„Nikolaustafel“ mit den vier Kirchenvätern Gregor d. Große, Hieronymus, Ambrosius und Augustinus

The Master of the Schöppingen Altarpiece was a Westphalian painter of the mid-fifteenth century named for an altarpiece in the church of Schöppingen near Münster. His Nikolaustafel depicting the four Latin Church Fathers — Gregory, Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine — as a unified group panel was a devotional format particularly appropriate to cathedral and collegiate church settings where the four Doctors' writings formed the intellectual basis of the liturgy. The subject was a standard choice for choir screens and sacristy altarpieces in German collegiate churches.

The master arranges the four Church Fathers in a paired composition — two facing left, two facing right in gentle profile turns — each identified by his distinctive attribute and vestments. His Westphalian figure style combines soft-faced German types with the more structured drapery conventions of the Cologne-influenced tradition that dominated the lower Rhine region.