The altarpiece is one of the highest forms Western Christian art ever invented. It is the great panel — painted, sculpted or wrought in gold — that stands behind the altar of a church, in the line of sight of the faithful, just where the priest raises the host. Its very name says so literally: retro tabulum, "the table behind", that is, what stands at the back of the Eucharistic table.[1][2] Born as a modest ledge set behind the altar to hold the vessels of worship, it became, from the 13th to the 16th century, the principal medium of religious painting in Europe, alongside the fresco.[3]
A medieval altarpiece is never a mere picture. It is a liturgical object before it is a work of art: it accompanies the Mass, frames the sacrifice, and unfolds the history of salvation before the eyes of the faithful. Many were movable machines, whose shutters were opened and closed to the rhythm of the liturgical seasons, reserving the full splendour of the painted or gilded images for the great feasts. In an age when most Christians could not read, these panels were, in a phrase inherited from Saint Gregory the Great, the "Bible of the illiterate": what Scripture gives to readers, the image gives to beholders.[4][5]
From the Pala d'Oro in Venice, studded with nearly two thousand precious stones, to the immense sculpted altarpieces of German Gothic, by way of Duccio's Maestà carried in procession through the streets of Siena and the Ghent Altarpiece of the Van Eyck brothers, the altarpiece concentrated the genius of an entire civilisation. It also crystallised a doctrine: that of the sacred image, defined at the Second Council of Nicaea and confirmed at Trent — the honour paid to the image "passes to its prototype".[6][7]
This article traces the birth, the forms, the function and the great centres of the medieval altarpiece, referring readers to the articles devoted to individual works — notably Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece and Van Eyck's Mystic Lamb — and to the doctrine of the sacred image.
What is an altarpiece?
Altarpiece, antependium, reredos: terms to clarify
The word altarpiece denotes, strictly speaking, any ornamental panel raised behind the altar table.[8] It comes from the medieval Latin retro tabulum (or tabula de retro), "the table behind", and first meant a simple recessed ledge on which candlesticks, crosses and reliquaries were set.[9][10] It should not be confused with two neighbouring objects.
The antependium (or altar frontal, paliotto) is the decorative panel placed in front of the altar, on the face turned towards the faithful — its name means "that which hangs before". Historically it is the ancestor of the altarpiece: figured panels adorning the lower part of the altar appear as early as the 10th century, before "passing" behind the table.[11] The reredos, a term used chiefly in England, denotes an ornamental screen or partition fixed to the wall behind the altar, rather than attached directly to the table.[12]
These distinctions were already fluid in the Middle Ages: a single object could be called retable, dossal, frontal, antependium, paliotto, tavola or tabula depending on the inventory.[13] Modern usage nevertheless reserves altarpiece for the great structure raised at the back of the altar.
Diptych, triptych, polyptych: counting the panels
Altarpieces are first classified by the number of their panels. The word polyptych comes from the Greek polus, "many", and ptukhê, "fold": it is an altarpiece composed of several compartments, fixed or hinged.[14]
| Type | Number of panels | Emblematic example |
|---|---|---|
| Diptych | 2 hinged panels | Wilton Diptych (c. 1395) |
| Triptych | 3 panels (a centre, two wings) | Stefaneschi Triptych by Giotto (c. 1320) |
| Polyptych | 4 panels or more | Van Eycks' Ghent Altarpiece (12 panels, 1432) |
| Pentaptych | 5-wing structure (centre + 2 pairs) | Veit Stoss's Kraków Altarpiece |
A winged altarpiece (in German Flügelaltar) has movable panels mounted on hinges, which fold back over a fixed central section: depending on whether it is open or closed, different representations are revealed.[15][16] This mechanism, inherited from the small ivory diptychs and triptychs of private devotion, would become one of the great features of northern European altarpieces.
The predella, the pinnacles and the shrine
A developed altarpiece is made of several parts. The predella is the lower horizontal band that serves as the base of the whole; the word comes from the Lombard predella, "bench" or "plank", and first denoted the support on which the altarpiece rested, then its lower section itself.[17] It was often painted with small narrative scenes — episodes from the life of the saint or the Passion — which extended and commented on the great panels above.
At the top and sides, Gothic architecture multiplies sculpted pinnacles, gables, niches and canopies, turning the altarpiece into a miniature church façade, gilded with fine gold. In sculpted altarpieces of the North, the central part takes the form of a shrine (in German Schrein) housing free-standing statues, framed by painted or themselves sculpted wings.
