The Austro-German painter and wood carver Michael Pacher (ca. 1435-1498) amalgamated north Italian perspective and northern realism to produce a uniquely personal style of painting.

Born in a town near the Austro-Italian border, Michael Pacher is recorded in 1467 as an established master in Bruneck (Brunico), where he had a workshop for making altarpieces. He was equally adept at painting and wood carving, and his commissions often were for the German-type altar: sculptured centerpiece, carved Gothic pinnacles above, a predella below, and painted scenes on wing panels. He went to Neustift to paint frescoes in 1471 and worked in Salzburg in 1484 on an altarpiece for the Franciscan church, of which some parts have been preserved.

Pacher traveled in north Italy, studying in Padua the recent frescoes by the noted master of perspective Andrea Mantegna, whose spectacular, low-viewpoint spatial constructions were fundamental to the formation of his own style. With an...