Roundel with Saints Barbara and Catherine

The artist who painted this roundel, probably from Swabia in southwestern Germany, had a sure command of multiple techniques including point of brush, stylus and stick work, badger brushing and other reductive means of texturing unfired mattes as well as of silver stain. Another roundel of exactly the same size and subject is now in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich. When one scale image is overlaid with the other the outlines correspond precisely indicating that both were executed from the same design. The only difference was that the individual painters aligned the like-sized blank roundel over the same or duplicate drawing in slightly different positions. In this case the haloes of both saints were slightly trimmed, whereas in the Munich example, the halos are intact but the lower folds of their robes are abridged.