Michael Pacher, mentioned frequently in civic documents as a citizen of Bruneck (now Brunico) in the Tyrol and as a maker of carved and painted altarpieces is among the first northern European painters to adapt the techniques of Italian Renaissance art successfully to his own work. (Scholars agree that Pacher must have traveled to Italy at least once, because the influence of Jacopo Bellini and, in particular, of Andrea Mantegna is obvious in his work; for example, in the use of such devices as the placement of large figures in exaggerated perspective against a low horizon line. His sculpture and the architectural elements in his paintings, however, are in the German Flamboyant Gothic style.)
Pacher creates numerous altarpieces for Tyrolean parish churches (most have remained in them).
His finest surviving work, signed and dated 1481, is a large polyptych high altar at Sankt Wolfgang am Ambersee in Austria.
All of the wings are carved on the outside and painted on the inside, with the carved “Coronation of the Virgin” as a central shrine.
