Left Unfinished: By Albrecht Dürer

In 1505, Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) left his hometown of Nuremberg for a two-year sojourn in Venice and other Italian cities, leaving behind several unfinished works. Among these were his Salvator Mundi, bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum in 1931, and two panels representing the hermit saints Onuphrius and John the Baptist, now in the collection of the Kunsthalle in Bremen, Germany.

All dating to around 1503–5, the three panels share the same creative moment in Dürer's career—characterized by his burgeoning interest in the paintings of Italian artists such as Jacopo de' Barbari and Giovanni Bellini—and are of an appropriate size to have formed the wings of an altarpiece with the Salvator Mundi as the central panel. The three paintings are now exhibited together for the first time, displayed along with the results of the most recent scholarly research on the relationship of the panels.