Origins: from the bare altar to the painted altarpiece
The altar of the early centuries and the antependium
In the early centuries, the Christian altar is bare: a simple table of stone or wood, often raised over the tomb of a martyr. Decoration, where it exists, is concentrated first in front of the altar, on the antependium, made of precious metals, ivory, wood or rich brocades, and most often depicting Christ in Majesty surrounded by angels, Evangelists or Apostles.[18] The relics of a saint and his image are also set out behind and above the altar dedicated to him, in a niche or on a small step called a gradine.[19]
Why the altarpiece appears around the 12th-13th century
The altarpiece proper — an image raised behind the table — develops from the 12th-13th century onwards.[20][21] Several converging developments explain it.
First, a change in the arrangement of the altar and the celebrant. When the priest celebrates facing east (ad orientem), in the same direction as the faithful, the space behind the altar is freed and calls for vertical decoration. The altarpiece fills this field of vision, just above the table, in the axis of the elevation.[22]
Second, the rise of Eucharistic devotion. The development of the theology of the Real Presence, the definition of the term transubstantiation at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and the spread of the rite of the elevation of the host focus attention on the moment when the Body of Christ is shown to the faithful.[23] The altarpiece frames this gesture: it extends in images what the altar accomplishes in mystery, and invites beholders to recognise in the elevated host the Christ whom the panels give them to contemplate.
Finally, the cult of the saints and their relics, and the multiplication of side altars in the great Gothic churches, create an immense demand for dedicated images. Every chapel wants its own altarpiece, bearing the likeness of its titular saint.
The goldsmiths' part: the Pala d'Oro in Venice
Before it was the painter's art, the altarpiece was often the art of the goldsmith and the enameller. The most famous witness to this sumptuous prehistory is the Pala d'Oro ("the golden pala") of St Mark's Basilica in Venice, the high-altar altarpiece studded with gold, silver and Byzantine enamels.
First commissioned in 976 under Doge Pietro Orseolo, enriched in 1105 under Doge Ordelafo Faliero, then reworked, it brings together 187 cloisonné enamel plaques and nearly 1,900 precious stones — emeralds, sapphires, amethysts, rubies, pearls.[24] It shows that, long before the great painted polyptychs, the altarpiece was conceived as a golden gate to heaven, unfolding behind the altar the splendour of the heavenly Jerusalem.
What is an altarpiece for?
A "Bible of the illiterate": teaching through images
The function most often invoked is pedagogical. At a time when the vast majority of the faithful cannot read, the image teaches. The classic formulation goes back to Saint Gregory the Great, who, around 599-600, rebukes Serenus, Bishop of Marseilles, for destroying the images in his church:
"What writing offers to those who read, painting offers to the uneducated who behold it; for in it even the illiterate see what they ought to follow, in it those who know no letters read." — Saint Gregory the Great, Letter to Serenus of Marseilles, c. 600[25]
This idea runs through the whole Middle Ages and justifies the effort to illustrate churches: stained glass, frescoes, illuminations and altarpieces together form a continuous visual catechesis, sometimes called the biblia pauperum, the "Bible of the poor". The altarpiece is its summit, because it occupies the holiest place: the gaze of the faithful rests upon it throughout Mass.
Honouring the prototype: the doctrine of the image
But the altarpiece is not merely a pedagogical panel: it is an object of veneration, and that presupposes a precise doctrine if idolatry is to be avoided. This doctrine was fixed by the Second Council of Nicaea (787), which, against the iconoclasts, distinguishes the adoration (latria) due to God alone from the veneration (proskynesis, dulia) paid to images: the honour paid to the image does not stop at the painted matter, it "passes to its prototype".[26] To venerate the image of Christ is to honour Christ; it is not to worship wood and gold.
This distinction is taken up almost word for word by the Council of Trent, at its twenty-fifth session (December 1563), at the moment when the Protestant Reformation rejects images:
"Images of Christ, of the Virgin Mother of God and of the other saints are to be kept and preserved, especially in churches, and due honour and veneration rendered to them: not because it is believed that there is any divinity or power in them for which they should be honoured […], but because the honour shown to them is referred to the prototypes they represent." — Council of Trent, Session XXV, decree On the Invocation of Saints and on Sacred Images, 1563[27]
The same decree recalls that, "by means of the histories of the mysteries of our Redemption, depicted by paintings or other representations, the people are instructed and strengthened in remembering the articles of faith" — in other words, it consecrates, against Protestant iconoclasm, the teaching and devotional function of the altarpiece.[28] For the complete theological foundation of this use of images, see Why does the Church use images?.
