Retable in the context of "Early Netherlandish painting"

A winged altarpiece (also folding altar) or winged retable is a special form of altarpiece (reredos, occasionally retable), common in Northern and Central Europe, in which the central image, either a painting or relief sculpture (or some combination of the two) can be hidden by hinged wings. It is called a triptych if there are two wings, a pentaptych (but this is rarely used in English) if there are four, or a polyptych if there are four or more. The technical terms are derived from Ancient Greek: τρίς: trís or "triple"; πέντε: pénte or "five"; πολύς: polýs or "many"; and πτυχή: ptychē or "fold, layer".

There are often images on both the insides and outsides of the wings, enabling the altarpiece to display completely different views when open and closed. It was usually the custom to keep the wings closed except on Sundays or feast days, although very often the sacristan would open them for tourists at any time for a modest tip. Small winged paintings, usually triptychs, were also owned by the wealthy for private devotions, and services in the house; they had the advantage that the open view was fairly well protected when covered up during travel.

A retablo is a devotional painting, especially a small popular or folk art one using iconography derived from traditional Catholic church art. More generally retablo is also the Spanish term for a retable or reredos above an altar, whether a large altarpiece painting or an elaborate wooden structure with sculptures. Typically this includes painting, sculpture, or a combination of the two, and an elaborate framework enclosing it. The Latin etymology of the Spanish word means "board behind". Aside from being found behind the altar, "similar ornamental structures are built and carved over facades and doorways", called overdoors.

Small retablos are devotional or votive paintings, often on rectangular sheets of tin that illustrate holy images such as Christ, the Virgin Mother, or one of the hundreds of saints. Many are ex-votos ("from a vow") that depict the story that led to their commission, usually dangerous or threatening events that occurred, and which the person survived, thanks to the intercession of a sacred person – God, Mary, or a saint. They are made as a way of thanking the sacred person for protection in precarious situations, such as surviving an illness or earthquake. This class of ex-votos often shows the protected humans in a dangerous situation, and the sacred person who protected them, usually with an inscribed explanation of the events, with the date and location. Both devotional and especially ex-voto retablos may be deposited at a shrine as a votive offering, or kept at home.

Michael Wolgemut (formerly spelt Wohlgemuth; 1434 – 30 November 1519) was a German painter and printmaker, who ran a workshop in Nuremberg. He is best known as having taught the young Albrecht Dürer.

The importance of Wolgemut as an artist rests not only on his own individual works, but also on the fact that he was the head of a large workshop, in which many different branches of the fine arts were carried on by a great number of pupil-assistants, including Albrecht Dürer, who completed an apprenticeship with him between 1486 and 1489. In his atelier large altar-pieces and other sacred paintings were executed, and also elaborate carved painted wood retables, consisting of crowded subjects in high relief, richly decorated with gold and colour.

Jan Van Wavere (? – 1521/22) was an influential Brabantine polychromer of late gothic Brabantine altarpieces (also called retables), mainly produced in the Brabantine towns of Antwerp, Brussels and Mechelen. During the15th–16th century, over 1000 altarpieces were traded and exported to many European countries. More than 300 complete examples of Brabantine altarpieces can still be found in museums and churches all over Europe, from the Baltic countries (e.g. St. Nicholas' Church, Tallinn) down to Spain.

Västerås Cathedral (Swedish: Västerås domkyrka) is the seat of the Diocese of Västerås in the Province of Västmanland, Sweden. The church building is a five-aisled hall church, with copper-covered roof and a single west tower with side extensions and an obelisk-shaped, copper-clad spire. It is built in the Scandinavian Brick Gothic style.