
A. Stange, Deutsche Malerei der Gotik, XI: Österreich und der ostdeutsche Siedlungsraum von Danzig bis Siebenbürgen in der Zeit von 1400 bis 1500, Munich and Berlin, 1961, p. 68.
C.A. zu Salm and G. Goldberg, eds., Alte Pinakothek München Katalog II: Altdeutsche Malerei, Munich, 1963, pp. 155-6, no. L.973.
O. Benesch, 'Der Meister des Krainburger Altars', in O. Benesch, Collected Writings, ed. E. Benesch, III: German and Austrian Art of the 15th and 16th Centuries, London, 1972, pp. 180 and 436 notes 39-40, fig. 180, incorrectly stating that the picture left Heiligenkreuz in 1970.
L. Behling, Zur Morphologie und Sinndeutung kunstgeschichtlicher Phänomene: Beiträge zur Kunstwissenschaft, Böhlau, 1985, pp. 131-2, figs. 151 and 152. 

Exhibited: Schaffhausen, Museum zur Allerheiligen, Einunddreissig Gemälde des 15. bis 18. Jahrhunderts aus einer Privatsammlung, September-November 1952, no. 21.
Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek, on loan by 1963 and until at least 1975, inventory no. L.973. 

Notes: One of the earliest painted examples of a sacra conversazione in Austrian art, this finely-preserved panel has been dated to circa 1470. First noted by modern scholarship in 1926 (Frey,loc. cit.), it was catalogued as 'Upper German' (i.e. South German), and dated to the last quarter of the fifteenth century. Four years later, in 1930, it was correctly placed within the corpus of the Master of the Jörg von Pottendorf Votive Panel by the fondly-remembered Vienna School art historian and
Rembrandt connoisseur Otto Benesch (loc. cit.). Benesch noted the stylistic resemblance to this unidentified artist's name-piece, a Votivtafel or ex-voto (i.e. a work painted as a votive offering to be placed in a religious institution) depicting the Austrian knight Jörg von Pottendorf and three of his wives -- the deceased Amalei von Eberstorf and Ursula von Zelking, and his third,
living wife, Elspeth von Liechtenstein - as donors (formerly Ebenfurth, in the sacristy of the parish church; subsequently Burg Liechtenstein, near Vienna, and now Vaduz, The Princely Collections of Liechtenstein). The surviving original frame of this picture bears an inscription including Pottendorf 's name, 'Die Tavel hat lasen Mach[e]n de anno Im LXVII Jar der Wolgeparn herr Jorig von Pottendorf obrister schenkch und die zeytt lantmarschalich und veldhauptman in esterreich', which provides the precious information of a precise date for the Master's activity, 1467. Benesch believed the Master to be a painter of Alpine origins who had moved to Lower Austria, where his two known pictures (the name-piece and the present work) were painted (op. cit., p. 161). The compiler of the last volume of the Thieme-Becker dictionary, writing in 1950, describes the Pottendorf Master simply as a Tyrolean painter (loc. cit.), while Alfred Stange discusses his works in a chapter on Styrian painting, but echoes Benesch in describing him as a characteristically Alpine painter and suggests the influence of artists working in the Tyrolean town of Brixen in the 1440s and 1450s. Stange sees the Master as a fascinating link between the late Gothic style of the first half of the fifteenth century, and the second half, which sees the beginnings of the German Renaissance.

The history of this work is intimately linked to the great Cistercian abbey of Heiligenkreuz in Lower Austria, 13 kilometres north-west of Baden in the Vienna Woods. The abbey was founded in 1133 by Margrave Saint Leopold III of Austria, at the instigation of his fifth son, Otto (who would soon go on to become abbot of the recent Cistercian foundation in Morimond, Burgundy, and subsequently Bishop of Freising), and dedicated to the Holy Cross (Heiligenkreuz). On 31 May 1188 it received a relic of the True Cross from Duke Leopold V of Austria, a gift from King Baldwin IV of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, which remains at the abbey to this day. Dear to the Babenberg dynasty of the Leopolds and Otto, the abbey was richly endowed and contains the graves of thirteen members of that ducal house. Despite having suffered severely at the hands of Ottoman attackers during the Turkish wars of 1529 and 1683, the abbey preserves a Romanesque façade, naves and the transept (dedicated 1187), and a choir of the thirteenth century. It has existed without interruption since its foundation in 1133 and is thus the second oldest continuously functioning Cistercian monastery in the world; during that long history, it has endeared itself to the Viennese aristocracy and to the people of Austria in general, having become a favoured destination in a serene and moving natural setting.

