Witwen and Eliut with Emira and Maternus

The Master of Kirchheim's Witwen and Eliut with Emira and Maternus, now in the Bavarian State Painting Collections, is another panel from the Kirchheim genealogical altarpiece program depicting figures from the Holy Kinship tradition who appear in apocryphal elaborations of the sacred family tree. Witwen, Eliut, Emira, and Maternus are obscure figures whose names appear in the expanded genealogical traditions of Saint Anne's family that flourished in German and Netherlandish devotional literature around 1500. The systematic depiction of these lesser-known kinship figures alongside the major biblical characters reflects the comprehensive theological ambition of the Kirchheim altarpiece program, which aimed to provide a complete visual genealogy of the sacred family. Such programs reflect the distinctive German and Netherlandish piety of the period, in which the domestic and familial aspects of sacred history were given unusual emphasis.

The Master of Kirchheim renders this unusual genealogical group with the formal, hierarchical arrangement characteristic of his altarpiece programs, giving each figure the distinctive costume and attribute that identifies their role within the sacred kinship. The late-Gothic German style preserves the formal dignity of the figures while the compositional grouping suggests their familial relationships through proximity and gesture.