The Babenberg family were freebooting German fighters, working for the Duke of Bavaria as Christian forces hacked their way east, pushing back the Hungarians. The records are so poor that beyond the most basic outline almost everything they did is merely bright coloured romance. And this is exactly what the canons’ painting provides – here they are praying, heading off on crusade, the victims of treachery, in a picturesquely mounted battle. The great weight of the past is brilliantly conveyed in the picture – a dynastic sequence of events stretching down through the centuries.
