Sabina von Steinbach

When after her father's death her brother Johann continued to build the cathedral tower from 1318 to 1339, Sabina is believed to have been employed as a skillful mason and sculptor in its completion.

This understanding may have derived from the interpretation of a – now lost – Latin inscription on a scroll held by the figure of St. John: GRATIA DIVINÆ PIETATIS ADESTO SAVINÆ DE PETRADVRA PERQVAM SVM FACTA FIGURA.

Von Steinbach's employment of his daughter Sabina among the Strasbourg stonemasons was not merely an irregularity perpetrated by a provincial lodge, lax in the proper guild observances.

They base their doubts on a number of discrepancies, including a re-examination of the now lost inscription on scroll held by the figure of St. John, the sculpture attributed to Sabina.

The name of Sabina von Steinbach continues to occur in studies of medieval female artists.Another art historian, Natalie Harris Bluestone, in her Double Vision: Perspectives on Gender and the Visual Arts (Associated University Presses, 1995), further explains the misunderstanding: The legend of Sabina stems from a misreading and mistranslation of an inscription on the portal, which identifies one 'Sabina' as the donor who made it possible for the sculptures to be cut from 'petra dura' or hard (read 'expensive') stone.

Guild records for the late Middle Ages repeatedly describe wives as business partners and specifically allow for them to inherit and take over their deceased husband's craft or trade.