Prague Altarpiece of Lucas Cranach the Elder

At that time, the altarpiece was evidently moved to a different place and the rear side of the wings, decorated with plant ornaments and marbling, was painted over with a scene of the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary.

The picture shows kneeling St Christina without her usual attribute (a millstone most probably lay at her feet), however she is identified by the text on the sheet of paper in her hands.

[10] K. Chamonikola concludes that Emperor Maximilian I had the retable painted to represent the House of Habsburg, whose members were portrayed in the form of female saints in the manner of the ‘sacred identification portrait’.

[11] The commission for this costly and demanding work was, in any case, connected in some way with the royal family and was, with its timing, linked to the accession of Louis II of Hungary and his wife Mary of Habsburg to the Bohemian throne.

[12] The altarpiece was designed for the mansioners’ Choir of the Virgin Mary at the end of the cathedral, a place originally intended by Charles IV to be the site where the royal tomb would be built.

[13] The fire destroyed the roof and most of the interior furnishings, including the high altar, however it left several chapels in ambulatory of the cathedral untouched.

The altarpiece might have been moved from the Chapel of the Virgin Mary and its panels divided up into a central part and two hinged wings during the reconstruction of the cathedral and in connection with the building of the Habsburg mausoleum.

At the coronation of Matthias of Austria in 1611, the altarpiece is recorded in an engraving as being in the Marian Choir, the place where it was originally meant to be situated.

Shortly before his coronation, Frederick V of the Palatinate ordered St Vitus Cathedral to be cleared of the Catholic paintings and sculptures to which Calvinists objected.

Several of the most valuable works, including Cranach’s altarpiece, were originally authorised by Frederick V of the Palatinate to be moved to the Sacristy and Chapel of St Sigismund.

On 22 December the court preacher Abraham Scultetus gave a sermon in St Vitus Cathedral ‘On idolatrous images’.

[15] Under Scultetus’s guidance and aided by the Moravian Church and Unity of the Brethren professing allegiance to Calvinism, a radical purge ensued during which Cranach's altarpiece also fell victim.

According to Jakob Hüebl, the construction scribe of Prague Castle, on 27 December and most probably at the command of the king, the priest Friedrich Salmuth was sent to St Vitus Cathedral along with a carpenter who, at least, cut out the panels with the female saints.