St Barbara (interior) and St Cassian (exterior)

This narrow wing was painted on both sides because it once opened and closed. On feast days, with the altarpiece open, it showed St Barbara against gold. She holds the tower her father locked her in, according to her legend, and in its doorway stands a chalice with the host, a reminder that people prayed to her for a good death with the last sacraments. On ordinary days, with the wings shut, the same panel showed a bishop in a red cope and white gloves, holding a book. That is St Cassian. His legend makes him a schoolmaster at Imola in northern Italy, stabbed to death by his own pupils with their writing styluses. Brixen, where these wings come from, honoured him as its first bishop and had him as a patron of its church from at least the 9th century.