Christ Taking Leave of his Mother

No Gospel describes this scene. It grew out of the devotional books of the late Middle Ages, which asked readers to picture the days before the Passion in close, human detail. The story they told was that Christ, before going up to Jerusalem for the last time, met his mother outside the house of Lazarus at Bethany and said goodbye, while she pleaded with him to stay. By 1500 the episode was well known in Germany. Dürer included it in his woodcut series on the Life of the Virgin, published as a book in 1511. Cranach painted it around 1520 at a generous size, more than a metre tall. With the Virgin are the women who followed Christ, Mary Magdalene, Mary Cleophas and Mary Salome, and Christ turns to them with a gesture of comfort, a wide landscape opening behind the group. The composition exists in several versions, and the museum considers this one the earliest and the finest. It has been recorded in the imperial picture gallery in Vienna since 1783.