Circle of Friedrich Pacher

Circle of Friedrich Pacher is the label for paintings made close to this Tyrolean painter, by his workshop or by artists working in his manner, when no single hand can be named. Friedrich Pacher came from Neustift, the Augustinian abbey near Brixen in South Tyrol. He worked on several projects with Michael Pacher, the painter and carver of the St Wolfgang altarpiece, who is often said to be his brother, although no document proves it.

The Belvedere holds four narrow panels from about 1490, each about 62 centimetres tall, painted on Swiss stone pine and still in their original frames. On the inner faces stand four virgin martyrs, Barbara, Margaret, Catherine and Dorothy. The outer faces show male saints, Pantaleon, Alexius, a saint thought to be Stephen, and Cassian, the patron of the diocese of Brixen. The panels came from a patrician house in Brixen, passed through the art trade in Meran in 1909 and were bought by Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Habsburg throne, before they entered the Belvedere in 1921.