Hl. Hieronymus Außenseite: Marter der Zehntausend (Werkstatt, Hans Siebenbürger)

Hans Pleydenwurff's Saint Jerome with the Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand on the exterior belongs to this Nuremberg painter's production of altarpieces where the exterior panels, visible when the altarpiece was closed, depicted subjects appropriate for everyday devotion. The Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand, where a Roman emperor had ten thousand Christian soldiers crucified and martyred on Mount Ararat, was a popular subject in German devotional painting that combined military context with Christian witness. Pleydenwurff's workshop treatment demonstrates the collaborative production methods of fifteenth-century Nuremberg altarpiece painting.

The double-sided panel shows Pleydenwurff's characteristic combination of Netherlandish-influenced realism in the portrait-like saint and more dramatic narrative treatment on the reverse, both executed with careful attention to surface textures and spatial depth.