P

PACHER, MICHAEL

(ca. 1430/1435–1498)
Born in the Puster valley in south Tyrol, the painter
and wood carver Michael Pacher was one of those rare
double talents of the late Middle Ages whose reputation
reached well beyond his native region. Contemporary
documents reveal, however, that he was primarily a
painter, like Friedrich Pacher, who is presumed to be
a relative. Thus, in spite of his astounding professional
activity as a sculp tor, most of his religious works com-
prise panel paintings and frescoes, including the vault
paintings in the old sacristy at the cloister Neustift from
about 1470. By 1467 at the latest he directed a workshop
in Bruneck.
Pacher’s importance lies in his adaptation of new
artistic forms from Italy, the Netherlands, and south-
ern Germany, which, in combination with his Alpine
piety, he transforms into a new pictorial language. A
clear understanding of Mantegna’s frescoes in Padua
and Mantua with their bold foreshortening and deep
spaces constructed in virtuoso perspective is already
apparent in four early panel paintings preserved from
an otherwise lost altar dedicated to Thomas Becket
(about 1460; Graz, Joanneum). In the altarpiece of the
church fathers from Neustift near Brixen (1482–1483;
Munich, Alte Pinakothek), he developed these picto-
rial techniques fully, setting the monumental fi gures
under diagonally arranged trompe l’oeil baldachins
(realistic fi gures) that seem to spring out of the paint-
ings. Realistic, portraitlike facial features characterize
the four small panels with the apostles and the helpers
in need that were located at Wilten after 1820 (about
1465; now divided among the Österreichische Galerie
in Vienna, the Museum Ferdinandeum in Innsbruck,
and a private collection in the United States). No trace
remains of a documented altarpiece, probably dedicated

to the Archangel Michael, made for the parish church

in Bozen between 1481 and 1484.

Of four Virgin altarpieces, all with richly sculptured

shrines, three are fragmentarily preserved. An enthroned

Madonna from 1462–1465 in the parish church of St.

Lorenz near Bruneck, probably accompanied by the

fi gures of St. Michael (Munich, Bayerisches Landes-

museum) and St. Lawrence (Innsbruck, Museum Fer-

dinandeum), has lasted through the centuries, although

without the original shrine structure. Single panels

from the wings, which were painted on both sides, are

now housed in Munich (Alte Pinakothek) and Vienna

(Österreichische Galerie). Pacher set a Coronation

of the Virgin, composed as a scene rather than a stiff

row of saints, into the center of the polyptych at Gries

near Bozen (1471–1475); polychromed and gilded

reliefs occupy the wings of the chapel-like shrine.

Pacher’s representation of the coronation before a gold

brocade curtain supported by angels is based on Hans

Multscher’s altar in Sterzing. The contract mentions

guard fi gures, which would have fl anked the shrine;

these, along with the painted wing panels, have disap-

peared. The masterpiece among Pacher’s altars is the

double triptych in the choir of the pilgrimage church

at St. Wolfgang in the Salzkammergut; the contract is

dated 1471, the execution between 1475 and 1481. With

this work Pacher set the artistic standards against which

other paintings and sculptures of the last phase of the

late Gothic are measured. Here this “genius among altar

sculptors of south Tyrol” (Paatz 1963: 44, my trans.)

developed his own artistic language in the shimmering

gold coronation set onto a stage under a fi ligreed tracery

superstructure that reaches up to the vaults, in the im-

posing fi gures of the church’s patron and St. Benedict,

in the militant knight-saints at the sides of the shrine,

and in the accompanying painted cycles with scenes