Altarpiece of Nicholas Puchner, Grand Master of the Knights of the Cross with the Red Star, called Puchner Ark

Puchner’s ark is one of the most remarkable relics of panel painting in Bohemia. It was made for the convent church of the Knights of the Cross with the Red Star in the year of the two hundredth anniversary of the death of Saint Agnes of Bohemia (probably 1211–1282). The Knights of the Cross with the Red Star had venerated Přemyslid princess Agnes (canonised in 1989) and the saints of their order since the Middle Ages. She was honoured as a founder because she was behind the hospitaller brotherhood in the 1230s which was upgraded to the separate order that followed the monastic rule of Saint Augustine as of 1237. The kneeling donor, originally praying under the protection of Saint Barbara to the Virgin and Child on the Crescent Moon, has been identified by the Latin dedication inscription. He was Mikuláš Puchner, the twelfth Grand Master of the Knights of the Cross with the Red Star. Originally, the two paintings were in the ark’s centre, at the side of the Virgin and Child on the Crescent Moon which has been venerated in the Old Town convent church as ‘Mater domus’ to this day.