Presentation of Mary in the Temple

When this panel was painted in Vienna, around 1445 to 1450, its subject was still fairly new to Western churches. The story comes from an early Christian text outside the Bible, which says Mary's parents brought her to the Temple in Jerusalem at the age of three, to be raised there. The Greek church had kept a feast for it for centuries, and it reached the papal court in Avignon only in 1372. Here the Temple looks like a Gothic church of the painter's own day, with a pinnacled canopy, an altar cloth and two burning candles. Mary is a small girl in a blue dress, lifting her joined hands towards the high priest. Her mother Anne rests a hand on her shoulder, and the priest's collar is edged with lettering.