Master of Uttenheim
Holy Roman Empire · Late Gothic
The story
Nobody knows this painter's name. Art historians call him the Master of Uttenheim after a panel from the parish church of Uttenheim, a village in the Puster Valley in South Tyrol, and that panel now hangs in the Belvedere in Vienna. It shows Mary enthroned between Saint Margaret and Saint Barbara, and on its back is a Man of Sorrows set among ornamental tendrils.
He worked from around 1460 to 1480, most likely in Brixen, the bishop's town of the region. Two altarpieces for Neustift Abbey, the Augustinian monastery just outside Brixen, are attributed to him. His career overlapped with that of Michael Pacher, the leading Tyrolean painter and carver of the day, and scholars suspect the two worked together, though how remains unclear. The Belvedere also holds his Christ on the Mount of Olives, painted on a panel of Swiss stone pine around 1475.
