Master of Sierentz

Two small panels in the Kunstmuseum Basel are almost all we have of this painter. One shows Saint George driving his lance into the dragon, the other Saint Martin on horseback cutting his cloak in half to share it with a beggar. He worked in the Upper Rhine around Basel and looked hard at Konrad Witz, the Basel painter who gave Northern figures a new weight and solidity, and he is usually counted among his followers.

The two panels are thought to have been the wings of an altarpiece for a church at Sierentz, a village just south of Basel, which is where his name comes from. They were painted around 1440 to 1450, and beyond them little of his work is securely identified.