Leonhard von Brixen

In the 1460s one of the busiest workshops in Brixen, the bishop's city in South Tyrol, belonged to a man the records call Lienhart Scherhauff, known today as Leonhard von Brixen. He is documented there from 1438 until 1475 or 1476, and like many Tyrolean masters he ran painting and carving under one roof, supplying frescoes and carved altars to churches across the region. Around 1463 his workshop painted the Joys of the Virgin in the cathedral cloister at Brixen. He softened the rough local Gothic into gentler, colourful storytelling, and that manner shaped South Tyrolean art until Michael Pacher, the next generation's leading Tyrolean painter, changed it.

The Belvedere's altar wing from around 1460 is painted on Swiss stone pine and keeps its original frame. Its inner face shows the Adoration of the Magi. The outer face shows Joseph chosen as Mary's husband when his rod burst into flower, and then their marriage. Leonhard's son Marx carried on the workshop until his own death in 1484, and the panel entered the imperial gallery in Vienna in 1783.