Saints Christina and Ottilia

This panel, which shows Saints Christina and Ottilia, was originally the outer face of one of the shutters of a multi-panelled altarpiece made by Cranach in 1506, one of his first and most important commissions for the electors of Saxony. The painting has since been separated from the inner face of the shutter.Little is known about the life of Saint Christina. She was an early Christian virgin martyr, born in the third century. Her father intended her to be a pagan priestess, and surrounded her with gold statues of pagan idols – she destroyed them after being visited by an angel who told her to embrace Christianity. When her father discovered her conversion to Christianity, he had Christina tortured: she was grilled by fire, tortured on a wheel and shot by arrows. God thwarted all of these attempts to harm her, but she was eventually beheaded. Cranach depicts her standing on the stone to which she was tied before being thrown in a river (she miraculously floated).Saint Ottilia was born into a noble family, but her father discarded her for being a blind girl; she was taken away and raised by peasants. When she was taken to a monastery aged 12 and baptised into the Christian faith, her eyesight was restored. On discovering this, her brother brought her back to the family home, so enraging their father that he accidentally killed the boy. Ottilia miraculously revived him and then left the family once again. When her father later fell ill, she returned to him and nursed him. She is the patron saint of good eyesight and the region of Alsace. Cranach depicts her in the black robes of a Benedictine abbess; she was abbess of the convent of Hohenburg and also founded a number of monasteries. A pair of eyeballs rests on the book she holds: a representation of her God-given sight.The altarpiece was almost certainly made for the chapel of the electors in the castle at Wittenberg. Electors Friedrich the Wise and, possibly, Johann the Steadfast are depicted in the central panel of the altarpiece as witnesses to the martyrdom of Saint Catherine. The inner face of each shutter depicts a group of three female saints.