The Annunciation | Crocker Art Museum
The Annunciation, 1514.
Master of Mühldorf (German, active 1508–1511)
Pen and black ink, grey wash, and white bodycolor, on cream laid paper prepared with brownish-red, 8 3/16 in. x 6 in. (20.8 cm x 15.24 cm). Crocker Museum of Art, E.B. Crocker Collection , 1871.11.

First identified by as the Master of Mühldorf by Ernst Buchner in 1938, this was the only drawing attributed to the Master prior to Winzinger’s reappraisal and expansion of the artist’s oeuvre.(1) In fact, Winzinger’s other attributions of both prints and drawings to the Master are based on the Crocker image and its similarity to paintings on two wings and the predella of an altarpiece of the Passion, dated 1511.(2) The most similar image stylistically, The Virgin of Altötting, is also executed in pen and black ink heightened with white bodycolor on brownish paper.(3) This drawing shows the Virgin heavily draped and luxuriously adorned standing on a sphere and surrounded by angels. It represents a local type of the Virgin in glory seen in the Holy Chapel at Altötting, close to Mühldorf.

Rather than the heavenly scene of The Virgin of Altötting, Mary is here seated in a dramatically rendered interior space that seems to be at once bedchamber and church. The beamed ceiling leads the eye into the depths of the right half of the drawing—this pull to the right is reinforced by annunciate angel’s gesture towards Mary.(4) Behind Gabriel the architecture appears to be more ecclesiastical, with the three windows symbolically placed above the main doorway. This drawing is often compared to various works by Albrecht Altdorfer, most frequently his night scenes, but it is really quite similar to his conception of space in the 1513 woodcut of the Annunciation.(5) In this drawing, Mary is seated in her bedchamber reading at a candlelit desk below a circular window—also seen in the Crocker drawing. Both images include deep perspectival settings, though with awkward results. In place of Altdorfer’s disproportionately large figure of Gabriel, the Master of Mühldorf’s column acts as a visual barrier to the space of the unfolding narrative.

In the upper right corner of the drawing is the Master’s complicated monogram. John Clarke (in Prints and Drawings of the Danube School, 1969) identified the Master of Mühldorf’s monogram as that of Wilhelm Beinholt, whose gravestone is preserved in the parish church of Mühldorf.(6) Isolde Hausberger (1973) understood the monogram differently, and citing a misreading of the gravestone, named the Master of Mühldorf Wilhelm Pätzsold in her monograph on the artist. Kaufmann agreed with Hausberger’s designation of the monogram as WP and not WB, but was reluctant to designate the Master as Pätzsold.

Freyda Spira, in William Breazeale, with Cara Denison, Stacey Sell, and Freyda Spira, A Pioneering Collection: Master Drawings from the Crocker Art Museum, exh. cat. Sacramento and tour, 2010

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Notes:

(1) Alfred Neumeyer cited in a note on the old mount of the drawing Buchner’s letter of December 18, 1938.

(2) The altarpiece was probably made for the Salvatorkirche, Ecksberg, but is now in the parish church of St. Lorenz near Altmühldorf, near Mühldorf.

(3) British Museum inv. no. 1949-4-11-122. Rowlands (1993, as in Literature above) removes The Annunciation (1519; BM 1879.1213.37) from Winzinger’s group and attributes it to an unknown south Bavarian artist, probably in the region around Regensburg.

(4) Winzinger relates Gabriel’s gesture in the drawing to two other works by the Master of Mühldorf: The Entry of Christ from the Altmühldorf altarpiece; and the St. George painting from the Mühldorf Rathaus.

(5) This impression British Museum, inv. no. 1895-1-22-351. Talbot and Shestack 1969 as in Literature above, p. 75; repeated by Kaufmann (2004 as in Literature above), p. 22.

(6) Talbot and Shestack 1969 as in Literature above, p. 74.

Inscriptions: pen and black ink, upper right corner: W [monogram]/ 1514

Marks: none

Provenance: Franz Graf von Sternberg-Manderscheid; his sale, Dresden, November 10, 1845, lot 593 (as German Monogrammist); Rudolf Weigel, before 1847, Kunstlagerkatalog no. 16785 with date of 1515. Edwin Bryant Crocker, Sacramento, by 1871; gift of his widow Margaret to the Museum, 1885

Literature: William Breazeale, with Cara Denison, Stacey Sell, and Freyda Spira, A Pioneering Collection: Master Drawings from the Crocker Art Museum, exh. cat. Sacramento and tour, 2010, no. 43; Thomas daCosta Kaufmann, Central European Drawings in the Collection of the Crocker Art Museum, Turnhout, 2004, pp. 22–23; Peter Flagg, Fate, Fortune, Nemesis: Albrecht Dürer at the Century's End, exh. cat. Sacramento, 1999, checklist p. 16; John Rowlands, Drawings by German Artists and Artists from German-speaking Regions of Europe in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, London, 1993, mentioned under no. 487, pp. 226-27; Jeffrey Ruda, The Art of Drawing, Old Masters from the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California, exh. cat. Flint, 1992, no. 37; John Rowlands, The age of Dürer and Holbein: German drawings 1400–1550, London, 1988, discussed under no. 124; Master Drawings from the E. B. Crocker Art Gallery at the Church Fine Arts Gallery, University of Nevada, Reno, exh. cat. Reno, 1978, no. 11; Ebria Feinblatt, Old Master Drawings from American Collections, exh. cat. Los Angeles, 1976, no. 178, pp. 148–49; Isolde Hausberger, Der Meister von Mühldorf: Der Maler Wilhelm Pätzsold, Mühldorf am Inn, 1973, pp. 94–96; Master Drawings from Sacramento, exh. cat. Sacramento and tour, 1971, no. 19; Charles Talbot and Alan Shestack, Prints and Drawings of the Danube School, exh. cat. Yale, New Haven, 1969, no. 75; Jürgen Schultz, Master Drawings from California Collections, exh. cat. Berkeley, 1968, no. 24; Franz Winzinger, “Unbekannte Werke des Meisters von Mühldorf,” in Zeitschrift des deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft, vol. XXII, nos. 1-2, 1968; Franz Winzinger, Albrecht Altdorfer Graphik, Munich, 1963, p. 18; Five Centuries of Drawings, exh. cat. Montreal, 1953, no. 97; Annemarie Henle, Master Drawings, an exhibition of Drawings from American Museums and Private Collections, San Francisco, 1940, no. 68; Annemarie Henle, "Old Master Drawings," in Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francisco, 1940, Art, Official Catalog, Palace of Fine Arts, exh. cat. San Francisco, 1940, no. 467; Drawings by the German Masters in the Edwin Bryant Crocker Collection, Sacramento, California, ed. Alfred Neumeyer, exh. cat. Sacramento, 1939, no. 11; F. Bruillot, Dictionnaire des Monogrammes, 1832–34, vol. I, no. 3176

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