Named after the magnificent alabaster altarpiece from Rimini now in the Liebieghaus in Frankfurt, the Master of Rimini is one of the most fabled artistic personalities in the history of medieval sculpture. The virtuosic carving and courtly elegance for which the sculptor and his workshop are celebrated is epitomised by this exquisite fragment of the Adoration of the Magi. The group was first attributed to the Rimini Master by Paul Williamson, and subsequently published by Kim Woods (op. cit. 2012 and 2018) as possibly one of his earliest extant works. In the most recent discussion of the Rimini Master’s oeuvre (Roller, op. cit., p. 52) the present group is hailed as one of ‘few objects [that] attain the quality of the Rimini Altarpiece sculptures in terms of craftsmanship and formal quality’.

Since the Liebieghaus’s acquisition of the Rimini Altar in 1913, art historians have held a fascination with the enigmatic alabaster carver who produced this work of outstanding beauty and pathos, seemingly without stylistic parallel. In recent years the Altar has received renewed attention as part of a major conservation campaign conducted at the Liebieghaus, which has restored the alabaster to its original luminosity. Composed of a central multi-figure Crucifixion scene flanked by twelve statuettes of the Apostles, the Altar is distinguished by its figures’ voluminous, richly folded drapery and intricately detailed attributes, as well as their highly expressive facial features. Formerly in the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Covignano, outside Rimini, the altarpiece is likely to have been commissioned for the occasion of the church’s consecration as Franciscan in 1430.

While it is from Rimini that the sculptor derives his Notname, he and his assistants are thought to have been based elsewhere in Europe. Today’s scholarly consensus is that the Rimini Master’s workshop was located in the Burgundian Netherlands, where there was a particularly vibrant trade in luxurious artworks in the 15th century. There are also undeniable affinities between the Rimini Master’s figural style and the paintings of the Flemish Primitives such as the Master of Flémalle. Kim Woods (op. cit. 2012 and 2018) has tentatively proposed an identification of the Master with Gilles de Backere, a ‘carver of alabaster’ recorded in the employ of Philip the Good in the city of Bruges in the 1430s. The status of Bruges as an important European trading centre lends credence to this hypothesis, as the geographical spread of works associated with the Rimini Master attests to the workshop’s thriving export network.

With their densely arranged and abundantly cascading folds of drapery, the three Magi forming the present group exhibit the Rimini Master’s most distinctive stylistic hallmark. Clad in elegant, pointed shoes and supported on a grassy ground, the figures closely parallel the groups at the foot of the Crucifixion in the Rimini Altar. As is characteristic of the Master’s work, the Kings’ attributes are rendered with astonishing attention to detail, from the zigzag pattern on the ciborium, to the central figure’s leather-bound horn, and the crowned hat at the foot of the kneeling Magus. The intricately carved coins with a cross motif inside the kneeling King’s casket, reminiscent of contemporary silver coins, are a rare reference to Eucharistic wafers (see Woods, op. cit.). Utilising the supple properties of its material, the carving of the group is exceptional. Traces of gilding and polychromy indicate that, as remarked by Woods, ‘this would have looked extremely courtly in its original condition’ (op. cit. 2018, p. 118).

According to Woods, the present group may represent ‘the earliest surviving work attributable to the workshop’ (op. cit. 2012, p. 71). Part of a larger Adoration scene within a now-lost altarpiece, or the shrine of a small house altar, Woods suggests that the group may have been complemented by a separate group of the Virgin and Child lying in bed, consistent with the Gesine current prevalent in English alabasters and Netherlandish wood altarpieces around 1400. A second argument for an early dating of the group according to Woods is the tightly waisted armour worn by the King on the left, which finds parallels in the early 15th century, for example in the Niederwildungen Altarpiece of 1403 by Conrad von Soest. Woods therefore proposes a dating of the present group as early as the second decade of the 15th century, noting that the alabaster lacks the greyish veining seen in most of the Master’s works, which may indicate that it was sourced prior to the workshop’s most prolific activity.

In his recent re-evaluation of the Rimini Master’s oeuvre, Stefan Roller has called such an early dating into question, arguing that ‘the London group corresponds so closely to the Rimini Altarpiece in terms of style that the recently formulated interval of some twenty years between them is unconvincing’ (op. cit., p. 52). He supports this argument by pointing out that the finely grained alabaster used for the group appears also in other fragments attributed to the Rimini Master, and that the group is more likely to have been accompanied by a depiction of the Virgin and Child enthroned. While a dating closer to the Rimini Altarpiece – around 1430 – is therefore perhaps more plausible for the present group, it remains exceptional in being one of only a handful of alabasters associated with the Rimini workshop that were undoubtedly carved by the same hands as the Rimini Altar. These include the figure of Saint Philip, sold in these rooms on 3 December 2014, which is now housed in the Getty Museum (inv. no. 2015.58).

Acquired by the eminent antiquarian and collector John Hunt and his wife Gertrude, the Three Magi by the Rimini Master are a testament to their former owners’ distinguished eye. Underscoring its superlative quality and art-historical importance, the group was until recently displayed in the Victoria and Albert Museum as an exemplar of medieval alabaster carving.