Master MS

In the canonica visitatio record of the diocese of Esztergom for 1755 noteworthy medieval panel paintings are mentioned in the description of the parish church of Újbánya (Königsberg, today Nová Baňa, Slovakia). The Annunciation and the Adoration of the Magi are most probably identical with the paintings on the wings of the altarpiece by Master MS signed in 1506. One of them is lost now, but the other is in Lille's Musée des Beaux-Arts. The source claims that the two panels were donated to the Újbánya church by Joseph Andreas Wenzl von Sternbach, head of the mining administration in 1727 when the late gothic retable of the high altar in St Catherine's church at Selmecbánya (Schemnitz, Banská Štiavnica, SK) was superannuated and replaced by a new baroque altarpiece. The article thus rectifies the provenance of these works by Master MS.

A drawing of two lovers, executed in pen and ink with wash, along with brush and white heightening, on brown prepared paper (Paris, Musée du Louvre, R.F. 3814), has been attributed by Heinrich Röttinger and others to the 16th-century Strasbourg painter Hans Wechtlin. In this paper, I join the voices sceptical of this attribution. The monogram MS near the lower edge of the sheet is not a false signature of Martin Schongauer, as previously supposed, but an authentic part of the artwork, for it is drawn in the same paint as the white heightening of the figures and the landscape. The content and shape of this monogram match another monogram MS on one of the seven surviving wing panels from the former high altarpiece of the Church of Saint Catherine in Banská Štiavnica (Selmecbánya, Schemnitz). A detailed stylistic analysis shows that the Paris drawing has much more in common with these paintings, dated 1506, than with the woodcuts of Wechtlin. Besides the Banská Štiavnica altarpiece, the Seated couple making music is the only work known so far by this painter.