Tabernacle House Altar with the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Annunciation.

Tabernacle House Altar with the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Annunciation.

Tabernacle House Altar with the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Annunciation.

Artist:Reinhold Vasters (German, Erkelenz 1827–1909 Aachen) (frame)
Artist: Italian , probably Lombardy, second half 16th century (panels)
Date:second half 16th century (panels); ca. 1865–90 (frame)
Medium:Ebony-veneered soft wood, silver gilt, rock crystal, agate, and reverse painted and gilded glass.
Dimensions:H. 16 1/8 in. (41 cm), w. 8 1/16 in. (20.4 cm), d. 2 3/8 in (6 cm).
Classification:Glass
Credit Line:Robert Lehman Collection, 1975

This tabernacle house altar contains reverse-painted glass panels depicting the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Annunciation, which were probably painted in Lombardy in the second half of the sixteenth century. The wooden frame, however, was made in the nineteenth century, probably by Reinhold Vasters (1827-1909) or someone in his workshop. Vasters was a highly skilled German silversmith and goldsmith who for a time served as restorer at the Aachen Cathedral treasury. There, in the spirit of nineteenth-century historicism, he not only restored but also replaced worn or damaged liturgical objects. It is likely that the Lehman tabernacle house altar was made expressly to house a set of sixteenth-century reverse-painted panels. The unified program and the similarity of the style of the painting on the ten rock crystal panels suggest that they were scavenged from a single piece.

Provenance

[Frédéric Spitzer, Paris]; Spitzer sale, Paris, 17 April - 16 June 1893, lot 2092, pl. LI (apparently unsold); Spitzer Legacies sale, Anderson Galleries, NY, 9-12 January 1929, lot 599, ill. Acquired by Robert Lehman from the Spitzer Legacies sale.

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