Master of the Mornauer Portrait

The Master of the Mornauer Portrait was a 15th-century German portrait painter active in Bavaria or Tyrol about 1460–1488. His notname is based on the Portrait of Alexander Mornauer now in the National Gallery, London. He was previously identified with Michael Pacher or Jost Amman, both proposals now rejected. He has also been tentatively identified as Ulrich Füetrer, which remains a possibility.

The Master's has been derived by technical and stylistic comparison with the Portrait of Alexander Mornauer, now in the National Gallery, London (oil on panel, 45.2 × 38.7 cm, inventory number NG 6532).

The sitter is identified by the letter that he holds in his hand, which is addressed to him (in German):

Dem ehrsamen und weisen alle[x]
ander Mornauer [stadt]schr[eiber]
zu lanzhut m[ein]em gutren günner

English translation: "To the honourable and wise Alexander Mornauer, town clerk of Landshut, my good patron"

Alexander Mornauer is indeed documented as a stadtschreiber (town clerk) in Landshut, Bavaria, between 1464 (when he succeeded his father, Landshut's town clerk in 1439–1464) and no later than 1488 (by which time the post was occupied by another man). He was probably born in 1438/1439 in Landshut, and died circa 1490 in Rattenberg, Tyrol. Based on the documents, National Gallery dates the painting to around 1464–1488.

The seal ring on the sitter's finger features the moor's head device, perhaps, a reference to the first syllable of Mornauer's surname.

After the portrait was acquired by the National Gallery in 1990, scientific analysis revealed significant later alterations to the painting; the size of the hat had been reduced, and the background had been changed from wood grain to bright blue. These changes can be dated between about 1720 and 1790s (on one hand, the pigment Prussian blue used for the background was invented in 1704–1710 and only became widely used in the 1720s; on the other hand, the painting was probably in the present state when it entered the collection of George Nugent-Temple-Grenville, 1st Marquess of Buckingham, sometime between 1788 and 1797, as a portrait of Martin Luther by Hans Holbein the Younger). In 1991, the painting was restored to its original state.

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