Flagellation of Christ

In 1709 the Gothic high altar of Salzburg's old parish church, today the Franciscan Church, had to make way for the Baroque taste. The architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach designed its replacement and kept only the carved Madonna. That Gothic altar was Michael Pacher's last commission, a winged altarpiece whose shrine alone was almost six metres high. This panel survives from it. It began as part of a wing painted on both sides, more than twice this size, and at some unknown date it was cut down and the front separated from the back. The other face, the Betrothal of the Virgin, also hangs in the Belvedere. Here Christ is bound to a marble column, his body covered in drops of blood, while two men in tall hats talk calmly behind a red lattice.