Master of the Saint Andrew Altarpiece

In 1885 an altarpiece of the apostle Andrew was moved from the Neukloster church in Wiener Neustadt, a town south of Vienna, to St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. Painted before 1440, with Andrew on its central panel, it gave a name to a painter nobody has been able to identify, the Master of the Saint Andrew Altarpiece. He worked in Vienna between roughly 1430 and 1450.

Scholars see in his work the moment when the graceful, flowing Soft Style of around 1400 grew harder and more solid. His figures have weightier bodies and more lifelike gestures, and he took care over landscape and background detail. His manner is close to that of another anonymous Viennese painter, the Master of the Saint Lambrecht Votive Panel.

The Belvedere holds two panels from a Passion altarpiece attributed to him, The Arrest of Christ and The Mocking of Christ, painted around 1450 on fir. They also came from the Neukloster in Wiener Neustadt and took a long way round. The Hungarian collector Miklós Jankovich took them to Budapest, they passed through the Hungarian national collections, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna acquired them in 1933, and in 1953 they moved to the Belvedere.