A liturgical theatre: opening and closing the wings with the seasons
The most striking feature of the medieval altarpiece, especially in the North, is its movable, theatrical character. Many great winged altarpieces were not displayed open all the time. They were kept closed most of the time — notably during Lent, the season of penance and stripping bare — and opened only on Sundays, on great feasts, or on the feast day of the altar's titular saint.[29]
A study of the early German winged altarpieces shows that the arrangement of their images was governed by the liturgical calendar: the outer faces, often painted in grisaille or with more sober scenes, corresponded to ordinary and penitential seasons; the inner faces, blazing with colour and gold, were reserved for seasons of joy, Easter first.[30] The solemn opening of the altarpiece on the morning of the feast thus became a true liturgical event: the light of the gilded panels answered the triumph celebrated at the altar. The altarpiece made itself an actor of the liturgy, not a mere backdrop.
The great centres of the medieval altarpiece
From the 13th to the 16th century, several great regional schools carry the art of the altarpiece to its summit, each with its own genius.
Italy: Duccio's Maestà and the gold ground
In Italy, the altarpiece is born of the Byzantine gold ground and the painted tavola. Its founding masterpiece is the Maestà by Duccio di Buoninsegna, painted from 1308 to 1311 for the high altar of Siena Cathedral.[31] A vast polyptych painted on both sides, in tempera and gold on wood, it showed on the front the Virgin in Majesty surrounded by a court of angels and saints, and on the back a narrative cycle of the Passion.
An anonymous Sienese chronicler of the mid-14th century reports that the completion of the Maestà was greeted, on 9 June 1311, with a solemn procession that bore it from Duccio's workshop to the cathedral, to the sound of bells, the whole city escorting it.[32] No document says better what an altarpiece was to a medieval city: not a workshop commodity, but a civic and sacred image, carried like a relic.
At the same period, Giotto, Cimabue, then Gentile da Fabriano (with his Adoration of the Magi of 1423, the summit of the International Gothic) ring the changes on the great Italian pala, in which space, volume and human emotion gradually come to animate the gold ground inherited from Byzantium.
The Roman triptych: Giotto and the Stefaneschi
The Stefaneschi Triptych, painted around 1320 by Giotto and his workshop for an altar of the old St Peter's Basilica in Rome, illustrates the papal altarpiece of the early 14th century.[33] Commissioned by Cardinal Jacopo Caetani Stefaneschi and painted on both faces, it set Christ and St Peter enthroned at the centre and unfolded on its wings the martyrdom of the apostles Peter and Paul. Today in the Vatican Pinacoteca, it shows how the altarpiece also served to assert the authority and memory of a prestigious patron.
The Flemish Primitives: Van Eyck at Ghent, Van der Weyden at Beaune
In the 15th century, the centre of gravity shifts to the Low Countries, where the new technique of oil painting allows unheard-of precision and luminous depth. The polyptych of the Mystic Lamb, completed in 1432 by Jan van Eyck (and his brother Hubert) for St Bavo's Cathedral in Ghent, is its manifesto: twelve panels, more than five metres across when open, in which the whole of creation converges upon the Lamb slain upon the altar.[34] This major work is treated in an article of its own — see Van Eyck's Mystic Lamb.
A few years later, Rogier van der Weyden painted, around 1443-1451, the great polyptych of the Last Judgment for the Hôtel-Dieu at Beaune, founded by Chancellor Nicolas Rolin.[35] More than five metres wide, this winged altarpiece stood in the hospital's ward for the sick: it offered the dying the vision of Christ the Judge and of St Michael weighing souls, strikingly joining art, charity and care for salvation. As at Isenheim, the altarpiece is an object of spiritual care as much as of beauty.
Germany and Central Europe: the sculpted altarpiece
In the Germanic world, the altarpiece becomes above all sculpted: the Schnitzaltar, an immense wooden shrine peopled with free-standing statues, most often in limewood, gilded and polychromed, closed by painted wings.
