Johann Georg Melchior Schmittner

For most of three centuries, Johann Georg Melchior Schmittner's best-known picture was a local devotion. He painted it around 1700 for St. Peter am Perlach, a church in the heart of Augsburg. Mary stands among angels and patiently unties the knots in a long ribbon that one angel hands her, while another takes the smoothed length away.

Schmittner was an Augsburg church painter through and through. He trained with Johann Heinrich Schönfeld, a leading Baroque painter in the city, spent years in Italy, and then filled altars in churches around his home town. This commission came from a local patrician, Hieronymus Ambrosius Langenmantel. A family story says his grandfather's failing marriage was saved by the prayers of a Jesuit priest in Ingolstadt, though researchers note that the tale was written down only much later.

The image's second life began in Argentina. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the future Pope Francis, received it on a Christmas card from a German nun, by his own account, and had copies made for churches in Buenos Aires. From there the devotion to Mary, Untier of Knots spread to Brazil and far beyond, and visitors now seek out the original in Augsburg.