The Nativity
Master of the Historia Friderici et Maximiliani (Bavarian or Austrian, active c. 1505–1520)
1507–10
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 111.4 × 74.1 cm (44 5/8 × 29 3/16 in.); Framed: 120.4 × 82.6 × 3.9 cm (47 3/8 × 32 1/2 × 1 1/2 in.)
- Culture
- Austria
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Wilson L. Mead Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Once thought to be by the young Albrecht Altdorfer, this painting is instead the work of a painter named after a winged altarpiece in the town of Pulkau, near the Austrian and Moravian border. Though the artist takes his name from the Pulkau altarpiece, he was probably active in Vienna. Like other loosely associated South German and Austrian artists of the early 16th century, who are now grouped together as the Danube School, the Master of Pulkau used exuberant natural forms to give a heightened emotional quality to his work. In this altarpiece wing, the swirling vegetation, excited angels, and oversized Virgin and animals direct the viewer’s attention to the vulnerable Christ Child, who is the focus of adoration.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