The picture is first securely documented as being in the Gemäldegalerie of the abbey by 1926, but there is strong circumstantial evidence to suggest that it may have been intended for the abbey at the time of its commission, circa 1470, as a number of members of the Pottendorf house also lie buried there, in a family vault. A vassal of Friedrich V, Duke of Austria, subsequently Holy Roman Emperor as Friedrich III (succeeded in 1493 by his son, Maximilian I), Jörg von Pottendorf has been described as one of the most prominent of Friedrich's subjects, becoming Feldhauptmann (captain) in the Imperial armies in 1464. It was not long after attaining this honour that Pottendorf commissioned the votive panel for the parish church at Ebenfurth. It is not unlikely, given the Pottendorf connection to Heiligenkreuz and the importance of the abbey generally, that he was also the donor of the present work, having commissioned it for the site where it was 'rediscovered' in 1926.

Benesch's characterization of the Pottendorf Master as the originator of the German 'santa conversazion' [sic, op. cit., p. 159], is striking. The composition places the crowned Virgin in the same timeless, eternal space as two royal female saints, paragons of aristocratic virtue: Saints Dorothea and Barbara. Such a juxtaposition can only exist in Heaven; the richly workedStuckgold background and the flowers in the lower register, which seem almost to burst with fertility from the recess in the dais of the Virgin's throne, suggest such a Paradiesgärtlein. While hieratic in character, the composition also abounds in delightful visual detail, such as the apotropaic coral necklace worn by the Christ-Child, a common practice in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period; the gesture with which the Christ-Child reaches out for Saint Dorothea's rose basket, as though grasping for more roses -- He already has one in His left hand; thetrompe-l'oeil rendering of the sculpted figures of Saint Peter and Saint John the Evangelist, placed under Gothic canopies on the shoulders of the throne; everything from a detail as seemingly insignificant as the plectrum with which the right-hand angel strums his lute, to the deeply connotive - for example, the placement of the Virgin's cross-like sceptre precisely between Her brow and the figure of Saint John, in allusion to their positions on either side of the True Cross in the traditional iconography of the Crucifixion - has been carefully weighed, considered and accounted for. The sculpted figures of the male saints may derive from Netherlandish prototypes, as indeed does the rich brocade ornamentation of the cloth of honour behind the Virgin, and the inner draperies of the Virgin and both saints.

The Heiligenkreuz panel was linked by Winkler (loc. cit.) to one of the earliest drawings by Albrecht Dürer, the pen-and-ink Madonna and Child enthroned with two musical angels, signed with Dürer's monogram and dated 1485 (fig. 1; Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, inventory no. 1). Discussions of the drawing, which is Dürer's earliest in pen and ink, have long acknowledged that it is very likely to be based on a pre-existing painted prototype, rather than being a pure invention (Ephrussi, 1882, p. 4; Bock, 1921, p. 31; Weinberger, 1921, p. 143; Winkler, loc. cit.). Dürer was a mere fourteen years old in 1485, still apprenticed as a goldsmith to his father, Albrecht Dürer the Elder. Beautifully modelled with nuanced shading and crisp detail, the drawing is a feat of a prodigious precocious talent. A number of elements are shared with the Heiligenkreuz picture, including the baldachin with its embroidered cloth of honour; the musicmaking angels; the crowns placed by tradition atop the heads of the Virgin and Child; the Virgin's copious drapery; and, above all, the grassy patch with wild flowers which abuts the dais on which the sacred company stands. It is tantalising to speculate that Dürer may have seen the Heiligenkreuz panel; unhelpfully, no visits to Austria are documented in his early biography. What is certainly true is that the similarities between the Heiligenkreuz panel and the young artist's drawing indicate a shared set of compositional ideas, motifs, symbols and associations, as well as a certain poetic apprehension of the nature of the Virgin and saints, which must have been circulating in the intellectual or cognitive atmosphere of well-informed, innovative painters. From the time of Benesch's article in 1930, the Pottendorf Master's debt to another anonymous fifteenth-century figure, the Master E.S., has been recognised. The Master E.S. was an engraver and draughtsman active circa 1450-1467, probably Strasbourg. One of the earliest fully-developed printmakers, the Master E.S. produced an oeuvre of perhaps some 500 engravings (318 attributed engravings survive), distinguished by a free and inventive combination and adaptation of new forms and source, particularly those being developed in the Netherlands in the generation of Hubert and Jan van Eyck, and Rogier van der Weyden. The Heiligenkreuz panel can be linked to three separate engravings by the Master E.S., elements of which inform its particular arrangement. These are Lehrs nos. 75, 82 and 83, all of which show variations on the theme of the Virgin and Child enthroned. Lehrs 83 (fig. 2) provides the basic composition, with the Virgin crowned and holding a sceptre, enthroned on an ornate gothiccathedra from behind which to serene angels peep out at Her. The Christ-Child perches playfully on her knees, turning to toy with an orb of state with all the elegance of a courtier; significantly, the floor ends at the lower edge of the picture rectangle with a low ledge. Lehrs 82 (fig. 3), by far the most ornate of the three, shows the Virgin and Child in a hortus conclusus, the Virgin seated on a cushion in the attitude of the Madonna of Humility, looking up from a prayer book; the baldachin is replaced by a representative architectural element, on either side of which angels play a harp and a lute; in the foreground the Virgin is flanked with royal female saints, who like her are crowned; spreading before the Virgin in the lower register, the grassy turf is rendered with a lavish depiction of foliage, in which the Christ-Child plays with a pair of little dogs. Lehrs 75 (fig. 4) is far simpler, but significant in that here the flanking saints are Barbara and Dorothea, and the Christ-Child is shown reaching into the basket of roses held by Saint Dorothea, as in the Pottendorf picture. The liveliness and harmony of these compositions is certain to have made them highly desirable in the growing market for printed imagery, and Dürer and the Pottendorf Master were certainly not the only artists caught by their spell; Martin Schongauer's Virgin in a Rose Garden (Colmar, Dominican Church), painted at about the same time as the Heiligenkreuz panel in 1473, and Michael Wolgemut's high altar for the church of Saint Mary in Zwickau, of 1479, can also be seen as part of this tradition.

