(Feldkirch circa 1480/90–1553 Passau)
The Crucifixion,
oil on panel, 117 x 65 cm, framed

Provenance:
Reichert Collection, Munich;
Collection Erich Franz, Breslau;
sale, Helbing, Munich, 9/10 May 1901, lot 10 (as Hans Schäufelin);
sale, Neumeister, Munich, 30 June 1982, lot 916 (as Circle of Wolf Huber);
art market, Germany

Literature:
C. Metzger, Hans Schäufelin als Maler, Berlin 2002, pp. 532–34, no. X-10, fig. 413 (as ‘Anonymous, circa 1520’)

We are grateful to Bernd Konrad for confirming the attribution on the basis of a photograph. His written certificate, dated 13 March 2023, is available. Konrad dates the present painting to the 1530s, together with further panels belonging originally to the same cycle of the Passion of Christ.

We are also grateful to Christof Metzger and Isolde Lübbeke for their assistance in cataloguing this lot.

Christof Metzger was the first to associate the present panel of the Crucifixion with three other panels depicting scenes from the Passion of Christ of identical dimensions and to declare them as having been part of the same retable. Although this reconstruction, as Metzger pointed out, was not based on the knowledge of the originals, but through literature, it still appears fully acceptable. For all four panels, Metzger refers to the graphic example of Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut series of the Small Passion (circa 1509/10). Due to the change in format from woodcut to panel painting, the figures had been elongated. It should also be noted that in the Small Passion Christ was presented without a halo, which was subsequently included in the painted panels and became the most conspicuous feature in all four pictures.

Two of the three other panels identified by Metzger are now conserved in the Slezske Museum, Opava, Czech Republic (Christ on the Mount of Olives and Arrest of Christ, inv. nos. U 2033 and U 2034). They originally were part of the collection of Eduard Weber in Hamburg and later entered the collection of Prince Johann II of Liechtenstein, who donated them to the Silesian Museum in Opava. The third panel depicting Christ Before Caiaphas was formerly in the Wallraf Collection, Rheydt and last appeared on the art market in 2009 (sale, Lempertz, Cologne, 16 May 2009, lot 1005).

Isolde Lübbeke added two additional panels, one of which is conserved in the Museum am Dom, Würzburg (The Last Supper, as Circle of Hans Schäufelin, around 1512/1515), the other – The Entombment of Christ – was sold at Sotheby’s, London on 5 April 1995 (as German School). She also refers to five further panels, today conserved in the Museum of Christian Art in Esztergom, Hungary, which are also based on Dürer’s Small Passion, featuring the same characteristic halo around Christ. Despite slightly different measurements they could have also been part of a surprisingly large retable or series of the Passion destined for the wall of a church. These panels include The Mocking of Christ, The Flagellation of Christ, The Crowning with Thorns, Ecce Homo and Christ Nailed to the Cross (inv. nos. 56.464–56.468) and were purchased in Regensburg in 1876 by János Simor, Archbishop of Esztergom and Prince-primate of Hungary. The panels were sold by ‘Domvikar Dengler’ which makes a provenance from a church in Regensburg plausible (see I. Lübbeke, Zur spätgotischen Tafelmalerei in Regensburg, in: Regensburg im Mittelalter, ed. by M. Angerer et al., Regensburg 1995, p. 442, A 97).

According to the current state of knowledge, three of the four panels published by Metzger (Crucifixion, Mount of Olives, and Arrest) come from the collection of the painter Fr. Reichert (or Reicharth, Reichart) in Munich-Haidhausen. This collection must have been compiled before 1883, for that very year Reichert sold the Mount of Olives and the Arrest. What is remarkable about the four panels assembled by Metzger is that both earlier attributions and subsequent references were associated with the name of Hans Schäufelin. In his publication Metzger did not accept the attribution to Schäufelin nor his workshop. According to Bernd Konrad this is entirely plausible, as these works completely lack the painter’s characteristic anatomical outlines in dark brown or black colour. He further notes that the underdrawing in the present painting, which is visible through the paint layers, reveal vibrant lines of high quality. In Schäufelin’s underdrawing one can essentially expect shading across forms in combination with accurate, almost rigid parallel hatching. At least in the present Crucifixion, such type of shading has not been used.

Bernd Konrad mentions that since the present painting was sold at Neumeister in 1982, a tentative attribution to the circle of Wolf Huber has been suggested. According to Konrad, this may not make sense at first, when comparing it, for example, with the latter’s vivid altar wing with the Passion of Christ in the Monastery of St. Florian, which features the same motifs. However, if by ‘Umkreis Huber’ one thinks of the painters of the Donauschule in and around Passau, this attribution appears more convincing, although Wolf Huber originally came from Feldkirch in Vorarlberg. Wolf Huber’s landscape drawings clearly identify him as an exponent of the Donauschule around Lucas Cranach I and Albrecht Altdorfer. As Huber ran a workshop in Passau until his death in 1553, he may be regarded as an important stylistic influence in this region.

Bernd Konrad concludes, that the present Crucifixion was doubtlessly part of a series of twelve scenes of the Passion, which, however, cannot be works by Hans Schäufelin. The fact that six panels are known to have been purchased for Esztergom in Regensburg, a comparable treatment of halos practiced by the Passau painting school, as well as references to original drawings by Wolf Huber from the period between 1517 and 1522 support the recent attribution to the circle of Wolf Huber. While the bright background colours in the Crucifixion are typical for the Franconian school, the dramatic red sunset light in both Opava panels are characteristic for the Donauschule. The contrasts created by the clothes in vibrant yellow are also in the tradition of the Donauschule around Albrecht Altdorfer and Wolf Huber.