MASTER of the Pfullendorf Altar
(active c. 1500)

Biography

German painter. He is named after a double-winged altarpiece (c. 1500), supposedly from the parish church at Pfullendorf, of which eight panels of the Life of the Virgin and Prophets have survived. In reconstruction the cycle presents two rows, one above the other, each with four panels depicting the Life of the Virgin, which together formed the second view of the altarpiece. When closed, it showed four scenes of the Passion (now almost completely destroyed), on the reverse sides of the outer wings. The shrine that belonged to the third view is lost, but there is evidence that it contained carved relief figures of St Ottilie and a second female saint. The eight surviving half-length pictures of Prophets (Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie) may have been next to the scenes from the Life of the Virgin, as the figures are positioned outside the picture axis of the painted scenes, or may have formed the front and reverse of upper side extensions that covered the higher central shrine.



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