Master of Grossgmain

In 1499 a painter finished four large panels on the life of the Virgin for the parish church of Grossgmain, a village just southwest of Salzburg. They show the young Jesus teaching in the Temple, Pentecost, the Death of the Virgin and the Presentation in the Temple, and they give the painter his only name, the Master of Grossgmain.

He worked in Salzburg from about 1480 to 1500, close to Rueland Frueauf the Elder, the leading painter of Salzburg and Passau at the time, and possibly in his workshop. His colour and technique also carry Netherlandish habits, the careful rendering of fabrics, jewels and tiny inscriptions on garment hems.

The Belvedere holds three of his panels. A Death of the Virgin from about 1480 was the centre of a triptych for the chapel of the Berchtesgaden canons' house in Salzburg, and the coat of arms of its donor, Provost Erasmus Pretschlaipfer, is painted on the outside of the right wing. Two panels from 1498 show the Church Fathers Augustine and Ambrose. Ambrose, as Bishop of Milan, sits reading a large book on a chest-bench, with more books stored inside it.