The European paintings department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has just acquired a major German Renaissance painting by Hans Schaufelein (ca. 1482-ca. 1589), a pupil of Albrecht Dürer whose works are seldom encountered outside of Germany. A double-sided altarpiece panel of ca. 1510 depicting TheDeath of the Virgin backed with The Carrying of the Cross, once owned by the great 19th-century British champion of Gothic architecture Augustus Pugin (and subsequently sold at Christie’s London for a mere 10,000 guineas in 1970), it was bought by New York dealer Otto Naumann at Sotheby’s London in July for £2,279,250 ($4,382,084) and re-sold to the Met for an “undisclosed but very reasonable price.” The Met had previously owned only several fine woodcuts and two beautiful drawings by the artist. The picture was briefly on view as an "anonymous loan" in the museum German Renaissance gallery, but is now being cleaned.