The summit of the genre is the altarpiece of St Mary's in Kraków, sculpted by Veit Stoss (Wit Stwosz) from 1477 to 1489: some thirteen metres high, it is the largest Gothic altarpiece in the world, peopled with more than two hundred figures, some nearly three metres tall, carved in lime, oak and larch.[36] This pentaptych was opened only on great feasts; at its centre, the Dormition of the Virgin surrounded by the Apostles unfolds a shattering realism.
A generation later, Tilman Riemenschneider carves for St James's Church at Rothenburg ob der Tauber the Holy Blood Altarpiece (c. 1501-1505), housing a relic of Christ's blood set in rock crystal above a striking Last Supper. Remarkably, Riemenschneider leaves his limewood without gilding or polychromy, in a simple glazed tint — a rare choice for the period, heralding a new sensitivity to pure sculpted form.[37] At the same period, in Alsace, Matthias Grünewald paints the overwhelming Isenheim Altarpiece (c. 1512-1516), the summit of the altarpiece as an image that consoles and heals.
Spain: the monumental retablo mayor
Spain pushes the logic of the altarpiece to its monumental extreme: the retablo mayor, which covers the entire back of the choir apse up to the vault. The most colossal is that of Seville Cathedral, begun around 1481-1482 by the Flemish master Pierre Dancart and completed only around 1564: some twenty metres wide by twenty-five high, forty-five gilded sculpted scenes from the life of Christ and the Virgin, all covered in a dizzying mass of gold.[38] It is, by size, the largest altarpiece in the world — a veritable golden façade of heaven raised behind the altar.
England and the Wilton Diptych
At the other end of the scale, the Wilton Diptych (c. 1395) shows the altarpiece in its intimate, portable version. A small double panel barely fifty centimetres across, painted in tempera and gold on oak, it depicts King Richard II of England presented to the Virgin and Child by his patron saints, in the extreme refinement of the International Gothic.[39] Made for a sovereign's private devotion, it recalls that the altarpiece was not only church furniture: it could also be a portable altar, a companion in prayer.
How is an altarpiece made?
Wood, gold raising and tempera
Most medieval altarpieces are painted on wooden panel: poplar in Italy, oak in the North, lime in German lands. The wood is coated with a preparation of chalk and glue (gesso), sanded to a polish. Gold leaf is then applied over a red clay ground (bole) and burnished with agate to obtain the glow of the golden backgrounds. Figures are painted in tempera — pigments bound with egg yolk — until, in the 15th century, Flemish oil painting allows new transparencies and modelling.
The contract, the workshop and the crafts
A great altarpiece is a collective enterprise, governed by a notarised contract specifying the subject, the dimensions, the quantity of fine gold and costly pigments (ultramarine from lapis lazuli), the deadlines and the price. Several crafts collaborate: the joiner builds the shrine and the wings, the sculptor carves the figures, the gilder lays the gold, the painter executes the panels and the polychromy. The master signs the work, but the workshop executes it — which explains the unevenness of hand often observed from one panel to another.
Carving limewood: polychromy and gold
In the sculpted altarpieces of the North, limewood is preferred for its soft, even grain, which allows great fineness of detail. The statues, carved in the round, are generally gilded and polychromed to set off faces, garments and backgrounds — a practice from which Riemenschneider departs by leaving the wood bare.[40] The whole, raised in the half-light of the choir and struck by the light of candles and stained glass, took on at Mass an almost living presence.
Iconographic programme: how to read an altarpiece
To read an altarpiece is to follow a theology in images organised around the altar. At the centre most often sits Christ, the Virgin and Child or the altar's titular saint; the wings and the predella unfold around them the scenes that illuminate this heart: the childhood and Passion of Christ, the life and martyrdom of the saint, the Last Judgment, the communion of saints.
This imagery is never cut off from the Eucharistic sacrifice celebrated just before it. When the Ghent Altarpiece makes all creation converge upon the slain Lamb shedding its blood into a chalice, it says visually what the Mass accomplishes sacramentally on the altar. When the predella lines up episodes of the Passion beneath a Virgin in glory, it links the mystery of the Cross to the mystery of the altar. The altarpiece is thus an exegesis of the Mass: it shows, permanently and before the eyes of the faithful, the meaning of what is done at the altar. On the spiritual meaning of the altar itself, see The symbolism of the altar.
The twilight of the medieval altarpiece
The Reformation and iconoclasm
In the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation deals a brutal blow to the art of the altarpiece. In the name of rejecting the cult of images and saints, waves of iconoclasm destroy or mutilate many altarpieces in the lands won over to the Reformation, from the Low Countries to England and Lutheran Germany. Many masterpieces disappear then, or survive only in fragments.
