Saints Christopher and James the Greater (interior); The Annunciation (exterior): left wing of the Pretschlaipfer Triptych

In 1495 a Servite friar named Hermann Künig wrote a rhymed guide for German pilgrims walking to Santiago de Compostela, the shrine of Saint James in Spain, and it soon went to print. On this wing, painted around 1480, James is dressed for that road. A broad pilgrim's hat hangs at his back, and he carries a staff and a scallop shell, the badge pilgrims brought home from Galicia. Beside him the giant Christopher wades through a stream, leaning on a trunk as thick as a sapling, with the Christ Child on his shoulders. The Belvedere catalogues the panel as workshop of the Master of Grossgmain. When the altarpiece was closed, this wing showed an Annunciation, now badly worn. In its corner a red shield carries crossed keys, the arms of the Berchtesgaden provostry, whose Salzburg house chapel the altarpiece served.