Presentation of Mary in the Temple

The story here is not in the Bible. It comes from an early Christian text known as the Gospel of James, which says that Mary's parents brought her to the Temple in Jerusalem when she was three, and medieval retellings added that she climbed its steps by herself. In the West the feast came late. It spread in the 15th century, and in 1472 Pope Sixtus IV extended it to the whole Church. Painted about 30 years later, this panel puts the girl alone on a long stone staircase, dressed in black, her hands joined in prayer. Below, two women watch from one side, and a man in a yellow gown points up at the child as he talks to a man in red. The Temple itself is a Gothic building of Reichlich's own day, with tall traceried windows glimpsed at the top of the stairs.