supernaut

Either Gemäldegalerie rotate some of their collection (the smaller works it seems) or I magically have seen this work before on their walls. Or it’s from the room that’s currently holding Jean Fouquet’s Das Diptychon von Melun, ’cos one of my faves was definitely missing. Hans Springinklee, a student of Albrecht Dürer (notably worked on Durer’s Triumphal Arch, Ehrenpforte Maximilians I.), more known for woodcuts and illustrations, but occasionally he painted, and here’s his Allegorie auf die Binde- und Lösegewalt des Papsttums, (Allegory on the Binding and Loosening of the Papacy), a riot of saints and martyrs floating on clouds, waving palm fronds (Saint Christóforos is up the back; you could play Name that Saint all day), St. Peter offering the pope a chalice full of crowned black snakes, and St. Michael busy heaving a sword and weighing souls on his scales.