Charge to St. Peter – Details from the movable wings of a winged altarpiece

95.5 x 34 cm

The two companion panels (56.456 and 56.457) originally belonged to a winged altarpiece showing scenes from the lives of St. Peter and Christ. In fact, the works may have formed the opposing sides of the same panel, with the Charge to St. Peter on the feast-day side. Their reverses have both been cradled.

Their vertical edges were probably trimmed. The banderol in the scene with St. Peter contains a text based on lines from Mt 16:16-19: Filius Dei vivi/ tu es Petrus. The beginning of the inscription (‘Tu es Christus’) was probably lost when the panel was trimmed.

The composition of the Arrest scene was borrowed from Dürer’s woodcut (B27).

Provenance

In the early 1920s, Marcell Nemes bought the works from a certain Freiherr v. Grundherr. Two panels of this series originating from Bohemia wound up in the Prague Picture Gallery, two were procured by a private collection in Munich and another two (the Resurrection of Lazar and the Pentecost) by a private collection in Budapest, while another (Ecce Homo) was also presumably acquired by a Hungarian private collection. In 1929, the Christian Museum purchased its two panels from the Budapest art dealer Sándor Donát. (Based on Boskovits-Mojzer-Mucsi 1964) Rest. 1933; Éva Derdák, 1984 (Charge to St. Peter).

Restauration

1933; Éva Derdák, 1984 (Charge to St. Peter).

Bibliography

• Magyarország műemléki topográfiája I. Esztergom 1. Esztergom műemlékei (összeállította: Genthon István; Budapest 1948) 121. –Boskovits Miklós-Mojzer Miklós-Mucsi András: Az esztergomi Keresztény Múzeum képtára (Budapest, 1964. Akadémiai Kiadó), 170, 333-334.
• Hoffmann Edit: Jegyzetek a régi magyar táblaképfestészethez. In: Archaeológiai Értesítő 1937, 19, 26.
• Az Ernst Múzeum Aukciói. Kat. XXXIV. 1927, 143-144 (az “Ecce Homo” és a “Szent Péter megbízatása”; frank festő 1500 körül).