Master of Alkmaar

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The Master of Alkmaar was a Dutch painter active around the town of Alkmaar in the early 1500s. His name comes from a series of panel paintings made for the church of Saint Lawrence in Alkmaar in 1504, which depict the Seven Works of Mercy. These works are now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. They bear the signature of Geertgen tot Sint Jans, and are painted in bright colors with figures drawn in an exaggerated, caricatured style.

Scholars have proposed several possible identities for the Master. One theory is that he is Cornelis Buys I, the brother of Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen, who was active in Alkmaar between 1490 and 1524. More recently, the name Pieter Gerritsz, a Haarlem-born painter, has been suggested; he is known to have been in Alkmaar from 1502. In 1518, Pieter Gerritsz was paid for a painting of Saint Bavo in Haarlem, and records from the Egmond Abbey and the church of Saint Lawrence in Alkmaar mention him between 1515 and 1529.

The Master of Alkmaar is generally placed in the first half of the 16th century, before the mid-1500s, but his exact identity remains a matter of scholarly debate.