Holy Family with a Deacon

This panel is barely 23 centimetres high, a devotional picture meant to be held close. It carries the date 1515, but a technical examination found an earlier date underneath that reads as 1507, so Altdorfer seems to have worked on it over several years. The group of Mary and the Child with Joseph comes from an Italian source, an engraving by Giovanni Antonio da Brescia after a design by Mantegna, which had reached German workshops by then. The young man on the right wears a dalmatic, the vestment of a deacon. He has sometimes been named as Saint Stephen or Saint Agapitus, but the museum doubts it, since he seems to hold fruit rather than burning coals. White highlights flicker across the folds, the hair and the Virgin's crown of pearls and stars.