The Master of Heiligenkreuz was an Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n painter active at the beginning of the 15th century; a tentative lifespan of 1395 to 1430 has been put forth but this appears highly conjectural. His name is taken from a diptych

Diptych

A diptych di "two" + ptychē "fold") is any object with two flat plates attached at a hinge. Devices of this form were quite popular in the ancient world, wax tablets being coated with wax on inner faces, for recording notes and for measuring time and direction.In Late Antiquity, ivory diptychs with...

 that once belonged to the Cistercian Abbey of Heiligenkreuz, located in southeastern Austria near the present-day border with Hungary

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

. The left panel depicts the Annunciation

Annunciation

The Annunciation, also referred to as the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary or Annunciation of the Lord, is the Christian celebration of the announcement by the angel Gabriel to Virgin Mary, that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus the Son of God. Gabriel told Mary to name her...

 on the obverse; the reverse is a depiction of the Madonna and Child. The right panel depicts the Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine

Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine

The Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine could refer to visions received by either Saint Catherine of Alexandria or Saint Catherine of Siena , in which these virgin saints went through a wedding ceremony with Christ, in the presence of the Blessed Virgin Mary, consecrating themselves and their...

, with Saint Dorothy on its reverse. Details of costume and iconography

Iconography

Iconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", and comes from the Greek "image" and "to write". A secondary meaning is the painting of icons in the...

 combine with associations with the International Style

International Gothic

International Gothic is a phase of Gothic art which developed in Burgundy, Bohemia, France and northern Italy in the late 14th century and early 15th century...

 to indicate a date of around the first decade of the 15th century.

It was initially proposed, by Betty Kurth in 1922, that the artist was French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 and had some association with the court in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. Other writers have disagreed, and various nationalities including French, Austrian, German, or Bohemian have been posited for the Master. Some have further suggested that he was an itinerant court artist, trained in France but active in Austria. Various clues have been used in an attempt to describe his nationality. These include his use of finely-worked gold decoration, in which some have seen a link to Franco-Burgundian goldsmith

Goldsmith

A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Since ancient times the techniques of a goldsmith have evolved very little in order to produce items of jewelry of quality standards. In modern times actual goldsmiths are rare...

's work of the late 14th century. Others, instead, see it as a link to the school of panel painting then active at the court in Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

. Consequently, it seems highly unlikely that the artist's nationality will be conclusively established.

Stylistically, the Master's work is distinguished by use of some Gothic

Gothic art

Gothic art was a Medieval art movement that developed in France out of Romanesque art in the mid-12th century, led by the concurrent development of Gothic architecture. It spread to all of Western Europe, but took over art more completely north of the Alps, never quite effacing more classical...

decorative elements, as well as oddly-proportioned figures with long, thin limbs and fingers.