Master of the Winkler Epitaph
Holy Roman Empire · Late Gothic
The story
Florian Winkler was a mercenary captain in the service of Emperor Frederick III. He died in 1477 in Wiener Neustadt, the town south of Vienna where Frederick often held court, and left much of his fortune to its monasteries. The painted memorial panel made for him now gives an anonymous painter his name, and it is kept in the Museum St. Peter an der Sperr in Wiener Neustadt.
The Master of the Winkler Epitaph worked in Vienna and Wiener Neustadt from about 1470 to 1490 and ran a workshop of his own. His painting shows the influence of the Master of the Schotten Altarpiece, the leading Viennese painter around 1470. One of his altarpieces, from about 1485, was later cut into separate panels so that they could be sold one by one.
The Belvedere's panel, from about 1480 to 1490, shows three beheaded saints, Felix, Regula and Exuperantius, martyrs of Zurich who in legend carried their own heads. It came to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in 1937 from Baroness Dobner von Dobenau in Baden.
