THE MASTER OF THE RIMINI ALTARPIECE

international Gothic style also brought with it a growing taste for small—sized sculptures, mainly in terra— cotta and alabaster. Isolated devotional images or elements of altarpiece decoration, these statuettes and rehefs, easily transportable because of their reduced format, ate sometimes difficult to attribute precisely to any particular rejion in the absence of signatures or docnments.
Such is the case with the alabaster sculptures carved by the mysterious Master of the Rimini Altarpieee, the creator of the Crucifixion altarpieee formerly io the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie near Rimini.
A large group of alabaster carvings from the first half of the fifteenth century, very consistent in style, are ascribed to this master and his workshop or to the sculptors who followed iu his wake. They are to be found widely dispersed over Italy, France, Silesia, the Rhine valley, the Netherlands and elsewhere. The extent of this diffusion can be explained by the mobility of the artists and the importance of commercial exchanges, as confirmed, for these sculptures, ou two occasions. In i43 t the abbot of the monastery of Sand at Wroelaw (Breslau) purchased from a Parisian trader a Crucifixion in alabaster (preserved fragment: the Holy Women in the Silesian Museum, Wroclaw); and in 1432 the abbot of the Saiut—Vaast monastery at Arras acquired from a German merchant some alabaster statuettes portraying the twelve apostles and the Coronation of the Virgin, which were painted in i434 by Jacques Daret at the same time as he paiuted the wing panels of the altarpiece for which the statuettes were intended. The dearth of details about the makers of these sculptures, the geographical distances separating the places where they were commissioned and the different nationahties of the merchants show how difficult it is to locate the produetiou of these alabaster statues with precision.
Proposed by Georg Swarzenski, the identification of the Master of the Rimini Altarpiece with Master Gusmin of Cologne, a goldsmith active in Italy and extolled by Lorenzo Ghiberti in his Commeotarii, is rejected today. Nevertheless, the hypothesis of itinerant werkshops, poss bly originating iu the Rhineland, has since been often adopted. On the other hand, a certain styhstie kinship with the Flemish painters of the first half of the fifteenth century has also led to consideration of the southern Netherlands as a possible source for the art of the Rimini Master.
Alabaster, a choice material, was handled with a subtle blend of dryness and extreme deheacy. The typical method of ehiselhng thin and angular forms, the minute rendering of anatomical details, garments, hairstyles and deeply undercut beards, sets off the precious appearance of the material enlivened by a few polyehrome highlights. The draperies with tight folds, fluid but breaking over the ground, adopt the formulas of international Gothic. Attitudes and expressions help to create a strong dramatic tension, yet one that is softened by refinements of style, especially in the finest creations hke the figures of the Rimini altarpiece or the Entombment in Leningrad. Indeed, despite similarities of form and the repetition of set themes (Virgin of Pity, Apostohe College, Annunciation), within that abundant output of small alabaster carvings, there exist notable differences of quality.