Lucas Cranach the Elder, 'Saints Christina and Ottilia', 1506

Both paintings are first recorded in the copies of the Saint Catherine Altarpiece made by the Torgau painter Daniel Fritsch, which are dated 1586 and 1596 (now Gotisches Haus, Stiftung Dessau Wörlitz and the Evangelical church (Dorfkirche), Berlin, Alt-Tempelhof, respectively). According to an inventory taken at Schloss Hartenfels, Torgau, in 1610 there was in the ‘Schöne Fürstenkammer’ an ‘alte gemahlte Taffel von Ölfarben darauff die Historien von der Catharina’ (‘an old picture painted with oil paints on which is the story of Catherine’), described in 1601 merely as a ‘grosser Flügelaltar mit vergoldetem Rahmen’ (‘a large winged altar with a gilded frame’), which can probably be identified with Cranach’s altarpiece.

The altarpiece was brought to Dresden from Torgau in 1738 by the court painter Bonaventura Rossi. It can evidently be identified in the ‘Specification derjenigen Bilder, so von Monsieur Rossi von dem Schlosse zu Torgau mit nach Dresden genommen worde’ that was drawn up in Torgau on 12 July 1738, as number 2, ‘Ein Bild, worauff die Historia der Dorothea auf Holz, in 3 Feldern gemahlt’. The whole altarpiece is first recorded in the Dresden royal collection from 1786 in records of paintings to be sold; the wing panels had evidently been sawn in two by this date, separating the front and back, as inner and outer panels were listed separately.The two outer sides of the wings were sold in 1797 together with one interior side of a wing: the panel with Saint Apollonia (NG 6511.1) was sold on 27/28 July for 2 Thaler 8 Groschen and the Saint Ottilia panel (NG 6511.2) on 2 December for 11 Groschen.

All three panels were acquired at an unknown date, probably via the Dresden painter Ferdinand Hartmann (1774–1842), by Heinrich Wilhelm Campe (1771–1862), a Leipzig businessman and collector, and sold on 24 September 1827 in Leipzig. The National Gallery panels are listed in the sale catalogue as numbers 286 and 287, by Hans Holbein the Elder; number 300, the interior panel depicting Saint Dorothy and her companion, was sold as by Hans Baldung Grien. The latter was acquired by the Leipzig collector Maximilian Speck von Sternburg (1776–1856), and remained in the possession of his descendents until acquired by the Dresden Gemäldegalerie in 1996, where it had been on loan since 1931. NG 6511.1 and NG 6511.2 were purchased at the 1827 sale by a Berlin dealer, ‘v.d. Laar’, perhaps the artist Ferdinand von Laer (active 1828–1840), for a total of 50 Thaler 4 Groschen. By 1875 they were in the collection of the banker and Trustee of the National Gallery, Samuel Jones-Loyd, 1st Baron Overstone (1796–1883). They were inherited by his descendants and acquired by the National Gallery from the Loyd Trustees through a private treaty sale in 1987.