Calvary altar

This altar is one of the key Central European works of painting from the era. Besides its outstanding quality, it has survived with eight of its panel paintings intact. The triptych was painted by Transylvanian-born artist Thomas de Coloswar in 1427, originally for the church of Garamszentbenedek in Upper Hungary (now Hronský Beňadik in Slovakia). It was ordered by Sigismund’s court priest Canon Miklós, cantor of the royal chapel and one of the intellectual elite of the period. Accordingly, the iconographic programme of the altar is much more complex than the average ecclesiastical images of Sigismund era art. The paintings show kinship to Austrian, Bohemian and Italian works, but as might be guessed from such a wide range of affinities, no direct precursor or clearly-related work is known. Every aspect of the work seems to convey that Hungarian court art of the time had a set of distinctive and definitive characteristics of which this altar is almost the sole survivor. The artist may also have worked for the King himself: the awestricken centurion of Calvary — on an altar Sigismund probably never saw — bears facial features recognisable as those of the ageing King.