Winged Altarpiece

A husband and wife paid for this altarpiece around 1530 and had themselves painted into it, kneeling on the wings with Saint George and Saint Catherine beside them. Their names were lost long ago. In the centre sit the Virgin and Child with Joseph.

Joos van Cleve kept the old shape of the Netherlandish triptych, a central panel between two narrow wings, and it is the kind of object a family placed in a chapel or a private room. What he changed was the surroundings. The Kunsthistorisches Museum points to the varied architecture he builds around the figures and to colour that shifts in iridescent tones. The triptych has been in the imperial collections in Vienna since at least 1619.