The biblical cycle of paintings on the Court Bridge was completed around It was obviously a success because soon after the Lucerne city chronicler Renward Cysat began to draw up concepts for a program of paintings for the Chapel Bridge. In , he submitted his proposal to the councils. They decided that the Chapel Bridge should also have a cycle of paintings. This cycle should feature no religious pictures but only worldly ones.
In , the council decided to go ahead with the project. All council members were invited to sponsor picture panels.
A sponsor family normally paid for two panels, with paintings on both sides. Its coats of arms and inscriptions can therefore be seen once in the national history cycle and once in the Leger and Maurice cycle.
They appear as captions under the paintings explaining the depicted themes. Starting from the left bank of the Reuss, around 76 picture panels depict scenes from national history. From the right bank of the Reuss, 40 picture panels portray the life of St Leger, followed by 29 paintings depicting the legends of the second patron saint of Lucerne, St Maurice. The Lucerne heraldic pyramid opened the passage of paintings at both ends of the bridge.
There was also a painting sponsored by the papal nuncio, who lived in Lucerne at the time. Looking back at the political events of to , it is clear why the sequence of paintings was created in this way. It was a politically uncertain time with domestic policy dominated by confessional disputes and foreign policy influenced by the changing alliances between France, Spain, Savoy and the pope.
