Der Dreikönigsaltar Außentafeln: Die Heiligen Katharina und Agnes

The outer panels of Baldung's Three Kings Altarpiece from 1506, depicting Saints Catherine and Agnes, demonstrate the standard practice of using the exterior wings of a closed altarpiece for grisaille or painted saints that would be visible during the liturgical periods when the altarpiece was closed. Catherine and Agnes were among the most popular virgin martyr saints in the German tradition—Catherine the philosophical debater, Agnes the child-martyr of supreme purity—and their pairing on the altarpiece exterior provided a devotional program complementing the interior's Adoration scene. Baldung's treatment of the outer panels reflects his Dürer formation while demonstrating the compositional ambition and individual figure characterization that already distinguished him from his contemporaries in his earliest independent works.

The paired female saints are rendered with the precise, linear technique Baldung inherited from Dürer's workshop. The early work already shows his distinctive approach to female figures—elegant but with an underlying intensity that would become more pronounced in his mature work.