PACHER, Michael

The picture shows the internal panels of the Altarpiece of the Doctors of the Church: Sts Augustine and Gregory on the central panel, Sts Jerome and Ambrose on the side panels.

The Altarpiece of the Church Fathers was created in 1483 for the Neustift Monastery near Brixen. With it Pacher reached a point at which the borders between painting and sculpture in the north were no longer clearly distinct, the altarpiece translates the subject of a carved shrine into panel painting. It thereby follows on from Rogier van der Weyden’s Deposition from the Cross (Prado, Madrid), but goes far beyond the earlier painting in its optical missing of the two genres.

The altarpiece is a depiction of the four great Fathers of the Church. On the far left, Jerome is portrayed as a cardinal with the lion from whose paw he drew the thorn. Next comes Augustine, accompanied by a child in a reference to one of the legends surrounding his life: one day by walking by the sea sunk in thought, the saint came across a child scooping up water with a spoon. In reply to his enquiry as to the sense of his activity, the child replied that it was just as pointless as Augustine’s own attempts to understand the holy essence of the Trinity with his rational mind. Third comes Pope Gregory the Great, who is seen delivering Emperor Trajan from Purgatory, and finally, on the right, the archbishop Ambrose, busy writing. The dove of Holy Ghost appears beside all four saints as a symbol of their divine inspiration.

The foreshortened floor tiles combine with the apparently projecting baldachins to confuse the eye, as real and pictorial space seem to overlap, The virtuosity of the foreshortening is not matched by the modelling of the figures, however, who acquire their volume primarily from the suggestive power of the vaulted canopy above them.

The picture shows one of the external panels of the Altarpiece of the Church Doctors.

Pacher was an Austrian painter and sculptor. His elaborate altarpieces combine painted panels with carved wooden figures. His best known work, the Saint Wolfgang Altarpiece (1481, Sankt Wolfgang, Austria), with scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary and the legend of St. Wolfgang, is one of the first Austrian works of art to show Italian Renaissance influence, particularly that of the painter Andrea Mantegna.

His efforts to realize in his works the unity of wood sculpting and painting can be observed in the painting only Church Fathers altarpiece too, as demonstrated by the architectonic ornamentation painted in an illusory way.

This reproduction shows the central panel of the Church Fathers altarpiece.

The picture shows the left wing of the Altarpiece of the Church Fathers, where Jerome is portrayed as a cardinal with the lion from whose paw he drew the thorn.

The picture shows one of the external panels of the Altarpiece of the Church Doctors.

The picture shows one of the panels of the St Lawrence Altarpiece, an early work of the artist.

The picture shows the central portion of the altarpiece of the parish church at St. Wolfgang, Austria.

In a setting of supernal radiance enraptured angels assist Divine Omnipotence and Benevolence in the courtly ceremony of welcoming human modesty, come to Paradise in the form of the Virgin Mary. Michael Pacher, a Tyrolean artist, was a master in both painting and sculpture, and combines the two techniques in some of his works. He assimilated the examples of Donatello and Mantegna while on a journey of apprenticeship in Italy, but his temperament caused him to lean more towards the northern style of sculpture, which he brought to its highest level of achievement. This altarpiece, executed between 1479 and 1481, is one of the many including scenes from the life of the Virgin produced by the great triad of German sculptors, Pacher, Stoss and Riemenschneider.

The picture shows the central section of the St Wolfgang Altarpiece.

The echo of Strasbourg art reverberated in different ways in the Alpine regions in the late fifteenth century: distinctly in Austria and in Switzerland, more discreetly in the Tyrol. From the workshop of Michael Pacher came several carved and painted altarpieces intended for Tyrolean churches like that of Gries (1471-75) or for more distant places: such are the famous altarpiece of St Wolfgang in the Salzkammergut and that of Salzburg (1484-98) destroyed in 1709.

Stylistic divergences between the painted panels and the sculptured sections of the St Wolfgang altarpiece led to the mistaken belief that Pacher was not both the painter and sculptor, as he is now generally regarded to have been. While the scenes viewed in perspective on the St Wolfgang wing panels reveal specific contacts with Italian painting, in particular the works of Jacopo Bellini and Andrea Mantegna, showing a conception of space already inspired by the Renaissance, the luxuriant Coronation of the Virgin which occupies the central panel is one of the great masterpieces of Late Gothic. Its style derives mainly from the art of the Swabian sculptor Hans Multscher.

The scene forms a complex whole of a profuse but skillfully ordered richness centred around God the Father and the kneeling Virgin. The monumental figures are enveloped in ample garments with breaks and tubular folds running through them which form broad, well-defined transversal lines between the smooth areas. The broad fleshy faces, typical of Pacher, resemble those of the painted figures which also display the same plastic density as the sculptures.

