Master of the Small Passion Panels

Around 1400 an unknown painter made a series of small, almost square panels telling the Passion of Christ scene by scene. At some point the series was sawn apart. Three pieces survive, and they gave the painter his name. Christ before Caiaphas, the high priest who questioned Jesus, is in the Belvedere. A Crucifixion with Mary and John is in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne, and Christ Being Nailed to the Cross is in the Städel in Frankfurt.

Where he worked is still an open question. Vienna and Salzburg have been proposed, and so have Swabia, the Upper Rhine and Lake Constance. His painting shows the influence of Burgundian art and of Italian painting of the 14th century. The Belvedere panel, painted on limewood, once belonged to the Viennese collector Albert Figdor, entered the Kunsthistorisches Museum in 1930 and moved to the Belvedere in 1953.