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The picture shows the left wing of the altarpiece in the church at Niederrotweil.
St Michael weighs a soul and at the same time deals a mortal blow to a horrid devil - recalling Netherlandish grotesques and the imagery of engravers - who tries to pull down the scale on the side of doom. Unusual in sculpture, the scene shows its creator to be gifted with fantasy and a remarkable feeling for life. His predilection for faithfully detailed faces and gnarled hands and feet illustrates a typically German concern for minutiae and didactic realism. The Baptism scene takes on a vivid emotional intensity through the surface agitation provided by wind-flung draperies, twisting locks of hair, and a crowd of exulting putti among whom the small image of God the Father is almost lost.
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