The Council of Trent and the Catholic reform of the image
The Catholic Church answers at the Council of Trent: its 25th session of 1563 solemnly reaffirms the legitimacy of venerating images and their teaching function, while demanding that every indecent, false or superstitious representation be banished.[41] The altarpiece does not disappear: it is transformed. The great polyptychs with wings gradually give way, in the Baroque age, to architectural altarpieces unified around a single great altar painting — another story, which continues this one.
Dismantling, museums and restorations
Many medieval altarpieces have come down to us dismembered. Dismantled during the French Revolution, sold, scattered among collections and museums, they have often lost their original setting and their liturgical function. Duccio's Maestà was sawn into pieces as early as the 18th century; the Isenheim Altarpiece, dismantled in 1793-1794, is today kept at the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar. The Ghent Altarpiece, stolen, dispersed, partly deprived of one panel still missing, has been the subject of one of the longest restorations in art history.
To see these works in a museum, behind glass and under electric light, is to grasp only half of them. The medieval altarpiece is fully true only when restored to the altar: opened on a feast-day morning, struck by candlelight, surmounting the elevation of the host. It was made not to be contemplated, but to be prayed.
To go further
- The Isenheim Altarpiece — the detailed study of Grünewald's great polyptych, the image that heals.
- Van Eyck's Mystic Lamb — the masterpiece of the Flemish Primitives at Ghent.
- The difference between icon, idol and sacred image — the doctrine on which legitimate veneration rests.
- Why does the Church use images? — Nicaea II, Trent and the theology of the image.
- The symbolism of the altar — the liturgical heart the altarpiece frames.
- The mosaics of Ravenna and biblical illuminations — other great arts of the Christian image.
Notes and References
"Retable", Encyclopédie Larousse (online) and Encyclopædia Universalis: etymology retro tabulum / tabula de retro, "back table" of the altar; first denotes a recessed ledge holding candlesticks, crosses and reliquaries.
1 9"Retable" and "Altarpiece", Encyclopædia Britannica: the altarpiece is any ornamental panel raised behind the altar table; the reredos denotes a screen fixed to the wall behind the altar and not attached to the table.
2 8 12"Retable", Encyclopédie Larousse, and L'Art en Tête ("Retable" entry): development of the form from the 13th century onwards, linked to the evolution of the liturgy; the altarpiece becomes, until the 18th century, the main type of religious painting alongside the fresco. Definition of the polyptych (Greek polus + ptukhê), the diptych, the triptych, and the predella (Lombard predella, "bench, plank").
3 10 14 17 21Saint Gregory the Great, Letter to Serenus of Marseilles (Register of Letters, Book XI), 599-600. Original Latin text: "Nam quod legentibus scriptura, hoc idiotis praestat pictura cernentibus, quia in ipsa ignorantes vident quod sequi debeant, in ipsa legunt qui litteras nesciunt." See Registrum Epistolarum, Book XI (New Advent, fathers); analysis in C. Chazelle, "Pictures, books, and the illiterate: Pope Gregory I's letters to Serenus of Marseilles", Word & Image, vol. 6, no. 2 (1990).
4 25Daniel P. DeGreve, "Retro Tablum: The Origins and Role of the Altarpiece in the Liturgy", The Institute for Sacred Architecture (sacredarchitecture.org), and Adoremus version (2013): etymology retro tablum; antependium in precious metals, ivory, wood or brocade depicting Christ in Majesty; relics and images set on a ledge (gradine) behind the altar; development of the altarpiece from the 12th century onwards out of decorated ledges; link with ad orientem celebration.
5 18 19 20 22Second Council of Nicaea (787), definition against the iconoclasts: distinction between the adoration (latria) due to God alone and the relative veneration paid to images, whose honour "passes to its prototype". See also Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§ 1159-1162 and 2131-2132.
6 26Council of Trent, Session XXV (3-4 December 1563), decree On the Invocation, Veneration and Relics of Saints, and on Sacred Images. Text from Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, Session XXV (Wikisource edition from the Waterworth translation). Original: "… the honour which is shown unto them is referred to the prototypes which they represent"; "by means of the histories of the mysteries of our Redemption, depicted by paintings or other representations, the people are instructed, and strengthened in remembering, and continually reflecting on the articles of faith."
