Master of the Habsburgs

In a small Adoration of the Magi in the Belvedere, the second of the three kings has a recognisable face. He is Maximilian I, the Habsburg ruler, wearing a jagged crown, the chain of the Order of the Golden Fleece and a signet ring with the Austrian arms, and behind him appears the profile of his father, Emperor Frederick III. Those two portraits gave the anonymous painter his name, the Master of the Habsburgs. The panel, a fragment painted on fir, dates from before 1508.

He worked in North Tyrol between about 1490 and 1520, when Innsbruck was one of Maximilian's favourite residences, and his style joins local Tyrolean tradition with strong Netherlandish influence. The Belvedere also holds his Virgin and Child of around 1490, painted on Swiss stone pine, and a panel of Saints Christopher and Sebastian is in the Bavarian State Painting Collections in Munich. Recent research has proposed that he was Niclas Reiser, a painter documented between 1498 and 1512, and the question is still open.