A libetbányai Keresztre feszítés-oltár

Out of the three wooden statues exhibited in the Hungarian National Gallery as a rood group from Spisska Belá (Szepesbéla), only the Christ on the Cross is appropriately designated. As for the two thieves, both the provenance and the style suggest that originally they were set up somewhere around Banská Bystrica (Besztercebánya): they can be attributed to the workshop of the Pukanec (Bakabánya) high altar. The style of this workshop can be traced to Veit Stoss's Cracow workshop on the basis not only of borrowed motifs but also of the paintings of the Pukanec high altar. The present paper adds to these paintings the original fixed wings. Similarly to Stoss's workshop in Cracow, the workshop of the Pukanec high altar probably also employed a permanent polychrome painter. When placed side by side with the corresponding statues in the Crucifixion group of eight figures in the shrine of the Pukanec high altar, the Budapest statues appear to be workshop replicas. The original altarpiece from which they possibly originate may also be taken for a workshop copy. Together with the Crucifix and St John the Evangelist in the museum of Banská Bystrica, the thieves are probably identical with the remains of the Crucifixion altarpiece once at the threshold of the sanctuary of the parish church of Ľubietová. The comparison of the two altarpieces outlines the practice of serial production in the workshop whose leader balanced off his modest sculptural talent with multifigural, easily varied compositional schemes.