Epitaph des Jodok Hauser

Hans Siebenbürger was a Nuremberg painter active in the mid-fifteenth century whose Epitaph of Jodok Hauser belongs to the Nuremberg tradition of memorial paintings for wealthy burgher patrons. Epitaph panels — devotional images commissioned to hang in a church as permanent memorials combining the sacred image with the kneeling portrait of the deceased — were a significant form of Nuremberg patronage throughout the fifteenth century. Jodok Hauser was likely a Nuremberg merchant or civic official, and his memorial panel placed him in a devotional relationship with the saints depicted above his kneeling figure for the perpetual benefit of his soul.

The epitaph format combines the devotional altarpiece with the memorial portrait: a sacred image in the upper register, the kneeling deceased in the lower. Siebenbürger employs the Nuremberg tempera-oil technique of the mid-fifteenth century, the memorial portrait rendered with the individualised realism appropriate to a commemorative function. The sacred image above follows the standard Nuremberg workshop convention of the period.