Zwei spätgotische Flügelaltäre im Benediktiner-Kollegium Sarnen

The late medieval paintings in the Benedictine College in Sarnen tell many stories. Anyone familiar with medieval iconography will recognise the stories of biblical salvation and exemplary saints. For a deeper understanding, however, you have to get closer to the paintings: what stages of their fate have left their mark on the panels? And finally, by whom and for whom could they have been painted?
When Muri Abbey was dissolved in 1841, more than twenty late Gothic altarpieces came to the Benedictine College in Sarnen. Illustrated for the first time in 1929 in the Kunstdenkmälerband des Kantons Unterwalden and published in essays in the 1930s, they were largely forgotten.
The subject of this publication is the surviving parts of two stylistically closely related winged altars. As there are no written sources on their creation or their subsequent fate until they were stored in Muri Abbey, art-historical research into the paintings must begin with the paintings themselves: It is a question of traces of earlier use, typical features of the painting style and possible models. Further clues can be found in historical sources:
What happened around Muri Abbey during the Reformation? All the clues are collected in a criminalistic manner and the results bundled into theses. In this way, a colourful description of its history is finally
possible.