Master of Delft

The notname was first used in 1913 by Max Jakob Friedländer, in describing the wings of a Triptych with the Virgin and Child with St Anne with the central panel by the Master of Frankfurt, which is now in Aachen.

[5] As Walter Liedtke describes the triptychs, "homely, everyday, types, including a variety of low-life characters, cover most of the surface in jagged rhythms",[6] and (it might be added) very fanciful and extravagant costume in many cases.

[8] Delft was apparently more notable as a centre for miniatures for illuminated manuscripts in this period than for panel painting; there were many monasteries as well as churches in the city,[9] which though small, was wealthy from textiles and brewing beer.

[11] The careers of both are made harder to understand as an unusually high proportion of both local paintings and documents have been destroyed in a series of disasters: a large fire in 1536, the Beeldenstorm of 1566, or other Protestant destruction of images.

[17] The central panel shows a hortus conclusus or small garden enclosed with a (very low) wall set in an urban scene with water and mountains in the distance.

[19] The scene is unusual in iconography, and has been explained by one scholar in an interpretation not yet generally accepted, and recognised but not agreed by Jan Piet Filedt Kok in his Rijksmuseum catalogue.

[24] A triptych "possibly" by the master, in a private collection in Switzerland, has a central Adoration of the Magi, with a Flight into Egypt on the left panel, and a Massacre of the Innocents on the right.