Biography

The Master of the Antwerp Adoration was an anonymous painter who is thought to have worked in Antwerp during the first decade of the sixteenth century. It was the triptych exhibited here that gave the master his invented name. However, the refinement of the work is substantially greater than that of what the so-called 'Antwerp Mannerists' produced, and it is therefore not impossible that the painter was active in Bruges or Ghent. The central panel has a depiction of the Adoration of the Magi, a theme that was highly marketable. On the side panels are, left, St. George with the dragon and, right, St. Margaret of Antioch, together with the kneeling commissioner of the work. In various places in the painting, the underpainting is visible to the naked eye.