A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

by Unknown

The Meister von Liesborn (German: about 1465).

The principal work of this master, whose name has not come down to us, was a high altar-piece for a convent church of the Benedictines at Liesborn, near Münster in Westphalia. This work was cut in pieces and sold in 1807, when the convent was suspended, and Napoleon established the modern kingdom of Westphalia. Some of the pieces were afterwards lost, some were obtained by different collectors, while others, which were acquired by Herr Krüger of Minden, were purchased in 1854 by the British Government. The sweet but feeble faces, with the gold background, recall the earliest Lower Rhine School, of which the Westphalian was an offshoot.

In 259—a Head of Christ on the Cross—we have a fragment of the centre compartment of the altar-piece.

In 260 and 261 we have the saints who stood by the side of the Cross (hence their melancholy expression). In 260 the saints are St. John, St. Benedict, and St. Scholastica (the first Benedictine nun and the sister of St. Benedict himself). In 261 the saints are Sts. Cosmas and Damian (see under 594), and the Virgin.

In 254 and 255 we have other saints: in 254, St. Ambrose (see under 50), St. Exuperius (a Bishop of Toulouse), and St. Jerome (saying, as it were, "Down, down" to his lion); in 255, St. Gregory, St. Hilary, and St. Augustine.

On either side of the central groups in the altar-piece were represented various sacred subjects. No. 256, represents the Annunciation; No. 257, the Purification of the Virgin and the Presentation of Christ in the Temple; No. 258, The Adoration of the Magi.

262. THE CRUCIFIXION.

School of the Meister von Liesborn. See under last pictures.

In the form of a predella or decoration of the base of the altar-piece. In the centre is Christ on the Cross; on either side are four Saints; on the left St. Scholastica, Mary Magdalen, St. Anne with the Virgin in her arms, who holds the Infant Christ; and the Virgin. On the right St. John the Evangelist, St. Andrew, St. Benedict, and St. Agnes with the Lamb. In the background is a representation of Jerusalem; here depicted as a little Westphalian town.