5. Bartholomäus Bruyn the Eider: The Besurrection of Christ, 1512
— 1515. Antverp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Künsten. Photo:
Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Künsten, Antverp.

theme was “local”), e.g. from the œuvre of the Mas-
ter of the Saint Ursula Legend or Master of Saint
Severin.32 The Prague paintingMjítww shows that
Bruyn had thoroughly studied Joest’s altarpiece with
scenes from the Life and Passion of Christ (Kalkar),
particularly the identically-themed panel adorning
the left inner wing of the retable in St Nicholas

Church.33 Bruyn’s Prague paintingis based on Joest’s
arrangement of the Ascension scene in Kalkar (1505
— 1508) as well as the symmetrical composition, the
figures of the Virgin Mary and Aposde Peter and
background landscape. However, the young Bruyn
(he was some twenty years old then) simplified the
scene and suppressed the spatial depth. But unlike
his master, he did not know how to curtail movement
— his mastery of the figure did not come until the
late 1520s — 1530s.34 Also, Bruyn’s early inclination
to various works of his predecessors and contem-
poraries suggests that he was gradually looking for
and creating his own style.
Three completed coats of arms in the cycle’s pan-
els were identified earlier - the one at the feet of the
two female donors in Nativity of Christis probably the
coat of arms of Count Manderscheid-Blankenheim’s
family.35 Countess Elisabeth von Mandersheid (1518
— 1544), abbess of the Convent of St Cecilia in Co-
logne, was from this family. The panel Martyrdom of
St Ursula (which, in our view, differs from the other
panels of the cycle as its style is slightly advanced and
the nimbus has a different form) bears the alliance
coat of arms of Cologne’s mayor Adolf Rinck (b.
1472) and Margaretha von Hardenrath.36 The panel
Martyrdom of the Maccabee Brothers and Their Mother
[Fig. 6] is the most significant in terms of research
of original provenance as the coats of arms are
depicted together with the donor, while he or she is
missing in the other panels (with the exception of
Nativity of Christ). The coat of arms with the horse
on the left was probably overpainted,37 while the
one with the crescent moon on the right is the coat
of arms of Helias Mertz (d. 1527), humanist and
confessor of the Zu den HU. Makkabäern Convent
of Benedictines in Cologne.38 Mertz, who also used
the Latinized form of his name Helias Marcaeus
de Luna (hence his coat of arms with the crescent
moon), is credited with the convent’s development

32 ZEHNDER 1990 (see in note 2), pp. 25-27, No. 232, fig.,
with earlier stages of style.
33 Cf. depiction in FRIEDLÄNDER 1972 (see in note 23),
plate 5.
34 Cf. particularly the Xanten Altarpiece — TÜMMERS 1964
(see in note 31), fig. A94-101 - and other paintintgs from
this period.

35 TÜMMERS 1982 (see in note 16), p. 115.
36 ZEHNDER 1990 (see in note 2), p. 25.
37 LÖW 2002 (see in note 20), p. 97, note 389.
38 Ibidem, particularly pp. 92-96 with more literatuře on iden-
tification of the donor.

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