The Master AE
Including original frame: 161.7 x 130 cm (63 x 51 in)
Provenance
Possibly designed to hang in the Schleinitz Chapel, which was added in 1408 to the monastic church of the Augustinian Canons in Meissen, although there is no firm documentary evidence.
(The surviving original frame suggests it was conceived as a single panel rather than as the former wing of a large altarpiece.)
Located, after the Reformation, in the Frauenkirche (formerly the Church of Saint Afra) in Meissen and, from around 1865-70, in the Chapel in Schloss Siebeneichen, near Meissen.
Confiscated as result of the policies of “Bodenreform” (Land Reform) by the authorities of the Soviet-occupied territory in the later GDR and placed in the Stadtmuseum in Meissen in 1947.
Restituted to the family of the original owners on the basis of the Ausgleichsleistungsgesetz in 2010.
We are grateful for Prof. Dr. Ingo Sandner for the following text on the painting.
A gesticulating crowd of people, whose excitable and urgent speech is represented visually by the scrolling banners, push towards the sorrowful and courageous figure of crouching Christ. Below, the donor Georg von Schleinitz is shown kneeling with his four sons, one of whom is Bishop Johann von Schleinitz (born c. 1470, Bishop from 1518-1537), and his four wives, three of whom had already died, with his three daughters shown opposite. According to their coatsof-arms, these former wives were from the von Schlieben, vonEinsiedel, von Pflugk and von Miltitz families. Georg von Schleinitz, who was born around 1440 and died in April 1501, was the princely Commissar in Oschatz from 1460. In 1461 he accompanied the Archduke Wilhelm of Saxony to Jerusalem, and he later served the Archdukes Albrecht and Ernst as Counsellor. In 1470 he married Marie von Miltitz who is depicted in the painting.
The picture may have been commissioned according to the will of Georg von Schleinitz, or possibly by the deceased’s family, following his death in April 1501.
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