Wings of an Altarpiece from the Private Chapel of the Stalburg in Frankfurt, 1504

About the Work

In 1504 a Frankfurt painter executed an ensemble unique for its time to grace the domestic chapel of the Stalburg family. Claus Stalburg – known as ‘the Rich’ – and his wife had themselves depicted full-length and almost life-size on the inner sides of two wings originally flanking a central panel of the Crucifixion (destroyed by fire in 1813). The traditional medieval donor’s portrait type has here been adopted for the prestige purposes of a leading patrician family; with the full-length format, it was a pictorial convention more usually reserved for the aristocracy.