Madonna of the Rose Bower

Around 1440 Cologne was one of the great cities of northern Europe, and Stefan Lochner was its finest painter. This little panel, barely 20 inches tall, was made for private prayer, and it is easy to imagine it doing exactly that work. The Virgin sits as Queen of Heaven in an enclosed rose garden, Christ on her lap, angels holding back a red curtain and making music around her. The closed garden was an old symbol of Mary's purity, and the roses carry their own meaning. Lochner painted her deep blue robe with tiny dark dots, a patient technique borrowed from manuscript painting, so the cloth seems to fold over a real body beneath. He would not paint for many more years. Around 1451, like thousands of others in Cologne, he died in an outbreak of plague. This gentle, gold-ground image is the work he is still best remembered for.