Beschneidungsaltar: Die hll. Hieronymus, Petrus und Joseph

Rendered in tempera on wood, the painting employs a gilded background that creates a luminous, otherworldly atmosphere.

Rendered in tempera on wood, the painting employs a gilded background that creates a luminous, otherworldly atmosphere. The patterned floor tiles and richly detailed garments reveal the artist’s attention to decorative surface treatment, while the restrained palette of muted earth tones contrasts with the bright gold leaf. Figures are rendered with linear precision, characteristic of the late Gothic style of the early 16th century.

The panel was created in the early 1500s, a period when the Master of the Holy Kinship the Elder was active in southern Germany. It entered the Alte Pinakothek’s holdings in the early 20th century as part of a larger acquisition of Bavarian religious art, and has remained in the museum’s collection since, serving as a representative example of devotional panel painting.

The composition reflects the devotional practices of the time, where altarpieces often depicted saints associated with the sacraments. The inclusion of Saint Jerome, a scholar of the Bible, alongside Peter, the apostolic founder, and Joseph, the foster father of Christ, emphasizes the continuity of ecclesiastical authority and the sanctity of baptismal rites within the Christian tradition.