The presence of Master Bertram, a native of Minden in Westphalia, is recorded in Hamburg from 1367, by which time he is apparently the city’s leading painter and where Bertram executes a sculpturesque altarpiece, bearing the date 1379, for Saint Peter’s Church, in which it will be erected in 1383.

The complex theological program of the altarpiece’s twenty-four naturalistically painted panels depict, in turn, the Creation; the story of Adam and Eve; Cain and Abel; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the Nativity; and the Infancy of Christ.

Master Bertram, a precursor of the realistic Flemish approach of the fifteenth century, and also of the 'soft style', may have some contact with Theodoric of Prague and with French art.