Late Gothic Panels from the Collection of York Art Gallery: Predella-Wings from the Workshop of Hans Pleydenwurff

Abstract

The article is a result of the research on continental European paintings in York Art Gallery, completed as a part of the project National Inventory of Continental European Paintings. Two late gothic panels, painted on both sides, contain the depictions of three saints in half-length on each side. Nowadays only one of these panels is still in York Art Gallery, as the other one was stolen and its current location remains unknown.
 It seems that the panels from York used to be the wings of predellas; however, presented research questions traditional assumption that they may be considered as the parts of predella of the Nuremberg St Catherine of Siena retable, as it seems impossible to fit them into the reconstruction that would be iconographically reasonable and suiting the eighteenth century descriptions. The altar of St Catherine of Siena was completed in 1464 by the workshop of Hans Pleydenwurff, to the St Catherine's Church of the Dominican Nuns' Convent in Nuremberg. The whole structure did not survive; only its wings (panels of the mid-opening and closed retable) are now in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg (GM137 and GM138 painted on both sides and GM139 and GM140 painted on one side) and in the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh NC, USA (one inner panel of the inner pair of this altar's wings, decorated with the full length depiction of St Leonard). York panels were for sure created around the same time (1460s) and by the same workshop. At least one of them used to be part of the altar dedicated to the Dominican church. However, the panels from York seem to have been prepared as the left wings of two different predellas; it even seems that they may not have originally been of the same size.