Konrad von Friesach

In 1458 a painter from Friesach, a small town in Carinthia, delivered an enormous linen cloth to Gurk Cathedral, roughly nine metres by nine. It was a Lenten veil, hung to hide the altar in the weeks before Easter, and Konrad filled it with 99 scenes, 50 from the Old Testament and 49 from the New. It is still at Gurk, the largest and oldest surviving Lenten cloth in Carinthia. Konrad ran a small workshop in Friesach and was active across Carinthia and Styria from about 1440 to 1460.

The cloth was ordered by Johannes Hinderkircher, a canon and later provost of Gurk, and the same patron appears in the Belvedere's panel, painted more than a decade earlier, before 1445. It shows the Virgin enthroned with the Child, with Hinderkircher kneeling small at the lower right. In the gold ground behind Mary, tiny punched dots form angels playing music. The panel still sits in its original fir frame.