Fragment of an altarpiece depicting a female saint

As the power of the Holy Roman Emperor waned over the course of the fourteenth century, individual principalities thrived throughout what is today considered Germany. One of these regions was Swabia, where one of the most powerful early German schools of painting emerged in the fifteenth century. Swabia included and abutted areas of the Upper Rhine and also Bavaria in present-day Germany’s south, around Augsburg. Two important Catholic assemblies, the Councils of Constance and Basel, occurred in this region during the first half of the century, which helped to stimulate artistic production. The small panel painting proposed for acquisition is likely a partial fragment of an altar wing. The image would have originally extended further at its lower edge to show the female saint’s feet and the ground upon which she stands. Given its diminutive size and simplicity of subject, it is likely this panel composed the exterior of a wing of a domestic altarpiece (a Hausaltärchen), which would have been used for private devotion. The female saint, identified by her gilded halo, wears a red mantle over a blue dress. She holds a book but no other attribute, making her identity hard to determine. The naturalism with which she is depicted was typical of the realism practiced at the time and for which the Swabia region was known (Netherlandish painting had heavily influenced German painting from the middle of the fifteenth century). The gilded background features punchwork in a floral motif, a hallmark of fifteenth century devotional painting from the principalities of Germany. The attribution to a Swabian artist and the panel’s date were assigned by Dr. Fritz Koreny, an expert on German and Netherlandish late fifteenth-century drawings who was Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Albertina until 2000 and a professor of art history at the University of Vienna.