Master Johannes

This name belongs to a real person, which is rare for a glass painter around 1400. In 1406 the Cistercian abbey of Rein, near Graz in Styria, began a new Chapel of the Holy Cross under its abbot Angelus Manse. The record of the costs names the craftsmen, among them a painter Johannes and a glass painter Johannes, quite possibly the same man. The chapel was consecrated in 1409.

His five choir windows told the life of Mary and of Christ in about 30 glass panels, from the childhood to the Passion, each scene framed by tall painted architecture like a city of towers. When the abbey was rebuilt in the Baroque style in the 18th century, the windows were walled up and left in place. In 1926 the abbey sold the surviving glass to a dealer in Graz, and the panels were scattered. Most went to the Hessian State Museum in Darmstadt, and a few to the MAK, Vienna's museum of applied arts, which lends this Passion window to the Belvedere. Rein itself keeps only copies, installed in the chapel in 1983.