Master of Rhenen
Northern Netherlands · Early Netherlandish painting
The story
Everything known about this painter comes from one large oak panel in the Rijksmuseum, The Siege of Rhenen. It shows the small town on the Rhine being stormed by the troops of Duke John II of Cleves in 1499. Frederik Schmidt-Degener, then director of the Rijksmuseum, picked out the hand in 1934 and named the painter after the picture.
For decades the Master of Rhenen was taken to be the same person as the Master of the St Elizabeth Panels, the anonymous painter of two altarpiece wings about the great flood of 1421 near Dordrecht. In 1988 the art historian Edwin Buijsen showed that the two drew differently and were separate painters. The museum places the Master of Rhenen in the Northern Netherlands, at work between about 1490 and 1520.
