Altarpiece of St Catherine's Church, Zwickau [right fixed wing]

The right fixed wing of the Zwickau altarpiece was one of the stationary outer panels — visible when the altarpiece was closed — that in many altarpiece programmes showed grisaille imitations of sculpture or the saints most closely associated with the commissioning church. Fixed wings contrasted with the inner movable wings to create a difference between the everyday view of a closed altarpiece and the festival view of the open one. Cranach's 1518 Zwickau altarpiece was a complex multi-component work, and the right fixed wing played an important structural and iconographic role in the ensemble as a whole.

Fixed outer wings often employed a more austere visual register than the inner painted wings, sometimes rendered in grisaille to simulate stone or metal sculpture. The painting strategy for the Zwickau fixed wings — whether grisaille or full colour — is determined by the surviving physical evidence at the Katharinenkirche.