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Master of 1527

possibly Aertgen Claesz. van Leyden, 1498–1564, Leiden

As early as 1928 Paul Wescher distinguished two different hands among the numerous Dutch draughtsmen active in the 16th century as successors to Lucas van Leyden. He gave one of these anonymous artists the notname Master of 1527 based on the year present on one of his drawings. He attributed a second group of works to the so-called Master of the Miracles of the Apostles. Further research results were presented in 1939, when I. Q. van Regteren Altena associated the groups of works identified by Wescher with a large number of drawings and paintings of the Leiden School and put these works together to form a complete oeuvre which he attributed to Aertgen Claesz. van Leyden. The thesis advanced by van Regteren Altena and later by J. Bruyn now appears questionable, however, in view of the stylistic heterogeneity and diversity of the individual works in what is called the Aertgen Group. On the contrary, it can be assumed that a larger number of anonymous artistic figures were involved who worked in a very expressive and idiosyncratic mannerist idiom.