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READING, Pa. — The Reading Public Museum has had a pair of 16th-century stained glass panels in its collection for nearly 90 years, but little was known about their history. That is, until now.

The panels were on display at the museum until 2012, when they were removed for renovations to the Arms and Armor Gallery. At that time, they were described as "sixteenth century Baumgartner panels from Nuremberg" with the artist unknown and the patron identified only by his last name, according to the museum.

Fast forward a decade, to early 2022, when the museum was preparing to reintroduce the panels. It took on the task of trying to learn more about them.

The museum already knew that before it purchased the panels in 1933, they were owned by American financier Thomas Fortune Ryan, sold to him by prominent New York art dealers, the Duveen Brothers. Before that, they were part of Rodolphe Kann's collection in Paris.

As the museum moved forward with its research, it learned that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York had in its collection a pair of similar panels, attributed to Bavarian court painter Hans Wertinger and inscribed with the Baumgartner family name and Kann provenance.

The museum then turned to Catharine Ingersoll, an associate professor of art history at Virginia Military Institute, whose research focuses on southern German visual and material culture in the late medieval and Renaissance periods.

Ingersoll told the museum that its panels were likely made by Hans Wertinger alone or with his workshop in Landshut, Germany, and completed in 1524. She said they were commissioned by Peter Baumgartner and his wife, Anna von Trenbach, for their family burial chapel in the parish church in Mining, Austria.

The museum said it learned its panels would have been two of at least seven total stained and painted windows adorning the choir and family chapel in the Mining parish church. Others are now part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection in New York (St. John the Baptist standing behind donor Hanns Baumgartner and his family and St. George standing behind kneeling donor Jorig Baumgartner and his family) and the Bavarian National Museum's collection in Munich.

The first panel, comprising the left side of the pairing, depicts Dr. Peter Baumgartner as patron, kneeling in pious devotion at the foot of the cross at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Below the image is a hand-lettered inscription reading "Petter Baumgarter Beder Recht Doctor (Peter Baumgartner doctor of both laws)," and the date "1524."

Baumgartner was born circa 1450 and became a professor of canonical law and a doctor of civil law. One of his most notable contributions is his authorship of the 1516 Reinheitsgebot, the Bavarian purity law for beer.

Baumgartner married Anna von Trenbach in 1496. Her likeness is portrayed in the second panel, kneeling before the Virgin and Christ Child with the inscription "Anna geboren von Trenbach sei gemahel (Anna née von Trenbach his wife)." The young men pictured behind Peter and Anna remain unidentified, but are speculated to be either their biological sons or Baumgartner's nephews (Hanns and Jorig Baumgartner), who inherited their uncle's estate upon his death a year after the windows were created.

"The Reading Public Museum is thrilled to present these incredible windows along with their full story for the first time, just shy of 500 years after they were created," said Ashley J. Houston, the museum's collections manager and registrar, who led the research effort. "The panels have always been admired at The Museum for their craftsmanship, quality, and detail. Our newly-found knowledge allows us to place the windows in the larger context of history, Renaissance art patronage, and Wertinger's oeuvre, which will only serve to enrich our visitor's understanding and appreciation of them here at RPM."

The panels are now on display in custom-built light boxes in the museum's second-floor European Gallery. They are accompanied by text detailing their newly discovered history and attribution.

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By HILLEL ITALIE - AP National Writer

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