Master of Alkmaar
Habsburg Netherlands · Northern Renaissance
The story
Almost everything we can say about this painter comes from a single object. In 1504 he finished a set of seven panels, the date painted on one of them, showing the works of mercy that the Gospel of Matthew asks of every Christian: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, burying the dead, sheltering travellers, visiting the sick and comforting prisoners. Christ stands quietly among the poor in nearly every scene, as if to say that whatever is done for them is done for him. The panels, still in their old frame, hung in the Sint-Laurenskerk, the great Gothic church of Alkmaar in North Holland, until the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam bought them in 1918.
No signature or document names their author, so art historians call him the Master of Alkmaar. Max Friedländer, the German expert on early Netherlandish painting, and others suggested Cornelis Buys, a painter recorded in Alkmaar until his death in 1524. Another proposal points to Pieter Gerritsz, a painter from Haarlem. Neither idea has been proven, and the name remains a convention. The panels carry scars of their own, because during the Protestant image-breaking of the 16th century someone took a knife to them and hacked the paint away, mostly from the faces.