The panel was part of the altarpiece in the parish church of Salzburg. It was the last painting executed by the artist.

The painting, attributed to Michael Pacher, is possibly the only portrait composed by the artist. The sitter shown in profile was the first wife of Emperor Maximilian. She died at an early age in a hunting accident.

The panel is part of the predella of the St Lawrence Altarpiece.

The picture shows one of the panels of the St Lawrence Altarpiece.

In Austria - the natural route of Italian influence into central Europe - the Tyrolean painter Michael Pacher, influenced by Paduan and Venetian art, employed a sculptural rendering of form and a deep rendering of perspective which were monumental in style.

This is a double-transforming altarpiece (Wandelaltar) with two pairs of movable wings, making three distinctly different views for use on various different occasions - every day, Sunday, high holy days. The core of it is an elaborate piece of lindenwood sculpture, depicting the Coronation of the Virgin, which is flanked by four scenes from the life of Mary. When these painted wings are closed, two rows of paintings concerned with Christ’s public life and ministry appear - four over four. When the altarpiece is completely closed, four scenes from the life of St Wolfgang appear, flanked by the carved figures of two saints in armor - George and Florian. A carved Crucifix with Mary, John, the Archangel Michael, and the Magdalene are in the elaborate Gesprenge at the top, and are visible at all times, while the Adoration of the Magi, a relief carving, appears at the foot of the altarpiece (the Staffel).

The contract for the altarpiece was signed in 1471, and Pacher himself had to deliver the work, signed 1481, to St Wolfgang and to install it.

In this work the crowning of Mary interweaves with the rich forms of the tracery into a unified pattern of lines, and light and shade create the suggestion of unlimited depth. The life-size figures, in particular those of St Wolfgang and St George beside the closed shrine, reveal Pacher as a contemporary of Verocchio and Pollaiolo: both north and south of the Alps efforts were being made to depict the human figure moving in space and seen from different angles.

While Pacher in his capacity of carver introduces elements of this art into painting, the painter in Pacher uses his insight into carving to deal with surface.

The picture shows one of the panels of the St Wolfgang Altarpiece.

The picture shows one of the panels of the St Wolfgang Altarpiece.

The picture shows one of the panels of the St Wolfgang Altarpiece.

The picture shows one of the panels of the St Wolfgang Altarpiece.

The picture shows one of the panels of the St Wolfgang Altarpiece.

Although the St Wolfgang Altarpiece shows a purely German emotionalism, the richness of the brocades, the attention given to the structure of the bodies and the landscape, the bold foreshortenings and viewpoints and finally the complete mastery of the use of light, show the influence exerted on Pacher’s work by the school of Mantegna and of Giovanni Bellini. This new understanding of one of the essential problems of Renaissance painting, ‘namely composition in depth rendered by means of linear and aerial perspective, must have been in the nature of a revelation to the German school, which had ignored the achievement of Witz. It was Pacher, together with Rueland Frueauf the Younger of Salzburg, with their great perception of the charms of the rural setting, who paved the way for the ` landscapists ’ of the Danube school whose work influenced the still expressionistic Cranach at the beginning of the 16th century.

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The picture shows one of the panels of the St Wolfgang Altarpiece.

The Resurrection of Lazarus deviates from iconographical tradition in a number of respects. Firstly, the scene is moved into an indoor setting whose architecture reveals an astonishing mixture of contemporary forms borrowed from both the sacred and the secular spheres. Secondly, the narrative unfolds not from left to right, but from foreground to background. It is true that Lazarus’ sisters are kneeling parallel to the pictorial plane in the foreground, and that Christ is gesturing in the same direction, but Lazarus himself is seen from behind and foreshortened towards the rear. The main lines of the composition reinforce this inward movement - the vaulted canopy above the tomb, for example, the arrangement of the figures into lines resembling a guard of honour, and finally the view through the arch in the central axis out into the distant landscape. The New Testament subject is effectively obliged to take place in this demonstration of the painter’s supreme mastery of perspective.

Pacher must undoubtedly have studied the works of Mantegna, and the figure of Lazarus almost seems to anticipate the latter’s Dead Christ (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan). The principle underlying Pacher’s composition points even further into the future, however, insofar as the vanishing lines converge not upon one central object or figure, but rather allow the eye to escape, as it were, out into the open countryside.

The picture shows the panels in the open state of the altarpiece.

The picture shows the panels in the open state of the altarpiece.

The picture shows one of the panels of the St Wolfgang Altarpiece.

The picture shows one of the panels of the St Wolfgang Altarpiece.

The painting is the external pendant of the Flagellation on the altarpiece in the parish church of Salzburg.