Master of the Figdor Deposition

This painter is named after a picture that can no longer be seen. The Deposition, showing Christ lowered from the cross, once belonged to the Viennese banker and collector Albert Figdor and later went to the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum in Berlin. It was lost during the Second World War, and its whereabouts have been unknown ever since.

The other side of it survives in Amsterdam. The Deposition was painted on one face of an altarpiece wing, with the Martyrdom of Saint Lucy on the back, and in the 19th century the panel was sawn through to separate the two scenes. The Rijksmuseum's Saint Lucy, dated around 1505 to 1510, is now the main work by which the master is known.

His style echoes two painters, Geertgen tot Sint Jans of Haarlem and Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen of Amsterdam, which suggests he worked in both cities. The Dutch art historian Hoogewerff proposed that he was Jan Gerritsz Swegher, a painter who died in Haarlem in 1514, a suggestion that remains unproven.