Master of the Crispin Legend

By legend, Crispin and Crispinian were two brothers of the Roman era who made shoes in Soissons, in northern France, and they became the patron saints of shoemakers. This painter's conventional name comes from the Belvedere panel that shows them at work in their cobbler's shop, around 1520. It was once the inner side of an altarpiece wing. The wing was later sawn through its thickness into two panels, and the outer face, with Saint Christopher between the martyrs Achatius and Leonard, is also in the Belvedere.

Both panels were once owned by a headmaster in Straßwalchen, near Salzburg, and then by Albert Figdor, a Viennese banker and collector. Scholars long placed the painter in the Salzburg region. Newer research suggests he trained in Franconia and worked in Thuringia, roughly between 1513 and 1525. His style is close to Albrecht Altdorfer and the Danube School, painters known for their landscapes, and he took models from Martin Schongauer and Lucas Cranach. An altarpiece wing with the Holy Family and female saints at Princeton is also given to him.