Pacher, Michael (1430–1498)

Austrian painter and wood sculptor. He was one of the principal late-Gothic masters of the carved and painted altarpiece, such as that in the Church of St Wolfgang on the Abersee, Upper Austria, produced 1471–81.

He had some contact with Venice, Padua, and Mantua, where Andrea Mantegna was his contemporary, though Italian influence appears mainly in the concentration of perspective on a focal point and in some details of ornament. Pacher executed altarpieces in Gries, Neustift, Salzburg, and other places in his native region. His Coronation of the Virgin (1471–81) is in the Pinakothek, Munich.