St. Paul

These two outstanding works represent saints Peter and Paul and likely served as predella figures at the base of a much larger carved altarpiece. The artist is identified as a close follower of Tilman Riemenschneider, whose workshop produced an exceptional group of sculptors during the first decades of the sixteenth century. The pair of bust portraits was discovered in the sacristy of the parish church in Wernfeld, near Würzburg, Germany in 1863, nearly 350 years after they were created. From there, they came into the collection of Privy Counsellor Dr. Schäfer and later of the painter Maria Schäfer in Darmstadt. The busts were given to the Reading Public Museum as gifts of Gustav Oberlaender in 1926.