In the age of Dürer, the sixteenth century, the spaces of contested boundaries significantly shifted. Whereas fifteenth-century German artists generally interrelated with artistic currents from the Netherlands, now the connections with Italy strengthened and German artists came into closer contact with Italian Renaissance stylistic and intellectual developments. And whereas fifteenth-century German artists still worked within the confines of medieval views of the artist as a craftsman, sixteenth-century artists had a new self-awareness of their status as intellectuals and humanists, which was linked to early modern conceptions of the self and to an overall sense of modernity that arose after the year 1500. Moreover, the Reformation movement, which was centred in the German-speaking territories and arose in the early decades of the sixteenth century, shattered the concept of a Christian Europe unified under the Roman Catholic Church and established new boundaries between Protestants and Catholics. In addition, the reformed view that religious art works were idolatrous forced art (in reformed regions) to take on new roles and new subject matter, as well as to shift toward a greater focus on the print medium.

Sixteenth-century German artists were much less interested in the ‘medium’ or format of the painted triptych. While there could be and were portrait triptychs, the format had its strongest associations with altarpieces and religious objects, and hence became problematic with the onset of the Reformation.