Begräbnis der heiligen Ursula und ihrer Gefährtinnen und Gefährten

The Burial of Saint Ursula and Her Companions — showing the mass interment of the British princess and her eleven thousand virgins martyred by Attila the Hun at Cologne — was among the most narratively demanding subjects in the Cologne painter's repertoire. The legend claimed that the martyrdom occurred on the banks of the Rhine in 383 AD, transforming Cologne into a city built on martyrs' bones. The Master of the Cologne Legend of Saint Ursula returned to this scene across multiple panels in his cycle, adjusting the composition to accommodate different moments in the burial narrative.

The burial scene requires managing a crowd of grieving figures around multiple bodies — the compositional challenge of the Lamentation multiplied many times over. The master organises the scene through horizontal ground lines and overlapping figures who build depth through tonal recession rather than strict perspective.