Sermon of Saint Albertus Magnus

Friedrich Walther's Sermon of Saint Albertus Magnus, dated around 1430 and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, depicts the great Dominican philosopher and theologian Albert the Great preaching — a subject that celebrated Dominican intellectual culture and was appropriate for a Dominican institutional commission. Albertus Magnus was the teacher of Thomas Aquinas, the most important Christian philosopher of the medieval period, and his canonization process was ongoing in the early fifteenth century. Walther was a south German or Swiss painter working in the International Gothic tradition, and the subject would have appealed to Dominican patrons celebrating their order's contributions to Christian learning.

Walther renders the preaching scene with Albertus at a pulpit or elevated position, an audience of figures below. The gold ground frames the scene in the devotional convention, while the figures show the soft rounded modeling of the south German Gothic tradition. Varied expressions among the listeners demonstrate his narrative awareness.