The carver placed the relief next to a canopy bed in the interior of a room with a bifora. According to apocryphal sources, the Apostles appeared at Mary’s side when she was dying. This depiction of Mary’s death belongs to the so-called Bohemian type, where the dying Mary kneels by the bedside. It captures the moment when her strength fails her and one of the Apostles supports her from behind, assisted by John, who takes from Mary’s hands the palm branch which, as was customary, was to be carried at the head of the funeral procession. The Apostles, some of whom are reading the breviary, are crowded around the central figures – they are preparing for the funeral rites, with Peter on the far right burning incense. A depiction of Christ, appearing in the clouds to receive his mother’s soul, has been fragmentarily preserved in the upper left half of the relief.

The Master of the Baierberg Altar, active in the third and fourth decades of the 16th century, had a workshop in Klagenfurt or Völkermarkt, and his works are associated with Lower Carinthia (Baierberg, Griffen and Maria Rojach). His style is characterised by the physicality of his figures, drapery that follows the contours of bodies but retains a character of its own, and hair that appears “wet”; some of his other works evidently draw on Albrecht Dürer’s graphic designs.