Master of the Vienna Adoration

Around 1420 a painter in Vienna made a panel only about 26 centimetres tall showing the adoration of the newborn Christ. That small limewood panel, now in the Belvedere, gives him his name, the Master of the Vienna Adoration. He was active from about 1410 to 1425.

He painted in the soft style of those years, often called International Gothic, with flowing drapery and bright colour. Scholars trace his roots to South Bohemian painting and the Master of the Třeboň Altarpiece, and see Italian elements arriving in his work as well. Four Passion scenes in Paris and works in Budapest are also given to him, and he is seen as a forerunner of the next Viennese generation, perhaps even a teacher of Hans von Tübingen, a painter later active in Wiener Neustadt.

The Vienna panel came to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in 1923 as a gift from the Viennese art dealer Moritz Lindemann, and in 2013 it was shown in the Belvedere's exhibition Wien 1450.