The Angel with the Imprisoned Saint Catherine

Until 1943 this panel belonged to Viktor Blum, a Viennese physician who had emigrated to America. It was then seized and sold through the Vugesta, the Gestapo office in Vienna that disposed of property taken from Jews. Restituted in 1946, the panel later passed through a New York gallery and private collections in the United States and Bavaria. In 2001 the Belvedere bought it at auction in Cologne. Painted in the 1440s for an altar wing, it follows the legend of Catherine of Alexandria, whom the emperor Maxentius threw into prison for refusing to give up her faith, and whom angels came to tend there. She looks out between the bars of a tower window while an angel in a yellow robe holds up a long scroll. At the foot of the tower two guards in mail crouch beside a bolted door.