The importance of the flower-strewn lower register has been recognised since the early publication of the panel in 1926: Frey and Grossman took the pains of identifying each of the distinct flowers ('Maiglöckchen, Hahnenfu, Zichorie, Krause Münze, Glockenblumen, Nelke, Kamille, Erdbeere, Himmelkerze, Löwenzahn, Vergimeinnicht, Veilchen'; see fig. 5, and key with translations). In her sophisticated study of morphological representation in art, Lottlisa Behling singles out the Heiligenkreuz panel as a particularly highly-developed example of floral symbolism in fifteenth-century painting (loc. cit.). Her botanical identifications differ in some areas from Frey and Grossman's (she adds Brunella vulgaris L., Borrago officinalis L., Lysimachia nummularia L., Alchemilla vulgaris L. and Saxifraga granulate L.), and are followed with an extensive analysis in Latin and vernacular texts which shed light on the Christian symbolism of many of the depicted plants. We are grateful to Paul Taylor of the Warburg Institute for pointing out that many traditional German vernacular names for wild flowers refer to the Virgin, and that one possible interpretation for the selection of blooms relies on a knowledge of the Marian name of each. Heinrich Marzell's Deutsches Worterbuch der Pflanzennamen, Leipzig, 1927-1979, a monumental feat of linguistic and folkloristic research, records a vast number of traditional and regional names for plants, from which Cindy Osborne, of The Marian Library/International Marian Research Institute at the University of Dayton, Ohio, has compiled a list of religious German names for flowers. Starting with Frey and Grossman's identification of the blooms, the following traditional German names suggest themselves:

All but number 16, the strawberry, have a documented Marian or religious name in German. The significance of such a reading is that it illustrates the ways in which an image such as that of the Heiligenkreuz panel would have been encountered by its public. The invocation of an earlier iconographic tradition and the allusion to the popular prints of the Master E.S. would have been obvious to the learned clergy, humanists and the 'upper middle class' who could afford to acquire early prints; the excellence of the painting technique and the skillful rendering of the Stuckgold would have appealed to craftsmen and those well-versed in the challenges of manufacture; but the symbolism of wild flowers, plucked from the field and placed at the Virgin's feet, each with its familiar Marian name, would have been evident and intriguing to the largest sector of
the population, the largely illiterate peasant population of the Austrian countryside, who would have learnt the names of the flowers from infanthood. Placed in the bottom register, closest to the viewer's eyes, the flowers could appeal to all visitors to the abbey, from the most erudite to the most rustic, young and old alike. 

Christie's. Old Master & British Paintings Evening Sale, 3 July 2012. London, King Street