Kreuzigungsaltar, linker Flügel: Der bußfertige Schächer und der hl. Lazarus

The Crucifixion Altarpiece left wing by Hans Burgkmair the Elder depicts the penitent thief and Saint Lazarus, figures paired by their shared association with repentance, resurrection hope, and divine mercy. Burgkmair was the leading painter in Augsburg in the early 16th century, a contemporary and rival of Dürer who had traveled to Italy and absorbed Venetian color while maintaining the precision of German panel technique. The Kreuzigungsaltar program was a major Augsburg commission, and placing the penitent thief alongside Lazarus — whose own resurrection prefigured Christ's — creates a typological program of salvation that would have been immediately legible to the altarpiece's intended audience.

Burgkmair's Venetian training inflects his palette with warmer, more saturated color than his northern German contemporaries. The penitent thief is rendered with attention to physical suffering — a bound figure expressing repentance through pose — while Lazarus, in contrast, appears in the dignified stillness of the resurrected or the sanctified.