Presentation of Christ in the Temple

In 1433 the masons of Vienna finished the south tower of St Stephen's, the city's great Gothic church, after more than 60 years of work. In those same years, around 1430 to 1440, a Viennese painter set this Gospel scene inside a church of his own day, a choir with a ribbed vault and pointed tracery windows. Luke's Gospel tells how the Child was brought to the Temple in Jerusalem 40 days after his birth, and how the old man Simeon took him in his arms. Here Mary, in a dark green mantle, holds the naked Child over an altar spread with linen. Simeon, in a tall white headdress, leans in with a cloth ready to receive him. Its companion panel, the Flagellation of Christ, is also in the Belvedere, and this one has been on long-term loan there from the McCarthy Collection in Hong Kong since 2015.