Gothic and Michael Pacher
Under the Habsburgs Vienna gained a Gothic cathedral and a university. In the Alpine valleys great winged altarpieces were carved, and Michael Pacher combined northern wood sculpture with Italian perspective in the altarpiece at St Wolfgang.
Duke Rudolf IV, called the Founder, wanted to make Vienna a capital on a par with Prague. In 1359 he had work begun on the new Gothic nave of St Stephen’s Cathedral and in 1365 founded the university. His portrait, painted around 1360, is regarded as one of the oldest independent portraits in Europe since antiquity. The cathedral’s south tower, 136 metres high, was completed in 1433 and became the symbol of the city.
Around 1400 the Soft Style, also called International Gothic, spread, with sweetly smiling Madonnas in deep, flowing cloaks. During the 15th century art became more realistic. Conrad Laib in Salzburg painted in 1449 a Crucifixion full of horsemen and onlookers, and the anonymous Schottenmeister set biblical events in front of the earliest known views of the streets of Vienna.
The most distinctive art was the winged altarpiece, in which carved and painted figures were gathered in a shrine with doors that could be opened and closed. Michael Pacher of Bruneck in Tyrol made the most famous of them for St Wolfgang in the Salzkammergut, completed in 1481. He had studied Italian painting and let the rooms in his paintings stretch deep into the picture, while the gilded figures in the shrine seem to move in a golden light.