Prince Tassilo Rides to Hunting

The Master of the Polling Panels's Prince Tassilo Rides to Hunting, painted around 1444 and now in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, depicts the legendary Bavarian duke Tassilo III on a hunting expedition — an episode drawn from the hagiographic tradition connecting this historical eighth-century ruler to the founding of the Bavarian monastery at Polling. Duke Tassilo III was a significant historical figure who had a complex relationship with Charlemagne and was associated with several monastic foundations in Bavaria. The hunting scene gives the Polling altarpiece program an unusually narrative, secular quality — a depiction of the patron saint of the monastery rather than a biblical episode.

Tempera on panel. The mounted figure of Tassilo with his hunting companions and dogs occupies a landscape setting, one of the relatively rare instances of a significant landscape scene in German panel painting of this period. The horses are rendered with attention to movement and anatomy.