Entombment of Christ

Provost Peter Maurer of the Augustinian abbey of Sankt Florian, near Linz, endowed a new altar to Saint Sebastian in 1508, and it took Altdorfer's workshop about a decade to paint its many panels. This one comes from the base of the altar, the predella, as does the Resurrection hanging beside it. Christ's body is being lowered into a stone tomb inside a cave, but the painter plays with scale. Mary and Saint John stand huge in the foreground, while the men handling the body are small figures further back, and through the mouth of the cave a whole valley opens toward distant mountains. Most of the altar is still at Sankt Florian. The Vienna museum acquired this panel from the abbey in 1923, and its partner a few years later.