Workshop of Michael Pacher
Holy Roman Empire · Renaissance, Northern Renaissance, Gothic
The story
Michael Pacher ran a workshop in Bruneck, a small town in the Puster valley of South Tyrol, in the late 1400s. Large carved and painted altarpieces needed many hands, and assistants there painted panels in the master's manner. When a museum labels a picture "workshop of", it means the picture came out of that shop, while Pacher's own hand in it cannot be confirmed.
The Belvedere in Vienna gives this label to a panel of Saint Barbara, painted around 1480 to 1490 on stone pine, a wood of the Alps. The saint fills the whole picture against a gold ground, which suggests it belonged to the inner side of a winged altarpiece, the side usually opened on feast days.
She holds the sword of her martyrdom in one hand. In the other she holds the tower her father built to shut her away, whose three windows stood for the Trinity in her legend.
