Heller Altarpiece

The Heller Altarpiece is an oil on panel triptych begun by Albrecht Dürer, who painted its interior, and completed by Matthias Grünewald, who painted its exterior, between 1507 and 1509. Its central panel depicted the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin, showing Mary crowned by the Holy Trinity amid cherubim while the apostles look on from below, flanked by side panels showing the martyrdom of Saint James and of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, with the work's donors shown kneeling in prayer. It was commissioned by the Frankfurt merchant Jakob Heller, whose wife Katharina von Melem is also depicted as a donor, for the city's Dominican church. Dürer's original central panel was destroyed in a fire in Munich in 1729; a 1615 copy of it by Jobst Harrich now hangs in the Städel museum in Frankfurt, while Grünewald's exterior side panels survive in the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe.