Der Heilige Wolfgang fordert die strenge Einhaltung der Regula Benedicti

The panel depicting Saint Wolfgang demanding strict observance of the Benedictine Rule was painted for a Bavarian monastery dedicated to Wolfgang, the tenth-century Bishop of Regensburg who reformed the monasteries of Bavaria and imposed the Rule of Saint Benedict on previously lax communities. The subject — Wolfgang confronting monks or clerics with the open Rule in his hand — was a declaration of Benedictine reform identity appropriate to a house undergoing its own reform under the influence of the Bursfeld Congregation, which was the major reform movement in German Benedictine monasticism around 1500.

The Master of the Holy Kinship the Younger renders Wolfgang in full episcopal vestments with the Rule held open as a confrontational gesture directed at the assembled community. His characteristic Cologne-influenced figure types are softened here toward the more monumental South German idiom appropriate to a Bavarian commission.