Assumption of the Virgin

In 1647 Emperor Ferdinand III placed his Austrian lands under the protection of the Virgin conceived without sin, and raised a column to her on the square Am Hof in Vienna. The column still stood in Janneck's Vienna a century later, and that devotion colours this small painting on copper. The Belvedere calls the subject the Assumption, Mary taken up into heaven, and Janneck gives her the signs of the Immaculate Conception as well. She rests one bare foot on a globe, where a serpent coils with an apple in its jaws, and a ring of stars circles her head. Above her, Christ and God the Father lean out of the clouds, with the dove of the Holy Spirit higher still. The tall, narrow plate has a companion of the same size, a Conversion of Saint Paul.