Workshop of the Master of the Friedrich Altarpiece

In 1447 Frederick III, then King of the Romans and soon to be crowned emperor, gave a large carved altarpiece to a church in Wiener Neustadt, the town south of Vienna where he often held court. The painter of its wings is known only as the Master of the Friedrich Altarpiece, a court artist working in Vienna and Wiener Neustadt between about 1440 and 1460. Since 1884 that altarpiece has stood in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna.

The Znojmo Altarpiece in the Belvedere is linked to his workshop. It was made around 1440 to 1445 for the Wenceslas Chapel beside the church of Saint Nicholas in Znojmo, a town in southern Moravia. Its centre is a carved limewood relief of the Crucifixion crowded with figures, a format that brings the scene unusually close to the viewer. Much of the original paint survives, though the gold background of the right-hand wing was renewed around 1500. The altarpiece later belonged to the Habsburg palace at Laxenburg and came to the Belvedere from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in 1953.