Workshop of Marx Reichlich

Around 1500, a Salzburg workshop painted a large altar of the Virgin for St Peter's, the city's old Benedictine abbey. Its head was Marx Reichlich, a painter from Brixen in South Tyrol who is thought to have trained with the Pacher family, the leading Tyrolean painters of the day. He became a citizen of Salzburg in 1494 and worked there until about 1508, with assistants sharing the brushwork, which is why these panels carry the workshop label.

The altar was later taken apart, and the Belvedere holds a group of its saints, painted on spruce. Some are double-sided wings, St Maurice backed by St Sebastian, St Thomas by Pope Sylvester. One bishop saint is still uncertain, either Erasmus or Thiemo, an early archbishop of Salzburg venerated as blessed. St Odilia and St Roch now stand alone, and the St Roch panel was once the outer face of a wing whose inner side was sawn off to make a separate picture. It was still at St Peter's Abbey in 1933 and reached the Belvedere after 1949.