15th Century Altar Panel
Much like the Ghent Altarpiece, which we’ve talked about here before, this altar panel was stolen many years ago and through a stroke of luck and keen eyes it was found! Unlike the Ghent Altarpiece, it hasn’t been repeatedly stolen.
York Art Gallery
To go back a little bit, the painting that we’re discussing today is half of a pair of pieces that were donated to the York Art Gallery in 1957 by Francis Dennis Lycett Green. Green acquired them from a London art gallery in 1956 and there is no ownership information about the panels before 1930. However, German scholars attribute them to the workshop of artist Hans Pleydenwurff of the Nuremberg school, but it is unknown who exactly painted it, and was created around 1480.
The panel is double sided and covered in depictions of different saints. The front shows three saint bishops against a gold background. “The figure on the left is St. Nicholas. He is holding a book with three gold balls, representing Santa’s throwing gold into the windows of three impoverished women for their dowries. In the middle is St. James of Tarentaise. On the right is St. Germanus of Paris, holding the key given to him by St. Peter in a prophetic dream” (The History Blog, 2023).
On the reverse of the panel are three more saints. From left to right we have St. Lawrence holding his traditional grill symbolizing his martyrdom, St. Sebald, the patron saint of Nuremberg, holding the church that was named after him, and Archangel Gabriel holding a banner that contains some of his greeting to the Virgin Mary at the Annunciation.
So it was donated, along with it’s counterpart, to the York Art Gallery in 1957. Then it 1979 it was stolen. Just this one half, the other part of the work remained at the gallery. I couldn’t find a lot out about this theft but there seemed to be no leads, no clues, it was like the painting had vanished into thin air.
44 Years Later
Almost 5 decades after it was stolen, most people had given up all hope of the panel ever being found again until an action was being planned through Dukes Auctions. As they were preparing the lots for auction one of them caught an auctioneers eye as having a lot of similarities to the panel that still hangs in the York Art Gallery. At the last minute they pulled the lot from the auction and contacted the Art Loss Register who was able to quickly confirm that this was the missing painting.
Dukes had come to acquired this panel for auction after going through the contents of a house that a woman had inherited from her father, she knew nothing of its origin. The partners at Dukes think it’s highly probable her father knew nothing about it either and could have just bought it at an antique store. “We told the daughter that the painting was stolen 50 years ago and she was quite happy that it was simply returned to the museum. No money changed hands at all. We are so grateful to her for being so straightforward about it” (Whiddington, 2023).
So now the panel is being restored and reinstated in its rightful place beside it’s sibling at the York Art Gallery.
Works Cited
“15th c. Altar Panel Returned to Museum 44 Years After Theft”. The History Blog. 2023. https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/67431
Nowakowski, T. “U.K. Museum Recovers 15th-Century Altar Panel Almost 50 Years After it was Stolen”. Smithsonian Magazine. 2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/uk-museum-recovers-15th-century-altar-panel-almost-50-years-after-it-was-stolen-180982322/
Widdington, R. “A Golden 15th-Century Altar Panel is Returning to a Museum 44 Years After it was Stolen, Thanks to a Keen-Eyed Auction Researcher”. ArtNet. 2023. https://news.artnet.com/art-world-archives/york-art-gallery-altar-panel-returns-2315726