The Wings of the Altenberg Altarpiece, ca. 1330

About the Work

The wings of the retable from Altenberg, near Wetzlar, flanked a section featuring at its centre a sculpture of the Madonna, the convent’s main patron saint. It is to her that the Three Wise Men on the left wing are kneeling in adoration. The scenes from the life of the Virgin are joined by depictions of the archangel Michael and St Elizabeth of Thuringia, whose daughter Gertrude was the abbess at Altenberg for many years. The elegant two-dimensionality of the robed figures with their slender limbs is typical of the early fourteenth-century High Gothic style.