7 27 28 41"De l'antependium au polyptyque : approche succincte d'une évolution", Province de Sienne (provincedesienne.com), 2020: the antependium, a panel placed in front of the altar ("that which hangs before"), appears as early as the 10th century; it is regarded as the formal ancestor of the altarpiece.
11"Altarpiece" and "Winged altarpiece", Wikipedia: fluidity of medieval vocabulary (the same object called retable, dossal, frontal, antependium, paliotto, tavola, tabula); definition of the movable-wing altarpiece (winged altarpiece) inherited from the ivory diptychs and triptychs of private devotion.
13 15Lynn F. Jacobs and others; synthesis from "Some Observations on the Role of Liturgy in the Early Winged Altarpiece", The Art Bulletin, vol. 64, no. 3 (1982), and "Winged altarpiece", Wikipedia: the wings of the early German altarpieces vary the image according to the liturgical calendar; the wings were usually kept closed except on Sundays and feast days, reserving the luminous inner faces for seasons of joy.
16 29 30Fourth Lateran Council (1215), canon 1 Firmiter: official use of the term transubstantiation for the Eucharistic mystery. The context of the rise of Eucharistic devotion and the rite of the elevation is documented by liturgical historiography (see notably works on the elevation of the host at the turn of the 12th-13th century).
23"Pala d'Oro", Wikipedia, and official notice of the Basilica di San Marco (Venice): high-altar altarpiece of St Mark's, gold and silver, 187 cloisonné enamel plaques and about 1,900 precious stones; first commission under Doge Pietro Orseolo (976), enrichment under Ordelafo Faliero (1105).
24"Maestà (Duccio)", Wikipedia: altarpiece painted for the high altar of Siena Cathedral, 1308-1311, tempera and gold on wood, approx. 213 × 396 cm for the main panel, painted on both sides; today at the Museo dell'Opera Metropolitana del Duomo, Siena. The Maestà was placed on the high altar on 9 June 1311; the triumphal procession is reported by an anonymous Sienese chronicler of the mid-14th century (L. A. Muratori, Rerum italicarum scriptores, XV/6, p. 90), according to the "Duccio" entry in Grove Art (Oxford Art Online).
31 32"Stefaneschi Triptych", Wikipedia, and Musei Vaticani notice: triptych painted around 1320 by Giotto and his workshop for an altar of the old St Peter's Basilica, commissioned by Cardinal Jacopo Caetani Stefaneschi, painted on both sides; tempera and gold on wood; today in the Vatican Pinacoteca.
33"Ghent Altarpiece", Wikipedia, and Smarthistory, "Jan van Eyck, The Ghent Altarpiece": polyptych of the Mystic Lamb completed in 1432 by Jan van Eyck (and Hubert van Eyck), oil on oak, approx. 375 × 520 cm open, twelve panels, St Bavo's Cathedral, Ghent.
34"Beaune Altarpiece" / The Last Judgment by Rogier van der Weyden, Wikipedia and Smarthistory: polyptych painted around 1443-1451 for the Hôtel-Dieu at Beaune founded by Nicolas Rolin, oil on oak, approx. 215 × 560 cm, intended for the ward of the sick.
35"Veit Stoss altarpiece in Kraków", Wikipedia, and St Mary's Basilica, Kraków (mariacki.com): altarpiece sculpted by Veit Stoss (Wit Stwosz) from 1477 to 1489, approx. 13 m high, more than 200 figures, lime (figures), oak (structure) and larch (backgrounds); pentaptych opened only on great feasts; at its centre, the Dormition of the Virgin.
36"Tilman Riemenschneider", Wikipedia, and notices on the Heilig-Blut-Altar at Rothenburg ob der Tauber: Holy Blood altarpiece sculpted around 1501-1505 in glazed limewood, without gilding or polychromy; relic of Christ's blood set in rock crystal above the Last Supper; St James's Church (St. Jakobskirche).
37 40"Retablo Mayor", Seville Cathedral (official notice catedraldesevilla.es): high altarpiece begun around 1481-1482 by Peter (Pieter) Dancart, completed around 1564; approx. 20 m wide by 25 m high, 45 gilded sculpted scenes; considered the largest altarpiece in the world.
38"Wilton Diptych", Wikipedia, and National Gallery (London), notice NG4451: portable diptych c. 1395-1399, tempera and gold on oak, approx. 53 × 37 cm, depicting Richard II of England presented to the Virgin and Child by his patron saints; International Gothic.
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