A Key Piece of the Puzzle

The Discovery of a Missing Panel of the Florian Altar Retable in Graz

Abstract

At the Archdiocesan Museum in Wrocław (Breslau before 1945), a missing element from the wing of the fifteenth century Florian Altar Retable was identified. Attributed to an anonymous Styrian master, the now deconstructed and disseminated altarpiece would once have consisted of a centerpiece with folding two-sided panels on a left and right wing, which formed the Sunday and workday sides of the altar. The panels showed scenes from Christ’s childhood on the front and the martyrdom cycle of St. Florian on the reverse, although many of the panels have now been split into individual scenes. Five paintings from the altar are held in the Universalmuseum Joanneum in Graz, Austria. Since 2019, a sixth painting has been held in an unknown private collection in France. Correspondingly, the two-sided panel in Wrocław—the only one that remains intact—depicts the circumcision of Jesus on the front and the drowning of St. Florian in the Enns River on the back.

The discovery reveals important information about the content of the altar: The complete, unsplit panel in Wrocław confirms the iconography of the wings, as well as providing important clues as to the sequence of the scenes. That the Drowning of St. Florian in the Enns is second in this sequence of four scenes from the legend of St. Florian, before the Guarding of the Body, means that the circumcision scene must have come before the Adoration of the Magi. The most probable sequence for the scenes on the wings, both open and closed, can therefore be reconstructed horizontally from left to right. The research presented here also finds that the splitting up of the wings most likely took place in Styria circa 1800, and that, some time before 1866, the complete panel discussed here was moved to St. Lazarus Church in Wrocław.