Last Judgement Altarpiece, Wing: Sts Catherine, Hubert and Quirinus of Neuss with a Donor

Two of the saints on this wing belong to a group the Rhineland called the Four Holy Marshals of God, saints believed to stand especially close to God's throne and so to plead with particular force. Hubert, whose shrine was at Saint-Hubert in the Ardennes, is one. Quirinus is the other, and his relics were kept at Neuss, a short way down the Rhine from Cologne. The remaining two marshals, Anthony and Pope Cornelius, stand on the companion wing, so the closed altarpiece showed all four. The first saint on this panel, though, is Catherine. The museum thinks the altarpiece was possibly made for the altar of the St Catherine Brotherhood, founded in 1435 in the Cologne church of St Aposteln, and the two kneeling donors on the wings were members of it.